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A History of Western Society
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ISBN-13: 978-0-312-68321-4
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Advanced Placement* Edition
Ninth Edition
A History of Western Society
Since
John P. McKay
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Bennett D. Hill
Late of Georgetown University
John Buckler
Clare Haru Crowston

Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
B E D F O R D / S T. M A R T I N ’ S
Boston ♦ N e w Yo r k
In Memoriam
Bennett David Hill
1934 – 2005
Bennett Hill, who authored many of the chapters in earlier editions of this
book, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of African American
Catholics. When Bennett was ten, the family moved north to Philadelphia,
where his father worked for the U.S. Postal Service and his mother for the
Veterans Administration. Bennett attended public schools, and his intellec-
tual prowess was soon evident. He won a scholarship to Princeton Univer-
sity, where he received an excellent education that he always treasured.
Majoring in history and graduating cum laude, Bennett was a trailblazer—
one of the first African Americans to receive an undergraduate degree from
Princeton. He subsequently earned a doctorate in European history at
Princeton, joined the history department of the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, Apagoand laterPDF
servedEnhancer
as department chair. Bennett was a
popular but demanding teacher with a passion for medieval social history.
His colleagues at Illinois remember especially his keen intellect, elegant taste,
literary flair, and quick, sometimes mischievous wit. (He once persuaded
some of his students that he followed medieval tradition and trimmed his
front lawn with sheep rather than a lawn mower.) Establishing a scholarly
reputation as a leading expert on medieval monasticism, Bennett heeded a
spiritual call in midlife and became a Benedictine monk and ordained priest
at St. Anselm’s Abbey in Washington, D.C. He often served Mass at the
parish church of his grandparents in Baltimore. Yet Bennett never lost his
passion for European and world history, teaching regularly as a visiting pro-
fessor at Georgetown University. An indefatigable worker with insatiable cu-
riosity, he viewed each new edition as an exciting learning opportunity. At
the time of his sudden and unexpected death in February 2005 he was work-
ing on a world history of slavery, which grew out of his research and reflected
his proud heritage and intensely ethical concerns. A complex and many-sided
individual, Bennett was a wonderful conversationalist, an inspiring human
being, and the beloved brother and uncle of a large extended family. His sud-
den passing has been a wrenching loss for all who knew him.
v
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About the Authors
John P. McKay Born in St. Louis, John P. McKay received lished Aegean Greece in the Fourth Century B.C. In the following
his B.A. from Wesleyan University (1961), his M.A. from the year appeared his editions of W. M. Leake, Travels in the Morea
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (1962), and his Ph.D. (three volumes), and Leake’s Peloponnesiaca. Cambridge Uni-
from the University of California, Berkeley (1968). He began versity Press published his Central Greece and the Politics of
teaching history at the University of Illinois in 1966 and be- Power in the Fourth Century, edited by Hans Beck, in 2007.
came a Professor there in 1976. John won the Herbert Baxter
Adams Prize for his book Pioneers for Profit: Foreign Entrepre- Clare Haru Crowston Born in Cambridge, Massachu-
neurship and Russian Industrialization, 1885–1913 (1970). He setts, and raised in Toronto, Clare Haru Crowston received her
has also written Tramways and Trolleys: The Rise of Urban Mass B.A. in 1985 from McGill University and her Ph.D. in 1996
Transport in Europe (1976) and has translated Jules Michelet’s from Cornell University. Since 1996, she has taught at the Uni-
The People (1973). His research has been supported by fellow- versity of Illinois, where she has served as associate chair and
ships from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, Director of Graduate Studies, and is currently Associate Profes-
the National Endowment for the Humanities, and IREX. He sor of history. She is the author of Fabricating Women: The
has written well over a hundred articles, book chapters, and re- Seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675–1791 (Duke University
views, which have appeared in numerous publications, includ- Press, 2001), which won two awards, the Berkshire Prize and
ing The American Historical Review, Business History Review, The the Hagley Prize. She edited two special issues of the Journal of
Journal of Economic History, and Slavic Review. He contributed Women’s History (vol. 18, nos. 3 and 4) and has published nu-
extensively to C. Stewart and P. Fritzsche, eds., Imagining the merous articles and reviews in journals such as Annales: His-
Twentieth Century (1997). toire, Sciences Sociales, French Historical Studies, Gender and
History, and the Journal of Economic History. Her research has
Bennett D. Hill A native of Philadelphia, Bennett D. Hill
Apago PDF Enhancer been supported with grants from the National Endowment for
earned an A.B. from Princeton (1956) and advanced degrees the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, and the Bourse
from Harvard (A.M., 1958) and Princeton (Ph.D., 1963). He Châteaubriand of the French government. She is a past presi-
taught history at the University of Illinois, where he was de- dent of the Society for French Historical Studies and a former
partment chair from 1978 to 1981. He published English Cis- chair of the Pinkney Prize Committee.
tercian Monasteries and Their Patrons in the Twelfth Century
(1968), Church and State in the Middle Ages (1970), and articles Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks Having grown up in Min-
in Analecta Cisterciensia, The New Catholic Encyclopaedia, The neapolis, Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks received her B.A. from
American Benedictine Review, and The Dictionary of the Middle Grinnell College in 1973 (as well as an honorary doctorate
Ages. His reviews appeared in The American Historical Review, some years later), and her Ph.D. from the University of
Speculum, The Historian, the Journal of World History, and Li- Wisconsin–Madison in 1979. She taught first at Augustana
brary Journal. He was one of the contributing editors to The College in Illinois, and since 1985 at the University of
Encyclopedia of World History (2001). He was a Fellow of the Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she is currently UWM Distin-
American Council of Learned Societies and served on the edi- guished Professor in the department of history. She is the co-
torial board of The American Benedictine Review, on committees editor of the Sixteenth Century Journal and the author or editor
of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and as vice of nineteen books and many articles that have appeared in Eng-
president of the American Catholic Historical Association lish, German, Italian, Spanish, and Chinese. These include
(1995–1996). A Benedictine monk of St. Anselm’s Abbey in Early Modern Europe, 1450–1789 (Cambridge, 2006), Women
Washington, D.C., he was also a Visiting Professor at George- and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 3d ed., 2008),
town University. and Gender in History (Blackwell, 2001). She currently serves as
the Chief Reader for Advanced Placement World History and
John Buckler Born in Louisville, Kentucky, John Buckler has also written a number of source books for use in the college
received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1973. In 1980 classroom, including Discovering the Western Past (Houghton
Harvard University Press published his Theban Hegemony, Mifflin, 6th ed., 2007) and Discovering the Global Past (Hough-
371–362 B.C. He published Philip II and the Sacred War (Leiden, ton Mifflin, 3d ed., 2006), and a book for young adults, An Age
1989) and also edited BOIOTIKA: Vorträge vom 5. Intern- of Voyages, 1350–1600 (Oxford, 2005).
ationalen Böotien-Kolloquium (Munich, 1989). In 2003 he pub-
vi
Brief Contents
Chapter 12 The Crisis of the Later Middle Ages, 1300–1450 371
Chapter 13 European Society in the Age of the Renaissance, 1350–1550 407
Chapter 14 Reformations and Religious Wars, 1500–1600 445
Chapter 15 European Exploration and Conquest, 1450–1650 483
Chapter 16 Absolutism and Constitutionalism in Western Europe,

ca 1589–1715 523
Chapter 17 Absolutism in Central and Eastern Europe to 1740 559
Chapter 18 Toward a New Worldview, 1540–1789 589
Chapter 19 The Expansion of Europe in the Eighteenth Century 621
Chapter 20 The Changing Life of the People 653
Chapter 21 The Revolution in Politics, 1775–1815

683
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Chapter 22 The Revolution in Energy and Industry, ca 1780–1860 717
Chapter 23 Ideologies and Upheavals, 1815–1850 747
Chapter 24 Life in the Emerging Urban Society in the Nineteenth Century 779
Chapter 25 The Age of Nationalism, 1850–1914 815
Chapter 26 The West and the World, 1815–1914 847
Chapter 27 The Great Break: War and Revolution, 1914–1919 879
Chapter 28 The Age of Anxiety, ca 1900–1940 913
Chapter 29 Dictatorships and the Second World War, 1919–1945 945
Chapter 30 Cold War Conflicts and Social Transformations, 1945–1985 981
Chapter 31 Revolution, Rebuilding, and New Challenges: 1985 to the

Present 1019
vii
Contents
Maps xvii Suggested Reading 402

Listening to the Past xviii Notes 403
Preface xix
LISTENING TO THE PAST Christine de Pizan 404
See
Chapter 12 Chapter 13 DBQ 1
The Crisis of the Later Middle Ages, European Society in the Age of the
1300–1450 371 Renaissance, 1350–1550 407
Prelude to Disaster 371
Economic and Political Developments 408
Climate Change and Famine 371
Commercial Developments 408
Government Ineptitude 373
Communes and Republics 409
The Black Death 374 The Balance of Power Among the Italian
Pathology 374 City-States 410
Spread of the Disease 375
Intellectual Change 412
Mapping the Past Map 12.1: The Course of Humanism 412
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the Black Death in Fourteenth-Century Europe Education 414
Care 377 Political Thought 415
Social, Economic, and Cultural Consequences 378 Secular Spirit 416
Christian Humanism 416
The Hundred Years’ War 381 The Printed Word 418
Causes 381
The Popular Response 382 Mapping the Past Map 13.2: The Growth
The Course of the War to 1419 383 of Printing in Europe 420
Joan of Arc and France’s Victory 385 Art and the Artist 421
Costs and Consequences 385 Art and Power 421
Challenges to the Church 387 Subjects and Style 422
The Babylonian Captivity and Great Schism 387 Patronage and Creativity 425
The Conciliar Movement 388 INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Leonardo da Vinci 427
Lay Piety and Mysticism 389
Social Hierarchies 428
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Jan Hus 391 Race 429
Economic and Social Change 390 Class 431
Peasant Revolts 390 Gender 432
Urban Conflicts 392 Politics and the State in the Renaissance
Sex in the City 393 (ca 1450–1521) 434
Fur-Collar Crime 396 France 434
Ethnic Tensions and Restrictions 397 England 435
Literacy and Vernacular Literature 399 Spain 436
Chapter Summary 401 Chapter Summary 439
Key Terms 402 Key Terms 440
viii
Contents • ix
See
Suggested Reading 440
Notes 441 Chapter 15 DBQ 3
LISTENING TO THE PAST An Age of Gold 442

European Exploration and Conquest,
1450–1650 483
See World Contacts Before Columbus 483
Chapter 14 DBQ 2
The Trading World of the Indian Ocean 484
Reformations and Religious Wars, Africa 485
The Ottoman and Persian Empires 488
1500–1600 445
Genoese and Venetian Middlemen 490
The Early Reformation 445
The European Voyages of Discovery 492
The Christian Church in the Early
Causes of European Expansion 492
Sixteenth Century 446
Technological Stimuli to Exploration 493
Martin Luther 446
The Portuguese Overseas Empire 495
Protestant Thought 449
The Appeal of Protestant Ideas 450 Mapping the Past Map 15.2: Overseas
The Radical Reformation 451 Exploration and Conquest, Fifteenth and
The German Peasants’ War 454 Sixteenth Centuries 496
The Reformation and Marriage 455
The Problem of Christopher Columbus 498
• Images in Society Art in the Reformation 452 Later Explorers 500
New World Conquest 501
The Reformation and German Politics 457
The Rise of the Habsburg Dynasty 457 Europe and the World After Columbus 504
The Political Impact of the Protestant Spanish Settlement and Indigenous
Reformation 458 Population Decline 504
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The Spread of the Protestant Reformation 459 Enhancer
Sugar and Slavery 505
The Columbian Exchange 508
The Reformation in England and Ireland 461
Silver and the Economic Effects of Spain’s
Calvinism 463
Discoveries 509
The Establishment of the Church
The Birth of the Global Economy 510
of Scotland 465
Spain’s Global Empire 511
The Reformation in Eastern Europe 465
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Juan de Pareja 507
The Catholic Reformation 466
Changing Attitudes and Beliefs 513
Mapping the Past Map 14.2: Religious
New Ideas About Race 513
Divisions in Europe 468
Michel de Montaigne and Cultural Curiosity 514
The Reformed Papacy 467
Elizabethan and Jacobean Literature 514
The Council of Trent 467
Chapter Summary 516
New Religious Orders 469
Key Terms 517
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Teresa of Ávila 471 Suggested Reading 517
Notes 520
Religious Violence 472
French Religious Wars 472 LISTENING TO THE PAST Columbus Describes
The Netherlands Under Charles V 473 His First Voyage 518
The Great European Witch-Hunt 475
Chapter Summary 478 See
Key Terms 479 Chapter 16 DBQ 4
Absolutism and Constitutionalism
Notes 479
in Western Europe, ca 1589–1715 523
LISTENING TO THE PAST Martin Luther,
Seventeenth-Century Crisis and Rebuilding 523
On Christian Liberty 480
Economic and Demographic Crisis 524
x • Contents
Seventeenth-Century State-Building: The Rise of Austria and Prussia 565

Common Obstacles and Achievements 525 The Austrian Habsburgs 565
Warfare and the Growth of Army Size 526 Austrian Rule in Hungary 566
Popular Political Action 527 Prussia in the Seventeenth Century 567
The Consolidation of Prussian Absolutism 571
Absolutism in France and Spain 528
The Foundations of Absolutism: Henry IV, • Images in Society Absolutist Palace Building 568
Sully, and Richelieu 528
The Development of Russia and the
Louis XIV and Absolutism 530
Ottoman Empire 572
Financial and Economic Management
The Mongol Yoke and the Rise of Moscow 572
Under Louis XIV: Colbert 532
Louis XIV’s Wars 533 Mapping the Past Map 17.3: The Expansion
The Decline of Absolutist Spain in the of Russia to 1725 573
Seventeenth Century 534 Tsar and People to 1689 574
Mapping the Past Map 16.2: Europe in 1715 536 The Reforms of Peter the Great 576
The Growth of St. Petersburg 578
Colonial Administration 538
The Growth of the Ottoman Empire 580
The Culture of Absolutism 539 Religious Diversity in the Ottoman Empire 584
Baroque Art and Music 539
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Hürrem 583
Court Culture 540
French Classicism 541 Chapter Summary 584
Key Terms 585
Constitutionalism 542
Absolutist Claims in England (1603–1649) 543
Notes 585
Religious Divides 544
Puritanical Absolutism in England:
Cromwell and the Protectorate
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Russia
TO THE PAST A Foreign Traveler
586
The Restoration of the English Monarchy 547
The Triumph of England’s Parliament: See
Constitutional Monarchy and Cabinet Chapter 18 DBQ 5
Government 548 Toward a New Worldview, 1540–1789 589
The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth
Century 549 The Scientific Revolution 590
Scientific Thought in 1500 590
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Glückel of Hameln 551 The Copernican Hypothesis 591
Chapter Summary 553 From Brahe to Galileo 592
Key Terms 554 Newton’s Synthesis 594
Suggested Reading 554 Causes of the Scientific Revolution 595
Notes 555 Science and Society 597
LISTENING TO THE PAST The Court at Versailles 556 The Enlightenment 598
The Emergence of the Enlightenment 598
See The Philosophes and the Public 600
Chapter 17 DBQ 4
The Enlightenment Outside of France 603
Absolutism in Central and Eastern Urban Culture and the Public Sphere 603
Europe to 1740 559 Late Enlightenment 607
Race and the Enlightenment 608
Warfare and Social Change in Central
and Eastern Europe 559 The Enlightenment and Absolutism 609
Origins of Serfdom 560 Frederick the Great of Prussia 609
The Consolidation of Serfdom 560 Catherine the Great of Russia 610
The Thirty Years’ War 562 The Austrian Habsburgs 613
Consequences of the Thirty Years’ War 563
Contents • xi
Mapping the Past Map 18.1: The Partition LISTENING TO THE PAST The Debate over
of Poland and Russia’s Expansion, 1772–1795 614 the Guilds 650
Evaluating “Enlightened Absolutism” 615
See
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Moses Mendelssohn Chapter 20 DBQ 7
and the Jewish Enlightenment 611
The Changing Life of the People 653
Chapter Summary 616
Marriage and the Family 653
Key Terms 617
Late Marriage and Nuclear Families 653
Work Away from Home 654
Notes 617
Premarital Sex and Community Controls 656
LISTENING TO THE PAST Voltaire on Religion 618 New Patterns of Marriage and Illegitimacy 656
See
Children and Education 658
Child Care and Nursing 658
Chapter 19 DBQ 6
Foundlings and Infanticide 659
The Expansion of Europe in the Attitudes Toward Children 660
Eighteenth Century 621 Schools and Popular Literature 661
Agriculture and the Land 622 Mapping the Past Map 20.1: Literacy in France
The Open-Field System 622 on the Eve of the French Revolution 662
The Agricultural Revolution 622
Food, Medicine, and New Consumption Habits 663
The Leadership of the Low Countries
Diets and Nutrition 664
and England 624
Toward a Consumer Society 665
The Beginning of the Population Explosion 625 Medical Practitioners 667
Limitations on Population Growth 626
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INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Madame du Coudray,
The New Pattern of the Eighteenth
the Nation’s Midwife 669
Century 627
Religion and Popular Culture 671
Cottage Industry and Urban Guilds 628
The Institutional Church 671
The Putting-Out System 629
Protestant Revival 672
Mapping the Past Map 19.1: Industry and Catholic Piety 674
Population in Eighteenth-Century Europe 630 Leisure and Recreation 675
The Textile Industry 631 Chapter Summary 676
Urban Guilds 631 Key Terms 677
The Industrious Revolution 633 Suggested Reading 677
Notes 680
Building the Global Economy 634
Mercantilism and Colonial Wars 634 LISTENING TO THE PAST A Day in the Life of Paris 678
Land and Labor in British America 640
The Atlantic Slave Trade 641 See
Revival in Colonial Latin America 643 Chapter 21 DBQ 8
Trade and Empire in Asia 644 The Revolution in Politics, 1775–1815 683
Adam Smith and Economic Liberalism 647
Background to Revolution 683
• Images in Society London: The Remaking Legal Orders and Social Change 684
of a Great City 638 The Crisis of Political Legitimacy 685
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Olaudah Equiano 645 The Impact of the American Revolution 687
Financial Crisis 688
Chapter Summary 648
Key Terms 649 Revolution in Metropole and Colony,
Suggested Reading 649 1789–1791 689
Notes 649 The Formation of the National Assembly 689
xii • Contents
The Revolt of the Poor and the Oppressed 690 The New Class of Factory Owners 732
A Limited Monarchy 691 The New Factory Workers 734
Revolutionary Aspirations in Conditions of Work 736
Saint-Domingue 693 The Sexual Division of Labor 738
The Early Labor Movement in Britain 740
World War and Republican France, 1791–1799 694
Foreign Reactions and the Beginning of War 694 INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY The Strutt Family 735
The Second Revolution 696
Chapter Summary 741
Total War and the Terror 697
Key Terms 742
Revolution in Saint-Domingue 700
The Thermidorian Reaction and the
Notes 742
Directory, 1794–1799 702
LISTENING TO THE PAST The Testimony
The Napoleonic Era, 1799–1815 703
of Young Mine Workers 744
Napoleon’s Rule of France 703
Napoleon’s Expansion in Europe 705 See
The War of Haitian Independence 707
The Grand Empire and Its End 708
Chapter 23 DBQ 10
Ideologies and Upheavals, 1815–1850 747

INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Touissaint L’Ouverture 709
Mapping the Past Map 23.1: Europe in 1815 748
Mapping the Past Map 21.2: Napoleonic
Europe in 1810 710 The Peace Settlement 749
The European Balance of Power 749
Chapter Summary 712
Intervention and Repression 751
Key Terms 713
Metternich and Conservatism 751
Notes Apago PDFRadical
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713Ideas and Early Socialism
Liberalism
753
753
LISTENING TO THE PAST Revolution and Nationalism 754
Women’s Rights 714 French Utopian Socialism 756
The Birth of Marxian Socialism 757
See
Chapter 22 DBQ 9 The Romantic Movement 758
Romanticism’s Tenets 758
The Revolution in Energy and Industry, Literature 758
ca 1780–1860 717 Art and Music 760
The Industrial Revolution in Britain 718 Reforms and Revolutions 761
Eighteenth-Century Origins 718 National Liberation in Greece 761
The First Factories 719 Liberal Reform in Great Britain 763
The Problem of Energy 721 Ireland and the Great Famine 766
The Steam Engine Breakthrough 721 The Revolution of 1830 in France 767
The Coming of the Railroads 723
Industry and Population 725 The Revolutions of 1848 768
A Democratic Republic in France 770
Industrialization in Continental Europe 727 The Austrian Empire in 1848 772
National Variations 727 Prussia and the Frankfurt Assembly 773
The Challenge of Industrialization 728
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Jules Michelet 769
Mapping the Past Map 22.3: Continental
Industrialization, ca 1850 729 Chapter Summary 774
Key Terms 775
Agents of Industrialization 730 Suggested Reading 775
Government Support and Corporate Banking 730 Notes 775
Relations Between Capital and Labor 732
Contents • xiii
LISTENING TO THE PAST Speaking for Nation Building in Italy and Germany 818
the Czech Nation 776 Italy to 1850 818
Cavour and Garibaldi in Italy 818
Germany Before Bismarck 821
Chapter 24 Bismarck and the Austro-Prussian War, 1866 821
Life in the Emerging Urban Society in the The Taming of the Parliament 822
Nineteenth Century 779 Mapping the Past Map 25.2: The Unification
of Germany, 1866–1871 823
Taming the City 779
Industry and the Growth of Cities 780 The Franco-Prussian War, 1870–1871 824
Mapping the Past Map 24.1: European Cities Nation Building in the United States 825
of 100,000 or More, 1800 and 1900 780 The Modernization of Russia and
Public Health and the Bacterial Revolution 781 the Ottoman Empire 826
Urban Planning and Public Transportation 784 The “Great Reforms” 827
The Revolution of 1905 828
Rich and Poor and Those in Between 786
Decline and Reform in the Ottoman Empire 829
Social Structure 786
The Middle Classes 788 The Responsive National State, 1871–1914 831
Middle-Class Culture 789 General Trends 831
The Working Classes 790 The German Empire 832
Working-Class Leisure and Religion 795 Republican France 833
Great Britain and Ireland 835
• Images in Society Class and Gender
The Austro-Hungarian Empire 836
Boundaries in Women’s Fashion, 1850–1914 792
Jewish Emancipation and Modern
The Changing Family
Premarital Sex and Marriage
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797
Anti-Semitism 837
Marxism and the Socialist Movement 838
Prostitution 798
The Socialist International 838
Kinship Ties 799
Unions and Revisionism 840
Gender Roles and Family Life 799
Child Rearing 802 INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Theodor Herzl 839
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Franziska Tiburtius 801 Chapter Summary 842
Key Terms 843
Science and Thought 804 Suggested Reading 843
The Triumph of Science 804 Notes 843
Social Science and Evolution 805
Realism in Literature 807 LISTENING TO THE PAST The Making of
Chapter Summary 810 a Socialist 844
Key Terms 810
Suggested Reading 810 See
Notes 811 Chapter 26 DBQ 11
LISTENING TO THE PAST Middle-Class The West and the World, 1815–1914 847
Youth and Sexuality 812 Industrialization and the World Economy 847
The Rise of Global Inequality 848
See The World Market 849
Chapter 25 DBQ 10
The Opening of China and Japan 850
The Age of Nationalism, 1850–1914 815 Western Penetration of Egypt 853
Napoleon III in France 815 The Great Migration 854

The Second Republic and Louis Napoleon 816 The Pressure of Population 855
Napoleon III’s Second Empire 817 European Migrants 856
Asian Migrants 858
xiv • Contents
Western Imperialism, 1880–1914 859 The Treaty of Versailles 902

The Scramble for Africa 859 The Peace Settlement in the Middle East 903
Mapping the Past Map 26.2: The Partition Mapping the Past Map 27.4: Shattered Empires
of Africa 860 and Territorial Changes After World War I 904
Imperialism in Asia 865 American Rejection of the Versailles Treaty 907
Causes of the New Imperialism 865 Chapter Summary 908
A “Civilizing Mission” 867 Key Terms 909
Critics of Imperialism 867 Suggested Reading 909
Notes 909
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Cecil Rhodes 863
LISTENING TO THE PAST Arab Political
Responding to Western Imperialism 868
Aspirations in 1919 910
The Pattern of Response 868
Empire in India 868
See
The Example of Japan 870
Toward Revolution in China 872
Chapter 28 DBQ 13
Chapter Summary 874 The Age of Anxiety, ca 1900–1940 913

Key Terms 874 Uncertainty in Modern Thought 913
Suggested Reading 874 The “Cruelly Injured Mind” 913
Notes 875 Modern Philosophy 915
LISTENING TO THE PAST A British Woman The Revival of Christianity 917
in India 876 The New Physics 917
Freudian Psychology 919
See Twentieth-Century Literature 920
Chapter 27 DBQ 12
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Art and Music 921
The Great Break: War and Revolution, Architecture and Design 921
1914–1919 879 Modern Painting 922
Modern Music 926
The First World War 879
The Bismarckian System of Alliances 880 • Images in Society Pablo Picasso and
The Rival Blocs 881 Modern Art 924
The Outbreak of War 883 Movies and Radio 926
Reflections on the Origins of the War 884
Stalemate and Slaughter 887 The Search for Peace and Political Stability 928
The Widening War 888 Germany and the Western Powers 928
Hope in Foreign Affairs, 1924–1929 930
The Home Front 890 Hope in Democratic Government 930
Mobilizing for Total War 890
The Social Impact 892 INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Gustav Stresemann 931
Growing Political Tensions 894 The Great Depression, 1929–1939 933
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Vera Brittain 893 The Economic Crisis 933
The Russian Revolution 895 Mapping the Past Map 28.1: The Great
The Fall of Imperial Russia 895 Depression in the United States, Britain,
The Provisional Government 896 and Europe 934
Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution 896 Mass Unemployment 935
Trotsky and the Seizure of Power 898 The New Deal in the United States 936
Dictatorship and Civil War 899 The Scandinavian Response to the
The Peace Settlement 901 Depression 937
The End of the War 901 Recovery and Reform in Britain
Revolution in Germany 901 and France 938
Contents • xv
See
Chapter Summary 940
Key Terms 940 Chapter 30 DBQs
15, 16
Suggested Reading 940 Cold War Conflicts and Social
Notes 941 Transformations, 1945–1985 981
LISTENING TO THE PAST Life on the Dole The Division of Europe 981
in Great Britain 942 The Origins of the Cold War 982
West Versus East 983
See
The Western Renaissance, 1945–1968 985
Chapter 29 DBQ 14
The Postwar Challenge 985
Dictatorships and the Second World War,
Mapping the Past Map 30.2: European Alliance
1919–1945 945 Systems, 1949–1989 988
Authoritarian States 946
Toward European Unity 989
Conservative Authoritarianism 946
Decolonization in East Asia 989
Radical Totalitarian Dictatorships 946
Decolonization in the Middle East and Africa 992
Stalin’s Soviet Union 949 America’s Civil Rights Revolution 994
From Lenin to Stalin 949
Soviet Eastern Europe, 1945–1968 995
The Five-Year Plans 950
Stalin’s Last Years, 1945–1953 995
Life and Culture in Soviet Society 952
Reform and De-Stalinization, 1953–1964 996
Stalinist Terror and the Great Purges 954
The End of Reform 997
Mussolini and Fascism in Italy 955 The Soviet Union to 1985 998
The Seizure of Power 955
Postwar Social Transformations, 1945–1968 999
The Regime in Action 956
Science and Technology 999
Hitler and Nazism in Germany Apago PDF
957 Enhancer The Changing Class Structure 1000
The Roots of Nazism 957 New Roles for Women 1002
Hitler’s Road to Power 958 Youth and the Counterculture 1004
The Nazi State and Society 960
Conflict and Challenge in the Late Cold War,
Hitler’s Popularity 961
1968–1985 1006
Aggression and Appeasement,
The United States and Vietnam 1006
1933–1939 962
Détente or Cold War? 1008
The Second World War 966 The Women’s Movement 1009
Hitler’s Empire, 1939–1942 966 The Troubled Economy 1010
The Holocaust 967 Society in a Time of Economic Uncertainty 1011
Mapping the Past Map 29.2: World War II INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Margaret Thatcher 1013
in Europe 968 Chapter Summary 1014
Japan’s Empire in Asia 970 Key Terms 1015
The Grand Alliance 972 Suggested Reading 1015
The War in Europe, 1942–1945 973 Notes 1015
The War in the Pacific, 1942–1945 974
LISTENING TO THE PAST A Feminist Critique
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Primo Levi 971 of Marriage 1016
Chapter Summary 975
See
Key Terms 976
Suggested Reading 976 Chapter 31 DBQ 16
Notes 977 Revolution, Rebuilding, and New

LISTENING TO THE PAST Stalin Justifies Challenges: 1985 to the Present 1019
the Five-Year Plan 978 The Decline of Communism in Eastern Europe 1020
xvi • Contents
Solidarity in Poland 1020 The Growth of Immigration 1042

Gorbachev’s Reforms in the Soviet Union 1022 Promoting Human Rights 1044
The Revolutions of 1989 1024 The West and the Islamic World 1045
The Collapse of Communism in Eastern The al-Qaeda Attack of September 11, 2001 1045
Europe 1025 The War in Iraq 1047
The Disintegration of the Soviet Union 1026 The West and Its Muslim Citizens 1048
German Unification and the End of the
INDIVIDUALS IN SOCIETY Tariq Ramadan 1051
Cold War 1028
The Gulf War of 1991 1030 The Future in Perspective 1050
Chapter Summary 1053
Building a New Europe in the 1990s 1030
Key Terms 1053
Common Patterns and Problems 1031
Recasting Russia 1033
Notes 1056
Progress in Eastern Europe 1035
LISTENING TO THE PAST The French Riots:
Mapping the Past Map 31.3: Contemporary
Will They Change Anything? 1054
Europe 1036
Tragedy in Yugoslavia 1037
Unity and Identity in Western Europe 1039 Document-Based Question (DBQ)
New Challenges in the Twenty-first Century 1041 Essay Topics A-1
The Prospect of Population Decline 1041
Index I-1
Apago PDF Enhancer

Maps • Mapping the Past
12.1 • The Course of the Black Death in 22.2 The Industrial Revolution in England,
Fourteenth-Century Europe 376 ca 1850 725
12.2 English Holdings in France During 22.3 • Continental Industrialization, ca 1850 729
the Hundred Years’ War 384 23.1 • Europe in 1815 748
12.3 Fourteenth-Century Peasant Revolts 392 23.2 Peoples of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1815 752
13.1 The Italian City-States, ca 1494 411 24.1 • European Cities of 100,000 or More,
13.2 • The Growth of Printing in Europe 420 1800 and 1900 780
13.3 Spain in 1492 437 24.2 The Modernization of Paris,
14.1 The Global Empire of Charles V 460 ca 1850–1870 784
14.2 • Religious Divisions in Europe 468 25.1 The Unification of Italy, 1859–1870 819
14.3 The Netherlands, 1559–1609 474 25.2 • The Unification of Germany,
1866–1871 823
15.1 The Afro-Eurasian Trading World
Before Columbus 486 25.3 Slavery in the United States, 1860 826
15.2 • Overseas Exploration and Conquest, 26.1 European Investment to 1914 851
Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
496 26.2 • The Partition of Africa 860
15.3
Apago PDF
Seaborne Trading Empires in the
Enhancer 26.3 Asia in 1914 864
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries 506 27.1 The Balkans After the Congress
16.1 The Acquisitions of Louis XIV, 1668–1713 533 of Berlin, 1878 884
16.2 • Europe in 1715 536 27.2 The Balkans in 1914 884
16.3 Seventeenth-Century Dutch Commerce 552 27.3 The First World War in Europe 886
17.1 Europe After the Thirty Years’ War 564 27.4 • Shattered Empires and Territorial
17.2 The Growth of Austria and Brandenburg- Changes After World War I 904
Prussia to 1748 570 27.5 The Partition of the Ottoman Empire,
17.3 • The Expansion of Russia to 1725 573 1914–1923 906
17.4 The Ottoman Empire at Its Height, 1566 581 28.1 • The Great Depression in the United
States, Britain, and Europe 934
18.1 • The Partition of Poland and Russia’s
Expansion, 1772–1795 614 29.1 The Growth of Nazi Germany, 1933–1939 963
19.1 • Industry and Population in Eighteenth- 29.2 • World War II in Europe 968
Century Europe 630 29.3 World War II in the Pacific 972
19.2 The Atlantic Economy in 1701 636 30.1 The Results of World War II in Europe 986
19.3 European Claims in North America Before 30.2 • European Alliance Systems, 1949–1989 988
and After the Seven Years’ War 637 30.3 The New States in Africa and Asia 990
20.1 • Literacy in France on the Eve of the 31.1 Democratic Movements in Eastern
French Revolution 662 Europe, 1989 1024
21.1 The Haitian Revolution 701 31.2 Russia and the Successor States 1029
21.2 • Napoleonic Europe in 1810 710 31.3 • Contemporary Europe 1036
22.1 Cottage Industry and Transportation 31.4 The Ethnic Composition of
in Eighteenth-Century England 718 Yugoslavia, 1991 1038
xvii
Listening to the Past
Chapter 12 Christine de Pizan 404

Chapter 13 An Age of Gold 442
Chapter 14 Martin Luther, On Christian Liberty 480
Chapter 15 Columbus Describes His First Voyage 518
Chapter 16 The Court at Versailles 556
Chapter 17 A Foreign Traveler in Russia 586
Chapter 18 Voltaire on Religion 618
Chapter 19 The Debate over the Guilds 650
Chapter 20 A Day in the Life of Paris 678
Chapter 21 Revolution and Women’s Rights 714
Chapter 22 The Testimony of Young Mine Workers 744
Chapter 23 Speaking for the Czech Nation 776
Chapter 24 Middle-Class Youth and Sexuality
812
Chapter 25
Apago PDF Enhancer
The Making of a Socialist 844
Chapter 26 A British Woman in India 876
Chapter 27 Arab Political Aspirations in 1919 910
Chapter 28 Life on the Dole in Great Britain 942
Chapter 29 Stalin Justifies the Five-Year Plan 978
Chapter 30 A Feminist Critique of Marriage 1016
Chapter 31 The French Riots: Will They Change Anything? 1054
xviii
Preface
A History of Western Society grew out of the authors’ previous editions, while blending in the most important
desire to infuse new life into the study of Western Civi- recent findings.
lization. We knew that historians were using imaginative
questions and innovative research to open up vast new Conceptual and Content Revisions
areas of historical interest and knowledge. We also recog-
Several main lines of revision have guided our many
nized that these advances had dramatically affected the
changes. In particular, we have approached the history of
subject of European economic, intellectual, and, especially,
the West as part of the history of the world and have de-
social history, while new research and fresh interpretations
voted more space to Europe’s interactions with the rest
were also revitalizing the study of the traditional main-
of the world. This has meant that some parts of the book
stream of political, diplomatic, and religious develop-
have been completely reconceptualized and reorganized,
ments. Despite history’s vitality as a discipline, however,
as have many of the sections within chapters. Chapter 15 is
it seemed to us at the time that both the broad public
now entirely devoted to European exploration, discovery,
and the intelligentsia were generally losing interest in the
and conquest and also includes coverage of world con-
past. That, fortunately for us all, has not proven the case.
tacts before Columbus. Chapter 19 includes discussion of
It was our conviction, based on considerable experi-
European trade with Asia, and Chapter 20 incorporates
ence introducing large numbers of students to the broad
extended coverage of the impact of colonial products, in-
sweep of Western Civilization, that a book in which social
Apago PDF Enhancer cluding sugar, tea, coffee, and tobacco. Chapter 21 has
history was the core element could excite readers and in-
considerable new material on the Haitian revolution; Chap-
spire a renewed interest in history. Our strategy was thus
ter 29 includes more on World War II outside of Europe;
twofold. First, we incorporated recent research by social
and Chapter 30 has more on decolonization in the Mid-
historians as we sought to re-create the life of ordinary
dle East and Africa.
people in appealing human terms. At the same time, we
A second major change is updated discussion of gen-
were determined to give great economic, political, cultural,
der throughout the text. The development of women’s
and intellectual developments the attention they unques-
and gender history has been a central part of the expan-
tionably deserve. We wanted to give individual readers
sion of historical knowledge over the last several decades,
and teachers a balanced, integrated perspective so that they
and this edition includes even fuller discussion of the role
could pursue—on their own or in the classroom—those
of gender in shaping human experience than did previous
themes and questions that they found particularly excit-
editions. Some of this new material focuses on women,
ing and significant. In an effort to realize fully the poten-
including women’s role in the court culture of early
tial of our fresh yet balanced approach, we made many
modern Europe (Chapter 16) and women’s work in the
changes, large and small, in the editions that followed.
Industrial Revolution (Chapter 22). Other sections ask
readers to consider the ways in which gender is related
Changes in the Ninth Edition to other social hierarchies, such as social status and race
(Chapters 13 and 30), or ways in which religious or
In preparing the Ninth Edition we have worked hard to intellectual concepts are gendered (Chapter 16). New
keep our book up-to-date by including as much valuable scholarship on gender has meant revisions in other sec-
and relevant new scholarship as possible. We have also tions as well, including discussion of the Reformation,
strengthened our distinctive yet balanced approach to a the witch-hunts, the scientific revolution, nineteenth-
wide range of topics. In addition, we have revised the lay- century cities, and cold war Europe. The discussion of
out of the chapters somewhat to foreground the histori- gender is accompanied by updates to the material on
cal questions posed and answered in each chapter, and sexuality in many chapters, as this is a field of scholarship
added a new map feature. This edition includes the best of growing very rapidly.
xix
xx • Preface
These two major lines of revision are accompanied by answered in the course of each chapter and repeated in
continued enhancement of content that began in earlier an end-of-chapter summary that concisely reiterates the
editions. The social history focus that has been the core chapter’s findings. For this edition, many of the questions
element of this book since its first edition continues. In have been reframed, and the chapter summaries rewrit-
addition to more material on Europe in a global perspec- ten, to maximize the usefulness of this popular pedagog-
tive, we have continued to incorporate more discussion of ical device. Dates have been added to most chapter titles.
groups and regions that are frequently shortchanged in This edition also adds a new feature, “Mapping the
the general histories of Europe and Western Civilization. Past.” Historians have long relied on maps to help ex-
This expanded scope reflects the renewed awareness within plain the stories that they tell, but we have found that
the profession of Europe’s enormous historical diversity, students often do not pay as much attention to the maps
as well as the efforts of contemporary Europeans to under- as they should. Thus in the new “Mapping the Past” fea-
stand the ambivalent and contested meanings of their ture, one map in each chapter includes questions for dis-
national, regional, ethnic, and pan-European identities. cussion. Some of these questions refer only to a single
Several chapters examine notions of race during times of map, while others encourage students to compare differ-
significant cultural change, including the Renaissance ent maps in order to trace processes over time.
(Chapter 13), the first wave of colonization (Chapter 15),
the Enlightenment (Chapter 18), and nineteenth-century
urban society (Chapter 24). Distinctive Features
An important part of this continued broader focus
In addition to the new “Mapping the Past” feature, this
is material on Islam. Chapters 17, 25, and 27 all include
edition continues to include distinctive features from ear-
significant new material on the Ottoman Empire. Several
lier editions that guide the reader in the process of his-
of the new features focus on Muslims living in Europe, as
torical understanding.
well as issues involving Christian-Muslim relations.
We believe that including examples of problems of his-
torical interpretations in our text helps our readers de-
Document-Based Questions
Apago PDFDocument-Based
Enhancer
velop the critical-thinking skills that are among the most Questions (DBQs) tied to each chapter
precious benefits of studying history. Examples of this appear in a special section at the back of the book, giving
more open-ended, interpretative approach include debates students experience in critically reading and interpreting
about the impact of Enlightenment thought (Chapter 18) primary sources. The DBQs provided are in the same for-
and renewed debate on personal and collective responsi- mat as those found on the AP* exam. Within the chap-
bility for the Holocaust (Chapter 29). ters, DBQ icons draw the student’s attention to passages
Concern with terminology is key to new ways in which that are especially meaningful in the context of the vari-
history is being studied, researched, and presented, and ous questions.
among the historiographical issues we present are some
that ask readers to consider the implications of words they Individuals in Society
(and historians) use regularly without thinking much about
Included in each chapter is the feature “Individuals in
them. This includes discussion of the terms “Renais-
Society,” which offers a brief study of a woman, man, or
sance” and “modern” (Chapter 13) and disputes about
group, informing us about the societies in which they
who was and was not part of “the nation” (Chapter 25) or
lived. Each study or biographical sketch has been care-
included in understandings of “Europe” (Chapter 31).
fully integrated into the body of the text. The “Individu-
This edition includes several major changes in the or-
als in Society” feature grew out of our long-standing
ganization of chapters. Chapter 14 now includes material
focus on people’s lives and the varieties of historical ex-
on the Reformations, religious wars, and witch-hunts,
perience, and we believe that readers will empathize with
while, as noted above, Chapter 15 now focuses on explo-
these human beings as they themselves seek to define
ration and overseas expansion.
their own identities. The spotlighting of individuals, both
famous and obscure, perpetuates the greater attention to
New Pedagogical Features
*“AP” and “Advanced Placement Program” are registered trade-
To help focus and guide the reader, we pose specific his- marks of the College Entrance Examination Board, which was
torical questions keyed to the main chapter headings at not involved with the production of, and does not endorse,
the beginning of each chapter. These questions are then this product.
Preface • xxi
cultural and intellectual developments that we used to interpretation. Selected for their interest and importance
vigorate our social history in earlier editions, and it re- and carefully fitted into their historical context, these
flects changing interests within the historical profession sources do indeed allow the student to “listen to the past”
as well as the development of “micro-history.” and to observe how history has been shaped by individ-
The range of men and women we consider is broad. ual men and women, some of them great aristocrats, oth-
For this edition, and sometimes at readers’ suggestion, ers ordinary folk.
we have dropped some individuals and replaced them with
others who add their own contributions to history. In
keeping with this edition’s increasing attention to indi-
Images in Society
viduals from outside western Europe who had an impact This edition continues to include the photo essay “Images
on European developments, Chapter 17 looks at Hür- in Society.” Each essay consists of a short narrative with
rem, first the concubine and then the wife of Suleiman questions, accompanied by several pictures. The goal of
the Magnificent, and Chapter 21 at Toussaint L’Ouver- the feature is to encourage students to think critically: to
ture, leader of the revolution in the French colony of view and compare visual illustrations and draw conclu-
Saint-Domingue. Chapter 23 focuses on the French his- sions about the societies and cultures that produced those
torian Jules Michelet, who viewed nationalism as a means objects. “Art in the Reformation” (Chapter 14) exam-
of lessening social tensions, and Chapter 30 on Margaret ines both the Protestant and Catholic views of religious
Thatcher, the first woman to become prime minister in art. Chapter 17 presents the way monarchs displayed their
Britain. Chapter 31 focuses on Tariq Ramadan, the con- authority visually in “Absolutist Palace Building.” Mov-
troversial European-Muslim intellectual. In addition to ing to modern times, the focus in Chapter 19 changes to
these new individuals, in some cases, such as Leonardo da “London: The Remaking of a Great City,” which depicts
Vinci (Chapter 13), we have kept the same individuals, but how Londoners rebuilt their city after a great catastro-
completely rewritten the feature to bring it in line with phe. “Class and Gender Boundaries in Women’s Fashion,
current scholarship. 1850–1914” studies women’s clothing in relationship to
Apago PDF Enhancer women’s evolving position in society and gender relations
(Chapter 24). “Pablo Picasso and Modern Art” looks at
Listening to the Past some of Picasso’s greatest paintings to gain insight into
A two-page feature called “Listening to the Past” ex- his principles and the modernist revolution in art (Chap-
tends and illuminates a major historical issue considered ter 28).
in each of the text’s chapters through the presentation of
a source or small group of sources. In the new edition we
have reviewed our selections and made judicious substi-
Additional Features
tutions. Chapter 20 focuses on Louis Sebastien Mercier’s The illustrative component of our work has been carefully
comments on everyday life in eighteenth-century Paris, revised. We have added many new illustrations to our ex-
and Chapter 23 on the reflections of a Czech historian tensive art program, which includes more than four hun-
writing during the revolution of 1848. Chapter 27 features dred color reproductions, letting great art and important
Arab protests regarding the establishment of the League events come alive. As in earlier editions, all illustrations
of Nations mandates in the former Ottoman Empire and have been carefully selected to complement the text, and
the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Chap- all carry informative captions, based on thorough research,
ter 31 examines riots in the suburbs of Paris by French that enhance their value and have been revised for the
people of Arab descent in late 2005. As in the “Individ- current edition. Artwork remains an integral part of our
uals in Society” feature, in addition to these brand-new book; the past can speak in pictures as well as in words.
sources, sources that appeared in previous editions have The use of full color serves to clarify the maps and graphs
often been contextualized in new ways reflective of cur- and to enrich the textual material. The maps and map cap-
rent scholarship. tions have been updated to correlate directly to the text,
Each primary source opens with a problem-setting and new maps, as well as the “Mapping the Past” feature,
introduction and closes with “Questions for Analysis” have been added.
that invite students to evaluate the evidence as historians Each chapter includes a chronology feature that lists ma-
would. Drawn from a range of writings addressing a vari- jor developments in the period discussed in the chapter.
ety of social, cultural, political, and intellectual issues, In addition, topic-specific timelines appear at key points
these sources promote active involvement and critical in- throughout the book. Once again we provide a unified
xxii • Preface
timeline at the end of the text. Comprehensive and easy The new print reader, Sources of Western Society, pro-
to locate, this useful timeline allows students to compare vides a broad selection of over 140 primary source docu-
developments over the centuries. ments as well as editorial apparatus to facilitate student
A list of Key Terms concludes each chapter. These analysis.
terms are highlighted in boldface in the text. The student Strive for a 5: Preparing for the AP* European His-
may use these terms to test his or her understanding of tory Examination, written by Louise Forsyth, Poly Prep
the chapter’s material. Country Day School, and Leonore Schneider, New
In addition to posing chapter-opening questions and Canaan High School, helps students prepare for the AP
presenting more problems in historical interpretation, we exam quickly, efficiently, and effectively. It includes a
have quoted extensively from a wide variety of primary diagnostic pre-test, practice questions, and self-scoring
sources in the narrative, demonstrating in our use of full-length practice exams including both multiple-choice
these quotations how historians evaluate evidence. Thus and free-response questions. All of the review materials
primary sources are examined as an integral part of the are closely correlated to the textbook for convenient re-
narrative as well as presented in extended form in the inforcement.
“Listening to the Past” chapter feature. We believe that AP* Edition Study Guide is adapted from the college
such an extensive program of both integrated and sepa- resource and greatly enhanced by Ane Lintvedt, an expe-
rate primary source excerpts will help readers learn to rienced AP European History instructor. Chapter “Key
interpret and think critically. Points,” a series of AP-style multiple-choice and essay
Each chapter concludes with a carefully selected list of- questions, and a unique geography section help students
suggestions for further reading, revised and updated to master the content of each chapter.
keep them current with the vast amount of new work be- The free Online Study Guide at bedford
ing done in many fields. These bibliographies are shorter stmartins.com/mckaywest features a wide variety of re-
than those in previous editions, as readers may now find view materials that include assessment quizzes, flashcard
more extensive suggestions for further reading on the and timeline activities, and document-based activities.
website bedfordstmartins.com/mckaywest. Apago PDF Enhancer Students can also find the primary sources referred to in
Throughout the text, icons direct students to online the margins of the textbook.
interactive maps and primary sources corresponding to Rand McNally Atlas of Western Civilization. This
discussions in the text and to the student and instructor collection of over fifty full-color maps highlights social,
websites. political, and crosscultural change and interaction from
classical Greece and Rome to the post-industrial Western
world. Each map is thoroughly indexed for fast reference.
The Bedford Glossary for European History. This
Ancillaries handy supplement for the survey course gives students
To aid in the teaching and learning processes, a wide ar- historically contextualized definitions for hundreds of
ray of print and electronic supplements for students and terms – from Abbasids to Zionism – that students will en-
instructors accompanies A History of Western Society, counter in lectures, reading, and exams.
Since 1300 AP* Edition. Some of the materials are avail- The Bedford Series in History and Culture. Volumes
able for the first time with our new publisher, Bedford/ in this highly praised series combine first-rate scholarship,
St. Martin’s. For more information on available materi- historical narrative, and important primary documents for
als, please visit bfwpub.com/highschool or contact your undergraduate courses. Each book is brief, inexpensive,
local sales representative by e-mailing highschool@bfw and focuses on a specific topic or period.
pub.com Trade Books. Titles published by sister companies
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux; Henry Holt and Company;
Hill and Want; Picador; St. Martin’s Press; and Palgrave
are available at a 50% discount when packaged with Bed-
For Students ford/St. Martin’s textbooks. For more information, visit
A History of Western Society Since 1300 for Advanced bedfordstmartins.com/tradeup.
Placement e-Book, an electronic version of the ninth
edition, presents the complete text of the print book,
with easy-to-use highlighting, searching, and note-taking
tools, at a significantly reduced price.
Preface • xxiii
Eugene Boia
For Instructors Cleveland State University
The Teacher’s Resource Guide for the AP* Program Robert Brown
helps high school teachers and students make a smooth State University of New York, Finger Lakes Community College
transition to the college-level work of the AP course. It Richard Eichman
has been developed to help both new and experienced Sauk Valley Community College
teachers effectively prepare students for success on the
David Fisher
AP exam. It includes suggestions on how to pace the
Texas Technical University
course, how to review for the exam, and how to assess
students’ preparedness. It also contains chapter outlines, Wayne Hanley
lecture suggestions, classroom activities, guidelines for West Chester University of Pennsylvania
using primary sources, and more. Michael Leggiere
The AP* Test Bank, available in print or in a CD for- Louisiana State University, Shreveport
mat, includes key-term identification, multiple-choice
John Mauer
questions (with page references to correct answers), essay
Tri-County Technical College
questions (with guidelines for how to effectively write
the essay), map questions, and a final exam. Nick Miller
The Instructor’s Resource Manual contains advice Boise State University
on teaching the Western Civilization course, instruc- Wyatt Moulds
tional objectives, chapter outlines, lecture suggestions, Jones County Junior College
paper and class activity topics, primary source and map
Elsa Rapp
activities, audiovisual and internet resources, and an an-
Montgomery County Community College
notated list of suggested readings.
The Instructor’s Resource CD-ROM features Pow- Anne Rodrick
Apago PDF Enhancer
Wofford College
erPoint maps and images from the text for use in class-
room presentations as well as questions and answers for Sonia Sorrell
use with personal response system software and blank Pepperdine University
outline maps.
Lee Shai Weissbach
MakeHistory at bedfordstmartins.com/makehistory
University of Louisville
provides one-stop access to relevant digital content in-
cluding maps, images, documents, and Web links. Stu-
Special thanks also go to Dr. Todd A. Beach, Advanced
dents and instructors can browse this free database by
Placement History teacher at Eastview High School in
topic, date, or resource type, download content, and cre-
Apple Valley, Minnesota, for his work on the DBQ ap-
ate collections.
pendix of the Advanced Placement* Edition of this text.
A set of Map Transparencies for Western Civiliza-
It is also a pleasure to thank our many editors at
tion reprints 130 full-color maps for overhead presenta-
Houghton Mifflin for their efforts over many years. To
tion.
Christina Horn, who guided production, and to Tonya
Lobato and Melissa Mashburn, our development editors,
we express our special appreciation. And we thank Carole
Acknowledgments Frohlich for her contributions in photo research and
selection.
It is a pleasure to thank the many instructors who read Many of our colleagues at the University of Illinois and
and critiqued the manuscript through its development: the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee continue to pro-
Hugh Agnew vide information and stimulation, often without even
George Washington University knowing it. We thank them for it. John Buckler thanks
Professor Jack Cargill for his advice on topics in Chapter 2.
Melanie Bailey He also wishes to thank Professor Nicholas Yalouris, for-
Centenary College of Louisiana mer General Inspector of Antiquities, for his kind permis-
Rachael Ball sion to publish the mosaic from Elis, Greece, in Chapter 3.
Ohio State University He is likewise grateful to Dr. Amy C. Smith, Curator of
xxiv • Preface
the Ure Museum of Archaeology of the University of mains worthy of the ultimate praise that they bestowed on
Reading, for her permission to publish the vase on page 64. it, that it’s “not boring like most textbooks.” She would,
Sincerest thanks go also to Professor Paul Cartledge of as always, also like to thank her husband, Neil, without
Clare College, Cambridge University, for his kind permis- whom work on this project would not be possible.
sion to publish his photograph of the statue of Leonidas Each of us has benefited from the criticism of his or her
in Chapter 3. John McKay expresses his deep appreciation coauthors, although each of us assumes responsibility for
to Jo Ann McKay for her sharp-eyed editorial support and what he or she has written. John Buckler has written the
unfailing encouragement. For their invaluable comments first six chapters; Bennett Hill continued the narrative
and suggestions, Clare Crowston thanks the following through Chapter 16; and John McKay has written Chap-
individuals: Martin Bruegel, Antoinette Burton, Don ters 17 through 31. Beginning with this edition, Merry
Crummey, Max Edelson, Tara Fallon, Masumi Iriye, Craig Wiesner-Hanks assumed primary responsibility for Chap-
Koslofsky, Janine Lanza, John Lynn, M. J. Maynes, ters 7 through 14 and Clare Crowston assumed primary
Kathryn Oberdeck, Dana Rabin, and John Randolph. responsibility for Chapters 15 through 21. Finally, we con-
Merry Wiesner-Hanks would like to thank the many stu- tinue to welcome the many comments and suggestions
dents over the years with whom she has used earlier edi- that have come from our readers, for they have helped us
tions of this book. Their reactions and opinions helped greatly in this ongoing endeavor.
shape her revisions to this edition, and she hopes it re-
J. P. M. B. D. H. J. B. C. H. C. M. E. W.
Apago PDF Enhancer

Apago PDF Enhancer
In this lavishly illustrated French chronicle, Wat Tyler, the leader of the English Peasant’s Revolt, is stabbed during a meeting
with the king. Tyler died soon afterward, and the revolt was ruthlessly crushed. (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
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Prelude to Disaster
• What were the demographic
and economic consequences of
D uring the later Middle Ages, the last book of the New Testament,
the Book of Revelation, inspired thousands of sermons and hun-
dreds of religious tracts. The Book of Revelation deals with visions of the
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climate change? end of the world, with disease, war, famine, and death. It is no wonder
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The Black Death this part of the Bible was so popular. Between 1300 and 1450 Europeans
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experienced a frightful series of shocks: climate change, economic dislo-
• How did the spread of the plague cation, plague, war, social upheaval, and increased crime and violence.
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shape European society? 21
Death and preoccupation with death make the fourteenth century one of
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The Hundred Years’ War the most wrenching periods of Western civilization. Yet, in spite of the
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• What were the causes of the pessimism and crises, important institutions and cultural forms, includ-
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Hundred Years’ War, and how did ing representative assemblies and national literatures, emerged. Even in-
Apago PDF Enhancer 25
the war affect European politics, stitutions that experienced severe crisis, such as the Christian church, saw
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economics, and cultural life? new types of vitality.
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Challenges to the Church 28
• What challenges faced the Christian 29
church in the fourteenth century, and
Prelude to Disaster 30
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how did church leaders, intellectuals, In the first half of the fourteenth century, Europe experienced a series of
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and ordinary people respond? climate changes that led to lower levels of food production, which had
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dramatic and disastrous ripple effects. Political leaders attempted to find
Economic and Social Change 34
solutions, but were unable to deal with the economic and social prob-
• How did economic and social 35
lems that resulted.
tensions contribute to revolts, crime, 36
violence, and a growing sense of • What were the demographic and economic consequences of 37
climate change? 38
ethnic and national distinctions?
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Climate Change and Famine 41
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The period from about 1000 to about 1300 saw warmer than usual climate
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in Europe, which underlay all the changes and vitality of the High Mid-
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dle Ages. About 1300 the climate changed, becoming colder and wetter.
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Historical geographers refer to the period from 1300 to 1450 as a “little
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ice age,” which they can trace through both natural and human records.
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372 CHAPTER 12 • T H E C R I S I S O F T H E L AT E R M I D D L E A G E S , 1 3 0 0 – 1 4 5 0
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25 Death from Famine In this fifteenth-century painting, dead bodies lie in the middle of a path, while a funeral
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26 procession at the right includes a man with an adult’s coffin and a woman with the coffin of an infant under her
27 arm. People did not simply allow the dead to lie in the street in medieval Europe, though during famines and
epidemics it was sometimes difficult to maintain normal burial procedures. (Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)
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32 Evidence from nature emerges through the study of “Great Famine” in the years 1315–1322, which contem-
33 Alpine and polar glaciers, tree rings, and pollen left in poraries interpreted as a recurrence of the biblical “seven
34 bogs. Human-produced sources include written reports lean years” (Genesis 42). Even in non-famine years, the
35 of rivers freezing and crops never ripening, as well as cost of grain, livestock, and dairy products rose sharply.
36 archaeological evidence such as the abandoned villages Reduced caloric intake meant increased susceptibility
37 of Greenland, where ice floes cut off contact with the to disease, especially for infants, children, and the elderly.
38 rest of the world and the harshening climate meant that Workers on reduced diets had less energy, which in turn
39 the few hardy crops grown earlier could no longer sur- meant lower productivity, lower output, and higher grain
40 vive. The Viking colony on Greenland died out com- prices. The Great Famine proved to be a demographic
41 pletely, though Inuit people who relied on hunting sea disaster in France; in Burgundy perhaps one-third of the
42 mammals continued to live in the far north, as they had population died. The many religious houses of Flanders
43 before the arrival of Viking colonists. experienced a high loss of monks, nuns, and priests. In
44 An unusual number of storms brought torrential rains, Scandinavia and the Baltic countries, low cereal harvests,
45 ruining the wheat, oat, and hay crops on which people declines in meat and dairy production, economic reces-
46 and animals almost everywhere depended. Since long- sions, and the lack of salt, used for preserving herring, re-
47 distance transportation of food was expensive and diffi- sulted in terrible food shortages.
48 cult, most urban areas depended for bread and meat on Hardly had western Europe begun to recover from
49 areas no more than a day’s journey away. Poor harvests— this disaster when another struck: an epidemic of typhoid
50S and one in four was likely to be poor—led to scarcity and fever carried away thousands. In 1316, 10 percent of the
51R starvation. Almost all of northern Europe suffered a population of the city of Ypres may have died between
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Prelude to Disaster • 373
May and October alone. Then in 1318 disease hit cattle Chronology 1
and sheep, drastically reducing the herds and flocks. An- 2
other bad harvest in 1321 brought famine and death. 1309–1376 Babylonian Captivity; papacy in Avignon 3
The province of Languedoc in France presents a 4
classic example of agrarian crisis. For more than 150 1310–1320 Dante, Divine Comedy 5
years Languedoc had enjoyed continual land reclamation, 1315–1322 Famine in northern Europe 6
steady agricultural expansion, and enormous population 7
growth. Then the fourteenth century opened with four 1324 Marsiglio of Padua, Defensor Pacis 8
years of bad harvests. Torrential rains in 1310 ruined the 1337–1453 Hundred Years’ War 9
harvest and brought on terrible famine. Harvests failed 10
again in 1322 and 1329. In 1332 desperate peasants sur- 1348 Black Death arrives in mainland Europe 11
vived the winter on raw herbs. In the half century from 1358 Jacquerie peasant uprising in France 12
1302 to 1348, poor harvests occurred twenty times. 13
These catastrophes had grave social consequences. Poor 1378 Ciompi revolt in Florence 14
harvests and famine led to the abandonment of home- 1378–1417 Great Schism 15
steads. In parts of the Low Countries and in the Scottish- 16
English borderlands, entire villages were abandoned. This 1381 Peasants’ Revolt in England 17
meant a great increase in the number of vagabonds, what 1387–1400 Chaucer, Canterbury Tales 18
we call “homeless people.” In Flanders and East Anglia 19
(eastern England), where aspects of the famine have been 1415 English smash the French at Agincourt 20
carefully analyzed, some peasants were forced to mort- 1429 French victory at Orléans; Charles VII 21
gage, sublease, or sell their holdings to get money to buy crowned king 22
food. Rich farmers bought out their poorer neighbors. 23
When conditions improved, debtors tried to get their 1431 Joan of Arc declared a heretic and burned at 24
the stake
lands back, leading to a very volatile land market. To re-
duce the labor supply and the mouths to feed in the 26
countryside, young men and women sought work in the 27
towns. Poor harvests probably meant that marriage had 28
to be postponed. Later marriages and the deaths caused Starving people focused their anger on the rich, specula- 29
by famine and disease meant a reduction in population. tors, and the Jews, who were targeted as creditors fleec- 30
Meanwhile, the international character of trade and coming the poor through pawnbroking. (Expelled from 31
merce meant that a disaster in one country had serious France in 1306, Jews were readmitted in 1315 and were 32
implications elsewhere. For example, the infection that granted the privilege of lending at high interest rates.) 33
attacked English sheep in 1318 caused a sharp decline Rumors spread of a plot by Jews and their agents, the 34
in wool exports in the following years. Without wool, lepers, to kill Christians by poisoning the wells. Based on 35
Flemish weavers could not work, and thousands were “evidence” collected by torture, many lepers and Jews 36
laid off. Without woolen cloth, the businesses of Flem- were killed, beaten, or hit with heavy fines. 37
ish, Hanseatic, and Italian merchants suffered. Unem- In England Edward I’s incompetent son, Edward II 38
ployment encouraged people to turn to crime. (r. 1307–1327), used Parliament to set price controls, 39
first on the sale of livestock after disease and poor lamb- 40
ing had driven prices up, and then on ale, which was 41
Government Ineptitude made from barley (the severe rains of 1315 had con- 42
To none of these problems did governments have effec- tributed to molds and mildews, sharply reducing the 43
tive solutions. The three sons of Philip the Fair who sat crop). Baronial conflicts and wars with the Scots domi- 44
on the French throne between 1314 and 1328 con- nated Edward II’s reign. Fearing food riots and violence, 45
demned speculators, who held stocks of grain back until Edward condemned speculators, which proved easier 46
conditions were desperate and prices high; forbade the than enforcing price controls. He did try to buy grain 47
sale of grain abroad; and published legislation prohibit- abroad, but yields in the Baltic were low; the French 48
ing fishing with traps that took large catches. These mea- crown, as we have seen, forbade exports; and the grain 49
sures had few positive results. As the subsistence crisis shipped from Castile in northern Spain was grabbed by 50S
deepened, popular discontent and paranoia increased. Scottish, English, and rogue Hanseatic pirates on the 51R
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1 high seas. Such grain as reached southern English ports when millions died. Doctors and epidemiologists closely
2 was stolen by looters and sold on the black market. The studied this outbreak, identified the bacillus as bubonic
3 Crown’s efforts at famine relief failed. plague, and learned about the exact cycle of infection for
4 the first time.
5 The fourteenth-century outbreak showed many simi-
6 The Black Death larities to the nineteenth-century outbreak, but also
7 some differences. There are no reports of massive rat die-
8 Royal attempts to provide food from abroad were unsuc- offs in fourteenth-century records. The plague was often
9 cessful, but they indicate the extent of long-distance transmitted directly from one person to another through
10 shipping by the beginning of the fourteenth century. In coughing and sneezing (what epidemiologists term pneu-
11 1291 Genoese sailors had opened the Strait of Gibraltar monic transmission) as well as through flea bites. The
12 to Italian shipping by defeating the Moroccans. Then, fourteenth-century outbreak spread much faster than the
13 shortly after 1300, important advances were made in the nineteenth-century outbreak and was much more deadly,
14 design of Italian merchant ships. A square rig was added killing as much as one-third of the population when it
15 to the mainmast, and ships began to carry three masts in- first spread to an area. These differences have led some
16 stead of just one. Additional sails better utilized wind historians to question whether the fourteenth-century
17 power to propel the ship. The improved design permit- disease was actually bubonic plague or whether it was
18 ted year-round shipping for the first time, and Venetian some other disease, perhaps something like the Ebola
19 and Genoese merchant ships could sail the dangerous At- virus. In the late 1990s French paleomicrobiologists
20 lantic coast even in the winter months. studying the tooth pulp from bodies in two plague ceme-
21 Ships continually at sea carried all types of cargo, and teries found DNA from Y. pestis, a finding that has been
22 they also carried vermin of all types, especially insects and viewed as convincing by most medical historians, though
23 rats, which often harbored disease pathogens. Rats, fleas, similar studies of English plague cemeteries have not
24 and cockroaches could live for months on the cargo car- yielded the same results.
25 ried along the coasts, disembarking at ports with the
Apago PDF Enhancer These debates fuel continued study of medical aspects
26 grain, cloth, or other merchandise. Just as modern air of the plague. Some scholars suggest that the type of fleas
27 travel has allowed diseases such as AIDS and SARS to that normally live on humans might have also been
28 spread quickly over very long distances, medieval shipping agents in plague transmission in the fourteenth century
29 did the same. The most frightful of these diseases first (which would account for the lack of a rat die-off), or
30 emerged in western Europe in 1347, carried on Genoese that the fourteenth-century strain of the disease might
31 ships, a disease that was later called the Black Death. have been particularly deadly, or that improvements in
32 • How did the spread of the plague shape European sanitation and public health by the nineteenth century—
33 society? even in poor countries such as India—might have limited
34 the mortality rate significantly.
35 Though there is some disagreement about exactly
36 what kind of disease the plague was, there is no dispute
37
Pathology about its dreadful effects on the body. The classic symp-
38 Most historians and almost all microbiologists identify tom of the bubonic plague was a growth the size of a nut
39 the disease that spread in the fourteenth century as the or an apple in the armpit, in the groin, or on the neck.
40 bubonic plague, caused by the bacillus Yersinia pestis. This was the boil, or bubo, that gave the disease its name
41 The disease normally afflicts rats. Fleas living on the in- and caused agonizing pain. If the bubo was lanced and
42 fected rats drink their blood; the bacteria that cause the the pus thoroughly drained, the victim had a chance of
43 plague multiply in the flea’s gut; and the flea passes them recovery. The next stage was the appearance of black
44 on to the next rat it bites by throwing up into the bite. spots or blotches caused by bleeding under the skin.
45 Usually the disease is limited to rats and other rodents, (This syndrome did not give the disease its common
46 but at certain points in history—perhaps when most rats name; contemporaries did not call the plague the Black
47 have been killed off—the fleas have jumped from their Death. Sometime in the fifteenth century, the Latin
48 rodent hosts to humans and other animals. One of these phrase atra mors, meaning “dreadful death,” was trans-
49 times appears to have been in the Eastern Roman Empire lated as “black death,” and the phrase stuck.) Finally, the
50S in the sixth century, when a plague killed millions of victim began to cough violently and spit blood. This
51R people. Another was in China and India in the 1890s, stage, indicating the presence of millions of bacilli in the
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The Black Death • 375
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Procession of Saint Gregory According to the Golden Legend, a thirteenth-century collection of saints’ 27
lives, the bubonic plague ravaged Rome when Gregory I was elected pope (590–604). This fourteenth- 28
century painting, produced at a time when plague was again striking Europe, shows Gregory leading a pro- 29
cession around the city as new victims fall (center). The artist shows everyone in fourteenth-century clothing
and may have seen similar plague processions in his own city. (Musée Condé, Chantilly/Art Resource, NY) 30
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bloodstream, signaled the end, and death followed in In October 1347 Genoese ships brought the plague 34
two or three days. from Kaffa to Messina, from which it spread across Sicily. 35
Venice and Genoa were hit in January 1348, and from 36
the port of Pisa the disease spread south to Rome and 37
Spread of the Disease east to Florence and all of Tuscany. By late spring south- 38
Plague symptoms were first described in 1331 in southern Germany was attacked. Frightened French authori- 39
western China, part of the Mongol Empire. Plague- ties chased a galley bearing the disease away from the 40
infested rats accompanied Mongol armies and merchant port of Marseilles, but not before plague had infected the 41
caravans carrying silk, spices, and gold across Central city, from which it spread to Languedoc and Spain. In 42
Asia in the 1330s. Then they stowed away on ships, car- June 1348 two ships entered the Bristol Channel and in- 43
rying the disease to the ports of the Black Sea by the troduced it into England. All Europe felt the scourge of 44
1340s. Later stories told of more dramatic means of this horrible disease (see Map 12.1). 45
spreading the disease as well, reporting that Mongol Although urban authorities from London to Paris to 46
armies besieging the city of Kaffa on the shores of the Rome had begun to try to achieve a primitive level of 47
Black Sea catapulted plague-infected corpses over the sanitation by the fourteenth century, urban conditions 48
walls to infect those inside. The city’s residents dumped remained ideal for the spread of disease. Narrow streets 49
the corpses into the sea as fast as they could, but they filled with refuse and human excrement were as much cess- 50S
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1
2 JUNE 1350 DEC. 1350
3
4
5
6 ATLANTIC
Course of the Black Death
7
Sea
City or area partially
OCEAN or totally spared
8 North
December 1347
9 DEC. 1349
Durham
Sea June 1348
c
Dublin Lancaster
lti
10 York Ba December 1348
Königsberg June 1349
11 Leicester DEC. 1350
JUNE 1349 Norwich Hamburg Danzig December 1349
12 Bristol London June 1350
DEC. 1348
13 Calais
December 1350
Cologne JUNE 1350 Warsaw
Erfurt
14 Liège
15 Paris
Würzburg DEC. 1349
Nuremberg Prague Cracow
16 Angers
Strasbourg
JUNE 1349
Vienna
17 Zurich DEC. 1347
Buda
18 Bordeaux DEC. 1348
19 Milan Venice
Da Caffa
Avignon Genoa nu
20 Montpellier Pisa Florence
be
JUNE 1348 Black Sea
21 Marseilles
Lisbon Barcelona Siena
22 Corsica Ragusa
Valencia
23 Majorca Minorca
Rome
Constantinople
Seville Naples
24 JUNE 1348
Sardinia
Strait of
25 Gibraltar
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26 DEC. 1347 Messina DEC. 1347
Athens
M
27 Salé ed Sicily DEC. 1347

ite
0 200 400 Km. rra
28 nean
Crete
Cyprus
Sea
29 0 200 400 Mi.
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31
Mapping the Past
32 MAP 12.1 The Course of the Black Death in Fourteenth-Century Europe Use the map
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and the information in the text to answer the following questions: 1 How did the expansion of trade
that resulted from the commercial revolution contribute to the spread of the Black Death? 2 When did the plague • •
reach Paris? Why do you think it got to Paris before it spread to the rest of northern France or to southern Germany?
35
36 • •
3 Which cities were spared? What might account for this? 4 Which regions were spared? Would the reasons for
this be the same as those for cities, or might other causes have been operating in rural areas?
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38
Improve Your Grade Interactive Map:
39 Bubonic Plague and Social Upheaval in Fourteenth-Century Europe
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43 beggars greeted the traveler. Houses whose upper stories brick, but many wood, clay, and mud houses remained. A
44 projected over the lower ones blocked light and air. determined rat had little trouble entering such a house.
45 And extreme overcrowding was commonplace. When Standards of personal hygiene remained frightfully
46 all members of an aristocratic family lived and slept in low. True, most large cities had public bathhouses, but
47 one room, it should not be surprising that six or eight we have no way of knowing how frequently ordinary
48 persons in a middle-class or poor household slept in people used them. Lack of personal cleanliness, com-
49 one bed—if they had one. Closeness, after all, provided bined with any number of temporary ailments such as di-
50S warmth. Houses were beginning to be constructed of arrhea and the common cold, weakened the body’s
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resistance to serious disease. Fleas and body lice were supply. Western Europeans improved navigation tech- 1
universal afflictions: everyone from peasants to archbish- niques and increased long-distance trade, which permit- 2
ops had them. One more bite did not cause much alarm. ted the importation of grain from sparsely populated 3
But if that nibble came from a bacillus-bearing flea, an Baltic regions. They strictly enforced quarantine meas- 4
entire household or area was doomed. ures. They worked on the development of vaccines. But 5
Mortality rates cannot be specified because population it was only in 1947, six centuries after the arrival of the 6
figures for the period before the arrival of the plague do plague in the West, that the American microbiologist Sel- 7
not exist for most countries and cities. The largest man Waksman discovered an effective vaccine, strepto- 8
amount of material survives for England, but it is difficult mycin. Plague continues to infect rodent and human 9
to use; after enormous scholarly controversy, only edu- populations sporadically today. 10
cated guesses can be made. Of a total English population 11
of perhaps 4.2 million, probably 1.4 million died of the 12
Black Death in its several visits. Densely populated Italian
Care 13
cities endured incredible losses. Florence lost between Fourteenth-century medical literature indicates that physi- 14
one-half and two-thirds of its 1347 population of 85,000 cians could sometimes ease the pain, but they had no 15
when the plague visited in 1348. The most widely ac- cure. Medical doctors observed that crowded cities had 16
cepted estimate for western Europe is that the plague high death rates, especially when the weather was warm 17
killed about one-third of the population in the first wave and moist. We understand that warm, moist conditions 18
of infection. make it easier for germs, viruses, and bacteria to grow 19
Nor did central and eastern Europe escape the ravages and spread, but fourteenth-century people—lay, schol- 20
of the disease. Moving northward from the Balkans, arly, and medical—thought in terms of “poisons” in the 21
eastward from France, and southward from the Baltic, air or “corrupted air” rather than germs. This “corrup- 22
the plague swept through the German Empire. In the ted air” came from swamps, unburied animal or human 23
Rhineland in 1349, Cologne and Mainz endured heavy corpses, too much rain, the position of planets or stars, or 24
losses. In 1348 it swept through Bavaria, entered the
Apago PDF Enhancer perhaps other causes. The poisons caused illness, which 25
Moselle Valley, and pushed into northern Germany. One doctors thought of as an imbalance in the fluids in the 26
chronicler records that, in the summer and autumn of body, especially blood. Certain symptoms of the plague, 27
1349, between five hundred and six hundred died every especially bleeding and vomiting, were believed to be the 28
day in Vienna. Styria, in what today is central Austria, was body’s natural reaction to too much fluid. These were of- 29
very hard hit, with cattle straying unattended in the fields. ten symptoms of other illnesses as well, and doctors fre- 30
As the Black Death took its toll on the German Em- quently prescribed bloodletting, that is, taking blood 31
pire, waves of emigrants fled to Poland, Bohemia, and from the body by applying leeches or making small cuts 32
Hungary. The situation there was better, though disease in veins, as standard treatment. 33
was not completely absent. The plague seems to have en- If the plague came from poisoned air, people reasoned, 34
tered Poland through the Baltic seaports and spread then strong-smelling herbs or other substances, like rose- 35
from there. Still, population losses were lower than else- mary, juniper, or sulfur, held in front of the nose or 36
where in Europe. The plague spread from Poland to burned as incense might stop it. Perhaps loud sounds like 37
Russia, reaching Pskov, Novgorod, and Moscow. No es- ringing church bells or firing the newly invented cannon 38
timates have been made of population losses there or in might help. Medicines made from plants that were bumpy 39
the Balkans. In Serbia, though, the plague left vast tracts or that oozed liquid might work, keeping the more dan- 40
of land unattended, which prompted an increase in Al- gerous swelling and oozing of the plague away. Because 41
banian immigration to meet the labor shortage. the plague seemed to strike randomly, perhaps wearing 42
Across Europe the Black Death recurred intermittently jewelry with random number and letter combinations, or 43
from the 1360s to 1400. It reappeared with reduced vir- drinking water in which ink used to write these magical 44
ulence from time to time over the following centuries, combinations had been dissolved, would help. Such let- 45
making its last appearance in the French port city of ter and number combinations, called cryptograms, were 46
Marseilles in 1721. Survivors became more prudent. Be- especially popular in Muslim areas. They were often the 47
cause periods of famine had caused malnutrition, making first letters of words in prayers or religious sayings, and 48
people vulnerable to disease, Europeans controlled pop- they gave people a sense of order when faced with the 49
ulation growth so that population did not outstrip food randomness with which the plague seemed to strike. 50S
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1 The Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375), parish collections, and in the belief that the sick would be
2 describing the course of the disease in Florence in the prayerful intercessors with God for the donors’ sins—
3 preface to his book of tales, The Decameron, identified endowed hospitals. Business people established hospitals
4 what many knew—that the disease passed from person to in the towns of northern France and Flanders; Milan,
5 person: Genoa, and Venice were well served, and the thirty hos-
6 pitals in Florence provided a thousand beds in 1339.
Moreover, the virulence of the pest was the greater by reason
7 Sixty hospitals served Paris in 1328—but probably not
that intercourse was apt to convey it from the sick to the
8 enough for its population of two hundred thousand. The
whole, just as fire devours things dry or greasy when they are
9 many hospitals in the Iberian Peninsula continued the
brought close to it. Nay, the evil went yet further, for not
10 Muslim tradition of care for the poor and ill. Merchants
merely by speech or association with the sick was the malady
11 in the larger towns of the German Empire, in Poland,
communicated to the healthy with consequent peril of com-
12 and in Hungary also founded hospitals in the fourteenth
mon death, but any that touched the clothes of the sick or
13 century, generally later than those in western Europe.
aught else that had been touched or used by them, seemed
14 Sailors, long viewed as potential carriers of disease, bene-
thereby to contract the disease.1
15 fited from hospitals reserved for them; in 1300 the
16 Venetian government paid a surgeon to care for sick
Improve Your Grade
17 sailors. At the time the plague erupted, therefore, most
Primary Source: The Plague Hits Florence
18 towns and cities had hospital facilities.
19 Wealthier people often fled cities for the countryside, When trying to determine the number of people a hos-
20 though sometimes this simply spread the plague faster. pital could accommodate, the modern researcher consid-
21 Some cities tried shutting their gates to prevent infected ers the number of beds, the size of the staff, and the
22 people and animals from coming in, which worked in a building’s physical layout. Since each medieval hospital
23 few cities. They also walled up houses in which there was bed might serve two or more patients, we cannot calcu-
24 plague, trying to isolate those who were still healthy from late the number of patients on the basis of the beds alone.
25 the sick. When the disease struck the town of Salé in Mo-
Apago PDF Enhancer We do know that rural hospices usually had twelve to fif-
26 rocco, Ibu Abu Madyan shut in the members of his teen beds, and city hospitals, as at Lisbon, Narbonne,
27 household with sufficient food and water and allowed no and Genoa, had on average twenty-five to thirty beds,
28 one to enter or leave until the plague had passed. Abu but these figures do not tell us how many patients were
29 Madyan was entirely successful. accommodated. Only the very rare document listing the
30 Along with looking for medical causes and cures, number of wrapping sheets and coffins for the dead pur-
31 people also searched for scapegoats, and savage cruelty chased in a given period provides the modern scholar
32 sometimes resulted. Many people believed that the Jews with information on the number of patients a hospital
33 had poisoned the wells of Christian communities and had. Hospitals could offer only shelter, compassion, and
34 thereby infected the drinking water. This charge led to care for the dying.
35 the murder of thousands of Jews across Europe. Accord- Many people did not see the plague as a medical issue,
36 ing to one chronicler, sixteen thousand were killed at the but instead interpreted it as the result of something
37 imperial city of Strasbourg alone in 1349. Though six- within themselves. God must be punishing them for ter-
38 teen thousand is probably a typical medieval numerical rible sins, they thought, so the best remedies were reli-
39 exaggeration, the horror of the massacre is not lessened. gious ones: asking for forgiveness, praying, trusting in
40 Scholars have yet to explain the economic impact that the God, making donations to churches, and trying to live
41 loss of so many productive people had on Strasbourg and better lives. In Muslim areas, religious leaders urged vir-
42 other cities. tuous living in the face of death: give to the poor, recon-
43 If medical science had no effective treatment, could cile with your enemies, free your slaves, and say a proper
44 victims’ suffering be eased? Perhaps it could, in hospitals. goodbye to your friends and family.
45 What was the geographical distribution of hospitals, and,
46 although our estimates of medieval populations remain
47 rough, what was the hospital-to-population ratio? How Social, Economic, and Cultural
48 many patients could a hospital serve? Whereas earlier the
49 feudal lord had made philanthropic foundations, begin-
Consequences
50S ning in the thirteenth century individual merchants—out It is noteworthy that, in an age of mounting criticism of
51R of compassion, generosity, and the custom of giving to clerical wealth, the behavior of the clergy during the
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Patients in a Hospital Ward, Fifteenth Century In many cities hospitals could not cope with the 27
large numbers of plague victims. The practice of putting two or more adults in the same bed, as shown
here, contributed to the spread of the disease. At the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris, nurses complained of being
28
forced to put eight to ten children in a single bed in which a patient had recently died. (Giraudon/The 29
Bridgeman Art Library) 30
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plague was often exemplary. Priests, monks, and nuns Economic historians and demographers sharply dis- 33
cared for the sick and buried the dead. In places like pute the impact of the plague on the economy in the late 34
Venice, from which even physicians fled, priests remained fourteenth century. The traditional view that the plague 35
to give what ministrations they could. Consequently, had a disastrous effect has been greatly modified. The 36
their mortality rate was phenomenally high. The German clearest evidence comes from England, where the agrar- 37
clergy especially suffered a severe decline in personnel in ian economy showed remarkable resilience. While the 38
the years after 1350. severity of the disease varied from region to region, it ap- 39
In taking their pastoral responsibilities seriously, some pears that by about 1375 most landlords enjoyed rev- 40
clergy did things that the church in a later age would vig- enues near those of the pre-plague years. By the early 41
orously condemn. The institutional church has tradition- fifteenth century seigneurial prosperity reached a me- 42
ally opposed letting laymen and, especially, laywomen dieval peak. Why? The answer appears to lie in the fact 43
administer the sacraments. But the shortage of priests that England and many parts of Europe suffered from 44
was so great that in 1349 Ralph, bishop of Bath and overpopulation in the early fourteenth century. Popula- 45
Wells in England (1329–1363), advised his people that tion losses caused by the Black Death led to increased 46
“if they are on the point of death and cannot secure the productivity by restoring a more efficient balance be- 47
services of a priest, then they should make confession to tween labor, land, and capital. 48
each other, as is permitted in the teaching of the Apos- What impact did visits of the plague have on urban 49
tles, whether to a layman or, if no man is present, even to populations? The rich evidence from a census of the city 50S
a woman.”2 of Florence and its surrounding territory taken between 51R
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1 1427 and 1430 is fascinating. The region had suffered shortage of labor and workers’ demands for higher wages
2 repeated epidemics since 1347. In a total population of put guild masters on the defensive. They retaliated with
3 260,000 persons, 15 percent were age sixty or over (a measures such as the Statute of Laborers (1351), an at-
4 very high proportion), suggesting that the plague took tempt by the English Parliament to freeze the wages of
5 the young rather than the mature. Children and youths English workers at pre-1347 levels. Such statutes could
6 up to age nineteen constituted 44 percent of the people. not be enforced and thus were unsuccessful. The price of
7 Adults between the ages of twenty and fifty-nine, the wheat in most of Europe increased, as did the costs of
8 most economically productive group, represented 41 meat, sausage, and cheese. This inflation continued to
9 percent of Florentine society. the end of the fourteenth century. But wages in the
10 The high mortality rate of craftsmen led Florentine towns rose faster, and the broad mass of people enjoyed
11 guilds to recruit many new members. For example, be- a higher standard of living. Population decline meant a
12 tween 1328 and 1347 the silk merchants guild accepted sharp increase in per capita wealth. The greater demand
13 730 members, and between 1408 and 1427 it admitted for labor meant greater mobility for peasants in rural
14 784. It appears that economic organizations tried to keep areas and for industrial workers in the towns and cities.
15 their numbers constant, even though the size of the pop- Labor shortages caused by the Black Death throughout
16 ulation and its pool of potential guild members was the Mediterranean region, from Constantinople to
17 shrinking. Moreover, in contrast to the pre-1348 period, Spain, presented aggressive businessmen with a golden
18 many new members of the guilds were not related to ex- opportunity, and the price of slaves rose sharply.
19 isting members. Thus the post-plague years represent an Even more significant than the social effects were the
20 age of “new men.” psychological consequences. The knowledge that the dis-
21 The Black Death brought on a general European infla- ease meant almost certain death provoked the most pro-
22 tion. High mortality produced a fall in production, found pessimism. Imagine an entire society in the grip of
23 shortages of goods, and a general rise in prices. The the belief that it was at the mercy of a frightful affliction
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49 Flagellants In this manuscript illumination from 1349, shirtless flagellants scourge themselves with whips as
50S they walk through the streets of the Flemish city of Tournai. The text notes that they are asking for God’s grace
51R to return to the city after it had been struck with the “most grave” illness. (HIP/Art Resource, NY)
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The Hundred Years’ War • 381
about which nothing could be done, a disgusting disease The literature and art of the fourteenth century reveal 1
from which family and friends would flee, leaving one to a terribly morbid concern with death. One highly popu- 2
die alone and in agony. It is not surprising that some lar artistic motif, the Dance of Death, depicted a dancing 3
sought release in wild living, while others turned to the skeleton leading away a living person. 4
severest forms of asceticism and frenzied religious fer- 5
vor. Some extremists joined groups of flagellants, who 6
whipped and scourged themselves as penance for their The Hundred Years’ War 7
and society’s sins in the belief that the Black Death was 8
God’s punishment for humanity’s wickedness. Groups of The plague ravaged populations in Asia, North Africa, 9
flagellants traveled from town to town, often provoking and Europe; in western Europe a long international war 10
hysteria against Jews and growing into unruly mobs. Of- added further misery to the frightful disasters of the 11
ficials worried that they would provoke violence and ri- plague. England and France had engaged in sporadic 12
ots, and ordered groups of them to disband or forbade military hostilities from the time of the Norman Con- 13
them to enter cities. quest in 1066, and in the middle of the fourteenth cen- 14
Plague ripped apart the social fabric. In the thirteenth tury these became more intense. From 1337 to 1453, 15
century, funerals, traditionally occasions for the mutual the two countries intermittently fought one another in 16
consolation of the living as much as memorial services for what was the longest war in European history, ultimately 17
the dead, grew increasingly elaborate, with large corteges dubbed the Hundred Years’ War though it actually lasted 18
and many mourners. In the fourteenth century, public 116 years. 19
horror at the suffering of the afflicted and at the dead re- • What were the causes of the Hundred Years’ War, and 20
duced the size of mourning processions and eventually how did the war affect European politics, economics, and 21
resulted in failure even to perform the customary death cultural life? 22
rites. Fear of infection led to the dead being buried 23
hastily, sometimes in mass graves. 24
People often used pilgrimages to holy places as justifi-
Causes
cation for their flight from cities. Suspected of being car- 26
riers of plague, travelers, pilgrims, and the homeless The Hundred Years’ War had both distant and immediate 27
aroused deep hostility. All European port cities followed causes. In 1259 France and England signed the Treaty of 28
the example of Ragusa (modern Dubrovnik in south- Paris, in which the English king agreed to become— 29
western Croatia on the Dalmatian coast) and quaran- for himself and his successors—vassal of the French 30
tined arriving ships, crews, passengers, and cargoes to crown for the duchy of Aquitaine. The English claimed 31
determine whether they brought the plague. Deriving Aquitaine as an ancient inheritance. French policy, how- 32
from a Venetian word, the English term quarantine orig- ever, was strongly expansionist, and the French kings re- 33
inally meant forty days’ isolation. solved to absorb the duchy into the kingdom of France. 34
Popular endowments of educational institutions multi- In January 1327 Queen Isabella of England, her lover 35
plied. The years of the Black Death witnessed the foun- Mortimer, and a group of barons, having deposed and mur- 36
dation of new colleges at old universities, such as Corpus dered Isabella’s incompetent husband, King Edward II, 37
Christi and Clare Colleges at Cambridge and New Col- proclaimed his fifteen-year-old son king as Edward III. 38
lege at Oxford, and of entirely new universities. The be- Isabella and Mortimer, however, held real power until 39
ginnings of Charles University in Prague (1348) and the 1330, when Edward seized the reins of government. In 40
Universities of Florence (1350), Vienna (1364), Cracow 1328 Charles IV of France, the last surviving son of 41
(1364), and Heidelberg (1385) were all associated with Philip the Fair, died childless. With him ended the Cap- 42
the plague: their foundation charters specifically men- etian dynasty. An assembly of French barons, meaning 43
tion the shortage of priests and the decay of learning. to exclude Isabella—who was Charles’s sister and the 44
Whereas universities such as those at Bologna and Paris daughter of Philip the Fair—and her son Edward III 45
had international student bodies, new institutions estab- from the French throne, proclaimed that “no woman 46
lished in the wake of the Black Death had more national nor her son could succeed to the [French] monarchy.” 47
or local constituencies. Thus the international character French lawyers defended the position with the claim that 48
of medieval culture weakened. The decline of cultural co- the exclusion of women from ruling or passing down the 49
hesion paved the way for schism in the Catholic Church right to rule was part of Salic Law, a sixth-century Ger- 50S
even before the Reformation. manic law code (see page 216), and that Salic Law itself 51R
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1 Economic factors involving the wool

2 trade and the control of Flemish towns
3 had served as justifications for war between
4 France and England for centuries. The wool
5 trade between England and Flanders served
6 as the cornerstone of both countries’ econ-
7 omies; they were closely interdependent.
8 Flanders was a fief of the French crown,
9 and the Flemish aristocracy was highly sym-
10 pathetic to the monarchy in Paris. But the
11 wealth of Flemish merchants and cloth
12 manufacturers depended on English wool,
13 and Flemish burghers strongly supported
14 the claims of Edward III. The disruption of
15 commerce with England threatened their
16 prosperity.
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The Popular Response
20 English Merchants in Flanders In this 1387 illustration, an English mer- The governments of both England and
21 chant requests concessions from the count of Flanders to trade English wool at France manipulated public opinion to sup-
22 a favorable price. Flanders was officially on the French side during the Hun- port the war. Whatever significance mod-
23 dred Years’ War, but Flemish cities depended heavily on English wool for their ern scholars ascribe to the economic factor,
24 textile manufacturing. Hence the count of Flanders agreed to the establish- public opinion in fourteenth-century Eng-
ment of the Merchant Staple, an English trading company with a monopoly on
25 trade in wool. (British Library) Apago PDF Enhancer land held that the war was waged for one
26 reason: to secure for King Edward the
27 French crown he had been unjustly denied.
28 was part of the fundamental law of France. They used Edward III issued letters to the sheriffs describing the
29 this invented tradition to argue that Edward should be evil deeds of the French in graphic terms and listing royal
30 barred from the French throne. (This notion became needs. Kings in both countries instructed the clergy to
31 part of French legal tradition until the end of the monar- deliver sermons filled with patriotic sentiment. The royal
32 chy in 1789.) The barons passed the crown to Philip VI courts sensationalized the wickedness of the other side
33 of Valois (r. 1328–1350), a nephew of Philip the Fair. and stressed the great fortunes to be made from the war.
34 In 1329 Edward III paid homage to Philip VI for Philip VI sent agents to warn communities about the
35 Aquitaine. In 1337 Philip, eager to exercise full French ju- dangers of invasion and to stress the French crown’s rev-
36 risdiction in Aquitaine, confiscated the duchy. Edward III enue needs to meet the attack.
37 interpreted this action as a gross violation of the treaty of The royal campaign to rally public opinion was highly
38 1259 and as a cause for war. Moreover, Edward argued, successful, at least in the early stage of the war. Edward
39 as the eldest directly surviving male descendant of Philip III gained widespread support in the 1340s and 1350s.
40 the Fair, he must assume the title of king of France in or- The English developed a deep hatred of the French and
41 der to wield his rightful authority in Aquitaine. In short, feared that King Philip intended “to have seized and
42 Edward rejected the decision of the French barons ex- slaughtered the entire realm of England.” When England
43 cluding him from the throne. Edward III’s dynastic ar- was successful in the field, pride in the country’s military
44 gument upset the feudal order in France: to increase proficiency increased.
45 their independent power, French vassals of Philip VI Most important of all, the Hundred Years’ War was
46 used the excuse that they had to transfer their loyalty to a popular because it presented unusual opportunities for
47 more legitimate overlord, Edward III. One reason the wealth and advancement. Poor knights and knights who
48 war lasted so long was that it became a French civil war, were unemployed were promised regular wages. Crimi-
49 with some French barons supporting English monarchs nals who enlisted were granted pardons. The great nobles
50S in order to thwart the centralizing goals of the French expected to be rewarded with estates. Royal exhortations
51R crown. to the troops before battles repeatedly stressed that, if
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victorious, the men might keep whatever they seized. sacking and burning English coastal towns, such as 1
The French chronicler Jean Froissart wrote that, at the Southampton. Such tactics lent weight to Edward III’s 2
time of Edward III’s expedition of 1359, men of all ranks propaganda campaign. In fact, royal propaganda on both 3
flocked to the English king’s banner. Some came to ac- sides fostered a kind of early nationalism. 4
quire honor, but many came “to loot and pillage the fair During the war’s early stages, England was highly suc- 5
and plenteous land of France.”3 cessful. At Crécy in northern France in 1346, English 6
longbowmen scored a great victory over French knights 7
Improve Your Grade
and crossbowmen. Although the aim of the longbow was 8
Primary Source: Warfare Without Chivalry:
not very accurate, it allowed for rapid reloading, and an 9
The Sack of Limoges
English archer could send off three arrows to the French 10
crossbowman’s one. The result was a blinding shower of 11
arrows that unhorsed the French knights and caused mass 12
The Course of the War to 1419 confusion. The ring of cannon—probably the first use of 13
The war was fought almost entirely in France and the artillery in the West—created further panic. Thereupon 14
Low Countries (see Map 12.2). It consisted mainly of a the English horsemen charged and butchered the French. 15
series of random sieges and cavalry raids. In 1335 the This was not war according to the chivalric rules that 16
French began supporting Scottish incursions into north- Edward III would have preferred. Nevertheless, his son, 17
ern England, ravaging the countryside in Aquitaine, and Edward the Black Prince, used the same tactics ten years 18
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Siege of the Castle of Mortagne Near Bordeaux (1377) Medieval warfare usually consisted of small 48
skirmishes and attacks on castles. This miniature shows the French besieging an English-held castle, which held
out for six months. Most of the soldiers use longbows, although at the left two men shoot primitive muskets 49
above a pair of cannon. Painted in the late fifteenth century, the scene reflects military technology available at 50S
the time it was painted, not the time of the actual siege. (British Library) 51R
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ENGLAND ENGLAND
S S
Southampton Calais R Calais ER
1 FL AN
DE
FLA
ND
2 n nel PONTHIEU
n e l Crécy
h Cha Chan
3 Englis English 1346
Rouen
4 NORMANDY
NORMANDY CHAMPAGNE CHAMPAGNE
5 Paris
e
Paris
ne
S ein BRITTANY S ei
6 BRITTANY
MAINE HOLY MAINE HOLY
7 ANJOU
e
ROMAN ANJOU
e
ROMAN
L oi r L oir BLOIS
8 BLOIS BURGUNDY EMPIRE BURGUNDY EMPIRE
TOURAINE TOURAINE
Poitiers
9 1356
POITOU
10 POITOU
11 AUVERGNE
AQUITAINE
AUVERGNE
AQUITAINE Rh ô n e
Rh ô n e
12 Bordeaux
Ga DAUPHINÉ
Bordeaux
Ga
DAUPHINÉ
ro
13 0 100 Km. 0 100 Km.
ro
nn
nn
e e
GASCONY
14 0 100 Mi.
GASCONY
LANGUEDOC 0 100 Mi. LANGUEDOC
15 Toulouse Toulouse
16 SPAIN
SPAIN
17 1337 1360
(before the Battle of Crécy) (after the Battle of Poitiers)
18
English holdings English holdings
19 Mediterranean Mediterranean
French holdings French holdings
20 Extent of English holdings
Sea Sea
Major battles
21 after Treaty of Paris, 1259
22
23
24
ENGLAND ENGLAND
26 BRABANT
Calais RS HOLY Calais S
27 DE D ER
L AN ROMAN AN
Agincourt F FL
28 el nel
Chan
n 1415 EMPIRE Chan
29 English E nglish LUXEMBOURG
Rouen
30 Reims HOLY
NORMANDY CHAMPAGNE NORMANDY CHAMPAGNE ROMAN
31 Paris
e i n eDomrémy
Paris
e
S ein
S
BRITTANY EMPIRE
32 MAINE Orléans
BRITTANY
MAINE
33 ANJOU
e
ANJOU
e
L oi r DUCHY OF
BURGUNDY COUNTY OF
L oi r COUNTY OF
34 TOURAINE
BLOIS
Bourges BURGUNDY TOURAINE
BLOIS DUCHY OF
BURGUNDY BURGUNDY
35
POITOU POITOU
36
37 AUVERGNE AQUITAINE AUVERGNE
AQUITAINE
Rh ô n e
Rh ô n e
Castillon-sur-Dordogne
38 Bordeaux
Ga DAUPHINÉ Bordeaux
Ga 1453 DAUPHINÉ
39 0 100 Km. 0 100 Km.
ro
ro
nn nn
e e
GASCONY
40 0 100 Mi. LANGUEDOC 0 100 Mi.
GASCONY
LANGUEDOC
41 Toulouse Toulouse
42 SPAIN
43 ca 1429 1453
(after the siege of Orléans) (end of war) SPAIN
44
English holdings Mediterranean
English holdings Mediterranean
45
French holdings French holdings
46 Burgundian lands allied
Sea
Burgundian lands reconciled
Sea
47 with England to 1435 with France after 1435

Major battle Last battle
48
49
50S MAP 12.2 English Holdings in France During the Hundred Years’ War The year 1429
51R marked the greatest extent of English holdings in France.
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later to smash the French at Poitiers, where he captured archers, comrades in arms, gentles and others, who are be- 1
the French king and held him for ransom. Again, at Agin- fore the town of Orléans, retire in God’s name to your own 2
court near Arras in 1415, the chivalric English soldier- country.4 3
king Henry V (r. 1413–1422) gained the field over vastly 4
Joan arrived before Orléans on April 28, 1429. Seven-
superior numbers. Henry followed up his triumph at Ag- 5
teen years old, she knew little of warfare and believed
incourt with the reconquest of Normandy. By 1419 the 6
that if she could keep the French troops from swearing
English had advanced to the walls of Paris (see Map 12.2). 7
and frequenting brothels, victory would be theirs. On
But the French cause was not lost. Though England had 8
May 8 the English, weakened by disease and lack of sup-
scored the initial victories, France won the war. 9
plies, withdrew from Orléans. Ten days later Charles VII
10
was crowned king at Reims. These two events marked
11
Joan of Arc and France’s Victory the turning point in the war.
12
The ultimate French success rests heavily on the actions Improve Your Grade 13
of an obscure French peasant girl, Joan of Arc, whose vi- Primary Source: The Trial of Joan of Arc 14
sion and work revived French fortunes and led to victory. 15
A great deal of pious and popular legend surrounds Joan Joan’s presence at Orléans, her strong belief in her 16
the Maid because of her peculiar appearance on the mission, and the fact that she was wounded enhanced her 17
scene, her astonishing success, her martyrdom, and her reputation and strengthened the morale of the army. In 18
canonization by the Catholic Church. The historical fact 1430 England’s allies, the Burgundians, captured Joan 19
is that she saved the French monarchy, which was the and sold her to the English. When the English handed 20
embodiment of France. her over to the ecclesiastical authorities for trial, the 21
Born in 1412 to well-to-do peasants in the village of French court did not intervene. While the English wanted 22
Domrémy in Champagne, Joan of Arc grew up in a reli- Joan eliminated for obvious political reasons, sorcery 23
gious household. During adolescence she began to hear (witchcraft) was the ostensible charge at her trial. Witch 24
voices, which she later said belonged to Saint Michael, persecution was increasing in the fifteenth century, and 25
Apago PDF Enhancer
Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret. In 1428 these voices Joan’s wearing of men’s clothes appeared not only aber- 26
spoke to her with great urgency, telling her that the rant but indicative of contact with the Devil. In 1431 the 27
dauphin (the uncrowned King Charles VII) had to be court condemned her as a heretic—her claim of direct in- 28
crowned and the English expelled from France. Joan went spiration from God, thereby denying the authority of 29
to the French court, persuaded the king to reject the ru- church officials, constituted heresy—and burned her at 30
mor that he was illegitimate, and secured his support for the stake in the marketplace at Rouen. A new trial in 31
her relief of the besieged city of Orléans. 1456 rehabilitated her name. In 1920 she was canonized 32
The astonishing thing is not that Joan the Maid over- and declared a holy maiden, and today she is revered as 33
came serious obstacles to see the dauphin, and not even the second patron saint of France, along with King Louis 34
that Charles and his advisers listened to her. What is IX. The nineteenth-century French historian Jules 35
amazing is the swiftness with which they were convinced. Michelet extolled Joan of Arc as a symbol of the vitality 36
French fortunes had been so low for so long that the and strength of the French peasant classes. 37
court believed that only a miracle could save the country. The relief of Orléans stimulated French pride and ral- 38
Because Joan cut her hair short and dressed like a man, lied French resources. As the war dragged on, loss of life 39
she scandalized the court. But hoping she would provide mounted, and money appeared to be flowing into a bot- 40
the miracle, Charles allowed her to accompany the army tomless pit, demands for an end increased in England. 41
that was preparing to raise the English siege of Orléans. The clergy and intellectuals pressed for peace. Parliamen- 42
In the meantime Joan, herself illiterate, dictated this tary opposition to additional war grants stiffened. Slowly 43
letter calling on the English to withdraw: the French reconquered Normandy and, finally, ejected 44
the English from Aquitaine. At the war’s end in 1453, 45
King of England . . . , do right in the King of Heaven’s sight. only the town of Calais remained in English hands. 46
Surrender to The Maid sent hither by God the King of 47
Heaven, the keys of all the good towns you have taken and 48
laid waste in France. She comes in God’s name to establish
Costs and Consequences 49
the Blood Royal, ready to make peace if you agree to aban- In France the English had slaughtered thousands of sol- 50S
don France and repay what you have taken. And you, diers and civilians. In the years after the sweep of the 51R
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1 Black Death, this additional killing meant a grave loss of The long war also had a profound impact on the polit-
2 population. The English had laid waste to hundreds of ical and cultural lives of the two countries. Most notably,
3 thousands of acres of rich farmland, leaving the rural it stimulated the development of the English Parliament.
4 economy of many parts of France a shambles. The war Between 1250 and 1450, representative assemblies
5 had disrupted trade and the great fairs, resulting in the flourished in many European countries. In the English
6 drastic reduction of French participation in international Parliament, German diets, and Spanish cortes, delibera-
7 commerce. Defeat in battle and heavy taxation con- tive practices developed that laid the foundations for the
8 tributed to widespread dissatisfaction and aggravated representative institutions of modern liberal-democratic
9 peasant grievances. nations. While representative assemblies declined in most
10 In England only the southern coastal ports experienced countries after the fifteenth century, the English Parlia-
11 much destruction, and the demographic effects of the ment endured. Edward III’s constant need for money to
12 Black Death actually worked to restore the land-labor bal- pay for the war compelled him to summon not only the
13 ance (see page 379). The costs of the war, however, were great barons and bishops, but knights of the shires and
14 tremendous. England spent over £5 million on the war ef- burgesses from the towns as well. Parliament met in
15 fort, a huge sum at the time. Manpower losses had greater thirty-seven of the fifty years of Edward’s reign.6
16 social consequences. The knights who ordinarily handled The frequency of the meetings is significant. Represen-
17 the work of local government as sheriffs, coroners, jury- tative assemblies were becoming a habit. Knights and
18 men, and justices of the peace were abroad, and their ab- wealthy urban residents—or the “Commons,” as they
19 sence contributed to the breakdown of order at the local came to be called—recognized their mutual interests and
20 level. The English government attempted to finance the began to meet apart from the great lords. The Commons
21 war effort by raising taxes on the wool crop. Because of gradually realized that they held the country’s purse
22 steadily increasing costs, Flemish and Italian buyers could strings, and a parliamentary statute of 1341 required that
23 not afford English wool. Consequently, raw wool exports all nonfeudal levies have parliamentary approval. By sign-
24 slumped drastically between 1350 and 1450. ing the law, Edward III acknowledged that the king
25 Many men of all social classes had volunteered for ser-
Apago PDF Enhancer of England could not tax without Parliament’s consent.
26 vice in France in the hope of acquiring booty and be- During the course of the war, money grants were increas-
27 coming rich. The chronicler Walsingham, describing the ingly tied to royal redress of grievances: to raise money,
28 period of Crécy, wrote: “For the woman was of no ac- the government had to correct the wrongs its subjects
29 count who did not possess something from the spoils protested.
30 of . . . cities overseas in clothing, furs, quilts, and uten- In England, theoretical consent to taxation and legis-
31 sils . . . tablecloths and jewels, bowls of murra [semi- lation was given in one assembly for the entire country.
32 precious stone] and silver, linen and linen cloths.”5 France had no such single assembly; instead, there were
33 Walsingham is referring to 1348, in the first generation many regional or provincial assemblies. Why did a na-
34 of war. As time went on, most fortunes seem to have tional representative assembly fail to develop in France?
35 been squandered as fast as they were made. The initiative for convening assemblies rested with the
36 If English troops returned with cash, they did not in- king, who needed revenue almost as much as the English
37 vest it in land. In the fifteenth century returning soldiers ruler. But the French monarchy found the idea of rep-
38 were commonly described as beggars and vagabonds, resentative assemblies thoroughly distasteful. Large gath-
39 roaming about making mischief. Even the large sums of erings of the nobility potentially or actually threatened
40 money received from the ransom of the great—such as the king’s power. The advice of a counselor to King
41 the £250,000 paid to Edward III for the freedom of Charles VI (r. 1380–1422), “above all things be sure that
42 King John of France—and the money paid as indemnities no great assemblies of nobles or of communes take place
43 by captured towns and castles did not begin to equal the in your kingdom,” was accepted.7 Charles VII (r. 1422–
44 more than £5 million spent. England suffered a serious 1461) even threatened to punish those proposing a na-
45 net loss. tional assembly.
46 The war stimulated technological experimentation, es- No one in France wanted a national assembly. Lin-
47 pecially with artillery. Cannon revolutionized warfare, guistic, geographical, economic, legal, and political dif-
48 making the stone castle no longer impregnable. Because ferences were very strong. People tended to think of
49 only central governments, not private nobles, could af- themselves as Breton, Norman, Burgundian, or whatever,
50S ford cannon, they strengthened the military power of na- rather than French. Through much of the fourteenth
51R tional states. and early fifteenth centuries, weak monarchs lacked the
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Challenges to the Church • 387
power to call a national assembly. Provincial assemblies, popes at Avignon concentrated on bureaucratic matters 1
highly jealous of their independence, did not want a to the exclusion of spiritual objectives. Though some of 2
national assembly. The costs of sending delegates to it the popes led austere lives, the general atmosphere was 3
would be high, and the result was likely to be increased one of luxury and extravagance. (See the feature “Indi- 4
taxation. viduals in Society: Francesco Datini” in Chapter 11 on 5
In both countries, however, the war did promote the page 343.) The leadership of the church was cut off from 6
growth of nationalism—the feeling of unity and identity its historic roots and the source of its ancient authority, 7
that binds together a people. After victories, each coun- the city of Rome. In the absence of the papacy, the Papal 8
try experienced a surge of pride in its military strength. States in Italy lacked stability and good government. The 9
Just as English patriotism ran strong after Crécy and economy of Rome had been based on the presence of the 10
Poitiers, so French national confidence rose after Or- papal court and the rich tourist trade the papacy attracted. 11
léans. French national feeling demanded the expulsion of The Babylonian Captivity left Rome poverty-stricken. 12
the enemy not merely from Normandy and Aquitaine In 1377 Pope Gregory XI brought the papal court 13
but from all French soil. Perhaps no one expressed this back to Rome. Unfortunately, he died shortly after the 14
national consciousness better than Joan of Arc when she return. At Gregory’s death, Roman citizens demanded 15
exulted that the enemy had been “driven out of France.” an Italian pope who would remain in Rome. Between the 16
time of Gregory’s death and the opening of the conclave, 17
great pressure was put on the cardinals to elect an Italian. 18
Challenges to the Church At the time, none of them protested this pressure, and 19
they chose a distinguished administrator, the archbishop 20
In times of crisis or disaster, people of all faiths have of Bari, Bartolomeo Prignano, who took the name Ur- 21
sought the consolation of religion. In the fourteenth ban VI. 22
century, however, the official Christian church offered Urban VI (1378–1389) had excellent intentions for 23
little solace. In fact, the leaders of the church added to church reform, but he went about this in a tactless and 24
the sorrow and misery of the times. In response to this
Apago PDF Enhancer bullheaded manner. He attacked clerical luxury, denoun- 25
lack of leadership, members of the clergy challenged the cing individual cardinals by name, and even threatened 26
power of the pope, and laypeople challenged the author- to excommunicate certain cardinals. 27
ity of the church itself. Women and men increasingly re- The cardinals slipped away from Rome and met at 28
lied on direct approaches to God, often through mystical Anagni. They declared Urban’s election invalid because 29
encounters, rather than on the institutional church. it had come about under threats from the Roman mob, 30
• What challenges faced the Christian church in the and they asserted that Urban himself was excommuni- 31
fourteenth century, and how did church leaders, cated. The cardinals then elected Cardinal Robert of 32
intellectuals, and ordinary people respond? Geneva, the cousin of King Charles V of France, as pope. 33
Cardinal Robert took the name Clement VII. There 34
were thus two popes—Urban at Rome and Clement VII 35
The Babylonian Captivity and (1378–1394), who set himself up at Avignon in opposi- 36
tion to Urban. So began the Great Schism, which di- 37
Great Schism vided Western Christendom until 1417. 38
In order to control the church and its policies, Philip the The powers of Europe aligned themselves with Urban 39
Fair of France pressured Pope Clement V to settle per- or Clement along strictly political lines. France naturally 40
manently in Avignon in southeastern France, where the recognized the French pope, Clement. England, France’s 41
popes already had their summer residence (see Map 11.3 historic enemy, recognized the Italian pope, Urban. 42
on page 346). Clement, critically ill with cancer, lacked Scotland, whose attacks on England were subsidized by 43
the will to resist Philip. The popes lived in Avignon from France, followed the French and supported Clement. 44
1309 to 1376, a period in church history often called the Aragon, Castile, and Portugal hesitated before deciding 45
Babylonian Captivity (referring to the seventy years the for Clement at Avignon. The emperor, who bore ancient 46
ancient Hebrews were held captive in Mesopotamian hostility to France, recognized Urban. At first the Italian 47
Babylon). city-states recognized Urban; when he alienated them, 48
The Babylonian Captivity badly damaged papal pres- they opted for Clement. 49
tige. The Avignon papacy reformed its financial adminis- John of Spoleto, a professor at the law school at 50S
tration and centralized its government. But the seven Bologna, eloquently summed up intellectual opinion of 51R
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1 the schism, or division: “The longer this schism lasts, the views had broad social and economic significance. He
2 more it appears to be costing, and the more harm it does; urged that the church be stripped of its property. His
3 scandal, massacres, ruination, agitations, troubles and idea that every Christian free of mortal sin possessed
4 disturbances.”8 The common people, wracked by infla- lordship was seized on by peasants in England during a
5 tion, wars, and plague, were thoroughly confused about revolt in 1381 and used to justify their goals.
6 which pope was legitimate. The schism weakened the re- In advancing these views, Wyclif struck at the roots of
7 ligious faith of many Christians and brought church lead- medieval church structure. Consequently, he has been
8 ership into serious disrepute. The schism also brought to hailed as the precursor of the Protestant Reformation of
9 the fore conciliar ideas about church government. the sixteenth century. Although Wyclif’s ideas were vig-
10 orously condemned by ecclesiastical authorities, they
11 were widely disseminated by humble clerics and enjoyed
12
The Conciliar Movement great popularity in the early fifteenth century. Wyclif’s
13 Theories about the nature of the Christian church and its followers were called “Lollards.” The term, which means
14 government originated in the very early church, but the “mumblers of prayers and psalms,” refers to what they
15 years of the Great Schism witnessed their maturity. criticized. Lollard teaching allowed women to preach.
16 Conciliarists believed that reform of the church could Women, some well educated, played a significant role in
17 best be achieved through periodic assemblies, or general the movement. After Anne, sister of Wenceslaus, king of
18 councils, representing all the Christian people. While ac- Germany and Bohemia, married Richard II of England,
19 knowledging that the pope was head of the church, con- members of her household carried Lollard books back to
20 ciliarists held that the pope derived his authority from the Bohemia.
21 entire Christian community, whose well-being he existed In response to continued calls throughout Europe for
22 to promote. Conciliarists favored a balanced or constitu- a council, the two colleges of cardinals—one at Rome,
23 tional form of church government, with papal authority the other at Avignon—summoned a council at Pisa in
24 shared with a general council, in contrast to the monar- 1409. That gathering of prelates and theologians de-
25 chical one that prevailed. Apago PDF Enhancer posed both popes and selected another. Neither the Avi-
26 A half century before the Great Schism, in 1324, Mar- gnon pope nor the Roman pope would resign, however,
27 siglio of Padua, then rector of the University of Paris, had and the appalling result was the creation of a threefold
28 published Defensor Pacis (The Defender of the Peace). schism.
29 Marsiglio argued that the state was the great unifying Finally, because of the pressure of the German em-
30 power in society and that the church was subordinate to peror Sigismund, a great council met at the imperial city
31 the state. He put forth the revolutionary ideas that the of Constance (1414–1418). It had three objectives: to
32 church had no inherent jurisdiction and should own no end the schism, to reform the church “in head and mem-
33 property. Authority in the Christian church, according to bers” (from top to bottom), and to wipe out heresy. The
34 Marsiglio, should rest in a general council made up of council condemned the Czech reformer Jan Hus (see the
35 laymen as well as priests, and the council should be supe- feature “Individuals in Society: Jan Hus”), and he was
36 rior to the pope. These ideas directly contradicted the burned at the stake. The council eventually deposed both
37 medieval notion of a society governed by the church and the Roman pope and the successor of the pope chosen at
38 the state, with the church supreme. Defensor Pacis was Pisa, and it isolated the Avignon antipope. A conclave
39 condemned by the pope, and Marsiglio was excommuni- elected a new leader, the Roman cardinal Colonna, who
40 cated. took the name Martin V (1417–1431).
41 Even more earthshaking than the theories of Marsiglio Martin proceeded to dissolve the council. Nothing was
42 of Padua were the ideas of the English scholar and the- done about reform. The schism was over, and though
43 ologian John Wyclif (ca 1330–1384). Wyclif wrote that councils subsequently met at Basel and at Ferrara-
44 papal claims of temporal power had no foundation in Florence, in 1450 the papacy held a jubilee celebrating its
45 the Scriptures and that the Scriptures alone should be the triumph over the conciliar movement. In the later fif-
46 standard of Christian belief and practice. He urged the teenth century the papacy concentrated on Italian prob-
47 abolition of such practices as the veneration of saints, pil- lems to the exclusion of universal Christian interests. But
48 grimages, pluralism, and absenteeism. Sincere Christians, the schism and the conciliar movement had exposed the
49 according to Wyclif, should read the Bible for them- crying need for ecclesiastical reform, thus laying the
50S selves. In response to that idea, the first English transla- foundation for the great reform efforts of the sixteenth
51R tion of the Bible was produced and circulated. Wyclif’s century.
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Challenges to the Church • 389
tory, either for specific individuals or for the anonymous

mass of all souls. In England they were generally associ-
ated with a parish, so are called parish guilds, parish fra-
ternities, or lights; by the late Middle Ages they held
dances, church ales, and collections to raise money to
clean and repair church buildings and to supply the
church with candles and other liturgical objects. Like
craft guilds, most confraternities were groups of men,
but separate women’s confraternities were formed in
some towns, often to oversee the production of vest-
ments, altar cloths, and other items made of fabric.
In Holland, beginning in the late fourteenth century, a
group of pious laypeople called the Brethren and Sisters
of the Common Life lived in stark simplicity while daily
carrying out the Gospel teaching of feeding the hungry,
clothing the naked, and visiting the sick. The Brethren
also taught in local schools with the goal of preparing de-
vout candidates for the priesthood. They sought to make
religion a personal inner experience. The spirituality of
the Brethren and Sisters of the Common Life found its
Spoon with Fox Preaching to Geese (southern Nether-
finest expression in the classic The Imitation of Christ by
lands, ca 1430) Taking as his text a contemporary proverb, Thomas à Kempis, which gained wide appeal among
“When the fox preaches, beware your geese,” the artist shows, laypeople. It urges Christians to take Christ as their
in the bowl of a spoon, a fox dressed as a monk or friar, model, seek perfection in a simple way of life, and look to
preaching with three dead geese in his hood, while another the Scriptures for guidance in living a spiritual life. In
Apago PDF Enhancer
fox grabs one of the congregation. The preaching fox reads
the mid-fifteenth century the movement had founded
from a scroll bearing the word pax (peace), implying the
perceived hypocrisy of the clergy. The object suggests the houses in the Netherlands, in central Germany, and in
widespread criticism of churchmen in the later Middle Ages. the Rhineland.
(Painted enamel and gilding on silver; 17.6 cm [6 7⁄8 in]. Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston, Helen and Alice Coburn Fund, 51.2472) Improve Your Grade
Primary Source: The Imitation of Christ:
On True Charity
Most of this lay piety centered on prayer, pious actions,

Lay Piety and Mysticism and charitable giving, but for some individuals, religious
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the laity devotion included mystical experiences. Bridget of Swe-
began to exercise increasing control over parish affairs. den (1303–1373) was a noblewoman who journeyed to
The constant quarrels of the mendicant orders (the Fran- Rome after her husband’s death. She began to see visions
ciscans and Dominicans), the mercenary and grasping at- and gave advice based on these visions to both laypeople
titude of the parish clergy, the scandal of the Great and church officials. Because she could not speak Latin,
Schism, and a divided Christendom all did much to she dictated her visions in Swedish; these were later trans-
weaken the spiritual mystique of the clergy in the populated and eventually published in Latin. At the end of her
lar mind. The laity steadily took responsibility for the life, Bridget made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where she
management of parish lands and secured jurisdiction over saw visions of the Virgin Mary, who described to her ex-
the structure of the church building and its vestments, actly how she was standing “with my knees bent” when
books, and furnishings. Lay Christian men and women she gave birth to Jesus, and how she “showed to the
often formed confraternities, voluntary lay groups orga- shepherds the nature and male sex of the child.”9 Brid-
nized by occupation, devotional preference, neighbor- get’s visions convey her deep familiarity with biblical
hood, or charitable activity. Confraternities expanded texts taught to her through sermons or stories, as there
rapidly in larger cities and many villages with the growth was no Bible available in Swedish. They also provide evi-
of the mendicant orders in the thirteenth century. Some dence of the ways in which laypeople used their own
confraternities specialized in praying for souls in purga- experiences to enhance their religious understanding;
1019763_ch_12.qxp 9/17/07 2:40 PM Page 390
1 Bridget’s own experiences of childbirth shaped the way Flemish peasants, who in 1323 began to revolt in protest
2 she viewed the birth of Jesus, and she related to the Vir- of officials’ demands for taxes and of the misappropria-
3 gin Mary in part as one mother to another. tion of the money collected. Also, monasteries pressed
4 peasants for fees higher than the customary tithes. In
5 retaliation, peasants subjected castles and aristocratic coun-
6 Economic and Social Change try houses to arson and pillage. A French army inter-
7 vened and on August 23, 1328, near the town of Cassel
8 in southwestern Flanders, crushed peasant forces. Savage
In the fourteenth century economic and political diffi-
9 repression and the confiscation of peasant property fol-
culties, disease, and war profoundly affected the lives of
10 lowed in the 1330s.
European peoples. Decades of slaughter and destruc-
11 In 1358, when French taxation for the Hundred Years’
tion, punctuated by the decimating visits of the Black
12 War fell heavily on the poor, the frustrations of the
Death, made a grave economic situation virtually disas-
13 French peasantry exploded in a massive uprising called
trous. In many parts of France and the Low Countries,
14 the Jacquerie, after a mythical agricultural laborer, Jacques
fields lay in ruin or untilled for lack of labor power. In
15 Bonhomme (Good Fellow). Two years earlier the Eng-
England, as taxes increased, criticisms of government
16 lish had captured the French king John and many nobles
policy and mismanagement multiplied. Crime and new
17 and held them for ransom. The peasants resented paying
forms of business organization aggravated economic
18 for their lords’ release. Recently hit by plague, experienc-
troubles, and throughout Europe the frustrations of the
19 ing famine in some areas, and harassed by nobles, peas-
common people erupted into widespread revolts.
20 ants in Picardy, Champagne, and the Île-de-France
21 • How did economic and social tensions contribute to erupted in anger and frustration. Crowds swept through
22 revolts, crime, violence, and a growing sense of ethnic and the countryside, slashing the throats of nobles, burning
23 national distinctions? their castles, raping their wives and daughters, and killing
24 or maiming their horses and cattle. Peasants blamed the
25 Apago PDF Enhancer nobility for oppressive taxes, for the criminal brigandage
26 Peasant Revolts of the countryside, for defeat in war, and for the general
27 misery. Artisans, small merchants, and parish priests
Nobles, clergy, and city dwellers lived on the produce of
28 joined the peasants. Urban and rural groups committed
peasant labor. Early in the thirteenth century the French
29 terrible destruction, and for several weeks the nobles
preacher Jacques de Vitry asked rhetorically, “How many
30 were on the defensive. Then the upper class united to re-
serfs have killed their lords or burnt their castles?”10 And
31 press the revolt with merciless ferocity. Thousands of the
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries social and eco-
32 “Jacques,” innocent as well as guilty, were cut down.
nomic conditions caused a great increase in peasant up-
33 That forcible suppression of social rebellion, without any
risings (see Map 12.3). They were very common and
34 effort to alleviate its underlying causes, served to drive
provide most of the evidence of peasants’ long suffering
35 protest underground.
and exploitation.
36 The Peasants’ Revolt in England in 1381 involved
We will never be able fully to answer Jacques de Vitry’s
37 thousands of people (see Map 12.3). Its causes were
questions, for peasants were not literate and, apart from
38 complex and varied from place to place. In general,
their explosive uprisings, left no record of their aspira-
39 though, the thirteenth century had witnessed the steady
tions. The clerical writers who mentioned the rebellions
40 commutation of labor services for cash rents, and the
viewed the peasants with aristocratic disdain and hostility.
41 Black Death had drastically cut the labor supply. As a re-
Recent research provides some insight into peasant re-
42 sult, peasants demanded higher wages and fewer manor-
volts in Flanders in the 1320s. Long-existing conflicts
43 ial obligations. The parliamentary Statute of Laborers of
along the Flemish-French border came to a head at
44 1351 (see page 380) had declared:
Courtrai in July 1302 when Flemish infantry smashed a
45
French army, killing many knights and nobles (their Whereas to curb the malice of servants who after the pesti-
46
golden spurs retrieved from the battlefield gave the bat- lence were idle and unwilling to serve without securing
47
tle its name, the Battle of the Spurs). The Flemish victory excessive wages, it was recently ordained . . . that such ser-
48
failed to resolve disputes over the French crown’s claim vants, both men and women, shall be bound to serve in re-
49
to fiscal rights over the county of Flanders. Moreover, turn for salaries and wages that were customary . . . five or
50S
the peace agreements imposed heavy indemnities on six years earlier.11
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Individuals 1
in Society 2
3
4
Jan Hus 5
authority in Scripture
alone); and made it clear
6
I n May 1990 the Czech Republic’s parliament that he had no intention of 7
8
declared July 6, the date of Jan Hus’s execution in leaving the church or incit-
1415, a Czech national holiday. The son of free farming a popular movement. 9
ers, Hus (ca 1369–1415) was born in Husinec in south- In 1413 the emperor 10
ern Bohemia, an area of heavy German settlement, Sigismund urged the call- 11
and grew up conscious of the ethnic differences being of a general council to 12
tween Czechs and Germans. Most of his professors at end the schism. Hus was The execution of Jan Hus. 13
Charles University in Prague were Germans. In 1396 invited, and, given the (University of Prague/The Art Archive) 14
he received a master’s degree, and just before his ordi- emperor’s safe conduct 15
nation as a priest in 1400 he wrote that he would not (protection from attack or arrest), agreed to go. What
16
be a “clerical careerist,” implying that ambition for he found was an atmosphere of inquisition. The safe
church offices motivated many of his peers. conduct was disregarded, and Hus was arrested. Under
17
The young priest lectured at the university and questioning about his acceptance of Wyclif’s ideas, Hus 18
preached at the private Bethlehem Chapel. During his repeatedly replied, “I have not held; I do not hold.” 19
twelve years there Hus preached only in Czech. He Council members were more interested in proving Hus 20
denounced superstition, the sale of indulgences, and a Wyclite than in his responses. They took away his 21
other abuses, but his remarks were thoroughly ortho- priesthood, banned his teachings, burned his books, 22
dox. He attracted attention among artisans and the and burned Hus himself at the stake. He then belonged 23
small Czech middle class, but not Germans. His austere to the ages. 24
life and lack of ambition enhanced his reputation. The ages have made good use of him. His death 25
Apago PDF Enhancer
Around 1400, Czech students returning from study aggravated the divisions between the bishops at Con- 26
at Oxford introduced into Bohemia the reforming ideas stance and the Czech clerics and people. In September
27
of the English theologian John Wyclif. When German 1415, 452 nobles from all parts of Bohemia signed a
professors condemned Wyclif’s ideas as heretical, Hus letter saying that Hus had been unjustly executed and
28
and the Czechs argued “academic freedom,” the right rejecting council rulings. This event marks the first time 29
to read and teach Wyclif’s works regardless of their that an ecclesiastical decision was publicly defied. Rev- 30
particular merits. When popular demonstrations olution swept through Bohemia, with Hussites—Czech 31
against ecclesiastical abuses and German influence at nobles and people—insisting on clerical poverty and 32
the university erupted, King Vaclav IV (1378–1419) both the bread and wine at the Eucharist, and with 33
placed control of the university in Czech hands. Hus German citizens remaining loyal to the Roman church. 34
was elected rector, the top administrative official. In the sixteenth century reformers hailed Hus as the 35
The people of Prague, with perhaps the largest ur- forerunner of Protestantism. In the eighteenth century 36
ban population in central Europe, 40 percent of it Enlightenment philosophes evoked Hus as a defender 37
living below the poverty line and entirely dependent on of freedom of expression. In the nineteenth century
38
casual labor, found Hus’s denunciations of an overen- central European nationalists used Hus’s name to de-
dowed church appealing. Hus considered the issues fend national sentiment against Habsburg rule. And in
39
theological; his listeners saw them as socioeconomic. the twentieth century Hus’s name was used against 40
Church officials in Prague were split about Hus’s German fascist and Russian communist tyranny. 41
ideas, and popular unrest grew. The king forced Hus 42
to leave the city, but he continued to preach and write. Questions for Analysis 43
He disputed papal authority, denounced abuses, and 44
argued that everyone should receive both bread and 1. Since Jan Hus lived and died insisting that his 45
wine in the Eucharist. (By this time, in standard West- religious teaching was thoroughly orthodox, why
46
ern Christian practice, the laity received only the bread; has he been hailed as a reformer?
2. What political and cultural interests did the 47
the priest received the wine for the laity, a mark of his 48
distinctiveness.) Hus also defended transubstantiation martyred Hus serve?
49
(see page 449); insisted that church authority rested
on Scripture, conscience, and tradition (in contrast to
50S
Improve Your Grade
sixteenth-century Protestant reformers, who placed Going Beyond Individuals in Society 51R
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1 0 150 300 Km. frightened and insecure. Moreover, dec-

2 ades of aristocratic violence against the
0 150 300 Mi.
SCOTLAND
3 weak peasantry had bred hostility and bit-
a
Riga
Se
North
4 terness. Social and religious agitation by
c
Sea
ti
5 a
l the popular preacher John Ball fanned the
IRELAND B
6 Limerick Dublin
PRUSSIA embers of discontent. Ball’s famous cou-
Danzig
7 ENGLAND Lübeck Vis
plet “When Adam delved and Eve span;
tul
8 Hamburg a Who was then the gentleman?” reflected
Od Warsaw
9 London Brunswick er real revolutionary sentiment.
ATLANTIC Bruges POLAND
El
10 The straw that broke the camel’s back
be
Ghent Cologne HOLY
Ypres
Rh
BOHEMIA
11 OCEAN Amiens PICARDY in England was the reimposition of a head
ine
Rouen Frankfurt Cracow
Laon Prague
12 Main centers of C
Paris HA ROMAN
Dan
tax on all adult males. Despite widespread
Jacquerie uprising,
ube
13 popular revolt 1358 Vienna opposition to the tax in 1380, the royal
M
Sei
PA
e Augsburg
L oir
ne
14 Main areas of rural council ordered the sheriffs to collect it

GN
EMPIRE Budapest
uprisings
E
FRANCE AUSTRIA
15 again in 1381 on penalty of a huge fine.
A U V ER G N E
Main area of the Peasants‘ HUNGARY

Lyons Geneva
16 Revolt in England, 1381
LYONNAIS Venice Beginning with assaults on the tax collec-
Milan
17 Le Puy tors, the uprising in England followed a
Nimes
18 Montpellier course similar to that of the Jacquerie in
Beziers Arles Ad
Florence ia
19 r ti
c
France. Castles and manors were sacked.
Se
20 Corsica Rome a Manorial records were destroyed. Many
ARAGON Barcelona
21 Tagus
Naples nobles, including the archbishop of Can-
22 Sardinia terbury, who had ordered the collection
23 Balearic Is. of the tax, were murdered.
24 Seville Palermo Messina The center of the revolt lay in the
Mediterranean Sea
25 Apago PDF Enhancer Sicily highly populated and economically ad-
26 vanced south and east, but sections of the
NORTH AFRICA
27 north and the Midlands also witnessed
28 rebellions. Violence took different forms
29 MAP 12.3 Fourteenth-Century Peasant Revolts In the later Middle Ages, in different places. Urban discontent
peasant and urban uprisings were endemic, as common as factory strikes in the
30 industrial world. The threat of insurrection served to check unlimited exploita-
merged with rural violence. In English
31 tion. towns where skilled Flemish craftsmen
32 were employed, fear of competition led to
33 Improve Your Grade their being attacked and murdered. Ap-
34 Interactive Map: Fourteenth-Century Peasant Revolts prentices and journeymen, frustrated be-
35 cause the highest positions in the guilds
36 were closed to them, rioted.
37 But this attempt to freeze wages and social mobility The boy-king Richard II (r. 1377–1399) met Wat
38 could not be enforced. Some scholars believe that in Tyler and other leaders of the revolt, agreed to charters
39 most places the peasantry was better off in the period ensuring peasants’ freedom, tricked them with false prom-
40 1350 to 1450 than it had been for centuries before or ises, and then crushed the uprising with terrible ferocity.
41 was to be for four centuries after. The nobility tried to restore ancient duties of serfdom,
42 Why then was the outburst in England in 1381 so se- but nearly a century of freedom had elapsed, and the com-
43 rious? It was provoked by a crisis of rising expectations. mutation of manorial services continued. Rural serfdom
44 The relative prosperity of the laboring classes led to de- disappeared in England by 1550.
45 mands that the upper classes were unwilling to grant.
46 Unable to climb higher, the peasants sought release for
47 their economic frustrations in revolt. Economic griev-
Urban Conflicts
48 ances combined with other factors. The south of Eng- In Flanders, France, and England, peasant revolts often
49 land, where the revolt broke out, had been subjected to blended with conflicts involving workers in cities. Unrest
50S destructive French raids. The English government did also occurred in other cities. In Florence in 1378 the
51R little to protect the south, and villagers grew increasingly ciompi, the poor propertyless workers, revolted. Serious
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Economic and Social Change • 393
social trouble occurred in Lübeck, Brunswick, and other workers to do tasks they regarded as beneath them. As 1
German cities. In Spain in 1391 aristocratic attempts to their actual status and economic prospects declined and 2
impose new forms of serfdom, combined with demands their work became basically wage labor, journeymen and 3
for tax relief, led to massive working-class and peasant poorer masters emphasized skill and honor as qualities 4
uprisings in Seville and Barcelona. that set them apart from less-skilled workers. 5
These revolts often occurred in cities where the condi- The sense of honor developed by craft and journey- 6
tions of work were changing for many people. In the men’s guilds was a gendered one. When urban economies 7
thirteenth century craft guilds had organized production were expanding in the High Middle Ages, the master’s 8
of most goods, with masters, journeymen, and appren- wife and daughters worked alongside him, and the jour- 9
tices working side by side. Beginning in the fourteenth neymen and apprentices and female domestic servants 10
century in a few areas of Europe such as Florence and also carried out productive tasks. (See the feature “Lis- 11
Flanders, individuals who had made money in trade and tening to the Past: Christine de Pizan” on pages 404– 12
banking invested in production. They wanted to make 405.) Women and girls served as a labor reservoir to be 13
products on a larger scale than guilds would allow, so utilized when guild needs required. Masters’ widows ran 14
they hired many households, with each household per- shops after the death of their husbands and were ex- 15
forming only one step of the process. Craft guilds some- pected to pay all guild fees, though they could not par- 16
times protested these changes, but in other cities more ticipate in running the guild. This informal participation 17
enterprising or wealthier masters recognized the benefits began to change in the fourteenth century, as guilds in- 18
of this new system and began to hire other households to creasingly came to view the honor of their work as tied to 19
work for them. This promoted a greater division within an all-male workplace. First, masters’ widows were lim- 20
guilds between wealthier masters and the poorer masters ited in the amount of time they could keep operating a 21
and journeymen they hired. Some masters became so shop or were prohibited from hiring journeymen; then 22
wealthy that they no longer had to work in a shop them- female domestic servants were excluded from any pro- 23
selves, nor did their wives and family members. Instead ductive tasks; then the number of his daughters a master 24
of being artisans, they became capitalist investors,
Apago PDF Enhancer craftsman could employ was limited. The timing of these 25
though they still generally belonged to the craft guild. restrictions varied from craft to craft, town to town, and 26
While capitalism provided opportunities for some arti- country to country, but because women’s participation 27
sans to become investors and entrepreneurs, especially in in guild shops was generally not guaranteed by guild reg- 28
cloth production, for many it led to a decrease in income ulations and because widows had no political voice in 29
and status. Guilds often responded to competition by running the guilds, women as a group were not able to 30
limiting membership to existing guild families, which protect their right to work. A few might be allowed to 31
meant that journeymen who were not master’s sons or work, but this was on an individual basis and was viewed 32
who could not find a master’s widow or daughter to as a substitute for charity. The separate journeymen’s 33
marry could never become masters themselves. They re- guilds were even more hostile to women’s work and 34
mained journeymen their entire lives, losing their sense never allowed female members. Their secret rituals of- 35
of solidarity with the masters of their craft and in some fered opportunities for men to bond with one another 36
cities forming separate journeymen’s guilds. These jour- and to express their resentment of economic change 37
neymen’s guilds tried to prevent anyone who was not a through hostility toward women’s work as well as toward 38
member of the guild from working in any craft shop, en- merchants’ privileges. 39
forcing their aims with boycotts, strikes, and riots. Such 40
actions often led cities to prohibit journeymen’s guilds, 41
but they were still set up illegally, and their secrecy made
Sex in the City 42
them stronger. Journeymen developed elaborate initia- Peasant and urban revolts and riots had clear economic 43
tion rituals and secret ceremonies to enhance group soli- bases, but some historians have suggested that late me- 44
darity, and they carried their organizations with them dieval marital patterns may have also played a role in un- 45
when they traveled in search of work. rest. At what age did people usually marry? The largest 46
Urban uprisings were most often touched off by eco- amount of evidence on age at first marriage survives from 47
nomic issues, as low- and middle-class workers deeply re- Italy. For girls, population surveys at Prato place the age 48
sented the widening economic and social gap separating at 16.3 years in 1372 and at 21.1 years in 1470. Noble 49
them from mercantile elites, but they were also sparked and wealthy urban women in cities elsewhere in Europe 50S
by issues involving honor, such as employers’ requiring also generally married while in their late teens, but peasant 51R
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1 and poorer urban women, especially in northwestern Venice, Genoa, London, Florence, Rome, most of the
2 Europe—including the British Isles, Scandinavia, France, larger German towns, and the English port of Sandwich
3 and Germany—waited until their mid- or late twenties to set up brothels.
4 marry. The northwestern European marriage pattern re- Many cities set down rules for the women and their
5 sulted largely from the idea that couples should be eco- customers, and they justified the existence of municipal
6 nomically independent before they married, so both brothels with the comment that such women protected
7 spouses spent long periods as servants or workers in honorable girls and women from the uncontrollable lust
8 other households saving money and learning skills, or of young men, an argument at least as old as Saint Au-
9 they waited until their own parents had died and the fam- gustine. In a few cities such as Florence, authorities also
10 ily property was distributed. noted that brothels might keep young men from homo-
11 The most unusual feature of this pattern was the late sexual relations, another, far worse alternative in their
12 age of marriage for women. Women entered marriage as eyes. Visiting brothels was associated with achieving man-
13 adults and took charge of running a household immedi- hood in the eyes of young men, though for the women
14 ately. They were thus not as dependent on their husbands themselves their activities were work. Indeed, in some
15 or their mothers-in-law as were women who married at cases the women had no choice, for they had been
16 younger ages. They had fewer pregnancies than women traded to the brothel manager by their parents or other
17 who married earlier, though not necessarily fewer surviv- people in payment for debt, or had quickly become in-
18 ing children. debted to him (or, more rarely, her) for the clothes and
19 Men of all social groups were older when they married. other finery regarded as essential to their occupation. Poor
20 An Italian chronicler writing about 1354 says that men women—and men—also sold sex illegally outside of city
21 did not marry before the age of thirty. At Prato in 1371 brothels, combining this with other sorts of part-time
22 the average age of men at first marriage was twenty-four work such as laundering or sewing. Prostitution was an
23 years, very young for Italian men, but these data may sig- urban phenomenon because only populous towns had
24 nal an attempt to regain population losses due to the re- large numbers of unmarried young men, communities of
25 cent attack of the plague. In general, men were in their
Apago PDF Enhancer transient merchants, and a culture accustomed to a cash
26 middle or late twenties at first marriage, with wealthier exchange.
27 urban merchants often much older. Journeymen and ap- Though selling sex for money was legal in the Middle
28 prentices were often explicitly prohibited from marrying, Ages, the position of women who did so was always mar-
29 as were the students at universities, as they were under- ginal. In the late fifteenth century cities began to limit
30 stood to be in “minor orders” and thus like clergy, even brothel residents’ freedom of movement and choice of
31 if they were not intending on careers in the church. clothing, requiring them to wear distinctive head cover-
32 The prohibitions on marriage for certain groups of ings or bands on their clothing so that they would not be
33 men and the late age of marriage for most men meant mistaken for “honorable” women. The cities also began
34 that cities and villages were filled with large numbers of to impose harsher penalties on women who did not live
35 young adult men with no family responsibilities who of- in the designated house or section of town. A few prosti-
36 ten formed the core of riots and unrest. Not surprisingly, tutes did earn enough to donate money to charity or buy
37 this situation also contributed to a steady market for sex- property, but most were very poor.
38 ual services outside of marriage, what in later centuries Along with buying sex, young men also took it by
39 was termed prostitution. Research on the southern force. Unmarried women often found it difficult to avoid
40 French province of Languedoc in the fourteenth and fif- sexual contacts. Many of them worked as domestic ser-
41 teenth centuries has revealed the establishment of legal vants, where their employers or employers’ sons or male
42 houses of prostitution in many cities. Municipal authori- relatives could easily coerce them, or they worked in
43 ties in Toulouse, Montpellier, Albi, and other towns set proximity to men. Female servants were sent on errands
44 up houses or red-light districts either outside the city alone or with men or worked by themselves in fields far
45 walls or away from respectable neighborhoods. For ex- from other people. Notions of female honor kept upper-
46 ample, authorities in Montpellier set aside Hot Street for class women secluded in their homes, particularly in
47 prostitution, required public women to live there, and southern and eastern Europe, but there was little attempt
48 forbade anyone to molest them. Prostitution thus passed anywhere to keep female servants or day laborers from
49 from being a private concern to a social matter requiring the risk of seduction or rape. Rape was a capital crime in
50S public supervision. The towns of Languedoc were not many parts of Europe, but the actual sentences handed
51R unique. Public authorities in Amiens, Dijon, Paris, out were more likely to be fines and brief imprisonment,
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class youth was convicted of the rape of 1

a non-noble girl, his punishment was 2
even lighter. By contrast, the sexual as- 3
sault of a noblewoman by a working- 4
class man, which was extraordinarily 5
rare, resulted in severe penalization be- 6
cause the crime had social and political 7
overtones. 8
According to laws regarding rape in 9
most parts of Europe, the victim had to 10
prove that she had cried out and had at- 11
tempted to repel the attacker, and she 12
had to bring the charge within a short 13
period of time after the attack had hap- 14
pened. Women bringing rape charges 15
were often more interested in getting 16
their own honorable reputations back 17
than in punishing the perpetrators, and 18
for this reason they sometimes asked 19
the judge to force their rapists to marry 20
them. 21
Same-sex relations—what in the late 22
nineteenth century would be termed 23
homosexuality—were another feature of 24
Apago PDF Enhancer medieval urban life (and of village life, 25
Prostitute Invites a Traveling Merchant Poverty drove though there are very few sources relating to sexual rela- 26
women into prostitution, which, though denounced by moral- tions of any type in the rural context). Same-sex relations 27
ists, was accepted as a normal part of the medieval social fab- were of relatively little concern to church or state author- 28
ric. In the cities and larger towns where prostitution
flourished, public officials passed laws requiring prostitutes to
ities in the early Middle Ages, but this attitude changed 29
wear a special mark on their clothing, regulated hours of busi- beginning in the late twelfth century. By 1300 most areas 30
ness, forbade women to drag men into their houses, and de- had defined such actions as “crimes against nature,” with 31
nied business to women with the “burning sickness,” authorities seeing them as particularly reprehensible be- 32
gonorrhea. (Bodleian Library, MS. Bodl. 264, fol. 245V) cause they thought they did not occur anywhere else in 33
creation. Same-sex relations, usually termed sodomy, be- 34
came a capital crime in most of Europe, with adult of- 35
fenders threatened with execution by fire. The Italian 36
cities of Venice, Florence, and Lucca created special 37
with the severity of the sentence dependent on the social courts to deal with sodomy, which saw thousands of in- 38
status of the victim and the perpetrator. According to a vestigations. 39
study of the legal evidence from Venice in the years 1338 How prevalent was homosexuality? This is difficult 40
to 1358, rape was not considered a particularly serious to answer, even in modern society, but Florence provides 41
crime against either the victim or society. Noble youths a provocative case study. The city of Florence passed leg- 42
committed a higher percentage of rapes than their small islation against sodomy in 1415 and 1418, and in 1432 43
numbers in Venetian society would imply. The rape of a it set up a special magistracy, the Office of the Night, 44
young girl of marriageable age or a child under twelve to “root out . . . the abominable vice of sodomy.” This 45
was considered a graver crime than the rape of a married board of professional men at least forty-five years of 46
woman. Nevertheless, the punishment for rape of a noble age and married was elected annually and charged with 47
marriageable girl was only a fine or about six months’ im- pursuing and punishing sodomitical activity between 48
prisonment. In an age when theft and robbery could be males.12 The name of the magistracy derived from the 49
punished by mutilation and forgery and sodomy by nocturnal activities of most male encounters, especially in 50S
burning, this penalty was mild indeed. When an upper- the spring and summer months and on feast days and 51R
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1 Sundays. Between 1432 and the abolition of the magis-

2 tracy in 1502, about seventeen thousand men came to its
3 attention, which, even over a seventy-year period, repre-
4 sents a great number in a population of about forty thou-
5 sand. Moreover, careful statistical analysis of judicial
6 records shows that all classes of society engaged in it—
7 men in the textile trade, in commerce, in education, and
8 in the food industry, especially butchers, as well as con-
9 struction workers, tavern keepers, artists, and innkeepers.
10 Sodomy was not a marginal practice, which may account
11 for the fact that, despite harsh laws and special courts, ac-
12 tual executions for sodomy were rare in Italy. They were
13 also uncommon in England, where despite harsh laws
14 there were only six trials for sodomy during the entire
15 long reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1564–1603). Trials
16 were more common in the Iberian Peninsula, where
17 those charged with sodomy were sometimes tortured to
18 reveal other names, so that sodomy accusations often oc-
19 curred in waves.
20 Almost all cases heard by the Florentine court and
21 courts in other cities involved an adult man and an ado-
22 lescent boy and ranged from sex exchanged for money or Same-Sex Relations This illustration, from a thirteenth-
23 gifts to long-term affectionate relationships. Florentines century French book of morals, interprets female and male
same-sex relations as the work of devils, who hover over the
24 believed in a generational model in which different roles couples. This illustration was painted at the time that religious
25 were appropriate to different stages in life. In a socially
Apago PDF Enhancer and political authorities were increasingly criminalizing same-
26 and sexually hierarchical world, the boy in the passive sex relations. (Austrian National Library, Vienna, Cod. 2554, fol. 2r)
27 role was identified as subordinate, dependent, and mer-
28 cenary, words usually applied to women. Florentines,
29 however, never described the dominant partner in femi-
30 nine terms, for he had not compromised his masculine
31 identity or violated a gender ideal; in fact, the adult part-
32 ner might be married or have female sexual partners as
Fur-Collar Crime
33 well as male. Only if an adult male assumed the passive The Hundred Years’ War had provided employment and
34 role was his masculinity jeopardized. Such cases were ex- opportunity for thousands of idle and fortune-seeking
35 tremely rare. Same-sex relations often developed within knights. But during periods of truce and after the war fi-
36 the context of all-male environments, such as the army, nally ended, many nobles once again had little to do. In-
37 the craft shop, and the artistic workshop, and were part flation hurt them. Although many were living on fixed
38 of the collective male experience. Homoerotic relation- incomes, their chivalric code demanded lavish generosity
39 ships played important roles in defining stages of life, ex- and an aristocratic lifestyle. Many nobles turned to crime
40 pressing distinctions of status, and shaping masculine as a way of raising money. The fourteenth and fifteenth
41 gender identity. centuries witnessed a great deal of “fur-collar crime,” so
42 Same-sex relations involving women almost never called for the miniver fur nobles alone were allowed to
43 came to the attention of legal authorities, so it is difficult wear on their collars.
44 to find out much about them. Most commentators about Fur-collar crime rarely involved such felonies as homi-
45 sexual relations were male clergy who viewed sex be- cide, robbery, rape, and arson. Instead, nobles used their
46 tween women as categorically different than sex between superior social status to rob and extort from the weak
47 men, if they regarded it as sex at all. Female-female desire and then to corrupt the judicial process. Groups of noble
48 is expressed in songs, plays, and stories, as is male-male brigands roamed the English countryside stealing from
49 desire. Such literary sources can be used as evidence of both rich and poor. Sir John de Colseby and Sir William
50S the way people understood same-sex relations, though Bussy led a gang of thirty-eight knights who stole goods
51R not how common such relations were. worth £3,000 in various robberies. Operating like mod-
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ern urban racketeers, knightly gangs demanded that towns; in Irish towns, French, the tongue of Norman or 1
peasants pay “protection money” or else have their hov- English settlers, predominated. 2
els burned and their fields destroyed. In the early periods of conquest and colonization, and 3
Attacks on the rich often took the form of kidnap- in all regions with extensive migrations, a legal dualism 4
ping and extortion. Wealthy travelers were seized on the existed: native peoples remained subject to their tradi- 5
highways and held for ransom. In northern England a tional laws; newcomers brought and were subject to the 6
gang of gentry led by Sir Gilbert de Middleton abduc- laws of the countries from which they came. On the 7
ted Sir Henry Beaumont; his brother, the bishop-elect of Prussian and Polish frontier, for example, the law was that 8
Durham; and two Roman cardinals in England on a peace- “men who come there . . . should be judged on account 9
making visit. Only after ransom was paid were the victims of any crime or contract engaged in there according to 10
released. Polish custom if they are Poles and according to German 11
Fur-collar criminals were terrorists, but like some custom if they are Germans.”14 Likewise, in Spain Mudé- 12
modern-day white-collar criminals who commit nonvio- jars, Muslim subjects of Christian kings, received guaran- 13
lent crimes, medieval aristocratic criminals got away with tees of separate but equal judicial rights. King Alfonso I of 14
their outrages. When accused of wrongdoing, fur-collar Aragon’s charter to the Muslims of Toledo states, “They 15
criminals intimidated witnesses. They threatened jurors. shall be in lawsuits and pleas under their (Muslim) qadi 16
They used “pull” or cash to bribe judges. As a fourteenth- (judges) . . . as it was in the times of the Moors.”15 Thus 17
century English judge wrote to a young nobleman, “For conquered peoples, whether Muslims in Spain or minor- 18
the love of your father I have hindered charges being ity immigrant groups such as Germans in eastern Europe, 19
brought against you and have prevented execution of had legal protection and lived in their own juridical en- 20
indictment actually made.”13 Criminal activity by nobles claves. Subject peoples experienced some disabilities, but 21
continued decade after decade because governments were the broad trend was toward legal pluralism. 22
too weak to stop it. The great exception to this broad pattern was Ireland. 23
The ballads of Robin Hood, a collection of folk leg- From the start, the English practiced an extreme form of 24
ends from late medieval England, describe the adven-
Apago PDF Enhancer discrimination toward the native Irish. The English dis- 25
tures of the outlaw hero and his band of followers tinguished between the free and the unfree, and the en- 26
who lived in Sherwood Forest and attacked and punished tire Irish population, simply by the fact of Irish birth, was 27
those who violated the social system and the law. unfree. In 1210 King John declared that “English law 28
Most of the villains in these simple tales are fur-collar and custom be established there (in Ireland).” Accord- 29
criminals—grasping landlords, wicked sheriffs such as the ingly, a legal structure modeled on that of England, with 30
famous sheriff of Nottingham, and mercenary church- county courts, itinerant justices, and the common law 31
men. Robin and his merry men performed a sort of ret- (see pages 271–274), was set up. But the Irish had no ac- 32
ributive justice. Robin Hood was a popular figure cess to the common-law courts. In civil (property) dis- 33
because he symbolized the deep resentment of aristo- putes, an English defendant need not respond to his Irish 34
cratic corruption and abuse; he represented the struggle plaintiff; no Irish person could make a will. In criminal 35
against tyranny and oppression. procedures, the murder of an Irishman was not consid- 36
ered a felony. In 1317–1318 Irish princes sent a Remon- 37
strance to the pope complaining that “any non-Irishman 38
Ethnic Tensions and Restrictions is allowed to bring legal action against an Irishman, but 39
Large numbers of people in the twelfth and thirteenth an Irishman . . . except any prelate (bishop or abbot) is 40
centuries migrated from one part of Europe to another: barred from every action by that fact alone.” An English 41
the English into Scotland and Ireland; Germans, French, defendant in the criminal matter would claim “that he is 42
and Flemings into Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary; the not held to answer . . . since he [the plaintiff] is Irish and 43
French into Spain. The colonization of frontier regions not of free blood.”16 Naturally, this emphasis on blood 44
meant that peoples of different ethnic backgrounds lived descent provoked bitterness. 45
side by side. Everywhere in Europe, towns recruited Other than in Ireland, although native peoples com- 46
people from the countryside (see pages 333). In frontier monly held humbler positions, both immigrant and 47
regions, townspeople were usually long-distance immi- native townspeople prospered during the expanding 48
grants and, in eastern Europe, Ireland, and Scotland, economy of the thirteenth century. When economic re- 49
ethnically different from the surrounding rural popula- cession hit during the fourteenth century, ethnic tensions 50S
tion. In eastern Europe, German was the language of the multiplied. 51R
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1 The later Middle Ages witnessed a movement away survey of Bohemian history written in Czech and per-
2 from legal pluralism or dualism and toward legal homo- vaded with Czech hostility toward Germans, one anti-
3 geneity and an emphasis on blood descent. Competition German prince offered 100 marks of silver “to anyone
4 for ecclesiastical offices and the cultural divisions be- who brought him one hundred noses cut off from the
5 tween town and country people became arenas for ethnic Germans.”19 Urban residents, who were German, coun-
6 tension. Since bishoprics and abbacies carried religious tered with their own restrictions. Cobblers in fourteenth-
7 authority, spiritual charisma, and often rights of appoint- century Beeskow, a town close to the large Slavic
8 ment to subordinate positions, they were natural objects population of Lausitz in Silesia, required that “an ap-
9 of ambition. When prelates of a language or “national- prentice who comes to learn his craft should be brought
10 ity” different from those of the local people gained before the master and guild members. . . . We forbid the
11 church positions, the latter felt a loss of influence. Bish- sons of barbers, linen workers, shepherds, Slavs.” The
12 ops were supposed to be pastors. Their pastoral work in- bakers of the same town decreed: “Whoever wishes to be
13 volved preaching, teaching, and comforting, duties that a member must bring proof to the councillors and
14 could be performed effectively only when the bishop (or guildsmen that he is born of legitimate, upright, German
15 priest) could communicate with the people. Ideally, in a folk. . . . No one of Wendish (Slavic) race may be in the
16 pluralistic society, he should be bilingual; often he was guild.”20
17 not. Ethnic purity can be maintained across generations
18 In the late thirteenth century, as waves of Germans only by prohibiting marriage among groups, and laws
19 migrated into Danzig on the Baltic, into Silesia, and did just this. Intermarriage was forbidden in many places,
20 into the Polish countryside and towns, they encountered such as Riga on the Baltic (now the capital of Latvia),
21 Jakub Swinka, archbishop of Gniezno (1283–1314), where legislation for the bakers guild stipulated that
22 whose jurisdiction included these areas of settlement. “whoever wishes to have the privilege of membership in
23 The bishop hated Germans and referred to them as our company shall not take as a wife any woman who is
24 “dog heads.” His German contemporary, Bishop John of ill-famed . . . or non-German; if he does marry such a
25 Cracow, detested the Poles, wanted to expel all Polish
Apago PDF Enhancer woman, he must leave the company and office.” Not
26 people, and refused to appoint Poles to any church of- only the guilds but also eligibility for public office de-
27 fice. In Ireland, English colonists and the native Irish pended on ethnic purity, as at the German burgher set-
28 competed for ecclesiastical offices until 1217, when the tlement of Pest in Hungary, where a town judge had to
29 English government in London decreed: have four German grandparents.
30 The most extensive attempt to prevent intermarriage
Since the election of Irishmen in our land of Ireland has of-
31 and protect ethnic purity is embodied in Ireland’s
ten disturbed the peace of that land, we command you . . .
32 Statute of Kilkenny (1366), which states that “there
that henceforth you allow no Irishman to be elected . . . or
33 were to be no marriages between those of immigrant and
preferred in any cathedral . . . (and) you should seek by all
34 native stock; that the English inhabitants of Ireland must
means to procure election and promotion to vacant bish-
35 employ the English language and bear English names;
oprics of . . . honest Englishmen.17
36 that they must ride in the English way (that is, with sad-
37 Although criticized by the pope and not totally enforce- dles) and have English apparel; that no Irishmen were to
38 able, this law remained in effect in many dioceses for cen- be granted ecclesiastical benefices or admitted to monas-
39 turies. teries in the English parts of Ireland.”21 Rulers of the
40 Likewise, the arrival of Cistercians and mendicants Christian kingdoms of Spain drew up comparable legisla-
41 (Franciscans and Dominicans) from France and Germany tion discriminating against the Mudéjars.
42 in Baltic and Slavic lands provoked ethnic hostilities. Late medieval chroniclers used words such as gens
43 Slavic prelates and princes saw the German mendicants as (race or clan) and natio (species, stock, or kind) to refer
44 “instruments of cultural colonization,” and Slavs were to different groups. They held that peoples differed ac-
45 strongly discouraged from becoming friars. In 1333, cording to language, traditions, customs, and laws. None
46 when John of Drazic, bishop of Prague, founded a friary of these were unchangeable, however, and commentators
47 at Roudnice (Raudnitz), he specified that “we shall admit increasingly also described ethnic differences in terms of
48 no one to this convent or monastery of any nation except “blood”—“German blood,” “English blood,” and so
49 a Bohemian [Czech], born of two Czech-speaking par- on—which made ethnicity heritable. Religious beliefs
50S ents.”18 In the fourteenth-century Dalimil Chronicle, a also came to be conceptualized as blood, with people re-
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garded as having Jewish blood, Muslim 1

blood, or Christian blood. The most dramatic 2
expression of this was in Spain, where “purity 3
of the blood”—having no Muslim or Jewish 4
ancestors—became an obsession. Blood was 5
also used as a way to talk about social differ- 6
ences, especially for nobles. Just as Irish and 7
English were prohibited from marrying each 8
other, those of “noble blood” were prohib- 9
ited from marrying commoners in many parts 10
of Europe. As Europeans increasingly came 11
into contact with people from Africa and Asia, 12
and particularly as they developed colonial 13
empires, these notions of blood also became a 14
way of conceptualizing racial categories (see 15
page 429). 16
17
Literacy and Vernacular 18
19
Literature 20
The development of ethnic identities had 21
many negative consequences, but a more pos- 22
itive effect was the increasing use of national 23
languages. In the High Middle Ages most of- 24
Apago PDF Enhancer ficial documents and works of literature were 25
written in Latin. Beginning in the fourteenth 26
century, however, national languages—the 27
vernacular—came into widespread use not 28
only in verbal communication but in literature 29
as well. Two masterpieces of European cul- 30
ture, Dante’s Divine Comedy (1310–1320) 31
and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1387–1400), 32
brilliantly manifest this new national pride. 33
Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) descended 34
from a landowning family in Florence, where 35
he held several positions in the city govern- 36
ment. Dante called his work a “comedy” be- 37
Opening Page from the Dalimil Chronicle This history of cause he wrote it in Italian and in a different style from 38
Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic) was the first book the “tragic” Latin; a later generation added the adjective 39
to be written in the Czech language, and was an important
tool in the creation of a Czech national identity. The section divine, referring both to its sacred subject and to Dante’s 40
reproduced here includes references to “our people” and “our artistry. The Divine Comedy is an allegorical trilogy of one 41
land.” The book remains an important part of Czech identity; hundred cantos (verses), each of whose three equal parts 42
in 2005 the National Library of the Czech Republic (1 + 33 + 33 + 33) describes one of the realms of the next 43
purchased a fragment of an illustrated fourteenth-century world: Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The Roman poet 44
Latin translation for nearly half a million dollars. Similar his-
torical chronicles were written in the vernacular languages of Virgil, representing reason, leads Dante through Hell, 45
many parts of Europe in the fifteenth century and contributed where he observes the torments of the damned and de- 46
to a growing sense of ethnic and national distinctions. (Aus- nounces the disorders of his own time, especially ecclesi- 47
trian National Library, Vienna) astical ambition and corruption. Passing up into Purgatory, 48
Virgil shows the poet how souls are purified of their dis- 49
ordered inclinations. From Purgatory, Beatrice, a woman 50S
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Schoolmaster and Schoolmistress Teaching Ambrosius Holbein, elder brother of the more famous
Hans Holbein, produced this signboard for the Swiss educator Myconius; it is an excellent example of what
we would call commercial art—art used to advertise, in this case Myconius’s profession. The German script
above promised that all who enrolled, girls and boys, would learn to read and write. Most schools were for
boys only, but a few offered instruction for girls as well. By modern standards the classroom seems bleak: the
windows have glass panes but they don’t admit much light, and the schoolmaster is prepared to use the sticks
if the boy makes a mistake. (Kunstmuseum Basel/Martin Buhler, photographer)
Dante once loved and the symbol of divine revelation vealed in the story each one tells. For example, the gross
Apago PDF Enhancer
in the poem, leads him to Paradise. In Paradise, home
of the angels and saints, Saint Bernard—representing
Miller tells a vulgar story about a deceived husband; the
earthy Wife of Bath, who has buried five husbands,
mystic contemplation—leads Dante to the Virgin Mary. sketches a fable about the selection of a spouse; and the
Through her intercession, he at last attains a vision elegant Prioress, who violates her vows by wearing jew-
of God. elry, delivers a homily on the Virgin. In depicting the in-
The Divine Comedy portrays contemporary and histor- terests and behavior of all types of people, Chaucer
ical figures, comments on secular and ecclesiastical af- presents a rich panorama of English social life in the four-
fairs, and draws on Scholastic philosophy. Within the teenth century. Like the Divine Comedy, Canterbury Tales
framework of a symbolic pilgrimage to the City of God, reflects the cultural tensions of the times. Ostensibly
the Divine Comedy embodies the psychological tensions Christian, many of the pilgrims are also materialistic, sen-
of the age. A profoundly Christian poem, it also contains sual, and worldly, suggesting the ambivalence of the
bitter criticism of some church authorities. In its sym- broader society’s concern for the next world and frank
metrical structure and use of figures from the ancient enjoyment of this one.
world, such as Virgil, the poem perpetuates the classical Beginning in the fourteenth century, a variety of evi-
tradition, but as the first major work of literature in the dence attests to the increasing literacy of laypeople. Wills
Italian vernacular, it is distinctly modern. and inventories reveal that many people, not just nobles,
Geoffrey Chaucer (1342–1400), the son of a London possessed books—mainly devotional, but also romances,
wine merchant, was an official in the administrations of manuals on manners and etiquette, histories, and some-
the English kings Edward III and Richard II and wrote times legal and philosophical texts. In England the num-
poetry as an avocation. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is a ber of schools in the diocese of York quadrupled between
collection of stories in lengthy rhymed narrative. On a 1350 and 1500. Information from Flemish and Ger-
pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Can- man towns is similar: children were sent to schools and
terbury (see page 271), thirty people of various social were taught the fundamentals of reading, writing, and
backgrounds tell tales. The Prologue sets the scene and arithmetic. Laymen increasingly served as managers or
describes the pilgrims, whose characters are further re- stewards of estates and as clerks to guilds and town gov-
400
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Chapter Summary • 401
ernments; such positions obviously required that they be separately, and many young people, especially girls, were 1
able to keep administrative and financial records. taught to read but not to write. 2
The penetration of laymen into the higher positions of The spread of literacy represents a response to the 3
governmental administration, long the preserve of cler- needs of an increasingly complex society. Trade, commerce, 4
ics, also illustrates rising lay literacy. For example, in 1400 and expanding government bureaucracies required more 5
beneficed clerics held most of the posts in the English and more literate people. Late medieval culture remained 6
Exchequer; by 1430 clerics were the exception. With an oral culture in which most people received informa- 7
growing frequency, the upper classes sent their daughters tion by word of mouth. But by the mid-fifteenth century, 8
to convent schools, where, in addition to instruction in even before the printing press was turning out large 9
singing, religion, needlework, deportment, and house- quantities of reading materials, the evolution toward a 10
hold management, girls gained the rudiments of reading literary culture was already perceptible. 11
and sometimes writing. Reading and writing were taught 12
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Chapter Summary ACE the Test 22
23
24
• What were the demographic and economic pean population. Contemporary medical explanations
consequences of climate change? for the plague linked it to poisoned air or water, and 26
• How did the spread of the plague shape European treatments were ineffective. Many people regarded the 27
society? plague as a divine punishment and sought remedies in re- 28
• What were the causes of the Hundred Years’ War, and ligious practices such as prayer, pilgrimages, or donations 29
how did the war affect European politics, economics, to churches. Population losses caused by the Black Death 30
and cultural life? led to inflation but in the long run may have contributed 31
to more opportunities for the peasants and urban work- 32
• What challenges faced the Christian church in the ers who survived the disease. 33
fourteenth century, and how did church leaders,
The miseries of the plague were enhanced in England 34
intellectuals, and ordinary people respond?
and France by the Hundred Years’ War, which was fought 35
• How did economic and social tensions contribute intermittently in France from 1337 to 1453. The war be- 36
to revolts, crime, violence, and a growing sense of gan as a dispute over the succession to the French crown, 37
ethnic and national distinctions? and royal propaganda on both sides fostered a kind of 38
early nationalism. The English won most of the battles 39
and in 1419 advanced to the walls of Paris. The appear- 40
The crises of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were ance of Joan of Arc rallied the French cause, and French 41
acids that burned deeply into the fabric of traditional me- troops eventually pushed English forces out of all of 42
dieval society. Bad weather brought poor harvests, which France except the port of Calais. The war served as a cat- 43
contributed to widespread famine and disease and an in- alyst for the development of representative government 44
ternational economic depression. Political leaders attemp- in England. In France, on the other hand, the war stiff- 45
ted to find solutions, but were unable to deal with the ened opposition to national assemblies. 46
economic and social problems that resulted. Religious beliefs offered people solace through these 47
In 1348 a new disease, most likely the bubonic plague, difficult times, but the Western Christian church was go- 48
came to mainland Europe, carried from the Black Sea by ing through a particularly difficult period in the four- 49
ships. It spread quickly by land and sea and within two teenth and early fifteenth centuries. The Avignon papacy 50S
years may have killed as much as one-third of the Euro- and the Great Schism weakened the prestige of the church 51R
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1 and people’s faith in papal authority. The conciliar move- Suggested Reading
2 ment, by denying the church’s universal sovereignty,
3 strengthened the claims of secular governments to juris- Allmand, Christopher. The Hundred Years War: England
4 diction over all their peoples. As members of the clergy and France at War, ca 1300–1450, rev. ed. 2005. De-
5 challenged the power of the pope, laypeople challenged signed for students; examines the war from political,
6 the authority of the church itself. Women and men in- military, social, and economic perspectives and compares
7 creasingly relied on direct approaches to God, often the way England and France reacted to the conflict.
8 through mystical encounters, rather than on the institu- Boswell, John. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homo-
9 tional church. Some, including John Wyclif and Jan Hus, sexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Begin-
10 questioned basic church doctrines. ning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century. 1981.
11 The plague and the war both led to higher taxes and Remains an important broad analysis of attitudes toward
12 economic dislocations, which sparked peasant revolts in same-sex relations throughout the Middle Ages.
13 Flanders, France, and England. Peasant revolts often Dunn, Alastair. The Peasants’ Revolt: England’s Failed
14 blended with conflicts involving workers in cities, where Revolution of 1381. 2004. Offers new interpretations
15 working conditions were changing to create a greater gap of the causes and consequence of the English Peasants’
16 between wealthy merchant-producers and poor prop- Revolt.
17 ertyless workers. Unrest in the countryside and cities may
18 have been further exacerbated by marriage patterns that Dyer, Christopher. Standards of Living in the Later Middle
19 left large numbers of young men unmarried and rootless. Ages. 1989. Examines economic realities and social
20 The pattern of late marriage for men contributed to a conditions more generally.
21 growth in prostitution, which was an accepted feature of Herlihy, David. The Black Death and the Transformation of
22 medieval urban society. Along with peasant revolts and the West, 2d ed. 1997. A fine treatment of the causes
23 urban crime and unrest, violence perpetrated by nobles and cultural consequences of the disease that remains
24 was a common part of late medieval life. The economic the best starting point for study of the great epidemic.
25 and demographic crises of the fourteenth century also
Apago PDFHolt,Enhancer
James Clarke. Robin Hood. 1982. A soundly re-
26 contributed to increasing ethnic tensions in the many searched and highly readable study of the famous out-
27 parts of Europe where migration had brought different law.
28 population groups together. A growing sense of ethnic
29 and national identity led to restrictions and occasionally Jordan, William Chester. The Great Famine: Northern Eu-
30 to violence, but also to the increasing use of national lan- rope in the Early Fourteenth Century. 1996. Discusses
31 guages for works of literature. The increasing number of catastrophic weather, soil exhaustion, and other factors
32 schools that led to the growth of lay literacy represents that led to the Great Famine and the impact of the
33 another positive achievement of the later Middle Ages. famine on community life.
34 Karras, Ruth M. Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing onto
35 Others. 2005. A brief overview designed for undergrad-
36 uates that incorporates the newest scholarship.
37
Key Terms
Kieckhefer, Richard. Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-Century
38 Great Famine Great Schism Saints and Their Religious Milieu. 1984. Sets the ideas of
39 Black Death conciliarists the mystics in their social and intellectual contexts.
40 bubo confraternities
41 flagellants The Imitation of Koch, H. W. Medieval Warfare. 1978. A beautifully illus-
42 Agincourt Christ trated book covering strategy, tactics, armaments, and
43 Joan of Arc peasant revolts costumes of war.
44 representative Jacquerie Lehfeldt, Elizabeth, ed. The Black Death. 2005. Includes
45 assemblies Statute of Kilkenny excerpts from debates about many aspects of the Black
46 nationalism vernacular Death.
47 Babylonian Captivity Oakley, Frances. The Western Church in the Later Middle
48 Ages. 1979. An excellent broad survey.
49
Improve Your Grade Flashcards Robertson, D. W., Jr. Chaucer’s London. 1968. Evokes
50S
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Swanson, R. N. Religion and Devotion in Europe, c. 1215– 8. Quoted in J. H. Smith, The Great Schism, 1378: The Disintegration 1
c. 1515. 2004. Explores many aspects of spirituality. of the Medieval Papacy (New York: Weybright & Talley, 1970), 2
p. 15.
Tuchman, Barbara. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 9. Quoted in Katharina M. Wilson, ed., Medieval Women Writers
3
Fourteenth Century. 1978. Written for a general audi- (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984), p. 245. 4
ence, this remains a vivid description of this tumultuous 10. Quoted in M. Bloch, French Rural History, trans. J. Sondeimer 5
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), p. 169. 6
time. 11. C. Stephenson and G. Marcham, eds., Sources of English Constitu- 7
tional History, rev. ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 225.
12. M. Rocke, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture
8
in Renaissance Florence (New York: Oxford University Press, 9
Notes 1996), p. 45. 10
13. Quoted in B. A. Hanawalt, “Fur Collar Crime: The Pattern of 11
1. J. M. Rigg, trans., The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio (London: Crime Among the Fourteenth-Century English Nobility,” Journal
J. M. Dent & Sons, 1903), p. 6. 12
of Social History 8 (Spring 1975): 7.
2. Quoted in D. Herlihy, The Black Death and the Transformation of 14. Quoted in R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Coloniza-
13
the West (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 42. tion and Cultural Change, 950–1350 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton 14
3. Quoted in J. Barnie, War in Medieval English Society: Social Values University Press, 1993), p. 205. 15
and the Hundred Years’ War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 15. Quoted ibid., p. 208. 16
1974), p. 34. 16. Quoted ibid., p. 215.
4. W. P. Barrett, trans., The Trial of Jeanne d’Arc (London: George 17
17. Quoted ibid., p. 224.
Routledge, 1931), pp. 165–166. 18. Quoted ibid., p. 228.
18
5. Quoted in Barnie, War in Medieval English Society, pp. 36–37. 19. Quoted ibid., p. 236. 19
6. See G. O. Sayles, The King’s Parliament of England (New York: 20. Quoted ibid., p. 238. 20
W. W. Norton, 1974), app., pp. 137–141. 21. Quoted ibid., p. 239. 21
7. Quoted in P. S. Lewis, “The Failure of the Medieval French Es-
tates,” Past and Present 23 (November 1962): 6. 22
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Christine de Pizan
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C hristine de Pizan (1364?–1430; earlier
spelled “Pisan”) was the daughter and wife of highly
All wives of artisans should be very painstaking
and diligent if they wish to have the necessities
17 educated men who held positions at the court of the of life. They should encourage their husbands
18 king of France. She was widowed at twenty-five with or their workmen to get to work early in the
young children and an elderly mother to support. morning and work until late, for mark our words,
19
Christine, who herself had received an excellent there is no trade so good that if you neglect your
20 education, decided to support her family through work you will not have difficulty putting bread on
21 writing, an unusual choice for anyone in this era the table. And besides encouraging the others,
22 before the printing press and unheard of for a the wife herself should be involved in the work
23 woman. She began to write prose works and poetry, to the extent that she knows all about it, so that
24 sending them to wealthy individuals in the hope she may know how to oversee his workers if her
25 of receiving their support. Her works were well
Apago PDF Enhancer husband is absent, and to reprove them if they do
26 received, and Christine gained commissions to write not do well. She ought to oversee them to keep
27 specific works, including a biography of the French them from idleness, for through careless workers
28 king Charles V, several histories, a long poem the master is sometimes ruined. And when
29 celebrating Joan of Arc’s victory, and a book of customers come to her husband and try to drive
military tactics. She became the first woman in a hard bargain, she ought to warn him solicitously
30
Europe to make her living as a writer. to take care that he does not make a bad deal.
31 Among Christine’s many works were several in She should advise him to be chary of giving too
32 which she considered women’s nature and proper much credit if he does not know precisely where
33 role in society, which had been a topic of debate and to whom it is going, for in this way many
34 since ancient times. The best known of these was come to poverty, although sometimes the greed
35 The City of Ladies (1404), in which she ponders why to earn more or to accept a tempting proposition
36 so many men have a negative view of women and makes them do it.
37 provides examples of virtuous women to counter this In addition, she ought to keep her husband’s
38 view. Immediately afterward she wrote The Treasure love as much as she can, to this end: that he will
39 of the City of Ladies (1405, also called The Book of stay at home more willingly and that he may
40 Three Virtues), which provides moral suggestions not have any reason to join the foolish crowds
and practical advice on behavior and household of other young men in taverns and indulge in
41
management for women of all social classes. Most unnecessary and extravagant expense, as many
42 of the book is directed toward princesses and court tradesmen do, especially in Paris. By treating him
43 ladies (who would have been able to read it), but kindly she should protect him as well as she can
44 she also includes shorter sections for the wives of from this. It is said that three things drive a man
45 merchants and artisans, serving-women, female from his home: a quarrelsome wife, a smoking
46 peasants, and even prostitutes. This is her advice to fireplace and a leaking roof. She too ought to stay
47 the wives of artisans, whose husbands were generally at home gladly and not go every day traipsing
48 members of urban craft guilds, such as blacksmiths, hither and yon gossiping with the neighbours
49 bakers, or shoemakers. and visiting her chums to find out what everyone
50S is doing. That is done by slovenly housewives
51R roaming about the town in groups. Nor should
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Several manuscripts of Christine’s

works included illustrations showing
her writing, which would have
increased their appeal to the wealthy
individuals who purchased them.
(British Library)
Apago PDF Enhancer
she go off on these pilgrimages got up for no

good reason and involving a lot of needless
Questions for Analysis
expense. Furthermore, she ought to remind her
1. How would you describe Christine’s view of
husband that they should live so frugally that their
the ideal artisan’s wife?
expenditure does not exceed their income, so that
at the end of the year they do not find themselves 2. The regulations of craft guilds often required
in debt. that masters who ran workshops be married.
If she has children, she should have them What evidence does Christine’s advice provide
instructed and taught first at school by educated for why guilds would have stipulated this?
people so that they may know how better to serve 3. How are economic and moral virtues linked
God. Afterwards they may be put to some trade for Christine?
by which they may earn a living, for whoever
gives a trade or business training to her child gives Source: Christine de Pisan, The Treasure of the City of
a great possession. The children should be kept Ladies, translated with an introduction by Sarah Lawson
from wantonness and from voluptuousness above (Peguin Classics, 1985). This translation copyright © 1985
all else, for truly it is something that most shames by Sarah Lawson. Reprinted by permission of Penguin
the children of good towns and is a great sin of Books Ltd. For more on Christine, see C. C. Willard,
Christine de Pisan: Her Life and Works (1984), and S. Bell,
mothers and fathers, who ought to be the cause
The Lost Tapestries of the City of Ladies: Christine de Pizan’s
of the virtue and good behavior of their children, Renaissance Legacy (2004).
but they are sometimes the reason (because of
bringing them up to be finicky and indulging
them too much) for their wickedness and ruin.
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Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, commissioned by the pope. The huge ceiling
includes biblical scenes, and the far wall, painted much later, shows a dramatic and violent Last
Judgment. (Vatican Museum)
1019763_ch_13.qxp 9/17/07 2:54 PM Page 407
c h a p t e r 1
2
13
European Society 3
4
in the Age of the 5
6
7
Renaissance, 8
9
1350–1550 10
11
chapter preview 12
13
Economic and Political
Developments
• What economic and political
W hile the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse seemed to be carry-
ing war, plague, famine, and death across northern Europe, a
new culture was emerging in southern Europe. The fourteenth century
14
15
16
17
developments in Italy provided the witnessed the beginnings of remarkable changes in many aspects of Ital-
18
setting for the Renaissance? ian intellectual, artistic, and cultural life. Artists and writers thought that
19
Intellectual Change they were living in a new golden age, but not until the sixteenth century
20
was this change given the label we use today—the Renaissance, from the
• What were the key ideas of the French version of a word meaning “rebirth.” That word was first used by
21
Renaissance, and how were they 22
the artist and art historian Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) to describe the
different for men and women and for 23
art of “rare men of genius” such as his contemporary Michelangelo.
southern and northern Europeans? 24
Through their works, Vasari judged, the glory of the classical past had
Art and the Artist been reborn—or perhaps even surpassed—after centuries of darkness.
26
• How did changes in art both reflect Vasari used Renaissance to describe painting, sculpture, and architecture,
27
and shape new ideas? what he termed the “Major Arts.” Gradually, however, the word was
28
used to refer to many aspects of life at this time, first in Italy and then in
Social Hierarchies 29
the rest of Europe. This new attitude had a slow diffusion out of Italy,
• What were the key social hierarchies 30
with the result that the Renaissance “happened” at different times in dif-
31
in Renaissance Europe, and how did ferent parts of Europe: Italian art of the fourteenth through the early six-
32
ideas about hierarchy shape people’s teenth century is described as “Renaissance,” and so is English literature
33
lives? of the late sixteenth century, including Shakespeare’s plays and poetry.
34
About a century after Vasari coined the word Renaissance, scholars be-
Politics and the State in the 35
gan to use the words Middle Ages to refer to the millennium between
Renaissance (ca 1450–1521) 36
the ancient world and the Renaissance. They increasingly saw the cul-
• How did the nation-states of 37
tural and political changes of the Renaissance, along with the religious
western Europe evolve in this period? 38
changes of the Reformation (see Chapter 14) and the European voyages
39
of exploration (see Chapter 15), as ushering in the “modern” world.
40
Since then, some historians have chosen to view the Renaissance as a
41
bridge between the medieval and modern eras because it corresponded
42
chronologically with the late medieval period and because there were
43
many continuities along with the changes. Others have questioned
44
whether the word Renaissance should be used at all to describe an era in
45
which many social groups saw decline rather than advance. These de-
46
bates remind us that these labels—medieval, Renaissance, modern—are
47
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408 CHAPTER 13 • EUROPEAN SOCIETY IN THE AGE OF THE RENAISSANCE, 1350–1550
1 intellectual constructs, devised after the fact. They all North African ports, and, of course, Naples and Rome.
2 contain value judgments, just as do other chronological The profits from loans, investments, and money ex-
3 designations, such as the “golden age” of Athens and the changes that poured back to Florence were pumped into
4 “Roaring Twenties.” urban industries. Such profits contributed to the city’s
5 economic vitality. Banking families, such as the Medici
6 in Florence, controlled the politics and culture of their
7 Economic and Political cities.
8 Developments By the first quarter of the fourteenth century, the eco-
9 nomic foundations of Florence were so strong that even
10 The cultural achievements of the Renaissance rest on the severe crises could not destroy the city. In 1344 King
11 economic and political developments of earlier centuries. Edward III of England repudiated his huge debts to
12 Economic growth laid the material basis for the Italian Florentine bankers and forced some of them into bank-
13 Renaissance, and ambitious merchants gained political ruptcy. Florence suffered frightfully from the Black
14 power to match their economic power. They then used Death, losing at least half its population. Serious labor
15 their money and power to buy luxuries and hire talent. unrest, such as the ciompi revolts of 1378 (see page 392),
16 • What economic and political developments in Italy shook the political establishment. Nevertheless, the basic
17 provided the setting for the Renaissance? Florentine economic structure remained stable. Driving
18 enterprise, technical know-how, and competitive spirit
19 saw Florence through the difficult economic period of
20 the late fourteenth century.
21
Commercial Developments
22 In the great commercial revival of the eleventh
23 century, northern Italian cities led the way. By
24 the middle of the twelfth century Venice, sup-
25 ported by a huge merchant marine, had grown Apago PDF Enhancer
26 enormously rich through overseas trade. Genoa
27 and Milan also enjoyed the benefits of a large
28 volume of trade with the Middle East and north-
29 ern Europe. These cities fully exploited their ge-
30 ographical positions as natural crossroads for
31 mercantile exchange between the East and the
32 West. Furthermore, in the early fourteenth cen-
33 tury Genoa and Venice made important strides
34 in shipbuilding that for the first time allowed
35 their ships to sail all year long. Advances in ship
36 construction greatly increased the volume of
37 goods that could be transported; improvements
38 in the mechanics of sailing accelerated speed.
39 Scholars tend to agree that the first artistic
40 and literary manifestations of the Italian Renais-
41 sance appeared in Florence, which possessed enor-
42 mous wealth despite geographical constraints: it
43 was an inland city without easy access to sea trans-
44 portation. But toward the end of the thirteenth
45 century, Florentine merchants and bankers ac-
46 quired control of papal banking. From their A Bank Scene, Florence Originally a “bank” was just a counter; mon-
47 position as tax collectors for the papacy, Flor- eychangers who sat behind the counter became “bankers,” exchanging
48 entine mercantile families began to dominate different currencies and holding deposits for merchants and business
people. In this scene from fifteenth-century Florence, the bank is covered
49 European banking on both sides of the Alps. with an imported Ottoman geometric rug, one of many imported luxury
50S These families had offices in Paris, London, items handled by Florentine merchants. (Prato, San Francesco/Scala/Art
51R Bruges, Barcelona, Marseilles, Tunis and other Resource, NY)
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Economic and Political Developments • 409
Chronology 1
Communes and Republics 2
The northern Italian cities were communes, sworn asso- 1350–1353 Boccaccio, The Decameron 3
ciations of free men seeking complete political and eco- 4
nomic independence from local nobles. The merchant 1434–1494 Medici family in power in Florence 5
guilds that formed the communes built and maintained 1440s Invention of movable metal type 6
the city walls, regulated trade, raised taxes, and kept civil 7
order. In the course of the twelfth century, communes at 1469 Marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand 8
Milan, Florence, Genoa, Siena, and Pisa fought for and of Aragon 9
won their independence from surrounding feudal nobles. 1486 Pico della Mirandola, On the Dignity of Man 10
The nobles, attracted by the opportunities of long- 11
distance and maritime trade, the rising value of urban real 1494 Invasion of Italy by Charles VIII of France 12
estate, the new public offices available in the expanding 1508–1512 Michelangelo paints ceiling of 13
communes, and the chances for advantageous marriages Sistine Chapel 14
into rich commercial families, frequently settled in the 15
1513 Machiavelli, The Prince
cities. Marriage vows often sealed business contracts be- 16
tween the rural nobility and wealthy merchants, with the 1516 More, Utopia 17
large dowries of brides providing cash for their new hus- 18
1528 Castiglione, The Courtier
bands’ businesses. This merger of the northern Italian 19
feudal nobility and the commercial elite created a power- 20
ful oligarchy, or small group that ruled a city and its sur- 21
rounding countryside. The ruling oligarchy in any city 22
was tied together by blood, economic interests, and so- power as well. The military leader often invented a long 23
cial connections, but was also often divided by hostilities noble lineage to justify his takeover of power, pretending 24
of kinship groups toward one another. Such hostilities
Apago PDF Enhancer he descended from a Germanic king or Roman leader. 25
sometimes erupted in violence, and Italian communes There was not much that merchant oligarchies could do 26
were often politically unstable. to retain their power, and many cities in Italy became 27
Conflict between families within the ruling oligarchy signori, in which one man ruled and handed down the 28
was exacerbated by unrest coming from below. Merchant right to rule to his son. Some signori (the word is plural 29
elites made citizenship in the communes dependent on a in Italian and is used for both persons and forms of gov- 30
property qualification, years of residence within the city, ernment) kept the institutions of communal government 31
and social connections. Only a tiny percentage of the in place, but these had no actual power. 32
male population possessed these qualifications and thus For the next two centuries the Italian city-states were 33
could hold office in the commune’s political councils. ruled by signori or by merchant oligarchies. Oligarchic 34
The common people, called the popolo, were disen- regimes possessed constitutions and often boasted about 35
franchised and heavily taxed, and they bitterly resented how much more democratic their form of government 36
their exclusion from power. The popolo wanted places was than the government in neighboring signori. In ac- 37
in the communal government and equality of taxation. tuality, there wasn’t much difference. In oligarchies, a 38
Throughout most of the thirteenth century, in city after small, restricted class of wealthy merchants exercised the 39
city, the popolo used armed force and violence to take judicial, executive, and legislative functions of govern- 40
over the city governments. Republican governments—in ment. Thus, in 1422 Venice had a population of eighty- 41
which political power theoretically resides in the people four thousand, but two hundred men held all the power; 42
and is exercised by their chosen representatives—were es- Florence had about forty thousand people, but only six 43
tablished in Bologna, Siena, Parma, Florence, Genoa, hundred men were part of the government. Even this 44
and other cities. The victory of the popolo proved tem- number is an illusion, for real power in Florence for most 45
porary, however, because they could not establish civil of the fifteenth century was actually held by the Medici 46
order within their cities. Merchant oligarchies reasserted family. Oligarchic regimes maintained only a façade of re- 47
their power and sometimes brought in powerful military publican government. The Renaissance nostalgia for the 48
leaders to establish order. These military leaders, called Roman form of government, combined with calculating 49
condottieri (singular, condottiero), had their own mer- shrewdness, prompted the leaders of Venice, Milan, and 50S
cenary armies, and in many cities they took over political Florence to use the old forms. 51R
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1 In the fifteenth century the signori in many cities and the sway of important Roman families. Pope Alexander
2 the most powerful merchant oligarchs in others trans- VI (1492–1503), aided militarily and politically by his
3 formed their households into courts. They built mag- son Cesare Borgia, reasserted papal authority in the papal
4 nificent palaces in the centers of cities and required lands. Cesare Borgia became the hero of Machiavelli’s
5 all political business be done there. They hired archi- The Prince (see page 415) because he began the work of
6 tects to design and build these palaces, artists to fill them uniting the peninsula by ruthlessly conquering and exact-
7 with paintings and sculptures, and musicians and coming total obedience from the principalities making up the
8 posers to fill them with music. They supported writers Papal States.
9 and philosophers, flaunting their patronage of learning South of the Papal States was the kingdom of Naples,
10 and the arts. They used ceremonies connected with fam- consisting of virtually all of southern Italy and, at times,
11 ily births, baptisms, marriages, funerals, or triumphant Sicily. The kingdom of Naples had long been disputed by
12 entrances into the city as occasions for magnificent the Aragonese and by the French. In 1435 it passed to
13 pageantry and elaborate ritual. Courtly culture afforded Aragon.
14 signori and oligarchs the opportunity to display and as- The major Italian city-states controlled the smaller
15 sert their wealth and power. The courts of the rulers of ones, such as Siena, Mantua, Ferrara, and Modena, and
16 Milan, Florence, and other cities were models for those competed furiously among themselves for territory. The
17 developed later by rulers of nation-states. large cities used diplomacy, spies, paid informers, and any
18 other available means to get information that could be
19 used to advance their ambitions. While the states of
20 northern Europe were moving toward centralization and
21 The Balance of Power Among consolidation, the world of Italian politics resembled a
22 jungle where the powerful dominated the weak.
23
the Italian City-States In one significant respect, however, the Italian city-
24 Renaissance Italians had a passionate attachment to their states anticipated future relations among competing Eu-
25 individual city-states: political loyalty and feeling cen-
Apago PDF Enhancer ropean states after 1500. Whenever one Italian state
26 tered on the local city. This intensity of local feeling per- appeared to gain a predominant position within the
27 petuated the dozens of small states and hindered the peninsula, other states combined to establish a balance of
28 development of one unified state. power against the major threat. In the formation of these
29 In the fifteenth century five powers dominated the alliances, Renaissance Italians invented the machinery of
30 Italian peninsula: Venice, Milan, Florence, the Papal modern diplomacy: permanent embassies with resident
31 States, and the kingdom of Naples (see Map 13.1). The ambassadors in capitals where political relations and
32 rulers of the city-states—whether signori in Milan, patri- commercial ties needed continual monitoring. The resi-
33 cian elitists in Florence, or oligarchs in Venice—governed dent ambassador was one of the great achievements of
34 as monarchs. They crushed urban revolts, levied taxes, the Italian Renaissance.
35 killed their enemies, and used massive building programs At the end of the fifteenth century Venice, Florence,
36 to employ, and the arts to overawe, the masses. Milan, and the papacy possessed great wealth and repre-
37 Venice, with its enormous trade and vast colonial em- sented high cultural achievement. However, their impe-
38 pire, ranked as an international power. Though Venice rialistic ambitions at one another’s expense and their
39 had a sophisticated constitution and was a republic in resulting inability to form a common alliance against po-
40 name, an oligarchy of merchant aristocrats actually ran the tential foreign enemies made Italy an inviting target for
41 city. Milan was also called a republic, but the condottieri- invasion. When Florence and Naples entered into an
42 turned-signori of the Sforza family ruled harshly and agreement to acquire Milanese territories, Milan called
43 dominated the smaller cities of the north. Likewise, in on France for support.
44 Florence the form of government was republican, with At Florence the French invasion had been predicted
45 authority vested in several councils of state. In reality, be- by Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498).
46 tween 1434 and 1494, power in Florence was held by the In a number of fiery sermons between 1491 and 1494,
47 great Medici banking family. Though not public officers, Savonarola attacked what he called the paganism and
48 Cosimo (1434–1464) and Lorenzo (1469–1492) ruled moral vice of the city, the undemocratic government of
49 from behind the scenes. Lorenzo de’ Medici, and the corruption of Pope Alexan-
50S Central Italy consisted mainly of the Papal States, der VI. For a time Savonarola enjoyed popular support
51R which during the Babylonian Captivity had come under among the ordinary people; he became the religious
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Economic and Political Developments • 411
1
HOLY ROMAN EM PIRE 2
3
Major city-states
4
Minor city-states
5
DUCHY
6
DUCHY Brescia
Milan 7
R
OF Padua
OF Venice
Pavia Lodi 8
E
Turin M. OF Este
MANTUA
SAVOY
MILAN Po 9
P
D. OF OTTOMAN
U
Parma
SALUZZO D.
FERRARA
Modena
10
B
Genoa
OF
Bologna EMPIRE 11
L
REPUBLIC OF Ravenna
MODENA
12
I
GENOA C
REP. OF
REP. OF LUCCA
Arno Florence Urbino O 13
Pisa FLORENCE Arezzo F 14
Siena PAPAL
A V 15
REP.
Perugia Assisi dr E
OF ia N 16
STATES I
SIENA ti C
c E 17
Tib Se
CORSICA
er
a 18
(to Genoa) 19
Rome
20
21
Bari
KINGDOM 22
Naples 23
Salerno OF
24
Apago PDF Enhancer NAPLES 25
SARDINIA
26
27
28
29
30
31
Medi 32
Palermo
terr 33
ane
an KINGDOM 34
Sea 0 50 100 Km.
OF 35
SICILY 0 50 100 Mi.
36
37
38
39
MAP 13.1 The Italian City-States, ca 1494 In the fifteenth century the Italian city-states represented great
wealth and cultural sophistication. The political divisions of the peninsula invited foreign intervention.
40
41
42
43
leader of Florence and as such contributed to the fall of The invasion of Italy in 1494 by the French king 44
the Medici dynasty. Eventually, however, people tired of Charles VIII (r. 1483–1498) inaugurated a new period 45
his moral denunciations, and he was excommunicated in Italian and European power politics. Italy became the 46
by the pope and executed. Savonarola stands as proof focus of international ambitions and the battleground 47
that the common people did not share the worldly out- of foreign armies, particularly those of France and the 48
look of the commercial and intellectual elite. His career Holy Roman Empire in a series of conflicts called the 49
also illustrates the internal instability of Italian cities such Habsburg-Valois Wars (named for the German and 50S
as Florence, an instability that invited foreign invasion. French dynasties). The Italian cities suffered severely from 51R
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1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
26 Uccello: Battle of San Romano Fascinated by perspective—the representation of spatial depth or distance
27 on a flat surface—the Florentine artist Paolo Uccello (1397–1475) celebrated the Florentine victory over
28 Siena (1432) in a painting with three scenes. Though a minor battle, it started Florence on the road to domi-
29 nation over smaller nearby states. The painting hung in Lorenzo de’ Medici’s bedroom. (National Gallery,
London/Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)
30
31
32
33 continual warfare, especially in the frightful sack of Rome Medieval people had believed that they were continuing
34 in 1527 by imperial forces under the emperor Charles V. the glories that had been ancient Rome and had recog-
35 Thus the failure of the city-states to form some federal sys- nized no cultural division between the world of the em-
36 tem, to consolidate, or at least to establish a common for- perors and their own times. But for Petrarch, the Germanic
37 eign policy led to centuries of subjection by outside migrations had caused a sharp cultural break with the
38 invaders. Italy was not to achieve unification until 1870. glories of Rome and inaugurated what he called the “Dark
39 Ages.” Along with many of his contemporaries, Petrarch
40 believed that he was witnessing a new golden age of in-
41 tellectual achievement.
42 Intellectual Change • What were the key ideas of the Renaissance, and how
43 were they different for men and women and for southern
44 The Renaissance was characterized by self-conscious aware- and northern Europeans?
45 ness among fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italians that
46 they were living in a new era. The realization that some-
47 thing new and unique was happening first came to men
48 of letters in the fourteenth century, especially to the poet
Humanism
49 and humanist Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374). Petrarch Petrarch and other poets, writers, and artists showed a
50S thought that he was living at the start of a new age, a deep interest in the ancient past, in both the physical re-
51R period of light following a long night of Gothic gloom. mains of the Roman Empire and classical Latin texts. The
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Intellectual Change • 413
study of Latin classics became known as the studia hu- 1

manitates, usually translated as “liberal studies” or the 2
“liberal arts.” Like all programs of study, they contained 3
an implicit philosophy, generally known as humanism, a 4
term devised by the Florentine rhetorician and historian 5
Leonardo Bruni (1370–1444). The words humanism and 6
humanist derive ultimately from the Latin humanitas, 7
which the ancient Roman writer Cicero had used to 8
mean the literary culture needed by anyone who would 9
be considered educated and civilized. Humanists stud- 10
ied the Latin classics to learn what they reveal about 11
human nature. Humanism emphasized human beings 12
and their achievements, interests, and capabilities. 13
Appreciation for the literary culture of the Romans 14
had never died in the West, but medieval writers had 15
studied the ancients in order to come to know God. Me- 16
dieval scholars had interpreted the classics in a Christian 17
sense and had invested the ancients’ poems and histories 18
with Christian meaning. 19
Renaissance humanists approached the classics differ- Benvenuto Cellini: Saltcellar of Francis I (ca 1540) In 20
ently. Whereas medieval writers looked to the classics to gold and enamel, Cellini depicts the Roman sea god, Neptune 21
reveal God, Renaissance humanists studied the classics (with trident, or three-pronged spear), sitting beside a small 22
to understand human nature. They viewed humanity from boat-shaped container holding salt from the sea. Opposite 23
him, a female figure personifying Earth guards pepper, which
a strongly Christian perspective, however: men (and derives from a plant. Portrayed on the base are the four sea- 24
women, though to a lesser degree) were made in the im-
Apago PDF Enhancer sons and the times of day, symbolizing seasonal festivities and 25
age and likeness of God. For example, in a remarkable es- daily meal schedules. Classical figures portrayed with grace, 26
say, On the Dignity of Man (1486), the Florentine writer poise, and elegance were common subjects in Renaissance art. 27
(Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna/The Bridgeman Art Library)
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) stressed 28
that man possesses great dignity because he was made as 29
Adam in the image of God before the Fall and as Christ 30
after the Resurrection. According to Pico, man’s place in 31
the universe is somewhere between the beasts and the an- sculptor Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1574) prefaced his 32
gels, but because of the divine image planted in him, Autobiography with a declaration: 33
there are no limits to what he can accomplish. Humanists 34
My cruel fate hath warr’d with me in vain:
generally rejected classical ideas that were opposed to 35
Life, glory, worth, and all unmeasur’d skill,
Christianity, or they sought through reinterpretation an 36
Beauty and grace, themselves in me fulfil
underlying harmony between the pagan and secular and 37
That many I surpass, and to the best attain.2
the Christian faith. 38
Interest in human achievement led humanists to em- Cellini, certain of his genius, wrote so that the whole 39
phasize the importance of the individual. Groups such as world might appreciate it. 40
families, guilds, and religious organizations continued to This attitude of individualism stressed personality, 41
provide strong support for the individual and to exercise uniqueness, genius, and full development of one’s capa- 42
great social influence. Yet in the Renaissance, intellectu- bilities and talents. Thirst for fame, the quest for glory, a 43
als, unlike their counterparts in the Middle Ages, prized driving ambition, and a burning desire for success drove 44
their own uniqueness. people such as Alberti and Cellini. 45
The Renaissance witnessed the emergence of many The fourteenth- and fifteenth-century humanists loved 46
distinctive personalities who gloried in their individual- the language of the classics and considered it superior to 47
ity; they had enormous confidence in their ability to the corrupt Latin of the medieval schoolmen. The lead- 48
achieve great things. Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), ing humanists of the early Renaissance were rhetoricians, 49
a writer, architect, and mathematician, remarked, “Men seeking effective and eloquent oral and written commu- 50S
can do all things if they will.”1 Florentine goldsmith and nication. Literary humanists of the fourteenth century 51R
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1 wrote each other highly stylized letters imitating ancient European cities like London and Paris. Gradually hu-
2 authors, and they held witty philosophical dialogues in manist education became the basis for intermediate and
3 conscious imitation of the Platonic Academy of the advanced education for a large share of middle- and upper-
4 fourth century B.C. They eventually became concerned class males.
5 about form more than about content, however, and Their emphasis on the public role and reputation of
6 more about the way an idea was expressed than about the the educated individual made humanists ambivalent in
7 significance and validity of the idea. their attitudes about education for women. If the best
8 models of moral behavior and clear thought were to be
9 found in classical authors, why should women be denied
10 access to these? Should the new virtues of self-confidence
11
Education and individualism be extended to include women? Most
12 One of the central preoccupations of the humanists was humanists thought that a program of study that empha-
13 education and moral behavior. Humanists poured out sized eloquence and action was not proper for women,
14 treatises, often in the form of letters, on the structure and for women were not to engage in public activities. They
15 goals of education and the training of rulers. They taught agreed with Leonard Bruni that “rhetoric in all its forms
16 that a life active in the world should be the aim of all ed- lies absolutely outside the province of women” and that
17 ucated individuals and that education was not simply for the “field of religion and morals” should be the primary
18 private or religious purposes, but benefited the public focus of women’s education.4 The Italian humanist and
19 good. In one of the earliest systematic programs for the polymath Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), discussing
20 young, Peter Paul Vergerio (1370–1444) wrote Uberti- morality in his On the Family, stressed that a wife’s role
21 nus, the ruler of Carrara: should be restricted to the orderliness of the household,
22 food and the serving of meals, the education of children,
For the education of children is a matter of more than pri-
23 and the supervision of servants. (Alberti never married,
vate interest; it concerns the State, which indeed regards the
24 so he never put his ideas into practice in his own house-
right training of the young as, in certain aspects, within its
25 Apago PDF Enhancer hold.) Humanists never established schools for girls,
proper sphere. . . .
26 though a few women of very high social status did gain a
We call those studies liberal which are worthy of a free
27 humanist education from private tutors. The ideal Ren-
man; those studies by which we attain and practice virtue
28 aissance woman looked a great deal more like her me-
and wisdom; that education which calls forth, trains, and de-
29 dieval counterpart than did the Renaissance man, leading
velops those highest gifts of body and mind which ennoble
30 the historian Joan Kelly to ask, in a now-famous essay,
men, and which are rightly judged to rank next in dignity to
31 “Did women have a Renaissance?” (Her answer was no.)
virtue only.3
32 No book on education had broader influence than Bal-
33 Part of Vergerio’s treatise specifies subjects for the in- dassare Castiglione’s The Courtier (1528). This treatise
34 struction of young men in public life: history teaches sought to train, discipline, and fashion the young man
35 virtue by examples from the past, ethics focuses on virtue into the courtly ideal, the gentleman. According to Cas-
36 itself, and rhetoric or public speaking trains for eloquence. tiglione, who himself was a courtier serving several dif-
37 Humanists did not simply talk about education, but ferent rulers, the educated man of the upper class should
38 also put their ideas into practice. They opened schools have a broad background in many academic subjects, and
39 and academies in Italian cities and courts in which pupils his spiritual and physical as well as intellectual capabilities
40 began with Latin grammar and rhetoric, went on to should be trained. The courtier should have easy famil-
41 study Roman history and political philosophy, and then iarity with dance, music, and the arts. Castiglione envi-
42 learned Greek in order to study Greek literature and phi- sioned a man who could compose a sonnet, wrestle, sing
43 losophy. These classics, humanists taught, would provide a song and accompany himself on an instrument, ride ex-
44 models of how to write clearly, argue effectively, and pertly, solve difficult mathematical problems, and, above
45 speak persuasively, important skills for future diplomats, all, speak and write eloquently. Castiglione also included
46 lawyers, military leaders, businessmen, and politicians. discussion of the perfect court lady, who, like the cour-
47 Merchants and bankers sent their sons to humanist schools, tier, was to be well-educated and able to play a musical
48 and ambitious young men from outside Italy flocked to instrument, to paint, and to dance. Physical beauty, deli-
49 these schools or to schools that opened later in their own cacy, affability, and modesty were also important qualities
50S cities. Humanist teachers and their ideas spread out for court ladies, however, though these were not ex-
51R from Florence across the Alps and eventually to northern pected of gentlemen.
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maintain, and increase it. Machiavelli implicitly addresses 1

the question of the citizen’s relationship to the state. As 2
a good humanist, he explores the problems of human na- 3
ture and concludes that human beings are selfish and out 4
to advance their own interests. This pessimistic view of 5
humanity led him to maintain that the prince might have 6
to manipulate the people in any way he finds necessary: 7
8
For a man who, in all respects, will carry out only his pro-
9
fessions of good, will be apt to be ruined amongst so many
10
who are evil. A prince therefore who desires to maintain
11
himself must learn to be not always good, but to be so or not
12
as necessity may require.5
13
The prince should combine the cunning of a fox with 14
the ferocity of a lion to achieve his goals. Asking rhetori- 15
cally whether it is better for a ruler to be loved or feared, 16
Machiavelli writes, “It will naturally be answered that it 17
would be desirable to be both the one and the other; but 18
as it is difficult to be both at the same time, it is much 19
more safe to be feared than to be loved, when you have 20
to choose between the two.”6 21
22
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23
Primary Source: The Prince: Power Politics During
the Italian Renaissance
24
Medieval political theory had derived ultimately from 26
Saint Augustine’s view that the state arose as a conse- 27
quence of Adam’s fall and people’s propensity to sin. The 28
Raphael: Portrait of Castiglione In this portrait by test of good government was whether it provided justice, 29
Raphael, the most sought-after portrait painter of the Renais-
sance, Castiglione is shown dressed exactly as he advised
law, and order. Political theorists and theologians from 30
courtiers to dress, in elegant, but subdued, clothing that Alcuin to Marsiglio of Padua had stressed the way gov- 31
would enhance the splendor of the court, but never outshine ernment ought to be; they had set high moral and Chris- 32
the ruler. (Scala/Art Resource, NY) tian standards for the ruler’s conduct. 33
Machiavelli maintained that the ruler should be con- 34
cerned not with the way things ought to be but with the 35
way things actually are. The sole test of a “good” gov- 36
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, The Courtier ernment is whether it is effective, whether the ruler in- 37
was translated into every European language and widely creases his power. Machiavelli did not advocate amoral 38
read. It influenced the social mores and patterns of con- behavior, but he believed that political action cannot be 39
duct of elite groups in Renaissance and early modern Eu- restricted by moral considerations. While amoral action 40
rope. Echoes of its ideal for women have perhaps had an might be the most effective approach in a given situation, 41
even longer life. he did not argue for generally amoral, rather than moral, 42
behavior. Nevertheless, on the basis of a crude interpre- 43
tation of The Prince, the word Machiavellian entered the 44
language as a synonym for the politically devious, cor- 45
Political Thought rupt, and crafty, indicating actions in which the end jus- 46
No Renaissance book on any topic has been more widely tifies the means. The ultimate significance of Machiavelli 47
read and studied in all the centuries since its publication rests on two ideas: first, that one permanent social order 48
(1513) than the short political treatise The Prince by reflecting God’s will cannot be established, and second, 49
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527). The subject of The that politics has its own laws, based on expediency, not 50S
Prince is political power: how the ruler should gain, morality. 51R
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1 huge sums of money. Pope Julius II (1503–1513) tore

2
Secular Spirit down the old Saint Peter’s Basilica and began work on
3 Machiavelli’s The Prince is often seen as a prime example the present structure in 1506. Michelangelo’s dome for
4 of another aspect of the Renaissance, secularism. Secu- Saint Peter’s is still considered his greatest work. Papal
5 larism involves a basic concern with the material world interests, which were far removed from spiritual con-
6 instead of with the eternal world of spirit. A secular way of cerns, fostered, rather than discouraged, the new worldly
7 thinking tends to find the ultimate explanation of every- attitude.
8 thing and the final end of human beings within the limits Despite their interest in secular matters, however, few
9 of what the senses can discover. Even though medieval people (including Machiavelli) questioned the basic te-
10 business people ruthlessly pursued profits and medieval nets of the Christian religion. Italian humanists and their
11 monks fought fiercely over property, the dominant ideals aristocratic patrons were anti-ascetic, but they were not
12 focused on the otherworldly, on life after death. Renais- agnostics or skeptics. The thousands of pious paintings,
13 sance people often had strong and deep spiritual interests, sculptures, processions, and pilgrimages of the Renais-
14 but in their increasingly secular society, attention was con- sance period prove that strong religious feeling persisted.
15 centrated on the here and now. Wealth allowed greater
16 material pleasures, a more comfortable life, and the leisure
17 time to appreciate and patronize the arts. The rich, social-
Christian Humanism
18 climbing residents of Venice, Florence, Genoa, and Rome The blend of religious and secular concerns of the Italian
19 came to see life more as an opportunity to be enjoyed humanists is even more pronounced among humanists
20 than as a painful pilgrimage to the City of God. from northern Europe. In the last quarter of the fifteenth
21 In On Pleasure, humanist Lorenzo Valla (1406–1457) century, students from the Low Countries, France, Ger-
22 defends the pleasures of the senses as the highest good. many, and England flocked to Italy, imbibed the “new
23 Scholars praise Valla as a father of modern historical crit- learning,” and carried it back to their countries. North-
24 icism. His study On the False Donation of Constantine ern humanists, often called Christian humanists, inter-
25 (1444) demonstrates by careful textual examination that
Apago PDF Enhancer preted Italian ideas about and attitudes toward classical
26 an anonymous eighth-century document supposedly giv- antiquity, individualism, and humanism in terms of their
27 ing the papacy jurisdiction over vast territories in western own traditions. They developed a program for broad so-
28 Europe was a forgery. Medieval people had accepted the cial reform based on Christian ideals.
29 Donation of Constantine as a reality, and the proof that Christian humanists were interested in an ethical way
30 it was an invention weakened the foundations of papal of life. To achieve it, they believed that the best elements
31 claims to temporal authority. Lorenzo Valla’s work ex- of classical and Christian cultures should be combined.
32 emplifies the application of critical scholarship to old and For example, the classical ideals of calmness, stoical pa-
33 almost sacred writings as well as the new secular spirit of tience, and broad-mindedness should be joined in hu-
34 the Renaissance. man conduct with the Christian virtues of love, faith, and
35 The tales in The Decameron (1350–1353) by the Flor- hope. Northern humanists also stressed the use of rea-
36 entine Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375), which describe son, rather than acceptance of dogma, as the foundation
37 ambitious merchants, lecherous friars, and cuckolded hus- for an ethical way of life. Like the Italians, they were im-
38 bands, portray a frankly acquisitive, sensual, and worldly patient with Scholastic philosophy. Christian humanists
39 society. Although Boccaccio’s figures were stock literary had profound faith in the power of human intellect to
40 characters, The Decameron contains none of the “con- bring about moral and institutional reform. They be-
41 tempt of the world” theme so pervasive in medieval liter- lieved that, although human nature had been corrupted
42 ature. Renaissance writers justified the accumulation and by sin, it was fundamentally good and capable of im-
43 enjoyment of wealth with references to ancient authors. provement through education.
44 Nor did church leaders do much to combat the new The Englishman Thomas More (1478–1535) towered
45 secular spirit. In the fifteenth and early sixteenth cen- above other figures in sixteenth-century English social
46 turies, the papal court and the households of the cardi- and intellectual history. Trained as a lawyer, More lived as
47 nals were just as worldly as those of great urban patricians. a student in the London Charterhouse, a Carthusian
48 Of course, most of the popes and higher church officials monastery. He subsequently married and practiced law
49 had come from the bourgeois aristocracy. Renaissance but became deeply interested in the classics. His house-
50S popes beautified the city of Rome, patronized artists and hold served as a model of warm Christian family life and
51R men of letters, and expended enormous enthusiasm and as a mecca for foreign and English humanists, who were
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particularly impressed with the linguistic skills of More’s 1

daughters, whom he had trained in Latin and Greek. In 2
the career pattern of such Italian humanists as Petrarch, 3
More entered government service under Henry VIII and 4
was sent as ambassador to Flanders. There More found 5
the time to write Utopia (1516), which presents a revolu- 6
tionary view of society. 7
Utopia, which means “nowhere,” describes an ideal so- 8
cialistic community on an island somewhere off the 9
mainland of the New World. All children receive a good 10
education, primarily in the Greco-Roman classics, and 11
learning does not cease with maturity, for the goal of all 12
education is to develop rational faculties. Adults divide 13
their days between manual labor or business pursuits and 14
intellectual activities. 15
Because profits from business and property are held in 16
common, there is absolute social equality. The Utopians 17
use gold and silver to make chamber pots and to prevent 18
wars by buying off their enemies. By this casual use of 19
precious metals, More meant to suggest that the basic 20
problems in society are caused by greed. Citizens of 21
Utopia lead an ideal, nearly perfect existence because 22
they live by reason; their institutions are perfect. More 23
punned on the word utopia, which he termed “a good 24
Apago PDF Enhancer place. A good place which is no place.” 25
More’s ideas were profoundly original in the sixteenth 26
century. Contrary to the long-prevailing view that vice 27
and violence existed because people were basically cor- 28
rupt, More maintained that acquisitiveness and private 29
property promoted all sorts of vices and civil disorders. 30
Since society protected private property, society’s flawed 31
institutions were responsible for corruption and war. Ac- 32
cording to More, the key to improvement and reform of 33
the individual was reform of the social institutions that 34
molded the individual. Today this view is so much taken 35
for granted that it is difficult to appreciate how radical 36
More’s approach was in the sixteenth century. 37
Bennozzo Gozzoli: Procession of the Magi, 1461 This
segment of a huge fresco covering three walls of a chapel in 38
Improve Your Grade
the Medici Palace in Florence shows members of the Medici 39
Primary Source: Utopia: A Question over
family and other contemporary individuals in a procession 40
accompanying the biblical three wise men (magi in Italian) as Diplomatic Advice
41
they brought gifts to the infant Jesus. The painting was or-
Better known by contemporaries than Thomas More 42
dered by Cosimo and Piero de’ Medici, who had just finished
building the family palace in the center of the city. Reflecting was the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus (1466?– 43
the self-confidence of his patrons, Gozzoli places the elderly 1536) of Rotterdam. Orphaned as a small boy, Erasmus 44
Cosimo and Piero at the head of the procession, accompanied was forced to enter a monastery. Although he hated the 45
by their grooms. The group behind them includes Pope Pius monastic life, he developed an excellent knowledge of 46
II (in the last row in a red hat that ties under the chin) and
the Latin language and a deep appreciation for the Latin 47
the artist (in the second to the last row in a red hat with gold
lettering). (Scala/Art Resource, NY) classics. During a visit to England in 1499, Erasmus met 48
the scholar John Colet, who decisively influenced his 49
life’s work: the application of the best humanistic learn- 50S
ing to the study and explanation of the Bible. As a mature 51R
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1 scholar with an international reputation stretching from of Erasmus were spread through print, in which hun-
2 Cracow to London, a fame that rested largely on his ex- dreds or thousands of identical copies could be made in a
3 ceptional knowledge of Greek, Erasmus could boast with short time. Erasmus actually spent his later years living
4 truth, “I brought it about that humanism, which among with printer friends, checking his own and others’ work
5 the Italians . . . savored of nothing but pure paganism, for errors as well as translating and writing. Print shops
6 began nobly to celebrate Christ.”7 were gathering places for those interested in new ideas.
7 Erasmus’s long list of publications includes The Educa- Though printers were trained through apprenticeships
8 tion of a Christian Prince (1504), a book combining ide- just like blacksmiths or butchers, they had connections to
9 alistic and practical suggestions for the formation of a the world of politics, art, and scholarship that other
10 ruler’s character through the careful study of Plutarch, craftsmen did not.
11 Aristotle, Cicero, and Plato; The Praise of Folly (1509), a Printing with movable metal type developed in Ger-
12 satire of worldly wisdom and a plea for the simple and many in the middle of the fifteenth century as a com-
13 spontaneous Christian faith of children; and, most im- bination of existing technologies. Several metal-smiths,
14 portant, a critical edition of the Greek New Testament most prominently Johan Gutenberg, recognized that the
15 (1516). In the preface to the New Testament, Erasmus metal stamps used to mark signs on jewelry could be
16 explained the purpose of his great work: covered with ink and used to mark symbols onto a sur-
17 face, in the same way that other craftsmen were using
For I utterly dissent from those who are unwilling that the
18 carved wood stamps. These craftsmen carved a whole
sacred Scriptures should be read by the unlearned translated
19 page in wood, inked it, and pressed it on paper, and then
into their vulgar tongue, as though Christ had taught such
20 assembled the paper into a book called a block-book.
subtleties that they can scarcely be understood even by a few
21 Block printing had been used in China and Korea since at
theologians. . . . Christ wished his mysteries to be published
22 least the eighth century and had spread to Europe by the
as openly as possible. I wish that even the weakest woman
23 thirteenth. The carvings could be used only a few dozen
should read the Gospel—should read the epistles of Paul.
24 times before they became ink-soaked and unreadable,
And I wish these were translated into all languages, so that
25 Apago PDF Enhancer however; and since each word, phrase, or picture was on
they might be read and understood, not only by Scots and
26 a separate block, this method of reproduction was ex-
Irishmen, but also by Turks and Saracens.8
27 traordinarily expensive and time-consuming.
28 Two fundamental themes run through all of Erasmus’s Using molds as smiths did for tableware or other metal
29 work. First, education is the means to reform, the key to items, Gutenberg and his assistants made stamps—later
30 moral and intellectual improvement. The core of educa- called type—for every letter of the alphabet and built
31 tion ought to be study of the Bible and the classics. (See racks that held the type in rows. This type could be re-
32 the feature “Listening to the Past: An Age of Gold” on arranged for every page and so used over and over; it
33 pages 442–443.) Second, the essence of Erasmus’s thought could also be melted down and remade once it became
34 is, in his own phrase, “the philosophy of Christ.” By this flattened through repeated use. They experimented with
35 Erasmus meant that Christianity is an inner attitude of different types of ink, settling on a type of artists’ ink,
36 the heart or spirit. Christianity is not formalism, special and with different types of presses, adapting the presses
37 ceremonies, or law; Christianity is Christ—his life and used to press grapes for wine, stamp patterns on fabric, or
38 what he said and did, not what theologians have written. make block-books.
39 The Sermon on the Mount, for Erasmus, expresses the Books were printed on paper, and by the middle of the
40 heart of the Christian message. fifteenth century, acquiring paper was no problem. The
41 knowledge of paper manufacture had originated in China,
42 and the Arabs introduced it to the West in the twelfth
43 century. Europeans quickly learned that durable paper was
44
The Printed Word far less expensive than the vellum (calfskin) and parch-
45 The fourteenth-century humanist Petrarch and the ment (sheepskin) on which medieval scribes had relied
46 sixteenth-century humanist Erasmus had similar ideas for centuries. By the fifteenth century the increase in ur-
47 about many things, but the immediate impact of their ban literacy, the development of primary schools, and the
48 ideas was very different because of one thing: the print- opening of more universities had created an expanding
49 ing press with movable metal type. The ideas of Petrarch market for reading materials of all types (see pages 400–
50S were spread the same way that ideas had been for cen- 401). When Gutenberg developed what he saw at first as
51R turies, from person to person by hand copying. The ideas a faster way to copy, professional copyists writing by hand
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The Print Shop This 1

sixteenth-century engraving 2
captures the busy world of a 3
print shop: On the left, men
set pieces of type, and an 4
individual wearing glasses 5
checks a copy. At the rear, 6
another applies ink to the 7
type, while a man carries in 8
fresh paper on his head. At
the right, the master printer 9
operates the press, while a boy 10
removes the printed pages and 11
sets them to dry. The well- 12
dressed figure in the right 13
foreground may be the patron
checking to see whether his 14
job is done. (Giraudon/Art 15
Resource, NY) 16
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and block-book makers, along with monks and nuns in
Europeans. It gave hundreds or even thousands of people 26
monasteries, were already churning out reading materials identical books, so that they could more easily discuss the 27
on paper as fast as they could for the growing number of ideas that the books contained with one another in per- 28
people who could read. son or through letters. Printed materials reached an in- 29
Gutenberg’s invention involved no special secret tech- visible public, allowing silent individuals to join causes 30
nology or materials, and he was not the only one to rec- and groups of individuals widely separated by geography 31
ognize the huge market for books. Other craftsmen to form a common identity; this new group conscious- 32
made their own type, built their own presses, and bought ness could compete with older, localized loyalties. 33
their own paper, setting themselves up in business in the Government and church leaders both used and wor- 34
cities of Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, and ried about printing. They printed laws, declarations of 35
then in Italy, England, and France. By 1480 about 110 war, battle accounts, and propaganda, and they also at- 36
cities in Europe had presses, with Venice employing the tempted to censor books and authors whose ideas they 37
most and producing about one-eighth of all printed thought were wrong. Officials developed lists of prohib- 38
books in Europe. Printing continued to spread to Spain ited books and authors, enforcing their prohibitions by 39
and Scandinavia, and by 1500, roughly fifty years after confiscating books, arresting printers and booksellers, or 40
the first printed books, more than 200 cities and towns in destroying the presses of printers who disobeyed. None 41
Europe had presses (see Map 13.2). Historians estimate of this was very effective, and books were printed se- 42
that somewhere between 8 million and 20 million books cretly, with fake title pages, authors, and places of publi- 43
were printed in Europe before 1500, many more than cation, and smuggled all over Europe. 44
the number of books produced in all of Western history Printing also stimulated the literacy of laypeople and 45
up to that point. eventually came to have a deep effect on their private 46
The effects of the invention of movable-type printing lives. Although most of the earliest books and pamphlets 47
were not felt overnight. Nevertheless, within a half cen- dealt with religious subjects, students, merchants, and 48
tury of the publication of Gutenberg’s Bible of 1456, upper- and middle-class people sought books on all sub- 49
movable type had brought about radical changes. Print- jects, and printers produced anything that would sell. 50S
ing transformed both the private and the public lives of They produced law codes bound in fancy leather bindings 51R
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1
2 NORWAY
3 SWEDEN
Stockholm
4 1483
Major printing centers
5 with date of establishment
6 SCOTLAND 15th century
7 Edinburgh 16th century
1507 North Baltic
8 Sea Copenhagen
Sea Political boundaries
1493 in 1490
9
ND
DENMARK
LA
10 Dublin
IRE
1551
11 ENGLAND Hamburg
Emden 1491
12 Amsterdam 1554 Berlin Warsaw
Oxford 1523 Deventer 1477 1540 1578
13 1478 London Utrecht 1472
1480 Antwerp Leipzig P OLAND
14 1470 Cologne 1466 1481
Brussels Bonn 1543
15 ATLANTIC 1474 Frankfurt 1478 Prague 1478
Mainz Bamberg 1460
16 1448 HOLY Nuremberg
OCEAN Paris ROM AN 1470
17 1470 EM P IRE Augsburg 1468
Vienna
Strasbourg 1482
18 1460 hine Munich MOLDAVIA
R 1482
19 F R A N C E Basel 1462
Bern Zurich HUNGARY
D a nu b e
Cluny 1508
20 1483
1525
Geneva
21 Lyons 1478 Venice
1473 Milan V 1469
22 1470 E Belgrade
N 1552
Rhône
I
23 Florence
C
E
PAPAL
24 NAVARRE 1471
STATES OTTOMAN Constantinople
AL
25 Apago PDF Enhancer EMPIRE 1488

UG
ARAGON Rome Subiaco

26
RT
Barcelona 1467 1465 Thessalonica

PO
Madrid 1515
27 Lisbon 1499 1475 NAPLES
1489 CASTILE
28
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30 Mediter Reggio di Calabria
GRANADA ran
31 ea
n
1480
32 Se
a
0 150 300 Km.
33
34 NORTH AFRICA 0 150 300 Mi.
35
Mapping the Past
36
37 MAP 13.2 The Growth of Printing in Europe The speed with which artisans spread printing
38 technology across Europe provides strong evidence for the existing market in reading material. Presses
in the Ottoman Empire were first established by Jewish immigrants who printed works in Hebrew,
39 Greek, and Spanish. Use this map and those in other chapters to answer the following questions:
40
41 • 1 What part of Europe had the greatest number of printing presses by 1550? Why might this be? 2 Printing was
•
developed in response to a market for reading materials. Use Maps 11.2 and 11.3 (pages 340 and 346) to help explain
42
43
•
why printing spread the way it did. 3 Many historians also see printing as an important factor in the spread of the
Protestant Reformation. Use Map 14.2 (page 468) to test this assertion.
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46 Improve Your Grade Interactive Map: The Growth of Printing
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Art and the Artist • 421
in matching sets for lawyers; medical manuals and guides sculpture of David, the great Hebrew hero and king. The 1
to healing herbs for doctors, surgeons, pharmacists, and subject matter of art through the early fifteenth cent- 2
midwives; grammars and dictionaries for students, often ury, as in the Middle Ages, remained overwhelmingly 3
in small sizes with paper covers so that they were cheap religious. Religious themes appeared in all media— 4
and could be carried to class; and books of prayers and woodcarvings, painted frescoes, stone sculptures, paint- 5
sermons for members of the clergy. They printed histori- ings. As in the Middle Ages, art served an educational 6
cal romances, biographies, and how-to manuals, such as purpose. A religious picture or statue was intended to 7
cookbooks and books of home remedies. They discov- spread a particular doctrine, act as a profession of faith, 8
ered that illustrations increased a book’s sales, so pub- or recall sinners to a moral way of living. 9
lished both history and pornography full of woodcuts Increasingly in the later fifteenth century, individuals 10
and engravings. Single-page broadsides and flysheets al- and oligarchs, rather than corporate groups, sponsored 11
lowed great public festivals, religious ceremonies, politi- works of art. Patrician merchants and bankers and popes 12
cal events, and “wonders” such as comets or two-headed and princes supported the arts as a means of glorifying 13
calves to be experienced vicariously by the stay-at-home. themselves and their families, becoming artistic patrons. 14
Since books and other printed materials were read aloud Vast sums were spent on family chapels, frescoes, reli- 15
to illiterate listeners, print bridged the gap between the gious panels, and tombs. Writing about 1470, Florentine 16
written and oral cultures. oligarch Lorenzo de’ Medici declared that his family had 17
spent the astronomical sum of 663,755 gold florins for 18
artistic and architectural commissions over the previous 19
Art and the Artist thirty-five years. Yet “I think it casts a brilliant light on 20
our estate [public reputation] and it seems to me that the 21
No feature of the Renaissance evokes greater admiration monies were well spent and I am very pleased with 22
than its artistic masterpieces. The 1400s (quattrocento) this.”10 Powerful men wanted to exalt themselves, their 23
and 1500s (cinquecento) bore witness to dazzling creativ- families, and their offices. A magnificent style of living 24
ity in painting, architecture, and sculpture. In all the arts,
Apago PDF Enhancer enriched by works of art served to prove the greatness 25
the city of Florence led the way. According to Vasari, the and the power of the despot or oligarch. 26
painter Perugino once asked why it was in Florence and In addition to power, art reveals changing patterns of 27
not elsewhere that men achieved perfection in the arts. consumption in Renaissance Italy. In the rural world of 28
The first answer he received was, “There were so many the Middle Ages, society had been organized for war. 29
good critics there, for the air of the city makes men quick Men of wealth spent their money on military gear— 30
and perceptive and impatient of mediocrity.”9 But Flor- swords, armor, horses, crenelated castles, towers, family 31
ence was not the only artistic center, for Rome and compounds—all of which represent offensive or defen- 32
Venice also became important, and northern Europeans sive warfare. As Italian nobles settled in towns (see page 33
perfected their own styles. 333), they adjusted to an urban culture. Rather than em- 34
• How did changes in art both reflect and shape ploying knights for warfare, cities hired mercenaries. Ex- 35
new ideas? penditure on military hardware declined. For the rich 36
merchant or the noble recently arrived from the country- 37
side, the urban palace represented the greatest outlay of 38
cash. It was his chief luxury, and although a private 39
Art and Power dwelling, the palace implied grandeur. Within the palace, 40
In early Renaissance Italy, art manifested corporate power. the merchant-prince’s chamber, or bedroom, where he 41
Powerful urban groups such as guilds or religious con- slept and received his intimate guests, was the most im- 42
fraternities commissioned works of art. The Florentine portant room. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a 43
cloth merchants, for example, delegated Filippo Brunel- large, intricately carved wooden bed, a chest, and per- 44
leschi to build the magnificent dome on the cathedral of haps a bench served as its sole decorations. The chest 45
Florence and selected Lorenzo Ghiberti to design the held the master’s most precious goods—silver, tapestries, 46
bronze doors of the Baptistery. These works represented jewelry, clothing. Other rooms, even in palaces of fifteen 47
the merchants’ dominant influence in the community. to twenty rooms, were sparsely furnished. As the fif- 48
Corporate patronage was also reflected in the Florentine teenth century advanced and wealth increased, the other 49
government’s decision to hire Michelangelo to create the rooms were gradually furnished with carved chests, tables, 50S
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25 Botticelli: Primavera, or Spring (ca 1482) Framed by a grove of orange trees, Venus, goddess of love, is
Apago PDF Enhancer
26 flanked on her left by Flora, goddess of flowers and fertility, and on her right by the Three Graces, goddesses of
27 banquets, dance, and social occasions. Above, Venus’s son Cupid, the god of love, shoots darts of desire, while
at the far right the wind god Zephyrus chases the nymph Chloris. The entire scene rests on classical mythology,
28 though some art historians claim that Venus is an allegory for the Virgin Mary. Botticelli captured the ideal for
29 female beauty in the Renaissance: slender, with pale skin, a high forehead, red-blond hair, and sloping shoul-
30 ders. (Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by Scala/Art Resource, NY)
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34 benches, chairs, tapestries for the walls, paintings (an in-
35 novation), and sculptural decorations, and a private
Subjects and Style
36 chapel was added. Wealthy individuals and families or- The content and style of Renaissance art were often dif-
37 dered gold dishes, embroidered tablecloths, and paint- ferent from those of the Middle Ages. The individual
38 ings of all sizes as art became a means of displaying portrait emerged as a distinct artistic genre. In the fif-
39 wealth. By the late sixteenth century the Strozzi banking teenth century members of the newly rich middle class
40 family of Florence spent more on household goods than often had themselves painted in scenes of romantic
41 on anything else except food; the value of those furnish- chivalry or courtly society. Rather than reflecting a spiri-
42 ings was three times that of their silver and jewelry. tual ideal, as medieval painting and sculpture tended to
43 After the palace itself, the private chapel within the do, Renaissance portraits showed human ideals, often
44 palace symbolized the largest expenditure. Equipped with portrayed in a more realistic style. The Florentine painter
45 the ecclesiastical furniture—tabernacles, chalices, thuri- Giotto (1276–1337) led the way in the use of realism; his
46 bles, and other liturgical utensils—and decorated with treatment of the human body and face replaced the for-
47 religious scenes, the chapel served as the center of the mal stiffness and artificiality that had long characterized
48 household’s religious life and its cult of remembrance of representation of the human body. Piero della Francesca
49 the dead. In fifteenth-century Florence, only the Medici (1420–1492) and Andrea Mantegna (1430/31–1506)
50S had a private chapel, but by the late sixteenth century seem to have pioneered perspective in painting, the linear
51R most wealthy Florentine families had private chapels. representation of distance and space on a flat surface.
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As the fifteenth century advanced, the subject matter Michelangelo. His many statues express an apprecia-
of art in Italy became steadily more secular. The study of tion of the incredible variety of human nature. Whereas
classical texts brought deeper understanding of ancient medieval artists had depicted the nude human body in
ideas. Classical themes and motifs, such as the lives and a spiritualized and moralizing context only, Donatello
loves of pagan gods and goddesses, figured increasingly revived the classical figure, with its balance and self-
in painting and sculpture. Religious topics, such as the awareness. The short-lived Florentine Masaccio (1401–
Annunciation of the Virgin and the Nativity, remained 1428), sometimes called the father of modern painting,
popular among both patrons and artists, but frequently inspired a new style characterized by great realism, narra-
the patron had himself and his family portrayed. People tive power, and remarkably effective use of light and
were conscious of their physical uniqueness and wanted dark. The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci (1452–
their individuality immortalized. 1519), with its stress on the tension between Christ
The sculptor Donatello (1386–1466) probably exerted and the disciples, is an incredibly subtle psychological
the greatest influence of any Florentine artist before interpretation.
Apago PDF Enhancer
Andrea Mantegna: Adoration of the Magi (ca 1495–1505) Applying his study of ancient
Roman relief sculpture, Mantegna painted for the private devotion of the Gonzaga family of
Mantua this scene of the three wise men coming to visit the infant Christ. The three wise men,
depicted as kings, represent the entire world—that is, the three continents known to medieval
Europeans: Europe, Asia, and Africa. They also symbolize the three stages of life: youth, matu-
rity, and old age. Here Melchior, the oldest, his large cranium symbolizing wisdom, personifies
Europe. He offers gold in a Chinese porcelain cup from the Ming Dynasty. Balthazar, with an
olive complexion and dark beard, stands for Asia and maturity. He presents frankincense in a
stunning vessel of Turkish tombac ware. Caspar, representing Africa and youth, gives myrrh in an
urn of striped marble. The three wise men were a common subject in Renaissance art (compare
the illustration on page 417), as they allowed artists to show exotic figures and sumptuous cloth-
ing. (© The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Mantegna, Andrea, Adoration of the Magi, ca 1495–1505,
distemper on linen, 54.6 ¥ 70.7 cm [85.PA.417])
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1 As humanists looked to the classical past for inspira- In the fifteenth century Florence was the center of the
2 tion in their writing, so did architects in constructing new art in Italy, but in the early sixteenth century this
3 buildings. The Florentine architect Filippo Brunelleschi shifted to Rome, where wealthy cardinals and popes
4 (1377–1446) designed a new hospital for orphans and wanted visual expression of the church’s and their own
5 foundlings set up by the silk-workers’ guild in Florence, families’ power and piety. Michelangelo, a Florentine
6 in which all proportions—of the windows, height, floor who had spent his young adulthood at the court of
7 plan, and covered walkway with a series of rounded Lorenzo de’ Medici, went to Rome about 1500 and be-
8 arches—were carefully thought out to achieve a sense of gan the series of statues, paintings, and architectural
9 balance and harmony. Brunelleschi later turned his tal- projects from which he gained an international reputa-
10 ents to designing and constructing a dome for the Flo- tion: the Pieta, Moses, the redesigning of the Capitoline
11 rence Cathedral, based to some degree on Roman domes, Hill in central Rome, and, most famously, the ceiling and
12 but higher and more graceful. altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. Pope Julius II, who com-
13 Art produced in northern Europe in the fourteenth missioned the Sistine Chapel, demanded that Michelan-
14 and fifteenth centuries tended to be more religious in gelo work as fast as he could and frequently visited the
15 orientation than that produced in Italy. Some Flemish artist at his work with suggestions and criticisms. Michel-
16 painters, notably Rogier van der Weyden (1399/1400– angelo complained in person and by letter about the
17 1464) and Jan van Eyck (1366–1441), were considered pope’s meddling, but his reputation did not match the
18 the artistic equals of Italian painters and were much
19 admired in Italy. Van Eyck, one of the earliest artists to
20 use oil-based paints successfully, shows the Flemish love Rogier van der Weyden: Deposition Taking as
21 for detail in paintings such as Ghent Altarpiece and the his subject the suffering and death of Jesus, a popu-
22 portrait Giovanni Arnolfini and His lar theme of Netherlandish piety, van der Weyden
23 Bride; the effect is great realism and describes (in an inverted T) Christ’s descent from
24 remarkable attention to human per- the cross, surrounded by nine sorrowing figures.
An appreciation of human anatomy, the rich fabrics
25 sonality. Northern architecture was Apago PDF Enhancer of the clothes, and the pierced and bloody hands of
26 little influenced by the classical re- Jesus were all intended to touch the viewers’ emo-
27 vival so obvious in Renaissance Italy. tions. (Museo del Prado/Scala/Art Resource, NY)
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power of the pope, and he kept working. Raphael Sanzio of princes Pietro Aretino (1492–1556) wrote to 1
(1483–1520), another Florentine, got the commission Michelangelo while he was painting The Last Judgment 2
for frescoes in the papal apartments, and in his relatively behind the altar in the Sistine Chapel: 3
short life he painted hundreds of portraits and devotional 4
To the Divine Michelangelo: Sir, just as it is disgraceful and
images, becoming the most sought-after artist in Europe. 5
sinful to be unmindful of God so it is reprehensible and dis-
Raphael also oversaw a large workshop with many collab- 6
honourable for any man of discerning judgment not to hon-
orators and apprentices—who assisted on the less diffi- 7
our you as a brilliant and venerable artist whom the very
cult sections of some paintings—and wrote treatises on 8
stars use as a target at which to shoot the rival arrows of
his philosophy of art in which he emphasized the impor- 9
their favour. . . . It is surely my duty to honour you with this
tance of imitating nature and developing an orderly se- 10
salutation, since the world has many kings but only one
quence of design and proportion. 11
Michelangelo.11
Venice became another artistic center in the sixteenth 12
century. Titian (1490–1576) produced portraits, religious Aretino was not alone in addressing Michelangelo as 13
subjects, and mythological scenes, developing techniques “divine,” for the word was widely applied to him, and to 14
of painting in oil without doing elaborate drawings first, a few other artists as well. (See the feature “Individuals in 15
which speeded up the process and pleased patrons eager Society: Leonardo da Vinci.”) Vasari described a number 16
to display their acquisition. Titian and other sixteenth- of painters, sculptors, and architects, in fact, as “rare men 17
century painters developed an artistic style known in of genius.” This adulation of the artist has led many his- 18
English as “mannerism” (from maniera or “style” in Ital- torians to view the Renaissance as the beginning of the 19
ian) in which artists sometimes distorted figures, exag- concept of the artist as genius. In the Middle Ages people 20
gerated musculature, and heightened color to express believed that only God created, albeit through individu- 21
emotion and drama more intently. (This is the style in als; the medieval conception recognized no particular 22
which Michelangelo painted the Last Judgment in the value in artistic originality. Renaissance artists and hu- 23
Sistine Chapel, shown in the frontispiece to this chapter.) manists came to think that a work of art was the deliber- 24
Until the twentieth century, “mannerism” was a negative
Apago PDF Enhancer ate creation of a unique personality who transcended 25
term; critics and art historians preferred the more natura- traditions, rules, and theories. A genius had a peculiar 26
listic and elegant style of Botticelli and Raphael, but gift, which ordinary laws should not inhibit. 27
modern critics and artists have appreciated its sense of Renaissance artists were not only aware of their cre- 28
movement, vivid colors, and passionate expressions. ative power, but they also boasted about it. Describing 29
his victory over five others, including Brunelleschi, in the 30
competition to design the bronze doors of Florence’s 31
Patronage and Creativity Baptistery, Ghiberti exulted, “The palm of victory was 32
Artists in the Renaissance did not produce unsolicited conceded to me by all the experts and by all my fellow- 33
pictures or statues for the general public, but usually competitors. By universal consent and without a single 34
worked on commission from patrons. A patron could be exception the glory was conceded to me.”12 Some me- 35
an individual, a group such as a guild, a convent, a ruler, dieval painters and sculptors had signed their works; Ren- 36
or a city council. Patrons varied in their level of involve- aissance artists almost universally did so, and many of 37
ment as a work progressed; some simply ordered a spe- them incorporated self-portraits, usually as bystanders, in 38
cific subject or scene, while others oversaw the work of their paintings. 39
the artist or architect very closely, suggesting themes and It is important not to overemphasize the Renaissance 40
styles and demanding changes while the work was in notion of genius. As certain artists became popular and 41
progress. well-known, they could assert their own artistic styles 42
The right patrons rewarded certain artists very well. and pay less attention to the wishes of patrons, but even 43
Lorenzo Ghiberti’s salary of 200 florins a year compared major artists like Raphael generally worked according to 44
favorably with that of the head of the city government, the patron’s specific guidelines. Whether in Italy or 45
who earned 500 florins. Moreover, at a time when a per- northern Europe, most Renaissance artists trained in the 46
son could live in a princely fashion on 300 ducats a year, workshops of older artists; Botticelli, Raphael, Titian, 47
Leonardo da Vinci was making 2,000 ducats annually. and at times even Michelangelo were known for their 48
Renaissance society respected the distinguished artist. large, well-run, and prolific workshops. Though they 49
In 1537 the prolific letter writer, humanist, and satirizer might be “men of genius,” artists were still expected to 50S
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21 Gentile and Giovanni Bellini: Saint Mark Preaching in Alexandria (1504–1507) The Venetian
22 artists Gentile and Giovanni Bellini combine figures and architecture in this painting of Saint Mark,
23 the patron saint of Venice. Saint Mark (on the platform) is wearing ancient Roman dress. Behind him
are male citizens of Venice in sixteenth-century Italian garb. In front of him are Ottoman Muslim
24 men in turbans, Muslim women in veils, and various other figures. The buildings in the background
are not those of first-century Alexandria (where Saint Mark is reported to have preached) but of
26 Venice and Constantinople in the sixteenth century. The setting is made even more fanciful with a
27 camel and a giraffe in the background. The painting glorifies cosmopolitan Venice’s patron saint, a
28 more important feature for the Venetian patron who ordered it than was historical accuracy. Its clear
colors and effective perspective and the individuality of the many faces make this a fine example of
29 Renaissance art. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
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32 be well-trained in proper artistic techniques and stylistic garded as “major arts,” but only as “minor” or “decora-
33 conventions, for the notion that artistic genius could tive” arts. (The division between “major” and “minor”
34 show up in the work of an untrained artist did not arts begun in the Renaissance continues to influence the
35 emerge until the twentieth century. Beginning artists way museums and collections are organized today.) Like
36 spent years copying drawings and paintings, learning painting, embroidery changed in the Renaissance to be-
37 how to prepare paint and other artistic materials, and, by come more classical in its subject matter, naturalistic, and
38 the sixteenth century, reading books about design and visually complex. Embroiderers were not trained to view
39 composition. Younger artists gathered together in the their work as products of individual genius, however, so
40 evenings for further drawing practice; by the later six- they rarely included their names on their works, and
41 teenth century some of these informal groups had turned there is no way to discover who they were.
42 into more formal artistic “academies,” the first of which Several women did become well-known as painters in
43 was begun in 1563 in Florence by Vasari under the pa- their day. Stylistically, their works are different from one
44 tronage of the Medicis. another, but their careers show many similarities. The
45 As Vasari’s phrase indicates, the notion of artistic ge- majority of female painters were the daughters of painters
46 nius that developed in the Renaissance was gendered. All or of minor noblemen with ties to artistic circles. Many
47 the most famous and most prolific Renaissance artists were eldest daughters or came from families in which
48 were male; there are no female architects whose names there were no sons, so their fathers took unusual interest
49 are known and only one female sculptor. The types of art in their careers. Many women began their careers before
50S in which more women were active, such as textiles, they were twenty and produced far fewer paintings after
51R needlework, and painting on porcelain, were not re- they married, or stopped painting entirely. Women were
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Individuals 1
in Society 2
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Leonardo da Vinci He drew plans for hun-
5
dreds of inventions, many
of which would become 6
W hat makes a genius? An infinite capacity for reality centuries later, such 7
8
taking pains? A deep curiosity about an extensive vari- as the helicopter, tank,
ety of subjects? A divine spark as manifested by talents machine gun, and para- 9
that far exceed the norm? Or is it just “one percent chute. He was hired by 10
inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration,” as one of the powerful new 11
Thomas Edison said? To most observers, Leonardo da rulers in Italy, Duke Lu- 12
Vinci was one of the greatest geniuses in the history of dovico Sforza of Milan, 13
the Western world. In fact, Leonardo was one of the to design weapons, 14
individuals that the Renaissance label “genius” was fortresses, and water sys- 15
designed to describe: a special kind of human being tems, as well as to produce Leonardo da Vinci, Lady with an 16
with exceptional creative powers. works of art. Leonardo Ermine. The enigmatic smile and
Leonardo (who, despite the title of a recent best- left Milan when Sforza smoky quality of this portrait can
17
seller, is always called by his first name) was born in was overthrown in war be found in many of Leonardo’s 18
Vinci, near Florence, the illegitimate son of Caterina, and spent the last years of works. 19
a local peasant girl, and Ser Piero da Vinci, a notary his life painting, drawing, (Czartoryski Museum, Krakow/The 20
public. Caterina later married another native of Vinci. and designing for the Bridgeman Art Library) 21
When Ser Piero’s marriage to Donna Albrussia pro- pope and the French king. 22
duced no children, he and his wife took in Leonardo. Leonardo experimented with new materials for 23
Ser Piero secured Leonardo’s apprenticeship with the painting and sculpture, some of which worked and 24
painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio in Flo- some of which did not. The experimental method he 25
Apago PDF Enhancer
rence. In 1472, when Leonardo was just twenty years used to paint The Last Supper caused the picture to 26
old, he was listed as a master in Florence’s deteriorate rapidly, and it began to flake off the wall as
27
“Company of Artists.” soon as it was finished. Leonardo actually regarded it
Leonardo’s most famous portrait, Mona Lisa, as never quite completed, for he could not find a model 28
shows a woman with an enigmatic smile that Giorgio for the face of Christ that would evoke the spiritual 29
Vasari described as “so pleasing that it seemed divine depth he felt it deserved. His gigantic equestrian statue 30
rather than human.” The portrait, probably of the in honor of Ludovico’s father, Duke Francesco Sforza, 31
young wife of a rich Florentine merchant (her exact was never made and the clay model collapsed. He 32
identity is hotly debated), may actually be the best- planned to write books on many subjects but never 33
known painting in the history of art. One of its com- finished any of them, leaving only notebooks. 34
petitors in that designation would be another work of Leonardo once said that “a painter is not admirable 35
Leonardo’s, The Last Supper, which has been called unless he is universal.” The patrons who supported him— 36
“the most revered painting in the world.” and he was supported very well—perhaps wished that 37
Leonardo’s reputation as a genius does not rest his inspirations would have been a bit less universal in
38
simply on his paintings, however, which are actually scope, or at least accompanied by more perspiration.
few in number, but rather on the breadth of his abilities 39
and interests. In these, he is often understood to be the Questions for Analysis 40
first “Renaissance man,” a phrase we still use for a 41
1. In what ways do the notion of a “genius” and of a 42
multi-talented individual. He wanted to reproduce
“Renaissance man” both support and contradict 43
what the eye can see, and he drew everything he saw
one another? Which better fits Leonardo?
around him, including executed criminals hanging on 44
2. Has the idea of artistic genius changed since the
gallows as well as the beauties of nature. Trying to 45
Renaissance? How?
understand how the human body worked, Leonardo 46
studied live and dead bodies, doing autopsies and dis- Sources: Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists, vol. 1, trans. G. Bull 47
sections to investigate muscles and circulation. He (London: Penguin Books, 1965); S. B. Nuland, Leonardo da Vinci
48
carefully analyzed the effects of light, and he experi- (New York: Lipper/Viking, 2000).
49
mented with perspective.
Leonardo used his drawings as the basis for his Improve Your Grade
50S
paintings and also as a tool of scientific investigation. Going Beyond Individuals in Society 51R
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27 Artemisia Gentileschi: Esther Before Ahasuerus (ca 1630) In this oil painting, Gentileschi shows
28 an Old Testament scene of the Jewish woman Esther who saved her people from being killed by her
29 husband, King Ahasuerus. This deliverance is celebrated in the Jewish holiday of Purim. Both figures are
in the elaborate dress worn in Renaissance courts. Typical of a female painter, Artemisia Gentileschi was
30 trained by her father. She mastered the dramatic style favored in the early seventeenth century and be-
31 came known especially for her portraits of strong biblical and mythological heroines. (Image copyright ©
32 The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY)
33
34
35 not allowed to study the male nude, which was viewed as from families with at least some money. Renaissance cul-
36 essential if one wanted to paint large history paintings ture did not influence the lives of most people in cities
37 with many figures. Women could also not learn the tech- and did not affect life in the villages at all. A small, highly
38 nique of fresco, in which colors are applied directly to wet educated minority of literary humanists and artists cre-
39 plaster walls, because such works had to be done out in ated the culture of and for an exclusive elite. The Renais-
40 public, which was judged inappropriate for women. Join- sance maintained, or indeed enhanced, a gulf between
41 ing a group of male artists for informal practice was also the learned minority and the uneducated multitude that
42 seen as improper, and the artistic academies that were es- has survived for many centuries.
43 tablished were for men only. Like universities, humanist
44 academies, and most craft guild shops, artistic workshops
45 were male-only settings in which men of different ages Social Hierarchies
46 came together for training and created bonds of friend-
47 ship, influence, patronage, and sometimes intimacy. The division between educated and uneducated people
48 Women were not alone in being excluded from the was only one of many social hierarchies evident in the Ren-
49 institutions of Renaissance culture. Though a few “rare aissance. Every society has social hierarchies; in ancient
50S men of genius” such as Leonardo or Michelangelo emerged Rome, for example, there were patricians and plebeians
51R from artisanal backgrounds, most scholars and artists came (see page 128). Such hierarchies are to some degree
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Social Hierarchies • 429
descriptions of social reality, but they are also idealiza- were most likely their original home. He thought that 1
tions—that is, they describe how people imagined their they were the first humans, and the most attractive. (His 2
society to be, without all the messy reality of social- judgment about Caucasian attractiveness came through 3
climbing plebeians or groups that did not fit the standard studying a large collection of skulls and measuring all 4
categories. Social hierarchies in the Renaissance built on other skulls against one from Georgia that he judged to 5
those of the Middle Ages but also developed new fea- be “the most beautiful form of the skull.”) This meaning 6
tures that contributed to modern social hierarchies. of race has had a long life, though biologists and anthro- 7
• What were the key social hierarchies in Renaissance pologists today do not use it, as it has no scientific mean- 8
Europe, and how did ideas about hierarchy shape ing or explanatory value. Renaissance people thus did not 9
people’s lives? use race the way we do, but they did make distinctions 10
based on skin color. These distinctions were interwoven 11
with ethnic, national, and religious distinctions, and they 12
provide some of the background for later conceptualiza- 13
Race tions of race. 14
Renaissance ideas about what we would term “race” Ever since the time of the Roman republic, a few black 15
were closely linked with those about ethnicity and “blood” Africans had lived in western Europe. They had come, 16
discussed in Chapter 12 (see page 399). In law codes, along with white slaves, as the spoils of war. Even after 17
histories, and other writings, ethnic and religious groups the collapse of the Roman Empire, Muslim and Christian 18
were referred to as gens or natio, words generally trans- merchants continued to import them. Unstable political 19
lated as “people” or “nation”: the German nation, the conditions in many parts of Africa enabled enterprising 20
Irish people, the Jewish people, and so on. What exactly merchants to seize people and sell them into slavery. Lo- 21
made them German or Irish or Jewish was viewed as a cal authorities afforded them no protection. Long tradi- 22
mixture of language, traditions, and customs, but these tion, moreover, sanctioned the practice of slavery. The 23
were also conceptualized as “blood,” and people were evidence of medieval art attests to the continued pres- 24
described as having French blood or Jewish blood. The
Apago PDF Enhancer ence of Africans in Europe throughout the Middle Ages 25
word race was also used in several European languages in and to Europeans’ awareness of them. 26
the Renaissance to describe such groupings—the French Beginning in the fifteenth century sizable numbers of 27
race, the Spanish race—or other social groups, such as black slaves entered Europe. Portuguese explorers im- 28
“the race of learned gentlemen” or “the race of man- ported perhaps a thousand a year and sold them at the 29
kind.” It was also used to refer to family line, kindred, or markets of Seville, Barcelona, Marseilles, and Genoa. In 30
lineage. With all these words—nation, people, blood, the late fifteenth century this flow increased, with thou- 31
race—people did not clearly distinguish between things sands of people leaving the West African coast. By 1530 32
that we would regard as biologically heritable, such as between four thousand and five thousand were being 33
hair color, and as socially constructed, such as being well- sold to the Portuguese each year. By the mid-sixteenth 34
dressed. (The boundaries between these two are not al- century blacks, slave and free, constituted about 10 per- 35
ways clear today, of course, as arguments about certain cent of the population of the Portuguese cities of Lis- 36
groups being “naturally” gifted musicians or mathemati- bon and Évora; other cities had smaller percentages. In 37
cians demonstrate.) all, blacks made up roughly 3 percent of the Portu- 38
The contemporary meaning of race as a system divid- guese population. In the Iberian Peninsula, African 39
ing people into very large groups by skin color and other slaves intermingled with the people they lived among 40
physical characteristics originated in the eighteenth cen- and sometimes intermarried. Cities such as Lisbon had 41
tury, when European natural scientists sought to develop significant numbers of people of mixed African and Eu- 42
one single system that would explain human differences. ropean descent. 43
They first differentiated “races” by continent of origin— Although blacks were concentrated in the Iberian 44
Americanus, Europaeus, Asiaticus, and Africanus—and Peninsula, there must have been some Africans in north- 45
then by somewhat different geographical areas. The ern Europe as well. In the 1580s, for example, Queen 46
word Caucasian was first used by the German anatomist Elizabeth I of England complained that there were too 47
and naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752– many “blackamoores” competing with needy English 48
1840) to describe light-skinned people of Europe and people for places as domestic servants.13 Black servants 49
western Asia because he thought that the Caucasus were much sought after; the medieval interest in cur- 50S
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13 Carpaccio: Black Laborers
14 on the Venetian Docks
15 (detail) Enslaved and free
16 blacks, besides working as
17 gondoliers on the Venetian
canals, served on the docks:
18 here, seven black men
19 careen—clean, caulk, and
20 repair—a ship. Carpaccio’s
21 reputation as one of Venice’s
22 outstanding painters rests on
his eye for details of everyday
23 life. (Gallerie dell’Accademia,
24 Venice/Scala/Art Resource, NY)
26
27
28 Renaissance. Italian aristocrats had their portraits painted dramas, and as musicians, sometimes making up full
29 with their black pageboys to indicate their wealth (see the orchestras.
30 illustration on page 417, in which Gozzoli’s depiction of Africans were not simply amusements at court. Adult
31 Cosimo de’ Medici shows him with a black groom). black slaves served as maids, valets, and domestic servants
32 Blacks were so greatly in demand at the Renaissance in Spanish and Italian cities. The Venetians employed
33 courts of northern Italy, in fact, that the Venetians defied blacks—slave and free—as gondoliers and stevedores on
34 papal threats of excommunication to secure them. In the the docks. In Portugal, kings, nobles, laborers, monas-
35 late fifteenth century Isabella, the wife of Gian Galazzo teries and convents, and prostitutes owned slaves. Slaves
36 Sforza, took pride in the fact that she owned ten blacks, supplemented the labor force in virtually all occupa-
37 seven of them females. A black lady’s maid was both a tions—as agricultural laborers, as craftsmen, and as sea-
38 curiosity and a symbol of wealth. In 1491 Isabella of men on ships going to Lisbon and Africa. Agriculture in
39 Este, duchess of Mantua, instructed her agent to secure Europe did not involve large plantations, so large-scale
40 a black girl between four and eight years old, “shapely agricultural slavery did not develop there; African slaves
41 and as black as possible.” The duchess saw the child as formed the primary workforce on the sugar plantations
42 a source of entertainment: “We shall make her very set up by Europeans on the Atlantic islands in the late fif-
43 happy and shall have great fun with her.” She hoped the teenth century, however (see page 505).
44 girl would become “the best buffoon in the world,”14 as Until the voyages down the African coast in the late fif-
45 the cruel ancient practice of a noble household’s retain- teenth century, Europeans had little concrete knowledge
46 ing a professional “fool” for the family’s amusement per- of Africans and their cultures. What Europeans did know
47 sisted through the Renaissance—and down to the was based on biblical accounts. The European attitude
48 twentieth century. Tradition, stretching back at least as toward Africans was ambivalent. On the one hand, Euro-
49 far as the thirteenth century, connected blacks with mu- peans perceived Africa as a remote place, the home of
50S sic and dance. In Renaissance Spain and Italy, blacks per- strange people isolated by heresy and Islam from superior
51R formed as dancers, as actors and actresses in courtly European civilization. Africans’ contact, even as slaves,
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with Christian Europeans could only “improve” the By the thirteenth century, however, and even more so 1
blacks. Theologians taught that God was light and linked by the fifteenth, the more fixed and inherited hierarchy 2
black skin color with the hostile forces of the under- of orders was interwoven with a more changeable hierar- 3
world: evil, sin, and the Devil. Thus the Devil was com- chy based on wealth, what would later come to be 4
monly represented as a black man in medieval and early termed “social class.” This was particularly true in towns. 5
Renaissance art (see the illustration on page 396). On Most residents of towns were technically members of the 6
the other hand, blackness possessed certain positive qual- “third estate,” that is, not nobles or clergy, but they in- 7
ities. It symbolized the emptiness of worldly goods and cluded wealthy merchants who oversaw vast trading em- 8
the humility of the monastic way of life. Black clothes pires and lived in splendor that rivaled the richest nobles. 9
permitted a conservative and discreet display of wealth. As we saw above, in many cities these merchants had 10
Black vestments and funeral trappings indicated grief, gained political power to match their economic might, 11
and Christ had said that those who mourn are blessed. becoming merchant oligarchs who ruled through city 12
Negative preconceptions about blackness largely out- councils. 13
weighed positive ones, however, and the expanding slave The development of a hierarchy of wealth did not 14
trade only reinforced these. mean an end to the hierarchy of orders, however. Those 15
in the first estate were far more likely to be wealthy than 16
those in the third, but even if they were poorer, they had 17
higher status. If this had not been the case, wealthy Ital- 18
Class ian merchants would not have bothered to buy noble ti- 19
Just as race did not develop its current meaning until tles and country villas as they began doing in the fifteenth 20
after the Renaissance, neither did class. The notion century, nor would wealthy English or Spanish mer- 21
of class—working class, middle class, upper class—was chants have been eager to marry their daughters and sons 22
developed by nineteenth-century social theorists, most into often impoverished noble families. The nobility 23
prominently Karl Marx. Looking at their own industrial maintained its status in most parts of Europe not by 24
societies, they decided that the most basic social division
Apago PDF Enhancer maintaining rigid boundaries, but by taking in and inte- 25
was between men who owned the “means of produc- grating the new social elite of wealth. Wealth allowed 26
tion,” that is, factories and equipment, and those who some male commoners to buy or gain noble titles and fe- 27
did not and worked for wages. The former were the male commoners to marry into noble families. 28
“bourgeoisie” (the middle class) and the latter the “pro- Along with being tied to the hierarchy of orders, social 29
letariat” (the working class). (How women fit into this status was also linked with considerations of honor. 30
division was not clear. Married women in the nineteenth Among the nobility, for example, certain weapons and 31
century could not own property and had no right to their battle tactics were favored because they were viewed as 32
wages, which belonged to their husbands.) This was a more honorable. Among urban dwellers, certain occupa- 33
system of social differentiation based primarily on wealth. tions, such as city executioner or manager of the munici- 34
By contrast, the medieval system of social differen- pal brothel, might be well paid but were understood to 35
tiation was based on function—or least theoretical be “dishonorable” and so of low status. 36
function—in society. Medieval Europeans conceptualized Cities were where the hierarchy of orders met the hier- 37
society in three basic groups: those who pray, or the archy of wealth most dramatically. In many cities, a num- 38
clergy; those who fight, or the nobility; and those who ber of urban merchants and bankers were wealthier than 39
work, or everyone else (see page 295). These groups all but the highest level of the nobility. Some of these 40
were termed “orders” or “estates,” and many medieval men climbed into the nobility through marriage, service 41
representative assemblies, including those of France and to a monarch, or purchase of a title. More of them 42
the Low Countries, were organized into three houses by heightened social and political distinctions within cities, 43
estate. The society of orders worked fairly well in setting trying to set themselves off as a privileged social group. 44
out sociolegal categories for membership in representa- Wealthy merchants often dominated city councils, and 45
tive bodies. It also highlighted the most important social they made it increasingly difficult for new residents to 46
distinction in both medieval and Renaissance Europe, become citizens. They passed sumptuary laws, essen- 47
that between noble and commoner. Status as a noble tially urban dress codes that created easily visible distinc- 48
generally brought freedom from direct taxation and tions between social groups (see page 338). Nobles and 49
rights of jurisdiction over a piece of property and the wealthy urban residents could wear fine silk clothing, 50S
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1 Italian City Scene In this detail from a fresco of

2 the life of Saint Barbara by the Italian painter
3 Lorenzo Lotto, the artist captures the mixing of
social groups in a Renaissance Italian city. The crowd
4 of men in the right foreground surrounding the
5 biblical figures includes wealthy merchants in elabo-
6 rate hats and colorful coats. Two mercenary soldiers
7 (carrying a sword and a pike), probably in hire to a
8 condottiero, wear short doublets and tight hose
stylishly slit to reveal colored undergarments, while
9 boys play with toy weapons at their feet. Clothing
10 like that of the soldiers, which emphasized the mas-
11 culine form, was frequently the target of sumptuary
12 laws for both its expense and its “indecency.” At the
13 left, women sell vegetables and bread, which would
have been a common sight at any city marketplace.
14 At the very rear, men judge the female saint, who
15 was thought to have been martyred for her faith in
16 the third century. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
17
18
19
20 linen garments, while servants were restricted to
21 rough, dark clothes and aprons. Individuals tried
22 to evade these laws by wearing the clothing re-
23 stricted to the group above them, though there
24 were fines for doing so. Sumptuary laws also reg-
25 ulated spending on celebrations such as weddings
Apago PDF Enhancer
26 or baptisms according to social class, and they
27 were justified as a way to limit frivolous spending
28 on luxuries and promote local production, for
29 many laws restricted the purchase of imported
30 clothing or foodstuffs. Along with setting out
31 a hierarchy of wealth, sumptuary laws marked certain and women “biologically” more peaceful, or do such dif-
32 groups as outside the social order: Jews were obliged to ferences simply come from their upbringing?), and the
33 wear specific symbols on their clothes or hats of a specific recently emerged transgender movement has questioned
34 color (often yellow) so that they would be easily recog- whether a model with two sexes or two genders is ade-
35 nizable, and prostitutes might also be ordered to sew quate. The word gender is becoming increasingly com-
36 stripes of yellow or red on their clothing, wear a specific mon, however, even on government forms.
37 type or color of cloak, or keep their hair uncovered so Renaissance people would have understood the word
38 people would not mistake them for “honorable” women. gender to refer to categories of nouns in many European
39 languages, not categories of people, but they would have
40 easily grasped the concept. Toward the end of the four-
41
Gender teenth century, learned men (and a few women) began
42 While “race” is an eighteenth-century concept and “class” what was termed the “debate about women” (querelle
43 a nineteenth-century concept, “gender” is a concept that des femmes), a debate about women’s character and na-
44 grew out of the women’s movement that began in the ture that would last for centuries. Misogynist critiques
45 1970s. Advocates of women’s rights increasingly distin- of women from both clerical and secular authors de-
46 guished between “sex,” by which they meant physical nounced females as devious, domineering, and dem-
47 and anatomical differences (what are often called “bio- anding. In answer, several authors, including Giovanni
48 logical differences”) and “gender,” by which they meant Boccaccio and Christine de Pizan, compiled long lists of
49 a culturally constructed and historically changing system famous and praiseworthy women exemplary for their loy-
50S of differences. The boundaries between “sex” and “gen- alty, bravery, and morality. (See the feature “Listening to
51R der” are debated (are men “biologically” better at math, the Past: Christine de Pizan” in Chapter 12 on pages
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404–405.) Boccaccio’s tribute is somewhat ambiguous, wife was either the snail or the tortoise, both animals that 1
for the highest praise he can bestow on a woman is that never leave their “houses” and are totally silent, although 2
she is like a man: “What can we think except that it was such images were never as widespread as those depicting 3
an error of nature to give female sex to a body which had wives beating their husbands or hiding their lovers from 4
been endowed by God with a magnificent virile spirit?”15 them. 5
Christine de Pizan and several other writers were inter- Beginning in the sixteenth century, the debate about 6
ested not only in defending women, but also in exploring women also became one about female rulers, sparked 7
the reasons behind women’s secondary status—that is, primarily by dynastic accidents in many countries, includ- 8
why the great philosophers, statesmen, and poets had ing Spain, England, France, and Scotland, which led to 9
generally been men. In this they were anticipating recent women serving as advisers to child kings or ruling in their 10
discussions about the “social construction of gender” by own right (see pages 436 and 463). The questions vigor- 11
six hundred years. ously and at times viciously disputed directly concerned 12
the social construction of gender: could a woman’s being 13
Improve Your Grade
born into a royal family and educated to rule allow her to 14
Primary Source: The Book of the City of Ladies:
Advice for a “Wise Princess”
overcome the limitations of her sex? Should it? Or stated 15
another way: which was (or should be) the stronger deter- 16
Some authors who wrote defenses of women also minant of character and social role, gender or rank? There 17
wrote attacks, or, like Baldassare Castiglione in The were no successful rebellions against female rulers simply 18
Courtier, included both sides of the argument in a single because they were women, but in part this was because 19
work, so that it is difficult to gauge their actual opinions. female rulers, especially Queen Elizabeth I of England, 20
The debate was clearly more than a literary game among emphasized qualities regarded as masculine—physical 21
intellectuals, however. With the development of the bravery, stamina, wisdom, duty—whenever they appeared 22
printing press, popular interest in the debate about in public. Machiavelli also linked rule and masculinity, us- 23
women grew, and works were translated, reprinted, and ing “effeminate” to describe the worst kind of ruler. (Ef- 24
shared around Europe. The debate about women also
Apago PDF Enhancer feminate in the Renaissance carried different connotations 25
found visual expression, particularly in single-sheet prints than it does today, however; strong heterosexual passion 26
that were hung in taverns or people’s homes. Prints that was not a sign of manliness, but could make one “effemi- 27
juxtaposed female virtues and vices were very popular, nate,” that is, dominated by as well as similar to a woman.) 28
with the virtuous women depicted as those of the classi- Male rulers also made sure that they appeared and were 29
cal or biblical past and the vice-ridden dressed in contemp- portrayed on horseback with armor, weapons, and other 30
orary clothes. The favorite metaphor for the virtuous symbols of masculinity. The ideal Renaissance king or 31
courtier may have been able to sing and dance, but he was 32
also careful to have people see him as a warrior. 33
Renaissance Wedding Chest (Tuscany, late fifteenth
century) Well-to-do brides provided huge dowries to 34
their husbands in Renaissance Italy, and grooms often 35
gave smaller gifts in return, such as this wedding chest. 36
Appreciated more for their decorative value 37
than for practical storage purposes, such 38
chests were prominently displayed in
people’s homes. This 37-inch by 47- 39
inch by 28-inch chest is carved with a 40
scene from classical mythology in which 41
Ceres, the goddess of agriculture, is 42
searching for her daughter Proserpina 43
(also known as Persephone), who has
been abducted by Pluto, the god of the 44
underworld. The subject may have 45
been a commentary on Renaissance 46
marriage, in which young women often 47
married much older men and went to 48
live in their houses. (Philadelphia Mu-
seum of Art. Purchased with the Bloomfield 49
Moore Fund and with Museum Funds, 1944 50S
[1944-15-7]) 51R
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1 Ideas about women’s and men’s proper roles shaped strong monarchy, and during the period of the Hundred
2 the actions of the most powerful Renaissance monarchs Years’ War, no ruler in western Europe was able to pro-
3 and determined those of ordinary men and women even vide effective leadership. The resurgent power of feudal
4 more forcefully. The dominant notion of the “true” man nobilities weakened the centralizing work begun earlier.
5 was that of the married head of household, so men whose Beginning in the fifteenth century, rulers utilized the
6 class and age would have normally conferred political aggressive methods implied by Renaissance political ideas
7 power but who remained unmarried did not participate to rebuild their governments. First in Italy, then in
8 on the same level as their married brothers. Unmarried France, England, and Spain, rulers began the work of re-
9 men in Venice, for example, could not be part of the rul- ducing violence, curbing unruly nobles, and establishing
10 ing council. Women were also understood as “married or domestic order. They emphasized royal majesty and royal
11 to be married,” even if the actual marriage patterns in sovereignty and insisted on the respect and loyalty of all
12 Europe left many women (and men) unmarried until subjects. These monarchs ruthlessly suppressed opposi-
13 quite late in life (see page 394). This meant that women’s tion and rebellion, especially from the nobility. They
14 work was not viewed as supporting a family—even if it loved the business of kingship and worked hard at it.
15 did—and was valued less than men’s. If they worked for • How did the nation-states of western Europe evolve
16 wages, and many women did, women earned about half in this period?
17 to two-thirds of what men did even for the same work,
18 and they received less food (and much less ale or wine) if
19 wages included food.
20 The maintenance of appropriate power relationships
21 between men and women, with men dominant and
France
22 women subordinate, served as a symbol of the proper The Hundred Years’ War left France drastically depopu-
23 functioning of society as a whole. Disorder in the proper lated, commercially ruined, and agriculturally weak. None-
24 gender hierarchy was linked with other types of social up- theless, the ruler whom Joan of Arc had seen crowned at
25 heaval and was viewed as the most threatening way in
Apago PDF Enhancer Reims, Charles VII (r. 1422–1461), revived the monar-
26 which the world could be turned upside down. Carnival chy and France. He seemed an unlikely person to do so.
27 plays, woodcuts, and stories frequently portrayed domi- Frail, indecisive, and burdened with questions about his
28 neering wives in pants and henpecked husbands washing paternity (his father had been deranged; his mother, no-
29 diapers alongside professors in dunce caps and peasants toriously promiscuous), Charles VII nevertheless began
30 riding princes. Men and women involved in relationships France’s long recovery.
31 in which the women were thought to have power—an Charles reconciled the Burgundians and Armagnacs,
32 older woman who married a younger man, or a woman who had been waging civil war for thirty years. By 1453
33 who scolded her husband—were often subjected to pub- French armies had expelled the English from French soil
34 lic ridicule, with bands of neighbors shouting insults and except in Calais. Charles reorganized the royal council, giv-
35 banging sticks and pans in disapproval. Of all the ways in ing increased influence to middle-class men, and strength-
36 which Renaissance society was hierarchically arranged— ened royal finances through such taxes as the gabelle (on
37 class, age, level of education, rank, race, occupation— salt) and the taille (land tax). These taxes remained the
38 gender was regarded as the most “natural” and therefore Crown’s chief sources of income until the Revolution of
39 the most important to defend. 1789.
40 By establishing regular companies of cavalry and
41 archers—recruited, paid, and inspected by the state—
42 Charles created the first permanent royal army. In 1438
43 Politics and the State in the Charles published the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges,
44 Renaissance (ca –) asserting the superiority of a general council over the pa-
45 pacy, giving the French crown major control over the ap-
46 The High Middle Ages had witnessed the origins of many pointment of bishops, and depriving the pope of French
47 of the basic institutions of the modern state. Sheriffs, in- ecclesiastical revenues. The Pragmatic Sanction estab-
48 quests, juries, circuit judges, professional bureaucracies, lished Gallican (or French) liberties because it affirmed
49 and representative assemblies all trace their origins to the the special rights of the French crown over the French
50S twelfth and thirteenth centuries (see pages 259–273). church. Greater control over the church and the army
51R The linchpin for the development of states, however, was helped consolidate the authority of the French crown.
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Politics and the State in the Renaissance (ca 1450–1521) • 435
Charles’s son Louis XI (r. 1461–1483), called the “Spi- struct the monarchy. Edward, his brother Richard III 1
der King” because of his treacherous character, was very (r. 1483–1485), and Henry VII (r. 1485–1509) of the 2
much a Renaissance prince. Facing the perpetual French Welsh house of Tudor worked to restore royal prestige, 3
problem of reduction of feudal disorder, he saw money to crush the power of the nobility, and to establish 4
as the answer. Louis promoted new industries, such as order and law at the local level. All three rulers used 5
silk weaving at Lyons and Tours. He welcomed foreign methods that Machiavelli himself would have praised— 6
craftsmen and entered into commercial treaties with Eng- ruthlessness, efficiency, and secrecy. 7
land, Portugal, and the towns of the Hanseatic League The Hundred Years’ War had been financed by Parlia- 8
(see page 341). He used the revenues raised through ment. Dominated by baronial factions, Parliament had 9
these economic activities and severe taxation to improve been the arena in which the nobility exerted its power. As 10
the army. With the army, Louis stopped aristocratic brig- long as the monarchy was dependent on the Lords and 11
andage and slowly cut into urban independence. the Commons for revenue, the king had to call Parlia- 12
Luck favored his goal of expanding royal authority and ment. Edward IV and subsequently the Tudors, except- 13
unifying the kingdom. On the timely death of Charles ing Henry VIII, conducted foreign policy on the basis of 14
the Bold, duke of Burgundy, in 1477, Louis invaded diplomacy, avoiding expensive wars. Thus the English 15
Burgundy and gained some territories. Three years later, monarchy did not depend on Parliament for money, and 16
the extinction of the house of Anjou brought Louis the the Crown undercut that source of aristocratic influence. 17
counties of Anjou, Bar, Maine, and Provence. Henry VII did summon several meetings of Parliament 18
Two further developments strengthened the French in the early years of his reign, primarily to confirm laws, 19
monarchy. The marriage of Louis XII (r. 1498–1515) and but the center of royal authority was the royal council, 20
Anne of Brittany added the large western duchy of Brit- which governed at the national level. There Henry VII 21
tany to the state. Then the French king Francis I and Pope revealed his distrust of the nobility: though not com- 22
Leo X reached a mutually satisfactory agreement in 1516. pletely excluded, very few great lords were among the 23
The new treaty, the Concordat of Bologna, rescinded the king’s closest advisers. Regular representatives on the 24
Pragmatic Sanction’s assertion of the superiority of a gen-
Apago PDF Enhancer council numbered between twelve and fifteen men, and 25
eral council over the papacy and approved the pope’s while many gained high ecclesiastical rank (the means, as 26
right to receive the first year’s income of new bishops and it happened, by which the Crown paid them), their ori- 27
abbots. In return, Leo X recognized the French ruler’s gins were in the lesser landowning class, and their educa- 28
right to select French bishops and abbots. French kings tion was in law. They were, in a sense, middle class. 29
thereafter effectively controlled the appointment and thus The royal council handled any business the king put 30
the policies of church officials in the kingdom. before it—executive, legislative, and judicial. For exam- 31
ple, the council conducted negotiations with foreign 32
governments and secured international recognition of 33
the Tudor dynasty through the marriage in 1501 of 34
England Henry VII’s eldest son Arthur to Catherine of Aragon, 35
English society suffered severely from the disorders of the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. The 36
the fifteenth century. The aristocracy dominated the gov- council dealt with real or potential aristocratic threats 37
ernment of Henry IV (r. 1399–1413) and indulged in through a judicial offshoot, the court of Star Chamber, 38
mischievous violence at the local level. Population, deci- so called because of the stars painted on the ceiling of the 39
mated by the Black Death, continued to decline. Be- room. The court applied principles of Roman law, and 40
tween 1455 and 1471 adherents of the ducal houses of its methods were sometimes terrifying: accused persons 41
York and Lancaster waged civil war, commonly called the were not entitled to see evidence against them; sessions 42
Wars of the Roses because the symbol of the Yorkists were secret; torture could be applied to extract confes- 43
was a white rose and that of the Lancastrians a red one. sions; and juries were not called. These procedures ran 44
The chronic disorder hurt trade, agriculture, and domes- directly counter to English common-law precedents, but 45
tic industry. Under the pious but mentally disturbed they effectively reduced aristocratic troublemaking. 46
Henry VI (r. 1422–1461), the authority of the monarchy Unlike the continental countries of Spain and France, 47
sank lower than it had been in centuries. England had no standing army or professional civil ser- 48
The Yorkist Edward IV (r. 1461–1483) began estab- vice bureaucracy. The Tudors relied on the support of 49
lishing domestic tranquillity. He succeeded in defeating unpaid local officials, the justices of the peace. These in- 50S
the Lancastrian forces and after 1471 began to recon- fluential landowners in the shires handled all the work of 51R
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1 local government. They apprehended and punished crim- mon foreign policy, until about 1700 Spain existed as a
2 inals, enforced parliamentary statutes, fixed wages and loose confederation of separate kingdoms (see Map 13.3),
3 prices, maintained proper standards of weights and mea- each maintaining its own cortes (parliament), laws, courts,
4 sures, and even checked up on moral behavior. and systems of coinage and taxation.
5 The Tudors won the support of the influential upper To curb the rebellious and warring aristocracy, Ferdi-
6 middle class because the Crown linked government policy nand and Isabella revived an old medieval institution: the
7 with the interests of that class. A commercial or agricul- hermandades, or “brotherhoods,” which were popular
8 tural upper class fears and dislikes few things more than groups in the towns given authority to act as local police
9 disorder and violence. The Tudors promoted peace and forces and judicial tribunals. The hermandades repressed
10 social order, and the gentry did not object to arbitrary violence with such savage punishments that by 1498 they
11 methods, like those of the court of Star Chamber, because could be disbanded.
12 the government had halted the long period of anarchy. The decisive step Ferdinand and Isabella took to curb
13 Secretive, cautious, and thrifty, Henry VII rebuilt the aristocratic power was the restructuring of the royal
14 monarchy. He encouraged the cloth industry and built council. Aristocrats and great territorial magnates were
15 up the English merchant marine. English exports of wool rigorously excluded; thus the influence of the nobility on
16 and the royal export tax on that wool steadily increased. state policy was greatly reduced. Ferdinand and Isabella
17 Henry crushed an invasion from Ireland and secured intended the council to be the cornerstone of their gov-
18 peace with Scotland through the marriage of his daugh- ernment system, with full executive, judicial, and legisla-
19 ter Margaret to the Scottish king. When Henry VII died tive powers under the monarchy. The council was also to
20 in 1509, he left a country at peace both domestically and be responsible for the supervision of local authorities.
21 internationally, a substantially augmented treasury, and The king and queen therefore appointed only people of
22 the dignity and role of the royal majesty much enhanced. middle-class background to the council. The council and
23 various government boards recruited men trained in Ro-
24 man law, which exalted the power of the Crown as the
25
Spain embodiment of the state.
26
Apago PDF Enhancer
While England and France laid the foundations of unified In the extension of royal authority and the consoli-
27 nation-states during the Renaissance, Spain remained a dation of the territories of Spain, the church was the
28 conglomerate of independent kingdoms. Castile and linchpin. If the Spanish crown could select the higher
29 León formed a single political organization, but Aragon clergy, the monarchy could influence ecclesiastical policy,
30 consisted of the principalities of Aragon, Valencia, Ma- wealth, and military resources. Through a diplomatic al-
31 jorca, Sicily, Cardeña, and Naples, each tied to the crown liance with the Spanish pope Alexander VI, the Spanish
32 of Aragon in a different way. On the one hand, the legacy monarchs secured the right to appoint bishops in Spain
33 of Hispanic, Roman, Visigothic, Jewish, and Muslim and in the Hispanic territories in America. This power
34 peoples made for rich cultural diversity; on the other enabled the “Catholic Kings of Spain,” a title granted
35 hand, the Iberian Peninsula lacked a common cultural Ferdinand and Isabella by the papacy, to establish, in ef-
36 tradition. fect, a national church.
37 The centuries-long reconquista—the wars of the north- Revenues from ecclesiastical estates provided the means
38 ern Christian kingdoms to control the entire peninsula to raise an army to continue the reconquista. The victo-
39 (see pages 265–267)—had military and religious objec- rious entry of Ferdinand and Isabella into Granada on
40 tives: conversion or expulsion of the Muslims and Jews January 6, 1492, signaled the culmination of eight cen-
41 and political control of the south. By the middle of the turies of Spanish struggle against the Arabs in southern
42 fifteenth century, the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon Spain and the conclusion of the reconquista (see Map 9.3
43 dominated the weaker Navarre, Portugal, and Granada, on page 266). Granada in the south was incorporated
44 and the Iberian Peninsula, with the exception of Gran- into the Spanish kingdom, and in 1512 Ferdinand con-
45 ada, had been won for Christianity. But even the wed- quered Navarre in the north.
46 ding in 1469 of the dynamic and aggressive Isabella of There still remained a sizable and, in the view of the
47 Castile and the crafty and persistent Ferdinand of Aragon majority of the Spanish people, potentially dangerous mi-
48 did not bring about administrative unity. Rather, their nority, the Jews. During the long centuries of the recon-
49 marriage constituted a dynastic union of two royal quista, Christian kings had renewed Jewish rights and
50S houses, not the political union of two peoples. Although privileges; in fact, Jewish industry, intelligence, and
51R Ferdinand and Isabella (r. 1474–1516) pursued a com- money had supported royal power. While Christians of
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Politics and the State in the Renaissance (ca 1450–1521) • 437
1
2
Compostela Pamplona
3
León
NAVARRE
4
Burgos
5
CATALONIA
6
Lérida
Duero
Eb
ro Barcelona 7
AL
Olmedo 8
Tarragona
Salamanca ARAGON 9
UG
Ávila
10
ia
Coimbra
Tu r
T
L E Ó N - CASTILE Minorca 11
R
ATLANTIC s Majorca
O Tagu 12
P Toledo
OCEAN Valencia 13
Gu Júcar
a di
ana Ibiza 14
Lisbon
15
16
17
ir Córdoba
uiv 18
ea
q
dal
Seville
S 19
Gua
GRANADA
Málaga n
20
Almeria
n ea 21
Cádiz
r ra
ite 22
Gibraltar
Med 23
Tangier Ceuta
24
0 100 200 Km.
A F R I C A 26
0 100 200 Mi.
27
28
MAP 13.3 Spain in 1492 The marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile in 1469 represented 29
a dynastic union of two houses, not a political union of two peoples. Some principalities, such as León (part of
Castile) and Catalonia (part of Aragon), had their own cultures, languages, and legal systems. Barcelona, the 30
port city of Catalonia, controlled a commercial empire throughout the Mediterranean. Most of the people in 31
Granada were Muslims, and Muslims and Jews lived in other areas as well. 32
33
34
all classes borrowed from Jewish moneylenders and while cies. Rising anti-Semitic feeling was aggravated by fiery 35
all who could afford them sought Jewish physicians, a anti-Jewish preaching, by economic dislocation, and by 36
strong undercurrent of resentment of Jewish influence the search for a scapegoat during the Black Death. In 1331 37
and wealth festered. When the kings of France and Eng- a mob attacked the Jewish community of Gerona in Cat- 38
land had expelled the Jews from their kingdoms (see alonia. In 1355 royal troops massacred Jews in Toledo. On 39
page 310), many had sought refuge in Spain. In the four- June 4, 1391, inflamed by “religious” preaching, mobs 40
teenth century Jews formed an integral and indispensable sacked and burned the Jewish community in Seville and 41
part of Spanish life. With vast numbers of Muslims, Jews, compelled the Jews who survived to accept baptism. From 42
and Moorish Christians, medieval Spain represented the Seville anti-Semitic pogroms swept the towns of Valencia, 43
most diverse and cosmopolitan country in Europe. Di- Barcelona, Burgos, Madrid, and Segovia. One scholar esti- 44
versity and cosmopolitanism, however, were not me- mates that 40 percent of the Jewish population of Spain 45
dieval social ideals. was killed or forced to convert.16 Those converted were 46
Since ancient times, governments had seldom tolerated called conversos or New Christians. 47
religious pluralism; religious faiths that differed from the Conversos were often well-educated and successful. In 48
official state religion were considered politically danger- the administration of Castile, New Christians held the 49
ous. But in the fourteenth century anti-Semitism in Spain royal secretaryship, controlled the royal treasury, and 50S
rose more from popular sentiment than from royal poli- composed a third of the royal council. In the church, 51R
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2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24 Felipe Bigarny: Ferdinand and Isabella In these wooden sculptures, the Burgundian artist Felipe Bigarny
portrays Ferdinand and Isabella as paragons of Christian piety, kneeling at prayer. Ferdinand is shown in ar-
mor, a symbol of his military accomplishments and masculinity. Isabella wears a simple white head-covering
26 rather than something more elaborate to indicate her modesty, a key virtue for women, though her actions
27 and writings indicate that she was more determined and forceful than Ferdinand. (Capilla Real, Granada/Laurie
28 Platt Winfrey, Inc.)
29
30
31 they held high positions as archbishops, bishops, and about and punish converts from Judaism who had trans-
32 bots. In the administration of the towns, conversos often gressed against Christianity by secretly adhering to
33 held the highest public offices; in Toledo they controlled Jewish beliefs and performing rites of the Jews.”17 Inves-
34 the collection of royal revenues. They included some of tigations and trials began immediately, as officials of the
35 the leading merchants and business people. They also Inquisition looked for conversos who showed any sign of
36 served great magnates, and by intermarrying with the incomplete conversion, such as not eating pork.
37 nobility they gained political leverage. In the professions Recent scholarship has carefully analyzed documents
38 of medicine and law, New Christians held the most of the Inquisition. Most conversos identified themselves
39 prominent positions. Numbering perhaps two hundred as Christians. They insisted that they were happy to be
40 thousand in a total Spanish population of about 7.5 mil- Christians and failed to see why they should be labeled
41 lion, New Christians and Jews exercised influence dispro- New Christians: many came from families that had re-
42 portionate to their numbers. ceived baptism generations before.
43 Such successes bred resentment. Aristocratic grandees In response, officials of the Inquisition developed a
44 resented their financial dependence; the poor hated the new type of anti-Semitism. A person’s status as a Jew,
45 converso tax collectors; and churchmen doubted the sin- they argued, could not be changed by religious conver-
46 cerity of their conversions. Queen Isabella shared these sion, but was in the person’s nature as a human being.
47 suspicions, and she and Ferdinand sought permission to Judaism was in their blood and was heritable, so Jews
48 set up an Inquisition in Spain. Pope Sixtus IV’s bull au- could never be true Christians. In what were known as
49 thorizing the Inquisition reached Spain in November “purity of the blood” laws, having pure Christian blood
50S 1478, and on September 28, 1480, Ferdinand and Is- became a requirement for noble status. Intermarriage be-
51R abella ordered the establishment of tribunals to “search tween Old and New Christians had been common for
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centuries, but now many families sought to hide their an- Shortly after the conquest of the Moorish stronghold 1
cestors. Ideas about Jews developed in Spain were im- at Granada in 1492, Isabella and Ferdinand issued an 2
portant components in European concepts of race, and edict expelling all practicing Jews from Spain. Of the 3
discussions of “Jewish blood” later expanded into no- community of perhaps 200,000 Jews, 150,000 fled. (Ef- 4
tions of the “Jewish race.” forts were made, through last-minute conversions, to re- 5
This new racially based anti-Semitism emerged at the tain good Jewish physicians.) Many Muslims in Granada 6
very time a Spanish national feeling was emerging, a na- were forcibly baptized and became another type of New 7
tional sentiment that looked to the building of a single Christian investigated by the Inquisition. Absolute reli- 8
nation. Whereas earlier anti-Semitism, such as that dur- gious orthodoxy and purity of blood (“untainted” by 9
ing the time of the Black Death, alleged Jewish schemes Jews or Muslims) served as the theoretical foundation of 10
to kill off entire Christian populations—by poisoning the the Spanish national state. 11
wells, for example, from which Jews derived no profit— The diplomacy of the Catholic rulers of Spain achieved 12
fifteenth-century theories held that Jews or New Chris- a success they never anticipated. Partly out of hatred for 13
tians planned to take over all public offices in Spain. Jews, the French and partly out of a desire to gain international 14
therefore, represented a grave threat to national unity. recognition for their new dynasty, in 1496 Ferdinand and 15
Although the Inquisition was a religious institution es- Isabella married their second daughter Joanna, heiress to 16
tablished to ensure the Catholic faith, it was controlled Castile, to the archduke Philip, heir through his mother 17
by the Crown and served primarily as a politically unify- to the Burgundian Netherlands and through his father 18
ing tool. Because the Spanish Inquisition commonly ap- to the Holy Roman Empire. Philip and Joanna’s son, 19
plied torture to extract confessions, first from conversos, Charles V (r. 1519–1556), thus succeeded to a vast pat- 20
then from Muslims, and later from Protestants, it gained rimony. When Charles’s son Philip II joined Portugal to 21
a notorious reputation. Thus the word inquisition, mean- the Spanish crown in 1580, the Iberian Peninsula was at 22
ing “any judicial inquiry conducted with ruthless sever- last politically united. The various kingdoms, however, 23
ity,” came into the English language. The methods of the were administered separately. 24
Spanish Inquisition were cruel, though not as cruel as the
investigative methods of some twentieth-century gov- 26
ernments. 27
28
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32
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37
• What economic and political developments in Italy The Italian Renaissance rested on the phenomenal eco- 38
provided the setting for the Renaissance? nomic growth of the High Middle Ages. In the period 39
from about 1050 to 1300, a new economy emerged 40
• What were the key ideas of the Renaissance, and how 41
were they different for men and women and for based on Venetian and Genoese shipping and long-
distance trade and on Florentine banking and cloth man- 42
southern and northern Europeans?
ufacture. These commercial activities, combined with the 43
• How did changes in art both reflect and shape 44
new ideas? struggle of urban communes for political independence
from surrounding feudal lords, led to the appearance of a 45
• What were the key social hierarchies in Renaissance new ruling group in Italian cities—merchant oligarchs. 46
Europe, and how did ideas about hierarchy shape 47
Unrest in some cities led to their being taken over by sin-
people’s lives? 48
gle rulers, but however Italian cities were governed, they
• How did the nation-states of western Europe evolve jockeyed for power with one another and prevented the 49
in this period? establishment of a single Italian nation-state. 50S
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1 The Renaissance was characterized by self-conscious Like the merchant oligarchs and signori of Italian city-
2 awareness among fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Ital- states, Renaissance monarchs manipulated culture to en-
3 ians, particularly scholars and writers known as human- hance their power.
4 ists, that they were living in a new era. Key to this
5 attitude was a serious interest in the Latin classics, a be-
6 lief in individual potential, and a more secular attitude
7 toward life. All these are evident in political theory devel- Key Terms
8 oped in the Renaissance, particularly that of Machiavelli.
9 Humanists opened schools for boys and young men to Renaissance orders
10 train them for an active life of public service, but they had communes debate about
11 doubts about whether humanist education was appropri- oligarchy women
12 ate for women. As humanism spread to northern Europe, popolo gabelle
13 religious concerns became more pronounced, and Chris- condottieri Pragmatic Sanction
14 tian humanists set out plans for the reform of church and signori of Bourges
15 society. Their ideas were spread to a much wider audi- courts Wars of the Roses
16 ence than those of early humanists because of the devel- republic royal council
17 opment of the printing press with movable metal type, humanism court of Star
18 which revolutionized communication. individualism Chamber
19 Interest in the classical past and in the individual also The Prince justices of the
20 shaped Renaissance art in terms of style and subject mat- secularism peace
21 ter. Painting became more naturalistic, and the individual Christian humanists hermandades
22 portrait emerged as a distinct artistic genre. Wealthy mer- patrons New Christians
23 chants, cultured rulers, and powerful popes all hired
24 painters, sculptors, and architects to design and orna-
Improve Your Grade Flashcards
25 ment public and private buildings. Art in Italy became
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26 more secular and classical, while that in northern Europe
27 retained a more religious tone. Artists began to under- Suggested Reading
28 stand themselves as having a special creative genius,
29 though they continued to produce works on order for Clark, Samuel. State and Status: The Rise of the State and
30 patrons, who often determined the content and form. Aristocratic Power. 1995. Discusses the relationship be-
31 Social hierarchies in the Renaissance built on those of tween centralizing states and the nobility.
32 the Middle Ages, but also developed new features that Earle, T. F., and K. J. P. Lowe, eds. Black Africans in Ren-
33 contributed to the modern social hierarchies of race, aissance Europe. 2005. Includes essays discussing many
34 class, and gender. Black Africans entered Europe in siz- aspects of ideas about race and the experience of Africans
35 able numbers for the first time since the collapse of the in Europe.
36 Roman Empire, and Europeans fit them into changing Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Press as an Agent of
37 understandings of ethnicity and race. The medieval hier- Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations
38 archy of orders based on function in society intermingled in Early Modern Europe. 1979. The definitive study of
39 with a new hierarchy based on wealth, with new types of the impact of printing.
40 elites becoming more powerful. The Renaissance debate
41 about women led many to discuss women’s nature and Ertman, Thomas. The Birth of Leviathan: Building States
42 proper role in society, a discussion sharpened by the pres- and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.
43 ence of a number of ruling queens in this era. 1997. A good introduction to the creation of nation-
44 With taxes provided by business people, kings in west- states.
45 ern Europe established greater peace and order, both Grafton, Anthony, and Lisa Jardine. From Humanism to
46 essential for trade. Feudal monarchies gradually evolved the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fif-
47 in the direction of nation-states. In Spain, France, and teenth and Sixteenth Century Europe. 1986. Discusses
48 England, rulers also emphasized royal dignity and au- humanist education and other developments in Renais-
49 thority, and they utilized Machiavellian ideas to ensure sance learning.
50S the preservation and continuation of their governments.
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Hale, J. R. The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance. Notes 1

1994. A comprehensive treatment of the period, arranged 2
1. Quoted in J. Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
thematically. (London: Phaidon Books, 1951), p. 89. 3
Hale, J. R. Machiavelli and Renaissance Italy. 1966. A 2. Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini; A Florentine Artist; Written by Himself 4
sound short biography. (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1927), p. 2. 5
3. Quoted in W. H. Woodward, Vittorino da Feltre and Other Hu- 6
Harbison, Craig. The Mirror of the Artist: Northern Ren- manist Educators (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1897),
7
aissance Art in Its Historical Context. 1995. The best in- p. 102.
4. Ibid., p. 127. 8
troduction to the art of northern Europe. 9
5. C. E. Detmold, trans., The Historical, Political and Diplomatic
Holmes, George, ed. Art and Politics in Renaissance Italy. Writings of Niccolò Machiavelli (Boston: J. R. Osgood, 1882), 10
1993. Treats the art of Florence and Rome against a popp. 51–52. 11
6. Ibid., pp. 54–55.
litical background. 12
7. Quoted in E. H. Harbison, The Christian Scholar and His Calling in
Jardine, Lisa. Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renais- the Age of the Reformation (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 13
sance. 1998. Discusses changing notions of social status, 1956), p. 109. 14
artistic patronage, and consumer goods. 8. Quoted in F. Seebohm, The Oxford Reformers (London: J. M. Dent 15
& Sons, 1867), p. 256. 16
Lubkin, Gregory. A Renaissance Court: Milan Under 9. B. Burroughs, ed., Vasari’s Lives of the Artists (New York: Simon &
17
Galeazzo Maria Sforza. 1994. A wonderful study of one Schuster, 1946), pp. 164–165.
10. L. Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy 18
of the most important Renaissance courts. 19
(New York: Vintage Books, 1980), p. 253.
Man, John. Gutenberg Revolution: The Story of a Genius 11. G. Bull, trans., Aretino: Selected Letters (Baltimore: Penguin 20
and an Invention That Changed the World. 2002. Presents Books, 1976), p. 109. 21
12. Quoted in P. Murray and L. Murray, A Dictionary of Art and Artists
a rather idealized view of Gutenberg, but has good dis- 22
(Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1963), p. 125.
cussions of his milieu and excellent illustrations. 13. J. Hale, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance (New York: 23
McConica, James. Erasmus. 1991. A sensitive treatment Atheneum, 1994), p. 44. 24
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of the leading northern humanist. 14. Quoted in J. Devisse and M. Mollat, The Image of the Black in West- 25
ern Art, vol. 2, trans. W. G. Ryan (New York: William Morrow, 26
Nauert, Charles. Humanism and the Culture of Renais- 1979), pt. 2, pp. 187–188.
27
sance Europe. 1995. A thorough introduction to hu- 15. Boccaccio, Concerning Famous Women, trans. Guido Guarino (New
Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers University Press, 1963), p. 87. 28
manism throughout Europe. 29
16. See B. F. Reilly, The Medieval Spains (New York: Cambridge Uni-
Netanyahu, Benjamin. The Origins of the Inquisition in versity Press, 1993), pp. 198–203. 30
Fifteenth Century Spain. 1995. An analysis of issues re- 17. B. Netanyahu, The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century 31
Spain (New York: Random House, 1995), p. 921.
lating to the expulsion of the Jews by the former prime 32
minister of Israel. 33
Wiesner, Merry E. Women and Gender in Early Modern 34
Europe, 2d ed. 2000. Discusses all aspects of women’s 35
lives and ideas about gender. 36
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An Age of Gold
A s the foremost scholar of the early sixteenth

century and a writer with international contacts,
preparations aside and established peace upon
solid and, as I trust, adamantine foundations, I
am led to a confident hope that not only morality
and Christian piety, but also a genuine and purer
Desiderius Erasmus (1466?–1536) maintained a vast literature, may come to renewed life or greater
correspondence. In the letters here, he explains his splendour; especially as this object is pursued with
belief that Europe was entering a golden age. The equal zeal in various regions of the world—at
letters also reflect the spiritual ideals of northern Rome by Pope Leo, in Spain by the Cardinal of
European humanists. Wolfgang Capito (1478?– Toledo,* in England by Henry, eighth of the
1541), a German scholar, was professor of theology name, himself not unskilled in letters, and among
at the University of Basel. Pope Leo X (1513–1521), ourselves by our young King Charles.† In France,
second son of Lorenzo de’ Medici, extended the King Francis, who seems as it were born for this
hospitality of the papal court to men of letters, object, invites and entices from all countries men
sought to rebuild Rome as a Renaissance capital,
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and pushed the building of the new Saint Peter’s
that excel in merit or in learning. Among the
Germans the same object is pursued by many of
Basilica by licensing the sale of indulgences (see their excellent princes and bishops, and especially
page 448). by Maximilian Caesar,‡ whose old age, weary of
so many wars, has determined to seek rest in the
To Capito employments of peace, a resolution more
It is no part of my nature, most learned Wolfgang, becoming to his own years, while it is fortunate
to be excessively fond of life; whether it is that I for the Christian world. To the piety of these
have, to my own mind, lived nearly long enough, princes it is due, that we see everywhere, as if
having entered my fifty-first year, or that I see upon a given signal, men of genius are arising and
nothing in this life so splendid or delightful that conspiring together to restore the best literature.
it should be desired by one who is convinced by Polite letters, which were almost extinct, are
the Christian faith that a happier life awaits those now cultivated and embraced by Scots, by Danes,
who in this world earnestly attach themselves to and by Irishmen. Medicine has a host of
piety. But at the present moment I could almost champions. . . . The Imperial Law is restored at
wish to be young again, for no other reason but Paris by William Budé, in Germany by Udalric
this, that I anticipate the near approach of a Zasy; and mathematics at Basel by Henry of
golden age, so clearly do we see the minds of Glaris. In the theological sphere there was no
princes, as if changed by inspiration, devoting all little to be done, because this science has been
their energies to the pursuit of peace. The chief hitherto mainly professed by those who are most
movers in this matter are Pope Leo and Francis, pertinacious in their abhorrence of the better
King of France.
There is nothing this king does not do or
does not suffer in his desire to avert war and *Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros (1436–1517), Spanish
consolidate peace . . . and exhibiting in this, as in statesman and adviser to Queen Isabella, who gained
everything else, a magnanimous and truly royal renown for his reform of the monasteries and the Spanish
church.
character. Therefore, when I see that the highest † After 1516 king of Spain and much of the Netherlands;
sovereigns of Europe—Francis of France, Charles after 1519 Holy Roman emperor.
the King Catholic, Henry of England, and the ‡Holy Roman emperor (1493–1519); he was succeeded by
Emperor Maximilian—have set all their warlike his grandson Charles (above).
442
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Hans Holbein the Younger, Erasmus (ca 1521).

Holbein persuaded his close friend Erasmus to
sit for this portrait and portrayed him at his
characteristic work, writing. (Louvre/Scala/Art
Resource, NY)
literature,§ and are the more successful in

defending their own ignorance as they do it
under pretext of piety, the unlearned vulgar
being induced to believe that violence is offered
to religion if anyone begins an assault upon their
barbarism. . . . But even here I am confident of
success if the knowledge of the three languages
continues to be received in schools, as it has now
begun. . . .
The humblest part of the work has naturally
fallen to my lot. Whether my contribution has
been worth anything I cannot say; . . . although
the work was not undertaken by me with any
confidence that I could myself teach anything
magnificent, but I wanted to construct a road for
other persons of higher aims, so that they might
be less impeded by pools and stumbling blocks in
carrying home those fair and glorious treasures. chief blessings of humanity are about to be
Why should I say more? Everything promises restored to her. I mean, first, that truly Christian
me the happiest success. But one doubt still piety, which has in many ways fallen into decay;
possesses my mind. I am afraid that, under cover
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of a revival of ancient literature, paganism may
secondly, learning of the best sort, hitherto partly
neglected and partly corrupted; and thirdly, the
attempt to rear its head—as there are some among public and lasting concord of Christendom, the
Christians that acknowledge Christ in name but source and parent of piety and erudition. These
breathe inwardly a heathen spirit—or, on the other will be the undying trophies of the tenth Leo,
hand, that the restoration of Hebrew learning may which, consecrated to eternal memory by the
give occasion to a revival of Judaism. This would writings of learned men, will forever render your
be a plague as much opposed to the doctrine of pontificate and your family|| illustrious. I pray God
Christ as anything that could happen. . . . Some that he may be pleased to confirm this purpose in
books have lately come out with a strong flavour you, and so protract your life, that after the affairs
of Judaism. I see how Paul exerted himself to of mankind have been ordered according to your
defend Christ against Judaism, and I am aware designs, Leo may make a long-delayed return to
that some persons are secretly sliding in that the skies.
direction. . . . So much the more do I wish you to
undertake this province; I know that your sincere
piety will have regard to nothing but Christ, to
whom all your studies are devoted. . . .
1. What does Erasmus mean by a “golden age”?
To Pope Leo X
2. Do education and learning ensure
While on the one hand, as a private matter, I improvement in the human condition, in his
acknowledge my own felicity in obtaining the opinion? Do you agree?
approbation not only of the Supreme Pontiff but
of Leo, by his own endowments supreme among 3. What would you say are the essential
the supreme, so on the other hand, as a matter differences between Erasmus’s educational
of public concern, I congratulate this our age— goals and those of modern society?
which bids fair to be an age of gold, if ever such ||TheFlorentine House of Medici, whose interests Leo X,
there was—wherein I see, under your happy himself a Medici, was known always to support.
auspices and by your holy counsels, three of the Source: Epistles 522 and 530, from The Epistles of Erasmus,
trans. F. M. Nichols (London: Longmans, Green & Co.,
§Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. 1901).
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51R Giorgio Vasari: Massacre of Coligny and the Huguenots (1573). This fresco shows the Saint
Bartholomew’s Day massacre in Paris, one of many bloody events in the religious wars that
52L accompanied the Reformation. (Vatican Palace/Scala/Art Resource, NY)
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c h a p t e r 1
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Reformations and 3
4
Religious Wars, 5
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1500–1600 8
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chapter preview 12
13
The Early Reformation
• What were the central ideas of the
reformers, and why were they
C alls for reform of the Christian church began very early in its his-
tory. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman
Empire in the fourth century, many believers thought that the church had
14
15
16
17
appealing to different social groups? abandoned its original mission, and they called for a return to a church
18
The Reformation and that was not linked to the state. Throughout the Middle Ages individu-
19
German Politics als and groups argued that the church had become too wealthy and pow-
20
erful and urged monasteries, convents, bishoprics, and the papacy to give
• How did the political situation in up their property and focus on service to the poor. Some asserted that
21
Germany shape the course of the 22
basic teachings of the church were not truly Christian and that changes
Reformation? 23
were needed in theology as well as in institutional structures and prac-
24
The Spread of the Protestant tices. The Christian humanists of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth
25
Reformation Apago PDF Enhancer
centuries urged reform, primarily through educational and social change.
26
• How did Protestant ideas and Sixteenth-century cries for reformation were hardly new. Throughout
27
institutions spread beyond German- the centuries, men and women believed that the early Christian church
28
speaking lands? represented a golden age, akin to the golden age of the classical past cel-
29
ebrated by Renaissance humanists. What was new was the breadth of ac-
The Catholic Reformation 30
ceptance and the ultimate impact of the calls for reform. In 1500 there
• How did the Catholic Church 31
was one Christian church in western Europe to which all Christians at
32
respond to the new religious least nominally belonged. Fifty years later there were many, a situation
33
situation? that continues today.
34
Religious Violence Along with the Renaissance, the Reformation is often seen as a key
35
element in the creation of the “modern” world. This radical change con-
• What were the causes and tained many elements of continuity, however. Sixteenth-century reform-
36
consequences of religious violence, 37
ers looked back to the early Christian church for their inspiration, and
including riots, wars, and witch-hunts? 38
many of their reforming ideas had been advocated for centuries.
39
40
41
The Early Reformation 42
43
Calls for reform in the church came from many quarters in early-
44
sixteenth-century Europe—from educated laypeople such as Christian
45
humanists and urban residents, from villagers and artisans, and from
46
church officials themselves. This dissatisfaction helps explain why the
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446 CHAPTER 14 • R E F O R M AT I O N S A N D R E L I G I O U S W A R S , 1 5 0 0 – 1 6 0 0
1 ideas of an obscure professor from a new and not very such conduct was completely at odds with the church’s
2 prestigious German university found a ready audience. rules and moral standards, it scandalized the educated
3 Within a decade of his first publishing his ideas (using the faithful.
4 new technology of the printing press), much of central The bishops only casually enforced regulations regard-
5 Europe and Scandinavia had broken with the Catholic ing the education of priests. As a result, standards for or-
6 Church and even more radical concepts of the Christian dination were shockingly low. Many priests could barely
7 message were being developed and linked to calls for so- read and write, and critics laughed at illiterate priests
8 cial change. mumbling Latin words of the Mass that they could not
9 • What were the central ideas of the reformers, and why understand. In northern Europe—in England, for exam-
10 were they appealing to different social groups? ple—recent research shows an improvement in clerical
11 educational standards in the early sixteenth century. Nev-
12 ertheless, parish priests throughout Europe were not as
13 educated as the educated laity, who condemned the ir-
14 The Christian Church in the regularity and poor quality of sermons.
15 In regard to absenteeism and pluralism, many clerics,
16
Early Sixteenth Century especially higher ecclesiastics, held several benefices (or
17 If external religious observances are a measure of depth offices) simultaneously but seldom visited the benefices,
18 of heartfelt conviction, Europeans in the early sixteenth let alone performed the spiritual responsibilities those of-
19 century were deeply pious and remained loyal to the Ro- fices entailed. Instead, they collected revenues from all of
20 man Catholic Church. Villagers participated in proces- them and hired a poor priest, paying him just a fraction
21 sions honoring the local saints. Middle-class people made of the income to fulfill the spiritual duties of a particular
22 pilgrimages to the great shrines, such as Saint Peter’s in local church. Many Italian officials in the papal curia held
23 Rome. The upper classes continued to remember the benefices in England, Spain, and Germany. Revenues
24 church in their wills. People of all social classes devoted from those countries paid the Italian priests’ salaries, pro-
25 an enormous amount of their time and income to reli-
Apago PDF Enhancer voking not only charges of absenteeism but also nation-
26 gious causes and foundations. alistic resentment.
27 Despite—or perhaps because of—the depth of their There was also local resentment of clerical privileges
28 piety, many people were also highly critical of the Roman and immunities. Priests, monks, and nuns were exempt
29 Catholic Church and its clergy. The papal conflict with from civic responsibilities, such as defending the city and
30 the German emperor Frederick II in the thirteenth cen- paying taxes. Yet religious orders frequently held large
31 tury, followed by the Babylonian Captivity and then the amounts of urban property, in some cities as much as
32 Great Schism, badly damaged the prestige of church one-third. City governments were increasingly deter-
33 leaders. Humanists denounced corruption in the church. mined to integrate the clergy into civic life by reducing
34 In The Praise of Folly, Erasmus condemned the supersti- their privileges and giving them public responsibilities.
35 tions of the parish clergy and the excessive rituals of the This brought city leaders into opposition with bishops
36 monks (see page 325). Many ordinary people agreed. and the papacy, which for centuries had stressed the inde-
37 Court records, bishop’s visitations of parishes, and even pendence of the church from lay control and the distinc-
38 popular songs and printed images show widespread anti- tion between members of the clergy and laypeople.
39 clericalism, or opposition to the clergy.
40
41
Improve Your Grade Martin Luther
Primary Source: The Praise of Folly: Erasmus on Popu-
42 lar Religious Practice
By itself, widespread criticism of the church did not lead
43 to the dramatic changes of the sixteenth century. Those
44 In the early sixteenth century critics of the church con- resulted from the personal religious struggle of a German
45 centrated their attacks on three disorders—clerical im- university professor, Martin Luther (1483–1546), who
46 morality, clerical ignorance, and clerical pluralism, with was also an Augustinian friar. The Augustinian friars were
47 the related problem of absenteeism. Many priests, partic- a mendicant order, like the Dominicans and Franciscans,
48 ularly those ministering to country people, had concu- whose members often preached, taught, and assisted the
49 bines, and reports of neglect of the rule of celibacy were poor. Martin Luther was born at Eisleben in Saxony and
50S common. Clerical drunkenness, gambling, and indul- was the second son of a copper miner and, later, mine
51R gence in fancy dress were also frequent charges. Because owner. At considerable sacrifice, his father sent him to
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The Early Reformation • 447
school and then to the University of Erfurt, where he Chronology 1

earned a master’s degree with distinction at the young 2
age of twenty-one. Hans Luther intended his son to pro- 1477 Union of Burgundian and Habsburg dynasties 3
ceed to the study of law and a legal career, which for cen- 4
turies had been the steppingstone to public office and 1517 Martin Luther, “Ninety-five Theses on the 5
material success. Badly frightened during a thunder- Power of Indulgences” 6
storm, however, Martin Luther vowed to become a friar. 1521 Diet of Worms 7
Much to his father’s dismay, he entered the monastery of 8
the Augustinian friars at Erfurt in 1505. Luther was or- 1521–1559 Habsburg-Valois Wars 9
dained a priest in 1507 and after additional study earned 1525 Peasants’ War in Germany 10
a doctorate of theology. From 1512 until his death in 11
1546, he served as professor of the Scriptures at the new 1526 Turkish victory at Mohács, which allows spread 12
of Protestantism in Hungary
University of Wittenberg. Luther was deadly serious 13
when he said, years later, “I would not take all the 1536 John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian 14
world’s goods for my doctorate.” His doctorate led to Religion 15
his professorship, and his professorship conferred on him 16
1540 Papal approval of Society of Jesus (Jesuits)
the authority to teach: throughout his life, he frequently 17
cited his professorship as justification for his reforming 1542 Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office and 18
work. Roman Inquisition 19
Martin Luther was a very conscientious friar. His 20
1545–1563 Council of Trent
scrupulous observance of the religious routine, frequent 21
confessions, and fasting, however, gave him only tempo- 1553–1558 Reign of Mary Tudor and temporary 22
rary relief from anxieties about sin and his ability to meet restoration of Catholicism in England 23
God’s demands. These apprehensions in turn led him to 1555 Peace of Augsburg, official recognition of 24
doubt the value of the monastic life itself. Since the me-
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Lutheranism 25
dieval church had long held that the monastic life was a 26
sure and certain road to salvation, Luther’s confusion 1558–1603 Reign of Elizabeth and the “Elizabethan 27
and anxieties increased. Settlement” in England 28
Luther’s wise and kindly confessor, John Staupitz, di- 1559 Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis 29
rected him to study Saint Paul’s letters in the New Testa- 30
ment. Gradually Luther arrived at a new understanding 1560–1660 Height of the European witch-hunt 31
of the Pauline letters and of all Christian doctrine. His 1568–1578 Civil war in the Netherlands 32
understanding is often summarized as “faith alone, grace 33
alone, Scripture alone” (sola fide, sola gratia, sola Scrip- 1572 Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre 34
tura). For Christians, salvation and justification come 1598 Edict of Nantes 35
through faith, not good works, though true faith leads to 36
love and to the active expression of faith in helping oth- 37
ers. Faith is a free gift of God, not the result of human ef- 38
fort. God’s word is revealed only in Scripture, not in the ter’s indulgence and allowed Albert to keep a portion of 39
traditions of the church. the revenue collected in the territories over which he was 40
At the same time Luther was engaged in scholarly re- bishop to pay back the Fuggers. 41
flections and professorial lecturing, Archbishop Albert of Albert hired a friar from the Dominican order, Johann 42
Mainz, who controlled the area in which Wittenberg was Tetzel, to run the indulgence sale. Tetzel mounted an ad- 43
located, sought to become the bishop of several other vertising blitz. He was a very effective salesman, hawking 44
territories as well. He borrowed money from the Fug- indulgences—printed on the newly developed printing 45
gers, a wealthy banking family of Augsburg, to pay for press—in a way that promised full forgiveness for sins or 46
the papal dispensation of the rules regarding pluralism. the end of time in purgatory for one’s friends and rela- 47
Meanwhile, Pope Leo X, a member of the Medici family, tives. One of his slogans—“As soon as coin in coffer 48
was constructing family chapels and tombs (for which he rings, the soul from purgatory springs”—brought phe- 49
hired Michelangelo) and continuing the building of St. nomenal success. Tetzel even drew up a chart with prices 50S
Peter’s Basilica in Rome. He authorized a special St. Pe- for the forgiveness of particular sins. 51R
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1 straight there.) When it was first discussed, purgatory was

2 a rather neutral place, unpleasant largely because one was
3 separated from God, but by the fifteenth century it had
4 acquired the fire and brimstone of Hell. Time in purga-
5 tory could be shortened by actions of the living, how-
6 ever, such as arranging for memorial masses or saying
7 prayers for the dead.
8 According to Catholic theology, the church has the au-
9 thority to grant sinners the remission of the penalties for
10 sin by drawing on what was termed the “treasury of mer-
11 its.” This was a collection of all the virtuous acts that
12 Christ, the apostles, and the saints had done during their
13 lives; their virtue was infinite, and so was the treasury of
14 merit. People thought of it as a sort of strongbox, like
15 those in which merchants carried coins. An indulgence
16 was a piece of parchment (and later paper), signed by the
17 pope or another church official, that substituted a virtu-
18 ous act from the treasury of merit for penance. The pa-
19 pacy and bishops had given Crusaders such indulgences,
20 and by the later Middle Ages they were offered for mak-
21 ing pilgrimages or other pious activities and also sold
22 outright. People widely believed that indulgences se-
23 cured total remission of penalties for sin and could sub-
24 stitute for both penance and time in purgatory. They
25 Apago PDF Enhancer ensured swift entry into Heaven and, like prayers for the
26 dead, were effective on behalf of relatives or friends al-
27 ready dead.
28 Luther was severely troubled that ignorant people be-
The Folly of Indulgences In this woodcut from the early
29 Reformation, the church’s sale of indulgences is viciously lieved that they had no further need for repentance once
30 satirized. With one claw in holy water, another resting on the they had purchased indulgences. He wrote a letter to
31 coins paid for indulgences, and a third stretched out for offer- Archbishop Albert on the subject and enclosed in Latin
32 ings, the church, in the form of a rapacious bird, writes out an “Ninety-five Theses on the Power of Indulgences.” His
33 indulgence with excrement. The creature’s head and gaping argument was that indulgences undermined the serious-
mouth represent Hell, with foolish Christians inside, others
34 being cooked in a pot above, and a demon delivering the pope ness of the sacrament of penance, competed with the
35 in a three-tiered crown and holding the keys to Heaven, a preaching of the Gospel, and downplayed the impor-
36 symbol of papal authority. Illustrations such as this, often tance of charity in Christian life. After Luther’s death, bi-
37 printed as single-sheet broadsides and sold very cheaply, ographies reported that the theses were also posted on
38 clearly conveyed criticism of the church to people who could the door of the church at Wittenberg Castle on October
not read. (Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg)
39 31, 1517. Such an act would have been very strange—
40 they were in Latin and written for those learned in theol-
41 ogy, not for normal churchgoers—but it has become a
42 What exactly was an indulgence? According to Cath- standard part of Luther lore. In any case, Luther in-
43 olic theology, individuals who sin alienate themselves tended the theses for academic debate, but by December
44 from God. To be reconciled to God, the sinner must 1517 they had been translated into German and were
45 confess his or her sins to a priest and do an assigned read throughout the Roman Empire.
46 penance, a religious act such as praying or fasting. Some-
times earthly penance is not enough, and beginning in Improve Your Grade
47
Primary Source: “Ninety-five Theses on the Power and
48 the twelfth century learned theologians increasingly em-
Efficacy of Indulgences”
49 phasized the idea of purgatory, a place where souls on
50S their way to Heaven after death went to make amends for Luther was ordered to come to Rome, which he was
51R their earthly sins. (Those on their way to Hell went able to avoid because of the political situation in the em-
52L
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pire, but he did engage in formal scholarly debate with a Zwingli was convinced that Christian life rested on the 1
representative of the church, Johann Eck, at Leipzig in Scriptures, which were the pure words of God and the 2
1519. He denied both the authority of the pope and the sole basis of religious truth. He went on to attack indul- 3
infallibility of a general council. The Council of Con- gences, the Mass, the institution of monasticism, and 4
stance, he said, had erred when it had condemned Jan clerical celibacy. In his gradual reform of the church in 5
Hus (see page 391). Zurich, where he remained the rest of his life, he had the 6
The papacy responded with a letter condemning some strong support of the city authorities, who had long re- 7
of Luther’s propositions, ordering that his books be sented the privileges of the clergy. 8
burned, and giving him two months to recant or be ex- Luther, Zwingli, and other Protestants agreed on 9
communicated. Luther retaliated by publicly burning many things. First, how is a person to be saved? Tradi- 10
the letter. By January 3, 1521, when the excommunica- tional Catholic teaching held that salvation is achieved by 11
tion was supposed to become final, the controversy in- both faith and good works. Protestants held that salva- 12
volved more than theological issues. The papal legate tion comes by faith alone. Women and men are saved by 13
wrote, “All Germany is in revolution. Nine-tenths shout the arbitrary decision of God, irrespective of good works 14
‘Luther’ as their war cry; and the other tenth cares noth- or the sacraments. God, not people, initiates salvation. 15
ing about Luther, and cries ‘Death to the court of (See the feature “Listening to the Past: Martin Luther, 16
Rome.’”1 On Christian Liberty” on pages 480–481.) Second, where 17
In this highly charged atmosphere, the twenty-one- does religious authority reside? Christian doctrine had 18
year-old emperor Charles V held his first diet (assembly long maintained that authority rests both in the Bible 19
of the Estates of the empire) in the German city of and in the traditional teaching of the church. For Protes- 20
Worms. Charles summoned Luther to appear before the tants, authority rests in the Word of God as revealed in 21
Diet of Worms. When ordered to recant, Luther replied the Bible alone and as interpreted by an individual’s con- 22
in language that rang all over Europe: science. For a doctrine or issue to be valid, it had to have 23
a scriptural basis. Because of this, most Protestants re- 24
Unless I am convinced by the evidence of Scripture or by
Apago PDF Enhancer jected Catholic teachings about the sacraments (see page 25
plain reason—for I do not accept the authority of the Pope
308), holding that only baptism and the Eucharist have 26
or the councils alone, since it is established that they have
scriptural support. 27
often erred and contradicted themselves—I am bound by
Third, what is the church? Protestants held that the 28
the Scriptures I have cited and my conscience is captive to
church is a spiritual priesthood of all believers, an invisible 29
the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, for it
fellowship not fixed in any place or person, which dif- 30
is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. God help
fered markedly from the Roman Catholic practice of a 31
me. Amen.2
clerical, hierarchical institution headed by the pope in 32
Rome. Luther re-emphasized the Catholic teaching that 33
the church consists of the entire community of Christian 34
Protestant Thought believers. Medieval churchmen, in contrast, had tended 35
As he developed his ideas, Luther gathered followers, to identify the church with the clergy. Fourth, what is the 36
who came to be called Protestants. The word Protestant highest form of Christian life? The medieval church had 37
derives from the protest drawn up by a small group of re- stressed the superiority of the monastic and religious life 38
forming German princes at the Diet of Speyer in 1529. over the secular. Luther argued that all vocations, whe- 39
The princes “protested” the decisions of the Catholic ther ecclesiastical or secular, have equal merit and that 40
majority. At first Protestant meant “Lutheran,” but with every person should serve God in his or her individual 41
the appearance of many protesting sects, it became a gen- calling. Celibacy was not superior to marriage, and vows 42
eral term applied to all non-Catholic western European of celibacy went against both human nature and God’s 43
Christians. commandment. 44
The most important early reformer other than Luther Protestants did not agree on everything. One impor- 45
was the Swiss humanist, priest, and admirer of Erasmus, tant area of dispute was the ritual of the Eucharist (also 46
Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531). In Zurich, Zwingli an- called communion, or the Lord’s Supper). Catholics 47
nounced in 1519 that he would preach not from the hold the dogma of transubstantiation: by the consecrat- 48
church’s prescribed readings but, relying on Erasmus’s ing words of the priest during the Mass, the bread and 49
New Testament, go right through the New Testament wine become the actual body and blood of Christ, who is 50S
“from A to Z,” that is, from Matthew to Revelation. then fully present in the bread and wine. In opposition, 51R
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1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Lucas Cranach the Elder: The Ten Commandments, 1516 Cranach, who was the court painter for
21 the elector of Saxony from 1505 to 1553, painted this giant illustration of the Ten Commandments
22 (more than 5 feet by 11 feet) for the city hall in Wittenberg just at the point that Luther was beginning
23 to question Catholic doctrine. Cranach became an early supporter of Luther, and many of his later
24 works depict the reformer and his ideas. This close association, and the fact that the painting captures
25 the Protestant emphasis on biblical texts very well, led it to be moved to the Luther House in Witten-
26
Apago PDF Enhancer
berg, the largest museum of the Protestant Reformation in the world. Paintings were used by both
Protestants and Catholics to teach religious ideas. (Lutherhalle, Wittenberg/The Bridgeman Art Library)
27
28
29
30
31 Luther believed that Christ is really present in the conse- church, the centrality of the Scriptures in the liturgy and
32 crated bread and wine, but this is the result of God’s in Christian life, and the abolition of elaborate cere-
33 mystery, not the actions of a priest. Zwingli understood monies—precisely the reforms the Christian humanists
34 the Lord’s Supper as a memorial, in which Christ was had been calling for. His insistence that everyone should
35 present in spirit among the faithful, but not in the bread read and reflect on the Scriptures attracted the literate
36 and wine. The Colloquy of Marburg, summoned in 1529 and thoughtful middle classes partly because Luther ap-
37 to unite Protestants, failed to resolve these differences, pealed to their intelligence. This included many priests
38 though Protestants reached agreement on almost every- and monks, who became clergy in the new Protestant
39 thing else. churches. There was no official position for women in
40 Protestant churches, but Protestant literature was smug-
41 gled into convents. Some nuns (most famously Katharina
42
The Appeal of Protestant Ideas von Bora, who became Luther’s wife) accepted Luther’s
43 Every encounter Luther had with ecclesiastical or politi- idea that celibacy was not especially worthy and left their
44 cal authorities attracted attention. Pulpits and printing convents, while others remained in their convents but
45 presses spread his message all over Germany. By the time otherwise accepted Protestant teachings.
46 of his death, people of all social classes had become As we saw above, many townspeople envied the
47 Lutheran. What was the immense appeal of Luther’s reli- church’s wealth, disapproved of the luxurious lifestyle of
48 gious ideas and those of other Protestants? some churchmen, and resented tithes and ecclesiastical
49 Educated people and humanists were much attracted taxation. Protestant doctrines of the priesthood of all be-
50S by Luther’s words. He advocated a simpler personal reli- lievers not only raised the religious status of laypeople,
51R gion based on faith, a return to the spirit of the early but also provided greater income for city treasuries. After
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Zurich became Protestant, the city council taxed the der. In terms of the process of the Reformation, Luther’s 1
clergy and placed them under the jurisdiction of civil hopes were largely fulfilled. Individuals may have been 2
courts. convinced of the truth of Protestant teachings by hear- 3
Hymns, psalms, and Luther’s two catechisms (1529), ing sermons, listening to hymns, or reading pamphlets, 4
compendiums of basic religious knowledge, show the but a territory became Protestant when its ruler, 5
power of language in spreading the ideals of the Refor- whether a noble or a city council, brought in a reformer 6
mation. Such hymns as the famous “A Mighty Fortress Is or to re-educate the territory’s clergy, sponsored public 7
Our God” (which Luther wrote) expressed deep human sermons, and confiscated church property. This happened 8
feelings, were easily remembered, and imprinted central in many of the states of the empire during the 1520s. In 9
points of doctrine on the mind. Luther’s Larger Cate- every area that became Protestant, there was aslightly 10
chism contained brief sermons on the main articles of differ-ent balance between popular religious ideas and 11
faith, whereas the Shorter Catechism gave concise expla- the aims of the political authorities. In some areas certain 12
nations of doctrine in question-and-answer form. Both groups, such as clergy or journeymen, pushed for re- 13
catechisms stressed the importance of the Ten Com- forms, while in others the ruler or city council forced re- 14
mandments, the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostle’s Creed, and ligious change on a population that was disinterested or 15
the sacraments for the believing Christian. Although hostile. 16
originally intended for the instruction of pastors, these The first area outside the empire to officially accept the 17
catechisms became powerful techniques for the indoctri- Reformation was the kingdom of Denmark-Norway un- 18
nation of men and women of all ages, especially the der King Christian III (r. 1536–1559). Danish scholars 19
young. studied at the University of Wittenberg, and Lutheran 20
Scholars in many disciplines have attributed Luther’s ideas spread into Denmark very quickly. In the 1530s the 21
fame and success to the invention of the printing press, king officially broke with the Catholic Church, and most 22
which rapidly reproduced and made known his ideas. clergy followed. The process went smoothly in Denmark, 23
Many printed works included woodcuts and other illus- but in northern Norway and Iceland (which Christian 24
trations, so that even those who could not read could
Apago PDF Enhancer also ruled) there were violent reactions, and Lutheran- 25
grasp the main ideas. (See the feature “Images in Society: ism was only gradually imposed on a largely unwilling 26
Art in the Reformation” on pages 452–453.) Equally im- populace. In Sweden, Gustavus Vasa (r. 1523–1560), who 27
portant was Luther’s incredible skill with language. came to the throne during a civil war with Denmark, also 28
Luther’s linguistic skill, together with his translation of took over control of church personnel and income, and 29
the New Testament into German in 1523, led to the ac- Protestant ideas spread, though the Swedish church did 30
ceptance of his dialect of German as the standard version not officially accept Lutheran theology until later in the 31
of German. century. 32
Both Luther and Zwingli recognized that if reforms 33
were going to be permanent, political authorities as well 34
as concerned individuals and religious leaders would have
The Radical Reformation 35
to accept them. Zwingli worked closely with the city Some individuals and groups rejected the idea that 36
council of Zurich, and in other cities and towns of church and state needed to be united, and sought to cre- 37
Switzerland and south Germany city councils similarly ate a voluntary community of believers as they under- 38
took the lead. They appointed pastors that they knew stood it to have existed in New Testament times. In 39
had accepted Protestant ideas, required them to swear an terms of theology and spiritual practices, these individu- 40
oath of loyalty to the council, and oversaw their preach- als and groups varied widely, though they are generally 41
ing and teaching. termed “radicals” for their insistence on a more extensive 42
Luther lived in a territory ruled by a noble—the elec- break with the past. Many of them repudiated infant bap- 43
tor of Saxony—and he also worked closely with political tism, for they wanted only members who had intention- 44
authorities, viewing them as fully justified in asserting ally chosen to belong. Some adopted the baptism of 45
control over the church in their territories. Indeed, in his believers—for which they were given the title of “An- 46
1520 Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Na- abaptists” or rebaptizers by their enemies—while others 47
tion he demanded that German rulers reform the papacy saw all outward sacraments or rituals as misguided and 48
and ecclesiastical institutions, and in On Secular Govern- concentrated on inner spiritual transformation. Some 49
ment he instructed all Christians to obey their secular groups attempted to follow Christ’s commandments in 50S
rulers, whom he saw as divinely ordained to maintain or- the Gospels literally, while others reinterpreted the nature 51R
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Images in Society
“lamb of God” on the altar as people are receiving
Art in the Reformation communion. This image represents the Lutheran un-
derstanding of the Lord’s Supper, in which Christ is
I n the Reformation era, controversy raged over the

purpose and function of art. Protestants and Catholics
really present in the bread and wine, in contrast to
other Protestants who saw the ceremony as a memorial
(see page 450). The woodcut thus could be under-
disagreed, and Protestant groups disagreed with one stood on different levels by different viewers, which is
another. The Bible specifically prohibits making images true of much effective religious art.
of anything “in the heavens above or the earth below For John Calvin, the utter transcendence of God
or the waters beneath the earth” (Exodus 20:4–6 and made impossible any attempt to bring God down to
Deuteronomy 5:8–10). Based on this, some Protestant human level through visual portraiture; to domesticate
leaders, including Ulrich Zwingli, stressed that “the or to humanize God would deprive him of his glory.
Word of God” should be the only instrument used in In houses of worship Calvin emphasized the centrality
the work of evangelization. Martin Luther disagreed, of the divine word, allowing wall inscriptions from
saying he was not “of the opinion that the Gospel the Bible. In later life, Calvin tolerated narrative bibli-
should blight and destroy all the arts.” Luther believed
cal scenes as long as they did not include pictures of
that painting and sculpture had value in spreading the God or Jesus Christ. In the Netherlands, which
Gospel message because “children and simple folk are adopted a Calvinist version of Protestantism, many
more apt to retain the divine stories when taught by formerly Catholic churches were stripped of all statues,
pictures and parables than merely by words or instruc- images, and decoration and were redesigned with a
Apago PDF Enhancer
tion.” Similar debates involved music, with Luther stark, bare simplicity that mirrored the Calvinist ideal.
supporting and even writing hymns, and Swiss Protes- Notice the interior of the church of Saint Bavo in
tants removing organs from their churches. Haarlem (Image 2).
Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553), a close The Catholic Church officially addressed the subject
friend of Luther’s, is the finest representative of of art at the Council of Trent in December 1563. The
Protestant Reformation artists. He and Luther collab- church declared that honor and veneration should be
orated on the production of woodcuts and paintings, given to likenesses of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the
such as The Ten Commandments (see page
450), that spread the new evangelical
theology. Each square in Cranach’s paint-
ing represents one of the Ten
Commandments.
Lucas Cranach the Younger (1515–
1586) continued his father’s work of
spreading Luther’s message. His woodcut
The True and False Churches (Image 1)
contains blatant and more subtle mes-
sages. At the center Luther stands in a
pulpit, preaching the word of God from
an open Bible. At the right, a flaming
open mouth symbolizing the jaws of Hell
engulfs the pope, cardinals, and friars, one
kind of “false church.” The scene at the
left actually suggests another kind of
“false church,” however. Cranach shows a Image 1 Lucas Cranach the Younger: The True and False Churches
crucified Christ emerging out of the (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden)
452
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Image 2 Church of Saint Bavo, Haarlem (Pieter Jansz, Saenredam, S. Bavo Image 3 Jesuit Priest Distributing Holy
in Haarlem. John G. Johnson Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art [J 599]) Pictures (From Pierre Chenu, The Reformation
[New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986])
saints; that images would remind people of the saints’

virtues, which should be imitated; and that pictorial art
would promote piety and the love of God. Examine the
painting Jesuit Priest Distributing Holy Pictures (Image 3).
Such pictures and images of saints were often given to
Apago PDF Enhancer children to help educate them on matters of doctrine.
How do these pictures serve the same function as the
Protestant Ten Commandments?
Both Protestants and Catholics used religious art for
propaganda purposes, to oppose religious heterodoxy, and
to arouse piety in laypeople. Catholic Reformation art
came into full flowering with the style later known as
baroque (see page 539). Baroque art originated in Rome
and reflected the dynamic and proselytizing spirit of the
Counter-Reformation. The church encouraged artists to
appeal to the senses, to touch the souls and kindle the faith
of ordinary people while proclaiming the power and confi-
dence of the reformed Catholic Church.
In addition to this underlying religious emotionalism,
the baroque drew from the Catholic Reformation a sense
of drama, motion, and ceaseless striving. The interior of
the Jesuit Church of Jesus—the Gesù—combined all these
characteristics in its lavish, shimmering, wildly active deco-
rations and frescoes (Image 4). This triumphant, elaborate,
and flamboyant church celebrates both the Catholic
baroque and Rome as the artistic capital of Europe. How
would you compare the Gesù with the Saint Bavo Church
(Image 2)?
Improve Your Grade

Image 4 Ceiling of the Gesù (Scala/Art Resource, NY) Going Beyond Images in Society
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1 Domestic Scene The Protes-

2 tant notion that the best form
3 of Christian life was marriage
and a family helps explain its
4 appeal to middle-class urban
5 men and women, such as those
6 shown in this domestic scene.
7 The engraving, titled “Concor-
8 dia” (harmony), includes the
biblical inscription of what
9 Jesus called the greatest com-
10 mandment—“You shall love the
11 Lord your God with all your
12 heart and all your soul and your
13 neighbor as yourself ”
(Deuteronomy 6; Matthew
14 22)—on tablets at the back.
15 The father presides as his son
16 says grace; the mother passes
17 bread; the older daughters seem
18 to have begun eating; and small
children and animals complete
19 the scene. The large covered
20 bed at the back was both a
21 standard piece of furniture in
22 urban homes and a symbol of
proper marital sexual relations.
23
(Mary Evans Picture Library)
24
26
27
28 of Christ. Radicals were often pacifists and refused to bination of religious differences and economic grievances
29 hold office or swear oaths, which were required of nearly would lead to civil disturbances. In Saxony, in Strasbourg,
30 everyone with any position of authority, including city and in the Swiss cities, radicals were either banished or
31 midwives and toll collectors, as well as anyone involved in cruelly executed by burning, beating, or drowning. Their
32 court proceedings. Some groups attempted communal community spirit and the edifying example of their lives,
33 ownership of property, living very simply and rejecting however, contributed to the survival of radical ideas.
34 anything they thought unbiblical. Different groups Later, the Quakers, with their gentle pacifism; the Bap-
35 blended these practices in different ways and often re- tists, with their emphasis on inner spiritual light; the
36 acted harshly to a member who deviated, banning the Congregationalists, with their democratic church organi-
37 person from the group and requiring other group mem- zation; and in 1787 the authors of the U.S. Constitution,
38 bers—sometimes including the spouse—to shun, or have with their opposition to the “establishment of religion”
39 no contact with, the offending member until he or she (state churches), would all trace their origins, in part, to
40 changed behavior and asked for forgiveness. Others, the radicals of the sixteenth century.
41 however, argued for complete religious toleration and in-
42 dividualism.
43 Ideas such as absolute pacifism and the distinction be-
The German Peasants’ War
44 tween the Christian community and the state brought The radicals represent one way that the ideas of early re-
45 down on these unfortunate people fanatical hatred and formers were pushed farther; as we have seen, many of
46 bitter persecution. Protestants and Catholics all saw— their ideas had social, economic, and political implica-
47 quite correctly—the separation of church and state as tions, which is in part why they were seen as so danger-
48 leading ultimately to the secularization of society. The ous. Groups that linked Protestant ideas directly to
49 powerful rulers of Swiss and German society immediately various political and social programs were also threaten-
50S saw the connection between religious heresy and eco- ing. The most far-reaching of these was the German
51R nomic dislocation. Civil authorities feared that the com- Peasants’ War of 1525.
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Peasant revolts had erupted in many parts of Europe in tract Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of the Peas- 1
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (see page 390). In ants: “Let everyone who can smite, slay, and stab [the 2
the early sixteenth century the economic condition of the peasants], secretly and openly, remembering that noth- 3
peasantry varied from place to place but was generally ing can be more poisonous, hurtful or devilish than a 4
worse than it had been in the fifteenth century and was rebel.”5 The nobility ferociously crushed the revolt. His- 5
deteriorating. Crop failures in 1523 and 1524 aggra- torians estimate that more than seventy-five thousand 6
vated an explosive situation. In 1525 representatives of peasants were killed in 1525. 7
the Swabian peasants met at the city of Memmingen and The German Peasants’ War of 1525 greatly strength- 8
drew up the Twelve Articles expressing their grievances. ened the authority of lay rulers. Not surprisingly, the Re- 9
The Twelve Articles condemned lay and ecclesiastical formation lost much of its popular appeal after 1525, 10
lords and summarized the agrarian crisis of the early six- though peasants and urban rebels sometimes found a 11
teenth century. They complained that nobles had seized place for their social and religious ideas in radical groups. 12
village common lands, which traditionally had been used Peasants’ economic conditions did moderately improve, 13
by all; that they had imposed new rents on manorial however. For example, in many parts of Germany, en- 14
properties and new services on the peasants working closed fields, meadows, and forests were returned to 15
those properties; and that they had forced the poor to common use. 16
pay unjust death duties in the form of the peasants’ best 17
horses or cows. Wealthy, socially mobile peasants espe- 18
cially resented these burdens, which they emphasized as
The Reformation and Marriage 19
new. The peasants believed that their demands con- At the same time they were reacting so harshly to radicals 20
formed to the Scriptures and cited Luther as a theologian and peasants, Luther and Zwingli decided to marry, 21
who could prove that they did. Luther to a former nun, Katharina von Bora (1499– 22
Luther wanted to prevent rebellion. Initially he sided 1532), and Zwingli to a Zurich widow, Anna Reinhart 23
with the peasants, and he blasted the lords in his tract An (1491–1538). Both women quickly had several children. 24
Admonition to Peace (1525): Apago PDF Enhancer Most other Protestant reformers also married, and their 25
wives had to create a new and respectable role for them- 26
We have no one on earth to thank for this mischievous rebel-
selves—pastor’s wife—to overcome being viewed as sim- 27
lion, except you lords and princes, especially you blind bish-
ply a new type of priest’s concubine. They were living 28
ops and mad priests and monks. . . . In your government you
demonstrations of their husband’s convictions about the 29
do nothing but flay and rob your subjects in order that you
superiority of marriage to celibacy, and they were ex- 30
may lead a life of splendor and pride, until the poor common
pected to be models of wifely obedience and Christian 31
folk can bear it no longer.3
charity. 32
But, he warned, nothing justified the use of armed force: Though they denied that marriage was a sacrament, 33
“The fact that rulers are unjust and wicked does not ex- many Protestant reformers praised marriage in formal 34
cuse tumult and rebellion; to punish wickedness does not treatises, commentaries on the Book of Genesis, house- 35
belong to everybody, but to the worldly rulers who bear hold guides, and—most importantly—wedding sermons. 36
the sword.” As for biblical support for the peasants’ de- They stressed that it had been ordained by God when he 37
mands, he maintained that Scripture had nothing to do presented Eve to Adam, served as a “remedy” for the 38
with earthly justice or material gain, a position that unavoidable sin of lust, provided a site for the pious 39
Zwingli supported.4 rearing of the next generation of God-fearing Christians, 40
Massive revolts first broke out near the Swiss frontier and offered husbands and wives companionship and 41
and then swept through Swabia, Thuringia, the Rhine- consolation. A proper marriage was one that reflected 42
land, and Saxony. The crowds’ slogans came directly both the spiritual equality of men and women and the 43
from Protestant writings. “God’s righteousness” and the proper social hierarchy of husbandly authority and wifely 44
“Word of God” were invoked in an effort to secure so- obedience. 45
cial and economic justice. The peasants who expected Protestants did not break with medieval scholastic the- 46
Luther’s support were soon disillusioned. Freedom for ologians in their idea that women were to be subject to 47
Luther meant independence from the authority of the men, a subjection rooted in their original nature and 48
Roman church; it did not mean opposition to legally es- made more pronounced by Eve’s primary responsibility 49
tablished secular powers. Firmly convinced that rebellion for the Fall. Women were advised to be cheerful rather 50S
would hasten the end of civilized society, he wrote the than grudging in their obedience, for in doing so they 51R
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1 Martin Luther and Katharina

2 von Bora, by Lucas Cranach
3 the Elder Cranach painted this
double marriage portrait to cele-
4 brate Luther’s wedding in 1525
5 to Katharina von Bora, a former
6 nun. The artist was one of the
7 witnesses at the wedding and, in
8 fact, had presented Luther’s
marriage proposal to Katharina.
9 Using a go-between for proposals
10 was very common, as was having
11 a double wedding portrait
12 painted. This particular couple
13 quickly became a model of the
ideal marriage, and many
14 churches wanted their portraits.
15 More than sixty similar paintings,
16 with slight variations, were pro-
17 duced by Cranach’s workshop
18 and hung in churches and
wealthy homes. (Uffizi, Florence/
19 Scala/Art Resource, NY)
20
21
22
23
24
25 Apago PDFScotland
Enhancer
26 demonstrated their willingness to follow God’s plan. and France allowed divorce for adultery and
27 Men were urged to treat their wives kindly and consider- impotence, and sometimes for contracting a contagious
28 ately, but also to enforce their authority, through physi- disease, “malicious” desertion (meaning intentional de-
29 cal coercion if necessary. Both continental and English sertion, as opposed to unintentional desertion such as ex-
30 marriage manuals use the metaphor of breaking a horse tended army service), conviction for a capital crime, or
31 for teaching a wife obedience, though laws did set limits deadly assault. Some of them allowed both parties to
32 on the husband’s power to do so. A few women took marry again, and some only the innocent.
33 Luther’s idea about the priesthood of all believers to This was a dramatic change in marital law, as Catholic
34 heart and wrote religious pamphlets and hymns, but no canon law had allowed only separation from bed and
35 sixteenth-century Protestants officially allowed women board with no remarriage, but it had a less than dramatic
36 to hold positions of religious authority, though mon- impact. Because marriage was the cornerstone of society
37 archs such as Elizabeth I of England and female territo- socially and economically, divorce was a desperate last re-
38 rial rulers of the states of the Holy Roman Empire did sort. In many Protestant jurisdictions the annual divorce
39 determine religious policies. rate hovered around 0.02 to 0.06 per thousand people.
40 Catholics viewed marriage as a sacramental union that, (By contrast, in 2000 the U.S. divorce rate was 4.1 per
41 if validly entered into, could not be dissolved. Protestants thousand people.)
42 saw marriage as a contract in which each partner prom- Marriage was the proper remedy for lust, and Protes-
43 ised the other support, companionship, and the sharing tants uniformly condemned prostitution. The licensed
44 of mutual goods. Because, in Protestant eyes, marriage brothels that were a common feature of late medieval ur-
45 was created by God as a remedy for human weakness, ban life (see page 394) were closed in Protestant cities,
46 marriages in which spouses did not comfort or support and harsh punishments were set for prostitution. Selling
47 one another physically, materially, or emotionally endan- sex was couched in moral rather than economic terms, as
48 gered their own souls and the surrounding community. simply one type of “whoredom,” a term that also in-
49 The only solution might be divorce and remarriage, cluded premarital sex, adultery, and other unacceptable
50S which most Protestants came to allow. Protestant marital sexual activities. Religious reformers such as Luther de-
51R courts in Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia, and later scribed women who sold sex in very negative terms and
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The Reformation and German Politics • 457
also regarded “whore” as the worst epithet they could named after the golden seal attached to it). There were 1
hurl at their theological opponents. only seven electors—the archbishops of Mainz, Trier, 2
Closing the official brothels did not end the exchange and Cologne, the margrave of Brandenburg, the duke of 3
of sex for money, of course, but simply reshaped it. Saxony, the count palatine of the Rhine, and the king of 4
Smaller illegal brothels were established, or women moved Bohemia. All these individuals were powerful, but so 5
to areas right outside city walls. Police and other auth- were many other nobles and church officials who ruled 6
orities were influenced or bribed to overlook such activi- the hundreds of largely independent states in the empire. 7
ties. For Italian city authorities, this fluid situation was Against this background of decentralization and strong 8
more worrisome, and they tended to favor regulation local power, Martin Luther had launched a movement 9
over suppression. They also viewed selling sex as a signif- to reform the church. Two years after Luther published 10
icant source of municipal income. From 1559 until the the Ninety-five Theses, the electors chose as emperor 11
mid-eighteenth century in Florence, for example, all a nineteen-year-old Habsburg prince who ruled as 12
women registered as prostitutes were required to con- Charles V. The course of the Reformation was shaped by 13
tribute an annual tax based on their income, which went this election and by the political relationships surround- 14
to support a convent for women who wished to give up ing it. 15
prostitution. Payment of extra taxes would allow a woman • How did the political situation in Germany shape the 16
to live where she wished in the city and wear any type of course of the Reformation? 17
clothes she chose, rather than having to follow the sump- 18
tuary laws requiring prostitutes to dress a certain way 19
(see page 394). 20
The Protestant Reformation clearly had a positive im-
The Rise of the Habsburg Dynasty 21
pact on marriage, but its impact on women was more War and diplomacy were important ways that states in- 22
mixed. Many nuns had lacked a religious vocation, but creased their power in sixteenth-century Europe, but so 23
convents nevertheless provided women of the upper was marriage. Because almost all of Europe was ruled by 24
classes with scope for their literary, artistic, medical, or
Apago PDF Enhancer hereditary dynasties—the Papal States and a few cities be- 25
administrative talents if they could not or would not ing the exceptions—claiming and holding resources in- 26
marry. The Reformation generally brought the closing of volved shrewd marital strategies, for it was far cheaper to 27
monasteries and convents, and marriage became virtually gain land by inheritance than by war. Royal and noble 28
the only occupation for upper-class Protestant women. sons and daughters were important tools of state policy. 29
Women in some convents recognized this and fought the Even popes and city leaders were often part of such mar- 30
Reformation, or argued that they could still be pious ital strategies; papal nieces, nephews, and sometimes chil- 31
Protestants within convent walls. Most nuns left, how- dren were coveted marriage partners, as were the wealthy 32
ever, and we do not know what happened to them. The daughters of urban elites. Wealthy urban families, espe- 33
Protestant emphasis on marriage made unmarried women cially in Italy, also transformed themselves into hereditary 34
(and men) suspect, for they did not belong to the type dynasties through coups and alliances during this period, 35
of household regarded as the cornerstone of a proper, and they cemented their position through marriages with 36
godly society. more established ruling houses. 37
The benefits of an advantageous marriage, particularly 38
if the wife had no brothers and thus inherited territory, 39
The Reformation and stretched across generations, a process that can be seen 40
German Politics most dramatically with the Habsburgs. The Holy Roman 41
emperor Frederick III, a Habsburg who was the ruler of 42
Criticism of the church was widespread in Europe in the most of Austria, acquired only a small amount of terri- 43
early sixteenth century, and calls for reform came from tory—but a great deal of money—with his marriage to 44
many areas. It was no accident, however, that the re- Princess Eleonore of Portugal in 1452. He arranged for 45
former whose ideas had the most impact lived in the po- his son Maximilian to marry Europe’s most prominent 46
litically divided Holy Roman Empire. Unlike Spain, heiress, Mary of Burgundy, in 1477; she inherited the 47
France, and England, the Holy Roman Empire lacked a Netherlands, Luxembourg, and the County of Burgundy 48
strong central power. The emperor was elected in a pro- in what is now eastern France. Through this union with 49
cess established by the Golden Bull of 1356, a decree is- the rich and powerful duchy of Burgundy, the Austrian 50S
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1 the empire, became an international power. The mar- collectors had long been more active in the empire than
2 riage of Maximilian and Mary angered the French, how- they were in the more unified nation-states such as
3 ever, who considered Burgundy French territory, and France, where royal power restricted them. Luther and
4 inaugurated centuries of conflict between the Austrian other reformers highlighted papal financial exploitation
5 house of Habsburg and the kings of France. of Germany in their sermons and pamphlets. Though
6 “Other nations wage war; you, happy Austria, marry.” Germany was not a nation, people did have an under-
7 Historians dispute the origins of this adage, but no one standing of being German because of their language and
8 questions its accuracy, at least in terms of marriage. (The traditions. Luther frequently used the phrase “we Ger-
9 frequency with which the Habsburgs went to war make mans” in his attacks on the papacy. Luther’s appeal to
10 the saying somewhat ironic.) Maximilian learned the les- German patriotism gained him strong support, and na-
11 son of marital politics well, marrying his son and daugh- tional feeling influenced many rulers otherwise confused
12 ter to the children of Ferdinand and Isabella, the rulers of by or indifferent to the complexities of the religious is-
13 Spain, much of southern Italy, and eventually the Spanish sues. Some German rulers were sincerely attracted to
14 New World empire. His grandson Charles V (1500– Lutheran ideas, but material considerations swayed many
15 1558) fell heir to a vast conglomeration of territories. others to embrace the new faith. The rejection of Roman
16 Through a series of accidents and unexpected deaths, Catholicism and adoption of Protestantism would mean
17 Charles inherited Spain from his mother, her New World the legal confiscation of lush farmlands, rich monasteries,
18 possessions, and the Spanish dominions in Italy, Sicily, and wealthy shrines. A steady stream of duchies, mar-
19 and Sardinia. From his father he inherited the Habsburg graviates, free cities, and bishoprics secularized church
20 lands in Austria, southern Germany, the Low Countries, property, accepted Lutheran theological doctrines, and
21 and Franche-Comté in east-central France. Charles would adopted simpler services conducted in German. Thus
22 eventually rule about half of Europe. many political authorities in the empire used the religious
23 Charles’s inheritance was an incredibly diverse collec- issue to extend their financial and political power and to
24 tion of states and peoples, each governed in a different enhance their independence from the emperor.
25 manner and held together only by the person of the em-
Apago PDF Enhancer Charles V was a vigorous defender of Catholicism,
26 peror (see Map 14.1 on page 460). Charles’s Italian ad- however, so it is not surprising that the Reformation led
27 viser, the grand chancellor Gattinara, told the young to religious wars. The first battleground was Switzerland,
28 ruler, “God has set you on the path toward world monar- which was officially part of the Holy Roman Empire,
29 chy.” Charles not only believed this but also was con- though it was really a loose confederation of thirteen
30 vinced that it was his duty to maintain the political and largely autonomous territories called “cantons.” Some
31 religious unity of Western Christendom. cantons remained Catholic, and some became Protes-
32 tant, and in the late 1520s the two sides went to war.
33 The Political Impact of the Zwingli was killed on the battlefield in 1531, and both
34 sides quickly decided that a treaty was preferable to fur-
35
Protestant Reformation ther fighting. The treaty basically allowed each canton to
36 In the sixteenth century the practice of religion remained determine its own religion and ordered each side to give
37 a public matter. Everyone participated in the religious life up its foreign alliances, a policy of neutrality that has
38 of the community, just as almost everyone shared in the been characteristic of modern Switzerland.
39 local agricultural work. Whatever spiritual convictions in- Trying to halt the spread of religious division, Charles V
40 dividuals held in the privacy of their consciences, the em- called an Imperial Diet in 1530, to meet at Augsburg.
41 peror, king, prince, magistrate, or other civil authority The Lutherans developed a statement of faith, later called
42 determined the official form of religious practice in his the Augsburg Confession, and the Protestant princes
43 (or occasionally her) jurisdiction. Almost everyone be- presented this to the emperor. (The Augsburg Confes-
44 lieved that the presence of a faith different from that of sion remained an authoritative statement of belief for
45 the majority represented a political threat to the security many Lutheran churches for centuries.) Charles refused
46 of the state. Only a tiny minority, and certainly none of to accept it and ordered all Protestants to return to the
47 the rulers, believed in religious liberty. Catholic Church and give up any confiscated church
48 Against this background, the religious storm launched property. This threat backfired, and Protestant territories
49 by Martin Luther swept across Germany. Anticlericalism in the empire—mostly north German princes and south
50S blended with hostility to the papacy, which was increas- German cities—formed a military alliance. The emperor
51R ingly seen as Italian rather than international. Papal tax could not respond militarily, as he was in the midst of a
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The Spread of the Protestant Reformation • 459
Giorgio Vasari: Fresco of Pope 1

Clement VII and the Emperor 2
Charles V In this double portrait, 3
Vasari uses matching hand gestures to
indicate agreement between the pope 4
and the emperor, though the pope’s 5
red hat and cape make him the domi- 6
nant figure. Charles V remained loyal 7
to Catholicism, though the political 8
situation and religious wars in Ger-
many eventually required him to 9
compromise with Protestants. 10
(Palazzo Vecchio, Florence/Scala/Art 11
Resource, NY) 12
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series of wars with the French: the Habsburg-Valois northern and central Germany became Lutheran, while 23
Wars, fought in Italy along the eastern and southern bor- the south remained Roman Catholic. There was no free- 24
ders of France and eventually in Germany. The Turks had dom of religion, however. Princes or town councils es- 25
Apago PDF Enhancer
also taken much of Hungary and in 1529 were besieging tablished state churches to which all subjects of the area 26
Vienna. had to belong. Dissidents had to convert or leave. 27
The 1530s and early 1540s saw complicated political 28
Improve Your Grade
maneuvering among many of the powers of Europe. The 29
Primary Source: The Religious Peace of Augsburg
emperor, the pope, France, England, Protestant and 30
Catholic princes and cities in Germany, Scotland, Sweden, There were limitations and problems in the Peace of 31
Denmark, and even the Turks made and broke alliances, Augsburg that would become clear by the late sixteenth 32
and the Habsburg-Valois rivalry continued to be played century, but it accomplished what its makers hoped it 33
out militarily. Various attempts were made to heal the re- would. It ended religious war in Germany for many 34
ligious split with a church council, but intransigence on decades, and it put political, religious, and economic life 35
both sides made it increasingly clear that this would not clearly in the hands of the territorial rulers. It was imme- 36
be possible and that war was inevitable. Charles V real- diately evident that this agreement ended Charles V’s 37
ized that he was fighting not only for religious unity, but hope of creating a united empire with a single church. 38
also for a more unified state against territorial rulers who He abdicated in 1556 and moved to a monastery, trans- 39
wanted to maintain their independence. He was thus de- ferring power over his Spanish and Netherlandish hold- 40
fending both church and empire. ings to his son Philip and his imperial power to his 41
Fighting began in 1546, and initially the emperor was brother Ferdinand. 42
very successful. This success alarmed both France and the 43
pope, however, who did not want Charles to become 44
even more powerful. The pope withdrew papal troops, The Spread of the Protestant 45
and the Catholic king of France sent money and troops Reformation 46
to the Lutheran princes. Finally, in 1555 Charles agreed 47
to the Peace of Augsburg, which, in accepting the status States within the empire and the kingdom of Denmark- 48
quo, officially recognized Lutheranism. The political au- Norway were the earliest territories to accept the Protes- 49
thority in each territory was permitted to decide whether tant Reformation, but by the later 1520s Protestant ideas 50S
the territory would be Catholic or Lutheran. Most of and dynastic considerations combined to bring religious 51R
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0 150 300 Km.
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Antwerp HESSE- SILESIA
KASSEL
Page 460
BOHEMIA
RHINE
PALATINATE UPPER MORAVIA
Gulf of FLORIDA
ATLANTI C ATLANTIC PALATINATE
Vienna
Paris WÜRTTEMBERG HUNGARY
Mexico OCEAN
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Havana
OCEAN LORRAINE
BAVARIA AUSTRIA
Guadalajara CUBA
Mexico City Veracruz Santiago ESPAÑOLA FRANCHE-
TYROL
SALZBURG
COMTÉ SWISS
F RANCE
Oaxaca PUERTO RICO CHAROLAIS CONFED.
Guatemala Caribbean
Sea REP. OF
Cartagena Caracas SAVOY MILAN VENICE
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Panama O TTO M A N
Bogotá GENOA MODENA
Ad EM P IR E
PAPAL ri
NAVARRE at
STATES ic
Quito
ANDORRA CORSICA Rome Se
P ORTUGAL
(to Genoa) a
Recife ARAGON N A P LES
(Pernambuco) Madrid Naples Otranto
PACIFI C Lima Cuzco Salvador Lisbon
OCEAN (Bahia) SARDINIA
CAS TI LE
BALEARIC IS.
Potosí
São Paulo Seville
Rio de rranean Sea
Janeiro dite SICILY
GRANADA
Me
Algiers Tunis
Tangiers Bougie Bona
Santiago
Buenos Melilla
Aires Oran
Spanish holdings, 1550
NORTH AF RI C A O TTO M A N
Lands inherited by Charles V EM P IR E
Lands gained by Charles V, 1519–1556
States favorable to Charles V
Strait of Magellan Cape Horn
0 750 1500 Km. Enemies of Charles V
0 750 1500 Mi. Boundary of the Holy Roman Empire
MAP 14.1 The Global Empire of Charles V Charles V exercised theoretical jurisdiction over more European
territory than anyone since Charlemagne. He also claimed authority over large parts of North and South Amer-
ica, though actual Spanish control was weak in much of this area.
Improve Your Grade Interactive Map: Global Empire of Charles V
1019763_ch_14.qxp 9/17/07 2:52 PM Page 461
change to England. Protestant ideas also spread into ereign in England and forbade judicial appeals to the pa- 1
France and eastern Europe. In all these areas, a second pacy, thus establishing the Crown as the highest legal au- 2
generation of reformers built on Lutheran and Zwinglian thority in the land. The Supremacy Act (1534) declared 3
ideas to develop their own theology and plans for insti- the king the supreme head of the Church of England. 4
tutional change. The most important of the second- Both the Act in Restraint of Appeals and the Supremacy 5
generation reformers was John Calvin, whose ideas would Act led to heated debate in the House of Commons. 6
come to shape Christianity over a much wider area than Some opposed the king. John Fisher, the bishop of 7
did Luther’s. Rochester, a distinguished scholar and a humanist, lashed 8
• How did Protestant ideas and institutions spread beyond the clergy with scorn for its cowardice in abjectly bend- 9
German-speaking lands? ing to the king’s will. Another humanist, Thomas More, 10
resigned the chancellorship: he could not take the oath 11
required by the Supremacy Act because it rejected papal 12
authority and made the king head of the English church. 13
The Reformation in England and Ireland Fisher, More, and other dissenters were beheaded. 14
As on the continent, the Reformation in England had When Anne Boleyn failed twice to produce a male 15
economic as well as religious causes. When the personal child, Henry VIII charged her with adulterous incest and 16
matter of the divorce of King Henry VIII (r. 1509– in 1536 had her beheaded. Parliament promptly pro- 17
1547) became enmeshed with political issues, a complete claimed Anne’s daughter, the princess Elizabeth, illegiti- 18
break with Rome resulted. mate and, with the royal succession thoroughly confused, 19
Henry was married to Catherine of Aragon, the daugh- left the throne to whomever Henry chose. His third wife, 20
ter of Ferdinand and Isabella. Catherine had originally Jane Seymour, gave Henry the desired son, Edward, but 21
been married to his older brother Arthur, who had died died in childbirth. Henry went on to three more wives. 22
as a youth. Marriage to a brother’s widow went against Before he died in 1547, he got Parliament to reverse the 23
canon law, and Henry had been required to obtain a decision of 1536, relegitimating Mary and Elizabeth and 24
special papal dispensation to marry Catherine. The
Apago PDF Enhancer fixing the succession first in his son and then in his 25
marriage was about average for royal marriages—they daughters. 26
neither especially hated nor loved one another—but it Between 1535 and 1539, under the influence of his 27
had produced only one living heir, a daughter, Mary. By chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, Henry decided to dis- 28
1527 Henry decided that God was showing his displeas- solve the English monasteries because he wanted their 29
ure with the marriage by denying him a son, and he ap- wealth. The king ended nine hundred years of English 30
pealed to the pope to have the marriage annulled. He monastic life, dispersing the monks and nuns and confis- 31
was also in love with a court lady-in-waiting, Anne Bo- cating their lands. Hundreds of properties were sold to 32
leyn, and assumed that she would give him the son he the middle and upper classes and the proceeds spent on 33
wanted. Normally an annulment would not have been a war. The dissolution of the monasteries did not achieve a 34
problem, but the troops of Emperor Charles V were in more equitable distribution of land and wealth. Rather, 35
Rome at that point, and Pope Clement VII was essen- the redistribution of land strengthened the upper classes 36
tially their prisoner. Charles V was the nephew of Cather- and tied them to the Tudor dynasty. 37
ine of Aragon and thus was vigorously opposed to an Henry’s motives combined personal, political, social, 38
annulment, which would have declared his aunt a forni- and economic elements. Theologically he retained such 39
cator and his cousin Mary a bastard. (An annulment de- traditional Catholic practices and doctrines as confes- 40
clares that there never was a marriage, making children sion, clerical celibacy, and transubstantiation. Meanwhile, 41
of such a union illegitimate.) The military situation in Protestant literature circulated, and Henry approved the 42
Rome, added to the fact that an annulment would have selection of men of Protestant sympathies as tutors for 43
called into question the pope’s right to grant a dispensa- his son. 44
tion from something proscribed by the Bible, led the Did the religious changes accompanying this political 45
pope to stall. upheaval have broad popular support? Some people were 46
Since Rome appeared to be thwarting Henry’s matri- certainly dissatisfied with the church in England, but tra- 47
monial plans, he decided to remove the English church ditional Catholicism exerted an enormously strong and 48
from papal jurisdiction. Henry used Parliament to legal- vigorous hold over the imagination and loyalty of the 49
ize the Reformation in England. The Act in Restraint of people. The surviving evidence does not allow us to 50S
Appeals (1533) declared the king to be the supreme sov- gauge the degree of opposition to (or support for) Henry’s 51R
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25 Allegory of the Tudor Dynasty The unknown creator of this work intended to glorify the virtues of
26
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the Protestant succession; the painting has no historical reality. Enthroned Henry VIII (r. 1509–1547)
hands the sword of justice to his Protestant son Edward VI (r. 1547–1553). The Catholic Queen Mary
27 (r. 1553–1558) and her husband Philip of Spain are followed by Mars, god of war, signifying violence
28 and civil disorder. At right the figures of Peace and Plenty accompany the Protestant Elizabeth I (r.
29 1558–1603), symbolizing England’s happy fate under her rule. (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon
30 Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library)
31
32
33 break with Rome. Most clergy and officials accepted firm control of only the area around Dublin, known as
34 Henry’s moves, but all did not quietly acquiesce. In the Pale. In 1536, on orders from London, the Irish par-
35 1536 popular opposition in the north to the religious liament, which represented only the English landlords
36 changes led to the Pilgrimage of Grace, a massive multi- and the people of the Pale, approved the English laws
37 class rebellion that proved the largest in English history. severing the church from Rome. The Church of Ireland
38 The “pilgrims” accepted a truce, but their leaders were was established on the English pattern, and the (English)
39 arrested, tried, and executed. Recent scholarship points ruling class adopted the new reformed faith. Most of the
40 out that people rarely “converted” from Catholicism to Irish people remained Roman Catholic, thus adding reli-
41 Protestantism overnight, particularly where changes were gious antagonism to the ethnic hostility that had been a
42 piecemeal and the religious policies of the Crown itself feature of English policy toward Ireland for centuries
43 varied, as in England. People responded to an action of (see page 397). Irish armed opposition to the Reforma-
44 the Crown that was played out in their own neighbor- tion led to harsh repression by the English. Catholic
45 hood—the closing of a monastery, the ending of Masses property was confiscated and sold, and the profits were
46 for the dead—with a combination of resistance, accep- shipped to England. With the Roman church driven un-
47 tance, cooperation, and collaboration. derground, Catholic clergy acted as national as well as re-
48 Loyalty to the Catholic Church was particularly strong ligious leaders.
49 in Ireland. Ireland had been claimed by English kings The nationalization of the church and the dissolution
50S since the twelfth century, but in reality the English had of the monasteries led to important changes in govern-
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ment administration in both England and Ireland. Vast her without denying the primacy of the pope. She also 1
tracts of formerly monastic land came temporarily under realized that head might be viewed as inappropriate for a 2
the Crown’s jurisdiction, and new bureaucratic machin- woman, for treatises about the family and proper gender 3
ery had to be developed to manage those properties. relations always referred to men as the “head.” 4
Cromwell reformed and centralized the king’s house- The parliamentary legislation of the early years of 5
hold, the council, the secretariats, and the Exchequer. Elizabeth’s reign—laws sometimes labeled the Eliza- 6
New departments of state were set up. Surplus funds bethan Settlement—required outward conformity to 7
from all departments went into a liquid fund to be ap- the Church of England and uniformity in all ceremonies. 8
plied to areas where there were deficits. This balancing In 1563 a convocation of bishops approved the Thirty- 9
resulted in greater efficiency and economy. Henry VIII’s nine Articles, a summary in thirty-nine short statements 10
reign saw the growth of the modern centralized bureau- of the basic tenets of the Church of England. During 11
cratic state. Elizabeth’s reign, the Anglican church (from the Latin 12
In the short reign of Henry’s sickly son, Edward VI (r. Ecclesia Anglicana), as the Church of England was called, 13
1547–1553), strongly Protestant ideas exerted a signifi- moved in a moderately Protestant direction. Services 14
cant influence on the religious life of the country. Arch- were conducted in English, monasteries were not re- 15
bishop Thomas Cranmer simplified the liturgy, invited established, and clergymen were (grudgingly) allowed to 16
Protestant theologians to England, and prepared the first marry. But the episcopate was not abolished, and the 17
Book of Common Prayer (1549). In stately and digni- bishops remained as church officials; apart from lan- 18
fied English, the Book of Common Prayer included, to- guage, the services were quite traditional. 19
gether with the Psalter, the order for all services of the 20
Church of England. 21
The equally brief reign of Mary Tudor (r. 1553–1558)
Calvinism 22
witnessed a sharp move back to Catholicism. The de- In 1509, while Luther was studying for a doctorate at 23
voutly Catholic daughter of Catherine of Aragon, Mary Wittenberg, John Calvin (1509–1564) was born in Noyon 24
rescinded the Reformation legislation of her father’s
Apago PDF Enhancer in northwestern France. Luther inadvertently launched 25
reign and restored Roman Catholicism. Mary’s marriage the Protestant Reformation. Calvin, however, had the 26
to her cousin Philip of Spain, son of the emperor Charles greater impact on future generations. His theological 27
V, proved highly unpopular in England, and her execu- writings profoundly influenced the social thought and at- 28
tion of several hundred Protestants further alienated her titudes of Europeans and English-speaking peoples all 29
subjects. During her reign, many Protestants fled to the over the world, especially in Canada and the United 30
continent. Mary’s death raised to the throne her sister States. Although he had originally intended to have an 31
Elizabeth (r. 1558–1603) and inaugurated the begin- ecclesiastical career, Calvin studied law, which had a deci- 32
nings of religious stability. sive impact on his mind and later thought. In 1533 he 33
Elizabeth had been raised a Protestant, but at the start experienced a religious crisis, as a result of which he con- 34
of her reign sharp differences existed in England. On the verted to Protestantism. 35
one hand, Catholics wanted a Roman Catholic ruler. On Convinced that God selects certain people to do his 36
the other hand, a vocal number of returning exiles work, Calvin believed that God had specifically called 37
wanted all Catholic elements in the Church of England him to reform the church. Accordingly, he accepted an 38
eliminated. The latter, because they wanted to “purify” invitation to assist in the reformation of the city of 39
the church, were called “Puritans.” Probably one of the Geneva. There, beginning in 1541, Calvin worked assid- 40
shrewdest politicians in English history, Elizabeth chose uously to establish a Christian society ruled by God 41
a middle course between Catholic and Puritan extremes. through civil magistrates and reformed ministers. Gen- 42
She insisted on dignity in church services and political or- eva, “a city that was a church,” became the model of a 43
der in the land. She required her subjects to attend Christian community for sixteenth-century Protestant 44
church or risk a fine, but did not care what they actually reformers. 45
believed as long as they kept quiet about it. She required To understand Calvin’s Geneva, it is necessary to un- 46
officials, clergy, and nobles to swear allegiance to her as derstand Calvin’s ideas. These he embodied in The Insti- 47
the “supreme governor of the Church of England.” She tutes of the Christian Religion, first published in 1536 48
initially chose the word governor rather than head to pro- and definitively issued in 1559. The cornerstone of 49
vide a loophole for English Catholics to remain loyal to Calvin’s theology was his belief in the absolute sovereignty 50S
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1 and omnipotence of God and the total weakness of hu-

2 manity. Before the infinite power of God, he asserted,
3 men and women are as insignificant as grains of sand.
4 Calvin did not ascribe free will to human beings be-
5 cause that would detract from the sovereignty of God.
6 Men and women cannot actively work to achieve salva-
7 tion; rather, God in his infinite wisdom decided at the be-
8 ginning of time who would be saved and who damned.
9 This viewpoint constitutes the theological principle called
10 predestination:
11
Predestination we call the eternal decree of God, by which
12
he has determined in himself, what he would have become
13
of every individual. . . . For they are not all created with a
14
similar destiny; but eternal life is foreordained for some, and
15
eternal damnation for others. . . . In conformity, therefore,
16
to the clear doctrine of the Scripture, we assert, that by an
17
eternal and immutable counsel, God has once for all deter-
18
mined, both whom he would admit to salvation, and whom
19
he would condemn to destruction. . . . To those whom he de-
20
votes to condemnation, the gate of life is closed by a just and
21
irreprehensible, but incomprehensible, judgment. How ex-
22
ceedingly presumptuous it is only to inquire into the causes
23
of the Divine will; which is in fact, and is justly entitled to
24
be, the cause of everything that exists. . . . For the will of
God is the highest justice; so that what he wills must be con-
26
sidered just, for this very reason, because he wills it.6
27 Young John Calvin Even in youth, Calvin’s face showed
28 Many people consider the doctrine of predestination, the strength and determination that were later to characterize
29 which dates back to Saint Augustine and Saint Paul, to be his religious zeal. (Bibliothèque de Genève, Département icono-
graphique)
30 a pessimistic view of the nature of God, who, they feel,
31 revealed himself in the Old and New Testaments as mer-
32 ciful as well as just. But “this terrible decree,” as even
33 Calvin called it, did not lead to pessimism or fatalism.
34 Rather, the Calvinist believed in the redemptive work of In the reformation of the city, the Genevan Consistory
35 Christ and was confident that God had elected (saved) also exercised a powerful role. This body consisted of
36 him or her. Predestination served as an energizing dy- twelve laymen plus the Company of Pastors, of which
37 namic, forcing a person to undergo hardships in the con- Calvin was the permanent moderator (presider). The du-
38 stant struggle against evil. ties of the Consistory were “to keep watch over every
39 Calvin aroused Genevans to a high standard of moral- man’s life [and] to admonish amiably those whom they
40 ity. He had two remarkable assets: complete mastery of see leading a disorderly life.” Even though Calvin em-
41 the Scriptures and exceptional eloquence. Through his phasized that the Consistory’s activities should be thor-
42 sermons and a program of religious education, God’s ough and “its eyes may be everywhere,” corrections were
43 laws and man’s were enforced in Geneva. Calvin’s pow- considered only “medicine to turn sinners to the Lord.”8
44 erful sermons delivered the Word of God and thereby Although all municipal governments in early modern
45 monopolized the strongest contemporary means of com- Europe regulated citizens’ conduct, none did so with the
46 munication: preaching. Through his Genevan Catechism, severity of Geneva’s Consistory under Calvin’s leader-
47 published in 1541, children and adults memorized set ship. Nor did it make any distinction between what we
48 questions and answers and acquired a summary of their would consider crimes against society and simple un-
49 faith and a guide for daily living. Calvin’s sermons and his Christian conduct. Absence from sermons, criticism of
50S Catechism gave a whole generation of Genevans thor- ministers, dancing, card playing, family quarrels, and
51R ough instruction in the reformed religion.7 heavy drinking were all investigated and punished by the
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Consistory. Serious crimes and heresy were handled by 1

The Establishment of the
the civil authorities, which, with the Consistory’s ap- 2
proval, sometimes used torture to extract confessions. Church of Scotland 3
Between 1542 and 1546 alone seventy-six persons were Calvinism found a ready audience in Scotland. There as 4
banished from Geneva and fifty-eight executed for her- elsewhere, political authority was the decisive influence in 5
esy, adultery, blasphemy, and witchcraft. reform. The monarchy was weak, and factions of virtually 6
Calvin reserved his harshest condemnation for reli- independent nobles competed for power. King James V 7
gious dissenters, declaring them “dogs and swine”: and his daughter Mary, Queen of Scots (r. 1560–1567), 8
staunch Catholics and close allies of Catholic France, op- 9
God makes plain that the false prophet is to be stoned with-
posed reform. The Scottish nobles supported it. One 10
out mercy. We are to crush beneath our heel all affections of
man, John Knox (1505?–1572), dominated the move- 11
nature when His honor is concerned. The father should not
ment for reform in Scotland. 12
spare his child, . . . nor husband his own wife or the friend
In 1559 Knox, a dour, single-minded, and fearless man 13
who is dearer to him than life. No human relationship is
with a reputation as a passionate preacher, set to work re- 14
more than animal unless it be grounded in God.9
forming the church. He was determined to structure the 15
In the 1550s Spanish humanist Michael Servetus had Scottish church after the model of Geneva, where he had 16
gained international notoriety for his publications deny- studied and worked with Calvin. In 1560 Knox persuaded 17
ing the Christian dogma of the Trinity. Servetus had the Scottish parliament, which was dominated by reform- 18
been arrested by the Inquisition but escaped to Geneva, minded barons, to enact legislation ending papal author- 19
where he was promptly rearrested. At his trial, he not ity. The Mass was abolished. Knox then established the 20
only held to his belief that there is no scriptural basis for Presbyterian Church of Scotland, so named because pres- 21
the Trinity but also rejected child baptism and insisted byters, or ministers, not bishops, governed it. The Church 22
that a person under twenty cannot commit a mortal sin. of Scotland was strictly Calvinist in doctrine, adopted a 23
The city fathers considered this last idea dangerous to simple and dignified service of worship, and laid great 24
public morality, “especially in these days when the young
Apago PDF Enhancer emphasis on preaching. Knox’s Book of Common Order 25
are so corrupted.” Though Servetus begged that he be (1564) became the liturgical directory for the church. 26
punished by banishment, Calvin and the town council The Presbyterian Church of Scotland was a national, or 27
maintained that the denial of child baptism and the Trin- state, church, and many of its members maintained close 28
ity amounted to a threat to all society. Servetus was relations with English Puritans. 29
burned at the stake. 30
31
Improve Your Grade
32
Primary Source: The Trial of Michael Servetus in The Reformation in Eastern Europe 33
Calvin’s Geneva
While political and economic issues determined the 34
course of the Reformation in western and northern Eu- 35
To many sixteenth-century Europeans Calvin’s Geneva rope, ethnic factors often proved decisive in eastern Eu- 36
seemed “the most perfect school of Christ since the days rope. In the later Middle Ages, the migration of diverse 37
of the Apostles.” Religious refugees from France, Eng- peoples into Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary meant that 38
land, Spain, Scotland, and Italy visited the city. Subse- those countries had heterogeneous populations in the 39
quently, the Reformed church of Calvin served as the sixteenth century. Ethnic background tended to resolve 40
model for the Presbyterian church in Scotland, the Hu- religious matters. 41
guenot church in France, and the Puritan churches in In Bohemia in the fifteenth century, the ethnic griev- 42
England and New England. ances of the Czech majority against German economic 43
Calvinism became the compelling force in international and ecclesiastical domination (see page 391) fused with 44
Protestantism. The Calvinist ethic of the “calling” dig- Czech resentment at the corruption of the Roman church. 45
nified all work with a religious aspect. Hard work, well By 1500 most Czechs had adopted the ideas of Jan Hus, 46
done, was pleasing to God. This doctrine encouraged an and the emperor had been forced to recognize a separate 47
aggressive, vigorous activism. These factors, together with Hussite church. Lutheranism spread rapidly among Ger- 48
the social and economic applications of Calvin’s theology, mans in Bohemia in the 1520s and 1530s; many Ger- 49
made Calvinism the most dynamic force in sixteenth- and mans lived near the border of Luther’s Saxony. 50S
seventeenth-century Protestantism. Moreover, the nobility’s identification of Lutheranism 51R
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1 with opposition to the Habsburgs contributed, as in faith and morals. The Jesuits (see page 469) comple-
2 Germany, to the growth of Protestantism. The forces of mented his work by establishing schools for the sons of
3 the Catholic Reformation promoted a Catholic spiritual the szlachta. By 1650 the identification of Poland and
4 revival in Bohemia, and some areas reconverted. This Roman Catholicism was well established.
5 complicated situation would be one of the causes of the Merchants from Poland carried the first news about
6 Thirty Years’ War (see pages 562–565). Martin Luther to Hungary in 1521. Hungarian students
7 By 1500 Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania flocked to Wittenberg; they became the major agents for
8 were united in a dynastic union. A king, senate, and diet the spread of Lutheranism in Hungary, and sympathy for
9 (parliament) governed, but the two territories retained it developed at the royal court at Buda. But concern
10 separate officials, judicial systems, armies, and forms of about “the German heresy” by the Catholic hierarchy
11 citizenship. In the fifteenth century rulers had granted and among the magnates found expression in a decree of
12 the Polish szlachta (nobility) extensive rights; though the Hungarian diet in 1523 that “all Lutherans and those
13 hereditary, the monarchy was weak and had to cooperate favoring them . . . should have their property confiscated
14 with the szlachta. The combined realms covered about and themselves punished with death as heretics.”10
15 440,150 square miles, making Poland-Lithuania the larg- A military event on August 26, 1526, had profound
16 est European polity. A population of only about 7.5 mil- consequences for both the Hungarian state and the
17 lion people was very thinly scattered over that land. Protestant Reformation there. On the plain of Mohács in
18 In comparison with western Europe, Poland-Lithuania southern Hungary, the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the
19 was overwhelmingly rural; its largest cities—Gdansk Magnificent (see page 566) inflicted a crushing defeat on
20 (30,000) and Cracow (15,000)—were very small in pop- the Hungarians, killing King Louis II, many of the mag-
21 ulation by Italian or French standards. Yet with Germans, nates, and more than sixteen thousand ordinary soldiers.
22 Italians, Tartars, and Jews, Poland-Lithuania represented Rival factions elected different kings, and the Hungarian
23 great diversity. Such peoples had come as merchants, in- kingdom was divided into three parts: the Ottoman
24 vited by medieval rulers because of their wealth or to Turks absorbed the great plains, including the capital,
25 make agricultural improvements. Each group spoke its
Apago PDF Enhancer Buda; the Habsburgs ruled the north and west; and
26 native language, though all educated people spoke Latin. Ottoman-supported Janos Zapolya held eastern Hungary
27 In the late fifteenth century Italian Renaissance human- and Transylvania. The Turks were indifferent to the reli-
28 ism influenced Polish art, architecture, literature, and gious conflicts of the infidels.
29 historical writing. Mohács led to a great advance of Protestantism. Many
30 Luther’s ideas spread first to the German-speaking Magyar (Hungarian) magnates accepted Lutheranism;
31 Baltic towns, then to the University of Cracow, where his Lutheran schools and parishes headed by men educated
32 works were translated. His ideas met two major obsta- at Wittenberg multiplied; and peasants welcomed the
33 cles: King Sigismund I (r. 1506–1548) banned Luther’s new faith. In spite of the foundation of Jesuit colleges, in
34 teachings in Poland, and strong anti-German feeling 1585 the papal nuncio noted that 85 percent of the pop-
35 among Poles meant that Lutheranism would have lim- ulation was Protestant, 10 percent remained Greek Or-
36 ited success outside Germanized towns. thodox, and just 5 percent (concentrated in Croatia)
37 The Reformed tradition of John Calvin, with its stress stayed Catholic. Hungary seemed lost to Catholicism.
38 on the power of church elders, appealed to the Polish Then, in the late seventeenth century, Hungarian nobles’
39 szlachta, however. The fact that Calvinism originated recognition of Habsburg (Catholic) rule and Ottoman
40 in France, not in Germany, also made it more attrac- Turkish withdrawal in 1699 led to Catholic restoration.
41 tive than Lutheranism. Several Polish magnates, includ-
42 ing Jan Laski (1499–1560), converted to Calvinism,
43 and Calvinist nobles dominated the important diet of The Catholic Reformation
44 1555. But doctrinal differences among Calvinists, Luther-
45 ans, and other groups prevented united opposition to Between 1517 and 1547 Protestantism made remarkable
46 Catholicism. advances. Nevertheless, the Roman Catholic Church
47 Under Stanislaus Hosius (1505–1579), who attended made a significant comeback. After about 1540 no new
48 the Council of Trent, a systematic Counter-Reformation large areas of Europe, other than the Netherlands, ac-
49 gained momentum. Hosius pressed for reform within the cepted Protestant beliefs (see Map 14.2). Many histori-
50S Catholic Church, held provincial synods, and published a ans see the developments within the Catholic Church
51R comprehensive and clear statement of Roman Catholic after the Protestant Reformation as two interrelated
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The Catholic Reformation • 467
movements: one a drive for internal reform linked to ear- remarks about heresy, Cardinal Caraffa wrote, “No man 1
lier reform efforts, and the other a Counter-Reformation is to lower himself by showing toleration towards any 2
that opposed Protestants intellectually, politically, mili- sort of heretic, least of all a Calvinist.”11 The Holy Office 3
tarily, and institutionally. In both movements, the papacy, published the Index of Prohibited Books, a catalogue of 4
new religious orders, and the Council of Trent that met forbidden reading. 5
from 1545 to 1563 were important agents. Within the Papal States, the Inquisition effectively de- 6
• How did the Catholic Church respond to the new stroyed heresy (and some heretics). Outside the papal 7
religious situation? territories, however, its influence was slight. In Venice, a 8
major publishing center, the Index had no influence on 9
scholarly research in nonreligious areas such as law, clas- 10
sical literature, and mathematics. 11
The Reformed Papacy 12
The Renaissance princes who sat on the throne of Saint 13
Peter were not blind to the evils that existed. Modest re-
The Council of Trent 14
form efforts were undertaken, but the idea of reform was Pope Paul III also called an ecumenical council, which 15
closely linked to the idea of a general council represent- met intermittently from 1545 to 1563 at Trent, an impe- 16
ing the entire church. Remembering fifteenth-century rial city close to Italy. It was called not only to reform 17
conciliar attempts to limit papal authority, early sixteenth- the church but also to secure reconciliation with the 18
century popes resisted calls for a council. The papal bu- Protestants. Lutherans and Calvinists were invited to par- 19
reaucrats who were the popes’ intimates warned the ticipate, but their insistence that the Scriptures be the 20
popes against a council, fearing loss of power, revenue, sole basis for discussion made reconciliation impossible. 21
and prestige. International politics repeatedly cast a shadow over the 22
This changed beginning with Pope Paul III (1534– theological debates. Charles V opposed discussions on 23
1549), and the papal court became the center of the re- any matter that might further alienate his Lutheran sub- 24
form movement rather than its chief opponent. Paul ap-
Apago PDF Enhancer jects, fearing the loss of additional imperial territory to 25
pointed reform-minded cardinals, abbots, and bishops Lutheran princes. Meanwhile, the French kings worked 26
who improved education for the clergy, tried to enforce against the reconciliation of Roman Catholicism and 27
moral standards among them, and worked on correcting Lutheranism. As long as religious issues divided the Ger- 28
the most glaring abuses. Reform measures that had been man states, the empire would be weakened, and a weak 29
suggested since the late Middle Ages, such as prohibiting and divided empire meant a stronger France. Portugal, 30
pluralism and absenteeism, were gradually adopted dur- Poland, Hungary, and Ireland sent representatives, but 31
ing the sixteenth century. Paul III and his successors sup- very few German bishops attended. 32
ported the establishment of new religious orders that In spite of the obstacles, the achievements of the 33
preached to the common people, the opening of semi- Council of Trent were impressive. The council dealt with 34
naries for training priests, the end of the selling of church both doctrinal and disciplinary matters. It gave equal 35
offices, and stricter control of clerical life. Their own lives validity to the Scriptures and to tradition as sources of 36
were models of decorum and piety, in contrast to Renais- religious truth and authority. It reaffirmed the seven 37
sance popes who had concentrated on building and dec- sacraments and the traditional Catholic teaching on tran- 38
orating churches and palaces and on enhancing the substantiation. Thus it rejected Lutheran and Calvinist 39
power of their own families. positions. 40
In 1542 Pope Paul III established the Sacred Congre- The council tackled the problems arising from ancient 41
gation of the Holy Office, with jurisdiction over the Ro- abuses by strengthening ecclesiastical discipline. Triden- 42
man Inquisition, a powerful instrument of the Catholic tine (from Tridentum, the Latin word for Trent) decrees 43
Reformation. The Inquisition was a committee of six car- required bishops to reside in their own dioceses, sup- 44
dinals with judicial authority over all Catholics and the pressed pluralism and simony, and forbade the sale of in- 45
power to arrest, imprison, and execute. Under the fer- dulgences. Clerics who kept concubines were to give 46
vent Cardinal Caraffa, it vigorously attacked heresy. them up. The jurisdiction of bishops over all the clergy of 47
The Roman Inquisition operated under the principles their dioceses was made almost absolute, and bishops 48
of Roman law. It accepted hearsay evidence, was not were ordered to visit every religious house within the 49
obliged to inform the accused of charges against them, diocese at least once every two years. In a highly original 50S
and sometimes applied torture. Echoing one of Calvin’s decree, the council required every diocese to establish a 51R
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Predominant Religion in 1555 Ottoman Empire, 1566 Bergen N
E
Lutheran D
NORWAY Helsinki
Calvinist (Reformed) 1536/1607 E
SCOTLAND W Stockholm
Church of England
1560
9/17/07
Roman Catholic
Edinburgh North
Orthodox John Knox,
1505–1572
Muslim IRELAND Sea
Penetration of Calvinism DENMARK Riga
Spread of Calvinism Dublin
to England after 1558 Baltic
Copenhagen
2:52 PM
Huguenot centers Sea
LITHUANIA
ENGLAND
0 150 300 Km. 1536
Hamburg
Oxford PRUSSIA
John Wyclif, SAXONY BRANDENBURG
Page 468
0 150 300 Mi. London Amsterdam
1320 –1384 Wittenberg
NETHERLANDS Martin Luther
Plymouth Münster
Antwerp Birthplace of Warsaw
Martin Luther,
Brussels Eisleben 1483–1546
Apago PDF Enhancer

ATLANTIC Birthplace of Marburg Erfurt Leipzig
Noyon John Calvin, POLAND
1509 –1564
HOLY ROMAN
Rennes Worms EMPIRE Prague
Paris Edict of Worms,
1521 Speyer Nuremberg Jan Hus,
OCEAN Nantes Orléans
Strasbourg Stuttgart
1369–1415
Edict of Nantes, BOHEMIA
1598 Augsburg MORAVIA
La Rochelle Basel Vienna
FRANCE Munich
Zurich AUSTRIA Pest
Ulrich Zwingli,
1484–1531 Buda
Bordeaux TRANSYLVANIA
Geneva Council of Trent,
John Calvin 1545–1563
Milan Trent
HUNGARY
Venice
AL
Loyola Pavia Belgrade Dan

Birthplace of
Toulouse ub
Genoa e
UG
Ignatius Loyola, Avignon Black

1491
RT
Marseilles Pisa
SPAIN Florence
PO
O T Sea
Ad
Madrid T
Lisbon at O
ri
ITALY
Barcelona Corsica ic M
Toledo Se A
Rome a N
Roman Inquisition
Valencia established, 1542
Naples Bari
Seville Balearic Is. Sardinia
E
Granada
M
P
I
R
E
ALGIERS Sicily
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
M
ed
MOROCCO ite
rran
TUNIS ean Sea
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The Catholic Reformation • 469
seminary for the education and training of the clergy; the achieved, nor was reform brought about immediately. 1
council even prescribed the curriculum and insisted that Nevertheless, the Tridentine decrees laid a solid basis for 2
preference for admission be given to sons of the poor. the spiritual renewal of the church and for the enforce- 3
Seminary professors were to determine whether candi- ment of correction. For four centuries the doctrinal and 4
dates for ordination had vocations, genuine callings as de- disciplinary legislation of Trent served as the basis for 5
termined by purity of life, detachment from the broader Roman Catholic faith, organization, and practice. 6
secular culture, and a steady inclination toward the 7
priesthood. This was a novel idea, since from the time of 8
the early church, parents had determined their sons’ (and
New Religious Orders 9
daughters’) religious careers. Finally, great emphasis was The establishment of new religious orders within the 10
laid on preaching and instructing the laity, especially the church reveals a central feature of the Catholic Reforma- 11
uneducated. tion. Most of these new orders developed in response to 12
One decision had especially important social conse- one crying need: to raise the moral and intellectual level 13
quences for laypeople. Since the time of the Roman Em- of the clergy and people. (See the feature “Individuals in 14
pire, many couples had treated marriage as a completely Society: Teresa of Ávila.”) Education was a major goal of 15
personal matter, had exchanged vows privately without the two most famous orders. 16
witnesses, and had thus formed what were called clandes- The Ursuline order of nuns, founded by Angela Merici 17
tine (secret) unions. This widespread practice frequently (1474–1540), attained enormous prestige for the edu- 18
led later to denials by one party, conflicts over property, cation of women. The daughter of a country gentle- 19
and disputes in the ecclesiastical courts that had jurisdic- man, Angela Merici worked for many years among the 20
tion over marriage once it became a sacrament (which poor, sick, and uneducated around her native Brescia in 21
occurred in the twelfth century). The Tridentine decree northern Italy. In 1535 she established the Ursuline or- 22
Tametsi (November 1563) stipulated that for a marriage der to combat heresy through Christian education. The 23
to be valid, consent (the essence of marriage) as given in first women’s religious order concentrating exclusively 24
the vows had to be made publicly before witnesses, one
Apago PDF Enhancer on teaching young girls, the Ursulines sought to re- 25
of whom had to be the parish priest. Trent thereby ended Christianize society by training future wives and moth- 26
secret marriages in Catholic countries. (They remained a ers. Because the Council of Trent placed great stress on 27
problem for civil and church courts in England until the the claustration (strict enclosure) of religious women and 28
Hardwicke Act of 1753 abolished them.) called for the end of all active ministries for women, 29
The Council of Trent did not meet everyone’s ex- Angela had great difficulty gaining papal approval. Offi- 30
pectations. Reconciliation with Protestantism was not cial recognition finally came in 1565, and the Ursulines 31
rapidly spread to France and the New World. Their 32
schools in North America, stretching from Quebec to 33
New Orleans, provided superior education for young 34
Mapping the Past women and inculcated the spiritual ideals of the Catholic 35
Reformation. 36
MAP 14.2 Religious Divisions in Europe The Reforma-
tions shattered the religious unity of Western Christendom.
The Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, founded by Ignatius 37
The situation was even more complicated than a map of this Loyola (1491–1556), a former Spanish soldier, played a 38
scale can show. Many cities within the Holy Roman Empire, for powerful international role in resisting the spread of 39
example, accepted a different faith than the surrounding Protestantism, converting Asians and Latin American In- 40
countryside; Augsburg, Basel, and Strasbourg were all Protes- dians to Catholicism, and spreading Christian education 41
tant, though surrounded by territory ruled by Catholic nobles.
Use the map and the information in the book to answer the
all over Europe. While recuperating from a severe battle 42
•
following questions: 1 Why was the Holy Roman Empire the first
•
arena of religious conflict in sixteenth-century Europe? 2 Are there
similarities in regions where a particular branch of the Christian faith
wound in his legs, Loyola studied a life of Christ and
other religious books and decided to give up his military
43
44
career and become a soldier of Christ. During a year 45
•
was maintained or took root? 3 To what degree can nonreligious
factors be used as an explanation for the religious divisions in sixteenth-
century Europe?
spent in seclusion, prayer, and personal mortification, he
gained insights that went into his great classic, Spiritual
46
47
Exercises (1548). This work, intended for study during a 48
four-week period of retreat, directed the individual imag- 49
Improve Your Grade Interactive ination and will to the reform of life and a new spiritual 50S
Map: Protestant and Catholic Reformations piety. 51R
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27 School of Titian: The Council of Trent Since the early sessions were sparsely attended, this well-attended
28 meeting seems to be a later session or an idealization. The seated figures in the tall white hats are bishops,
while the dark-clothed figures around the edges are church lawyers and officials. The guards in the foreground
29 are members of the Swiss guards, founded by Pope Julius II in 1505 to defend the papacy and still serving in
30 that role (and in similar uniforms) today. In the sixteenth century Switzerland was a poor country, as its moun-
31 tainous terrain was not good for agriculture, and mercenary soldiers were one of its chief “exports.” (Louvre/
32 Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY)
33
34
35
36 Loyola was a man of considerable personal magnetism. The Society of Jesus developed into a highly central-
37 After study at universities in Salamanca and Paris, he ized, tightly knit organization. Candidates underwent a
38 gathered a group of six companions and in 1540 secured two-year novitiate, in contrast to the usual one-year pro-
39 papal approval of the new Society of Jesus. The first bation. In addition to the traditional vows of poverty,
40 Jesuits, recruited primarily from the wealthy merchant chastity, and obedience, professed members vowed “spe-
41 and professional classes, saw the Reformation as a pas- cial obedience to the sovereign pontiff regarding mis-
42 toral problem, its causes and cures related not to doc- sions.”13 Thus as stability—the promise to live his life in
43 trinal issues but to people’s spiritual condition. Reform the monastery—was what made a monk, so mobility—
44 of the church, as Luther and Calvin understood that the commitment to go anywhere for the help of souls—
45 term, played no role in the future the Jesuits planned was the defining characteristic of a Jesuit. Flexibility and
46 for themselves. Their goal was “to help souls.” Loyola the willingness to respond to the needs of time and cir-
47 also possessed a gift for leadership that consisted in spot- cumstance formed the Jesuit tradition. In this respect, Je-
48 ting talent and in seeing “how at a given juncture change suits were very modern, and they attracted many recruits.
49 is more consistent with one’s scope than staying the They achieved phenomenal success for the papacy and
50S course.”12 the reformed Catholic Church. Jesuit schools adopted
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Individuals 1
in Society 2
3
4
Teresa of Ávila 5
6
H er family derived from Toledo, center of the material demands were 7
8
Moorish, Jewish, and Christian cultures in medieval forbidden. Third, Teresa
Spain. Her grandfather, Juan Sanchez, made a fortune intended an egalitarian at- 9
in the cloth trade. A “New Christian” (see pages 437– mosphere in which class 10
439), he was accused of secretly practicing Judaism. distinctions were forbid- 11
Although he endured the humiliation of a public repen- den. She had always re- 12
tance, he moved his family south to Ávila. Beginning jected the emphasis on 13
again, he recouped his wealth and, aspiring to the pres- “purity of blood,” a dis- 14
tige of an “Old Christian,” bought noble status. Juan’s tinctive and racist feature Seventeenth-century cloisonné 15
son Alzonzo Sanchez de Cepeda married a woman of of Spanish society that enamelwork illustrating Teresa of
Ávila’s famous vision of an angel 16
thoroughly Christian background, giving his family an was especially out of place
aura of impeccable orthodoxy. The third of their nine in the cloister. All sisters, piercing her heart. 17
children, Teresa, became a saint and in 1970 was the including those of aristo- (By gracious permission of Catherine 18
Hamilton Kappauf) 19
first woman declared a Doctor of the Church, a title cratic background, must
given to a theologian of outstanding merit. share the manual chores. 20
At age twenty, inspired more by the fear of Hell Finally, like Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits, Teresa 21
than the love of God, Teresa (1515–1582) entered the placed great emphasis on obedience, especially to one’s 22
Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation in Ávila. Most of confessor. 23
the nuns were daughters of Ávila’s leading citizens; Between 1562 and Teresa’s death in 1582, she 24
they had entered the convent because of a family deci- founded or reformed fourteen other houses of nuns, 25
Apago PDF Enhancer
sion about which daughters would marry and which traveling widely to do so. Though Teresa did not advo- 26
would become nuns. Their lives were much like those cate institutionalized roles for women outside the con-
27
of female family members outside the convent walls, vent, she did chafe at the restrictions placed on her
with good food, comfortable surroundings, and fre- because of her sex, and she thought of the new reli- 28
quent visits from family and friends. Teresa was fre- gious houses she founded as answers to the Protestant 29
quently ill, but she lived quietly in the convent for takeover of Catholic churches elsewhere in Europe. 30
many years. In her late thirties, she began to read devo- From her brother, who had obtained wealth in the 31
tional literature intensely and had profound mystical Spanish colonies, Teresa learned about conditions in 32
experiences—visions and voices in which Christ chas- Peru and instructed her nuns “to pray unceasingly for 33
tised her for her frivolous life and friends. She the missionaries working among the heathens.” 34
described one such experience in 1560: Through prayer, Teresa wrote, her nuns could share in 35
the exciting tasks of evangelization and missionary 36
It pleased the Lord that I should see an angel. . . .
work otherwise closed to women. Her books, along 37
Short, and very beautiful, his face was so aflame that
with her five hundred extant letters, show her as a
he appeared to be one of the highest types of 38
practical and down-to-earth woman as well as a mystic
angels. . . . In his hands I saw a long golden spear and 39
and a creative theologian.
at the end of an iron tip I seemed to see a point of fire. 40
With this he seemed to pierce my heart several times so 41
that it penetrated to my entrails. When he drew it Questions for Analysis
42
out . . . he left me completely afire with the great love 1. How did sixteenth-century convent life reflect the 43
of God.* values of Spanish society? 44
Teresa responded with a new sense of purpose: al- 2. How is the life of Teresa of Ávila typical of 45
though she encountered stiff opposition, she resolved developments in the Catholic Reformation? How is
46
to found a reformed house. Four basic principles were her life unusual?
47
to guide the new convent. First, poverty was to be fully *The Autobiography of St. Teresa of Ávila, trans. and ed. E. A. 48
observed, symbolized by the nuns’ being barefoot, Peers (New York: Doubleday, 1960), pp. 273–274. 49
hence discalced. Charity and the nuns’ own work must
support the community. Second, the convent must keep Improve Your Grade
50S
strict enclosure; the visits of powerful benefactors with Going Beyond Individuals in Society 51R
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1 the seventeenth century. Within Europe the Jesuits

2 brought southern Germany and much of eastern Europe
3 back to Catholicism.
4
5
6 Religious Violence
7
8 In 1559 France and Spain signed the Treaty of Cateau-
9 Cambrésis, which ended the long conflict known as the
10 Habsburg-Valois Wars. Spain was the victor. France, ex-
11 hausted by the struggle, had to acknowledge Spanish
12 dominance in Italy, where much of the fighting had taken
13 place. The Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis did not bring
14 peace, however. Instead, over the next century religious
15 differences led to riots, civil wars, and international con-
16 flicts. Especially in France and the Netherlands, Protes-
17 tants and Catholics used violent actions as well as
18 preaching and teaching against each other, for each side
19 regarded the other as a poison in the community that
20 would provoke the wrath of God. Catholics continued to
21 believe that Calvinists and Lutherans could be recon-
22 verted; Protestants persisted in thinking that the Roman
23 church should be destroyed. Catholics and Protestants
24 alike feared people of other faiths, who they often saw as
25 Apago PDF Enhancer agents of Satan. Even more, they feared those who were
26 explicitly identified with Satan: witches living in their
27 midst. The era of religious wars was also the time of the
28 most virulent witch persecutions in European history, as
29 both Protestants and Catholics tried to make their cities
30 and states more godly.
31 • What were the causes and consequences of religious
Juan de Valdes Leal: Pope Paul III Approves the Jesuit
32 Constitutions This painting by a Spanish artist celebrates violence, including riots, wars, and witch-hunts?
33 the founding of the Jesuits by his fellow countryman Ignatius
34 Loyola. When the Jesuit constitutions were read to him, Paul
35 III supposedly murmured, “There is the finger of God.”
36 Judging by other portraits, the depiction of Loyola here is a French Religious Wars
reasonable likeness, that of the pope an idealization: in 1540
37 he was a very old man. (Institut Amatller d’Art Hispanic) The Habsburg-Valois Wars, waged intermittently through
38 the first half of the sixteenth century, cost more than
39 the French government could afford. In addition to the
40 time-honored practices of increasing taxes and engaging
41 in heavy borrowing, King Francis I (r. 1515–1547) tried
42 two new devices to raise revenue: the sale of public of-
43 the modern humanist curricula and methods, and though fices and a treaty with the papacy. The former proved to
44 they first concentrated on the children of the poor, they be only a temporary source of money. The offices sold
45 were soon educating the sons of the nobility. As confes- tended to become hereditary within a family, and once a
46 sors and spiritual directors to kings, Jesuits exerted great man bought an office he and his heirs were exempt from
47 political influence. Operating on the principle that the taxation.
48 end sometimes justifies the means, they were not above The treaty with the papacy was the Concordat of
49 spying. Indifferent to physical comfort and personal Bologna (see page 435), in which Francis agreed to rec-
50S safety, they carried Christianity to India and Japan before ognize the supremacy of the papacy over a universal
51R 1550 and to Brazil, North America, and the Congo in council. In return, the French crown gained the right to
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Religious Violence • 473
appoint all French bishops and abbots. This understand- defending images, and crowds on both sides killed their 1
ing gave the monarchy a rich supplement of money and opponents, often in gruesome ways. 2
offices and a power over the church that lasted until the A savage Catholic attack on Calvinists in Paris on Au- 3
Revolution of 1789. The Concordat of Bologna helps gust 24, 1572 (Saint Bartholomew’s Day), followed the 4
explain why France did not later become Protestant: in usual pattern. The occasion was a religious ceremony, 5
effect, it established Catholicism as the state religion. Be- the marriage of the king’s sister Margaret of Valois to 6
cause French rulers possessed control over appointments the Protestant Henry of Navarre, which was intended to 7
and had a vested financial interest in Catholicism, they help reconcile Catholics and Huguenots. Instead Hugue- 8
had no need to revolt against Rome. not wedding guests in Paris were massacred, and other 9
Luther’s tracts first appeared in France in 1518, and Protestants were slaughtered by mobs. Religious vio- 10
his ideas attracted some attention. After the publication lence spread to the provinces, where thousands were 11
of Calvin’s Institutes in 1536, sizable numbers of French killed. This Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre led to a 12
people were attracted to the “reformed religion,” as Cal- civil war that dragged on for fifteen years. Agriculture in 13
vinism was called. Because Calvin wrote in French rather many areas was destroyed; commercial life declined se- 14
than Latin, his ideas gained wide circulation. Initially, verely; and starvation and death haunted the land. 15
Calvinism drew converts from among reform-minded What ultimately saved France was a small group of 16
members of the Catholic clergy, the industrious mid- moderates of both faiths called politiques who believed 17
dle classes, and artisan groups. Most French Calvinists that only the restoration of strong monarchy could re- 18
(called Huguenots) lived in major cities, such as Paris, verse the trend toward collapse. No religious creed was 19
Lyons, and Rouen. When Henry II died in 1559, per- worth the incessant disorder and destruction. Therefore, 20
haps one-tenth of the population had become Calvinist. the politiques favored accepting the Huguenots as an of- 21
The feebleness of the French monarchy was the seed ficially recognized and organized pressure group. (But 22
from which the weeds of civil violence sprang. The three religious toleration, the full acceptance of peoples of dif- 23
weak sons of Henry II who occupied the throne could ferent religious persuasions within a pluralistic society, 24
not provide the necessary leadership, and they were often
Apago PDF Enhancer with minorities having the same civil liberties as the ma- 25
dominated by their mother, Catherine de’ Medici. The jority, developed only in the eighteenth century.) The 26
French nobility took advantage of this monarchical death of Catherine de’ Medici, followed by the assassina- 27
weakness. In the second half of the sixteenth century be- tion of King Henry III, paved the way for the accession 28
tween two-fifths and one-half of the nobility at one time of Henry of Navarre (the unfortunate bridegroom of the 29
or another became Calvinist. Just as German princes in Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre), a politique who be- 30
the Holy Roman Empire had adopted Lutheranism as a came Henry IV (r. 1589–1610). 31
means of opposition to Emperor Charles V, so French Henry knew that the majority of the French were Ro- 32
nobles frequently adopted the reformed religion as a man Catholics. Allegedly saying “Paris is worth a Mass,” 33
religious cloak for their independence. Armed clashes be- Henry knelt before the archbishop of Bourges and was 34
tween Catholic royalist lords and Calvinist antimonar- received into the Roman Catholic Church. Henry’s will- 35
chical lords occurred in many parts of France. Both ingness to sacrifice religious principles to political neces- 36
Calvinists and Catholics believed that the others’ books, sity saved France. The Edict of Nantes, which Henry 37
services, and ministers polluted the community. Preach- published in 1598, granted liberty of conscience and lib- 38
ers incited violence, and ceremonies such as baptisms, erty of public worship to Huguenots in 150 fortified 39
marriages, and funerals triggered it. towns, such as La Rochelle. The reign of Henry IV and 40
Protestant teachings called the power of sacred images the Edict of Nantes prepared the way for French abso- 41
into question, and mobs in many cities took down and lutism in the seventeenth century by helping restore in- 42
smashed statues, stained-glass windows, and paintings. ternal peace in France. 43
They ridiculed and tested religious images, throwing 44
them into latrines, using them as cooking fuel or build- 45
ing material, or giving them as toys or masks for children. 46
Though it was often inspired by fiery Protestant ser-
The Netherlands Under Charles V 47
mons, this iconoclasm is an example of men and women Hostility to a monarch was also part of religious wars in 48
carrying out the Reformation themselves, rethinking the the Netherlands. What began as a movement for the ref- 49
church’s system of meaning and the relationship between ormation of the church developed into a struggle for 50S
the unseen and the seen. Catholic mobs responded by Dutch independence. 51R
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1 Emperor Charles V (r. 1519–1556) had inherited the

2 seventeen provinces that compose present-day Belgium United Provinces as of 1609
3 and the Netherlands (see page 458). Each of the seven- Spanish Netherlands
4 teen provinces of the Netherlands possessed historical Truce line, 1609
5 liberties: each was self-governing and enjoyed the right

6 to make its own laws and collect its own taxes. In addi- GRONINGEN
7 tion to important economic connections, only the recog- FRIESLAND
8 nition of a common ruler in the person of Emperor DRENTHE
9 Charles V united the provinces. The cities of the Nether- North

10 lands made their living by trade and industry. Sea
Amsterdam OVERUSSEL
11 In the Low Countries as elsewhere, corruption in the HOLLAND UTRECHT
GELDERLAND
12 Roman church and the critical spirit of the Renaissance Brill Utrecht
Rotterdam
13 provoked pressure for reform, and Lutheran ideas spread.
DUCHY OF
14 Charles V had grown up in the Netherlands, however, BRABANT GELDERLAND
Bruges
15 and he was able to limit their impact. In 1556 Charles V
Ghent S h eldt Antwerp HOLY
c
16 abdicated, dividing his territories between his brother FLANDERS
Rh i n
Ypres
17 Ferdinand, who received Austria and the Holy Roman Brussels
e
LIMBOURG
18 Empire, and his son Philip, who inherited Spain, the Low ARTOIS
Tournai Maastricht ROMAN
19 Countries, Milan and the kingdom of Sicily, and the Valenciennes BISHOPRIC
NAMUR OF LIÈGE
Cambrai HAINAUT
20 Spanish possessions in the Americas. Philip had grown up Cateau-Cambrésis
EMPIRE
21 in Spain and did not understand the Netherlands. DUCHY OF
22 By the 1560s Protestants in the Netherlands were pri- LUXEMBOURG
FRANCE
23 marily Calvinists, not Lutherans, and were more militant
Me
use
24 in their beliefs. Calvinism appealed to the middle classes 0 50 100 Km.
25 because of its intellectual seriousness, moral gravity, and

Apago PDF Enhancer 0 50 100 Mi.
26 emphasis on any form of labor well done. It took deep
27 root among the merchants and financiers in Amsterdam MAP 14.3 The Netherlands, 1559–1609 This map
28 and the northern provinces. Working-class people were shows the division of the seventeen provinces as a result
29 also converted. Whereas Lutherans taught respect for the of the religious wars. Some provinces were overwhelm-
30 powers that be, Calvinism tended to encourage opposi- ingly agricultural; some were involved in manufacturing;
31 tion to “illegal” civil authorities. and others were heavily commercial.
32 In the 1560s Spanish authorities attempted to suppress
33 Calvinist worship and raised taxes, which sparked riots.
34 Thirty churches in Antwerp were sacked and the reli- 1581 declared their independence from Spain. The north
35 gious images in them destroyed in a wave of iconoclasm. was Protestant; the south remained Catholic (see Map
36 From Antwerp the destruction spread to Brussels and 14.3). Philip did not accept this, and war continued, with
37 Ghent and north to the provinces of Holland and Zee- the Dutch troops gaining victories under the leadership
38 land. From Madrid Philip II sent twenty thousand Span- of a local nobleman, William of Nassau, prince of Orange
39 ish troops under the duke of Alva to pacify the Low (1533–1584), known as William the Silent. William was
40 Countries. Alva interpreted “pacification” to mean the shot by a French assassin loyal to Philip (the first known
41 ruthless extermination of religious and political dissi- assassination of a political leader by a handgun), and the
42 dents. On top of the Inquisition, he opened his own tri- leaders of the United Provinces looked beyond their bor-
43 bunal, soon called the “Council of Blood.” On March 3, ders to other Protestant areas for assistance against the
44 1568, fifteen hundred men were executed. Spanish.
45 For ten years, between 1568 and 1578, civil war raged They particularly appealed to the Protestant queen of
46 in the Netherlands between Catholics and Protestants England, Elizabeth, for assistance. Fearing that the next
47 and between the seventeen provinces and Spain. Eventu- step would be a Spanish invasion of England, Elizabeth
48 ally the ten southern provinces, the Spanish Netherlands reluctantly sent money and troops. Philip responded by
49 (the future Belgium), came under the control of the planning and launching an invasion of England, but the
50S Spanish Habsburg forces. The seven northern provinces, Spanish fleet scattered in the English Channel and only
51R led by Holland, formed the Union of Utrecht and in half the ships made it back to Spain (see pages 512–513).
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Fighting continued off and on in the Netherlands, 1

but the borders set by the Union of Utrecht gradually 2
became permanent, and in 1609 Spain agreed to a 3
truce that recognized the independence of the United 4
Provinces. 5
6
7
The Great European Witch-Hunt 8
The relationship between the Reformation and the up- 9
surge in trials for witchcraft that occurred at roughly the 10
same time is complex. Increasing persecution for witch- 11
craft actually began before the Reformation in the 1480s, 12
but it became especially common about 1560. Religious 13
reformers’ extreme notions of the Devil’s powers and the 14
insecurity created by the religious wars contributed to 15
this increase. Both Protestants and Catholics tried and 16
executed witches, with church officials and secular au- 17
thorities acting together. They regarded both their reli- 18
gious opponents and witches as deluded by the Devil but 19
made a clear distinction between them; heretics might 20
merit burning, but they were only rarely accused of 21
witchcraft. Witches were a special kind of heretic, but 22
their primary crime was a pact with the Devil, not incor- 23
rect doctrine. 24
The heightened sense of God’s power and divine
wrath in the Reformation era was an important factor in 26
the witch-hunts, but other factors were also significant. 27
One of these was a change in the idea of what a witch 28
was. Nearly all premodern societies believe in witchcraft 29
and make some attempts to control witches, who are Iconoclasm in the Netherlands Calvinist men and women 30
understood to be people who use magical forces to do break stained-glass windows, remove statues, and carry off 31
evil deeds. Witches themselves often believe in their own devotional altarpieces. Iconoclasm, or the destruction of reli- 32
powers, which they can use to earn a living or gain influ- gious images, is often described as a “riot,” but here the par- 33
ence over their neighbors. In the later Middle Ages, ticipants seem very purposeful. Calvinist Protestants regarded 34
pictures and statues as sacrilegious and saw removing them as
however, many educated Christian theologians, canon a way to purify the church. (The Fotomas Index/The Bridgeman 35
lawyers, and officials added a demonological component Art Library) 36
to this notion of what a witch was. For them, the essence 37
of witchcraft was making a pact with the Devil that re- 38
quired the witch to do the Devil’s bidding. Witches were 39
no longer simply people who used magical power to get thus spiritualized, and witches became the ultimate 40
what they wanted, but rather people used by the Devil to heretics, enemies of God. 41
do what he wanted. This demonological or Satanic idea Trials involving this new notion of witchcraft as dia- 42
of witchcraft was fleshed out, and witches were thought to bolical heresy began in Switzerland and southern Ger- 43
engage in wild sexual orgies with the Devil, fly through many in the late fifteenth century, became less numerous 44
the night to meetings called sabbats, which parodied the in the early decades of the Reformation when Protestants 45
Mass, and steal communion wafers and unbaptized ba- and Catholics were busy fighting each other, and then 46
bies to use in their rituals. Some demonological theorists picked up again about 1560. Because so many records 47
also claimed that witches were organized in an interna- have been lost or destroyed, it is difficult to make an es- 48
tional conspiracy to overthrow Christianity, with a hier- timate for all of Europe, but most scholars agree that dur- 49
archy similar to the hierarchy of angels and archangels ing the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries somewhere 50S
that Christian philosophers had invented. Witchcraft was between 100,000 and 200,000 people were officially tried 51R
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1 for witchcraft and between 40,000 and 60,000 were pects, as most lawyers firmly believed that no witch could
2 executed. act alone.
3 Though the gender balance varied widely in different The use of inquisitorial procedure did not always lead
4 parts of Europe, between 75 and 85 percent of those to witch-hunts, however. The most famous inquisitions
5 tried and executed were women. Ideas about women, in early modern Europe, those in Spain, Portugal, and
6 and the roles women actually played in society, were Italy, were in fact very lenient in their treatment of people
7 thus important factors shaping the witch-hunts. Some accused of witchcraft: the Inquisition in Spain executed
8 demonologists expressed virulent misogyny, or hatred of only a handful of witches, the Portuguese Inquisition
9 women, and particularly emphasized women’s powerful only one, and the Roman Inquisition none, though in
10 sexual desire, which could be satisfied only by a demonic each of these areas there were hundreds of cases. Inquisi-
11 lover. Most people viewed women as weaker and so more tors certainly believed in the power of the Devil and were
12 likely to give in to any kind of offer by the Devil, includ- no less misogynist than other judges, but they doubted
13 ing better food or nicer clothing. Women were associated very much whether the people accused of witchcraft had
14 with nature, disorder, and the body, all of which were actually made pacts with the Devil that gave them special
15 linked with the demonic. Women’s actual lack of power powers. They viewed such people not as diabolical Devil-
16 in society and gender norms about the use of violence worshipers but as superstitious and ignorant peasants
17 meant that they were more likely to use scolding and who should be educated rather than executed. Thus
18 cursing to get what they wanted instead of taking people most people brought up before the Inquisition for witch-
19 to court or beating them up. Curses were generally ex- craft were sent home with a warning and a penance.
20 pressed (as they often are today) in religious terms; “go Most witch trials began with a single accusation in a
21 to Hell” was calling on the powers of Satan. Women also village or town. Individuals accused someone they knew
22 had more contact with areas of life in which bad things of using magic to spoil food, make children ill, kill ani-
23 happened unexpectedly, such as preparing food or caring mals, raise a hailstorm, or do other types of harm. Ten-
24 for new mothers, children, and animals. sions within families, households, and neighborhoods
25 Learned ideas about the diabolical nature of witchcraft
Apago PDF Enhancer often played a role in these accusations. Women number
26 gradually filtered down to common people. Illustrated very prominently among accusers and witnesses as well
27 pamphlets and broadsides portrayed witches riding as among those accused of witchcraft because the ac-
28 on pitchforks to sabbats where they engaged in anti- tions witches were initially charged with, such as harm-
29 Christian acts such as spitting on the communion host ing children or curdling milk, were generally part of
30 and having sexual relations with demons. Though witch women’s sphere. A woman also gained economic and so-
31 trials were secret, executions were not; they were public cial security by conforming to the standard of the good
32 spectacles witnessed by huge crowds, with the list of wife and mother and by confronting women who devi-
33 charges read out for all to hear. By the late sixteenth cen- ated from it.
34 tury popular accusations of witchcraft in many parts of Once a charge was made, judges began to question
35 Europe involved at least some parts of the demonic con- other neighbors and acquaintances, building up a list of
36 ception of witchcraft. suspicious incidents that might have taken place over
37 Legal changes also played a role in causing, or at least decades. Historians have pointed out that one of the rea-
38 allowing for, massive witch trials. One of these was a sons those accused of witchcraft were often older was
39 change from an accusatorial legal procedure to an in- that it took years to build up a reputation as a witch. At
40 quisitorial procedure. In the former, a suspect knew the this point, the suspect was brought in for questioning by
41 accusers and the charges they had brought, and an ac- legal authorities. Judges and inquisitors sought the exact
42 cuser could in turn be liable for trial if the charges were details of a witch’s demonic contacts, including sexual
43 not proven; in the latter, legal authorities themselves ones. Suspects were generally stripped and shaved in a
44 brought the case. This change made people much more search for a “witch’s mark,” or “pricked” to find a spot
45 willing to accuse others, for they never had to take per- insensitive to pain, and then tortured.
46 sonal responsibility for the accusation or face the ac- Detailed records of witch trials survive for many parts of
47 cused’s relatives. Inquisitorial procedure involved intense Europe. They have been used by historians to study many
48 questioning of the suspect, often with torture; areas in aspects of witchcraft, but they cannot directly answer what
49 Europe that did not make this change saw very few trials. seems to us an important question: did people really prac-
50S Torture was also used to get the names of additional sus- tice witchcraft and think they were witches? They certainly
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Once the initial suspect had been questioned, and par- 1

ticularly if he or she had been tortured, the people who 2
had been implicated were brought in for questioning. 3
This might lead to a small hunt, involving from five to 4
ten victims, and it sometimes grew into a much larger 5
hunt, what historians have called a “witch panic.” Panics 6
were most common in the part of Europe that saw the 7
most witch accusations in general—the Holy Roman 8
Empire, Switzerland, and parts of France. Most of this 9
area consisted of very small governmental units, which 10
were jealous of each other and after the Reformation 11
were divided by religion. The rulers of these small terri- 12
tories often felt more threatened than did the monarchs 13
of western Europe, and they saw persecuting witches as a 14
way to demonstrate their piety and concern for order. 15
Sometimes witch panics were the result of legal au- 16
thorities’ rounding up a group of suspects together. Such 17
panics often occurred after some type of climatic disaster, 18
such as an unusually cold and wet summer, and they 19
came in waves. In large-scale panics a wider variety of sus- 20
pects were taken in—wealthier people, children, a greater 21
proportion of men. Mass panics tended to end when it 22
became clear to legal authorities, or to the community it- 23
self, that the people being questioned or executed were 24
Apago PDF Enhancer not what they understood witches to be, or that the 25
scope of accusations was beyond belief. Some from their 26
community might be in league with Satan, they thought, 27
but not this type of person and not as many as this. 28
Similar skepticism led to the gradual end of witch- 29
hunts in Europe. Even in the sixteenth century a few in- 30
dividuals questioned whether witches could ever do 31
Hans Baldung Grien: Witches’ Sabbat (1510) In this harm, make a pact with the Devil, or engage in the wild 32
woodcut, Grien combines learned and popular beliefs about activities attributed to them. Doubts about whether se- 33
witches: they traveled at night, met at sabbats (or assemblies),
feasted on infants (in dish held high), concocted strange po-
cret denunciations were valid or torture would ever yield 34
tions, and had animal “familiars” that were really demons a truthful confession gradually spread among the same 35
(here a cat). Grien also highlights the sexual nature of witch- type of religious and legal authorities who had so vig- 36
craft by portraying the women naked and showing them with orously persecuted witches. Prosecutions for witchcraft 37
goats, which were common symbols of sexuality. (Germanisches became less common and were gradually outlawed. Spo- 38
Nationalmuseum Nürnberg)
radic trials continued into the eighteenth century, but by 39
then people who thought themselves witches were more 40
confessed to evil deeds and demonic practices, sometimes likely to be regarded as deluded or mentally defective, 41
without torture, but where would we draw the line be- meriting pity rather than persecution, even by people 42
tween reality and fantasy? Clearly people were not riding who still firmly believed in the Devil. Belief in the power 43
through the air on pitchforks, but did they think they did? of witches continued among uneducated people, but ed- 44
Did they actually invoke the Devil when they were angry ucated people now sneered at this as superstition. People 45
at a neighbor, or was this simply in the mind of their ac- ceased to bring formal accusations when they knew they 46
cusers? Trial records cannot tell us, and historians have would simply be dismissed, and witch trials ended. The 47
answered these questions very differently, often using in- last official execution for witchcraft in England was in 48
sights from psychoanalysis or the study of more recent vic- 1682, though the last one in the Holy Roman Empire 49
tims of torture in their explanations. was not until 1775. 50S
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1
2
3
4
5
6
Chapter Summary ACE the Test
7
8 • What were the central ideas of the reformers, and ization allowed the Reformation to spread. Charles re-
9 why were they appealing to different social groups? mained firmly Catholic, and in the 1530s religious wars
10
11
• How did the political situation in Germany shape the began in Germany. These were brought to an end with
course of the Reformation? the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, which allowed rulers to
12
• How did Protestant ideas and institutions spread choose whether their territory would be Catholic or
13
beyond German-speaking lands? Lutheran.
14 In England the political issue of the royal succession
15 • How did the Catholic Church respond to the new
religious situation?
triggered the break with Rome, and a Protestant church
16 was established. Protestant ideas also spread into France
17 • What were the causes and consequences of religious and eastern Europe. In all these areas, a second genera-
18 violence, including riots, wars, and witch-hunts?
tion of reformers built on Lutheran and Zwinglian ideas
19 to develop their own theology and plans for institutional
20 change. The most important of the second-generation
21 The Catholic Church in the early sixteenth century had reformers was John Calvin, whose ideas would come to
22 serious problems, and many individuals and groups had shape Christianity over a much wider area than did
23 long called for reform. This background of discontent Luther’s.
24 helps explain why Martin Luther’s ideas found such a The Roman Catholic Church responded slowly to the
ready audience. Luther and other Protestants developed Protestant challenge, but by the 1530s the papacy was
26 a new understanding of Christian doctrine that empha- leading a movement for reform within the church instead
27 sized faith, the power of God’s grace, and the centrality of blocking it. Catholic doctrine was reaffirmed at the
28 of the Bible. Protestant ideas were attractive to educated Council of Trent, and reform measures such as the open-
29 people and urban residents, and they spread rapidly ing of seminaries for priests and a ban on holding multi-
30 through preaching, hymns, and the printing press. By ple church offices were introduced. New religious orders
31 1530 many parts of the Holy Roman Empire and Scan- such as the Jesuits and the Ursulines spread Catholic
32 dinavia had broken with the Catholic Church. Some ideas through teaching, and in the case of the Jesuits
33 reformers developed more radical ideas about infant through missionary work.
34 baptism, the ownership of property, and separation be- Religious differences led to riots, civil wars, and inter-
35 tween church and state. Both Protestants and Catholics national conflicts in the later sixteenth century. In France
36 regarded these as dangerous, and radicals were banished and the Netherlands, Calvinist Protestants and Catholics
37 or executed. The German Peasants’ War, in which Luther’s used violent actions against one another, and religious
38 ideas were linked to calls for social and economic reform, differences mixed with political and economic griev-
39 was similarly put down harshly. The Protestant reformers ances. Long civil wars resulted, which in the case of the
40 did not break with medieval ideas about the proper gen- Netherlands became an international conflict. War ended
41 der hierarchy, though they did elevate the status of mar- in France with the Edict of Nantes in which Protestants
42 riage and viewed orderly households as the key building were given some civil rights, and in the Netherlands with
43 blocks of society. a division of the country into a Protestant north and
44 The progress of the Reformation was shaped by the Catholic south. The era of religious wars was also the
45 political situation in the Holy Roman Empire. The Habs- time of the most extensive witch persecutions in Euro-
46 burg emperor, Charles V, ruled almost half of Europe pean history, as both Protestants and Catholics tried to
47 along with Spain’s overseas colonies. Within the empire rid their cities and states of people they regarded as
48 his authority was limited, however, and local princes, no- linked to the Devil.
49 bles, and cities actually held most power. This decentral-
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Monter, William E. Calvin’s Geneva. 1967. Shows the ef- 1

Key Terms fect of Calvin’s reforms on the social life of the Swiss city. 2
anticlericalism predestination Oberman, Heiko. Luther: Man Between God and the Devil. 3
pluralism Holy Office 1989. Provides a thorough grounding in his thought. 4
indulgence Jesuits 5
O’Malley, John W. Trent and All That: Renaming Cath- 6
penance Huguenots olicism in the Early Modern Era. 2000. Provides an ex-
purgatory iconoclasm 7
cellent historiographical review of the literature and 8
Diet of Worms Saint Bartholomew’s explains why and how early modern Catholicism influ-
Protestant Day massacre 9
enced early modern European history. 10
transubstantiation politiques
Book of Common Edict of Nantes Roper, Lyndal. The Holy Household: Women and Morals in 11
Prayer Union of Utrecht Reformation Augsburg. 1991. An important study in lo- 12
Elizabethan misogyny cal religious history as well as the history of gender and 13
Settlement the family. 14
The Institutes of the Shagan, Ethan. Popular Politics and the English Reforma- 15
Christian Religion tion. 2003. Analyzes the process of the Reformation in 16
local areas. 17
18
Improve Your Grade Flashcards Wheatcroft, Andrew. The Habsburgs: Embodying Empire. 19
1995. A solid study of political developments surround- 20
ing the Reformation. 21
Bossy, John. Christianity in the West, 1500–1700. 1985. A 23
lively brief overview. 24
Notes 25
Apago PDF Enhancer
Bouwsma, William J. John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century
1. Quoted in O. Chadwick, The Reformation (Baltimore: Penguin 26
Portrait. 1988. An authoritative study that situates Books, 1976), p. 55.
27
Calvin within Renaissance culture. 2. Quoted in E. H. Harbison, The Age of Reformation (Ithaca, N.Y.:
28
Cornell University Press, 1963), p. 52.
Elton, Geoffrey R. Reform and Reformation: England, 3. Quoted in S. E. Ozment, The Age of Reform, 1250–1550: An Intel- 29
1509–1558. 1977. Combines religious, political, and so- lectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Eu- 30
cial history. rope (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980), p. 280. 31
Holt, Mack P. The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629. 32
1995. A thorough survey designed for students. 6. J. Allen, trans., John Calvin: The Institutes of the Christian Reli- 33
gion (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1930), bk. 3, chap. 21, 34
Hsia, R. Po-Chia. The World of Catholic Renewal, paras. 5, 7. 35
1540–1770. 1998. Situates the Catholic Reformation in 7. E. W. Monter, Calvin’s Geneva (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 36
a global context and provides coverage of colonial 1967), pp. 98–108.
37
Catholicism. 8. Ibid., p. 137.
38
9. Quoted in R. H. Bainton, Women of the Reformation in Germany
Levack, Brian. The Witchhunt in Early Modern Europe, 3d and Italy (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1971), pp. 69–70. 39
ed. 2007. A good introduction to and helpful bibli- 10. Quoted in D. P. Daniel, “Hungary,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of 40
ographies of the vast literature on witchcraft. the Reformation, vol. 2, ed. H. J. Hillerbrand (New York: Oxford 41
University Press, 1996), p. 273.
Levi, Anthony. Renaissance and Reformation: The Intellec- 42
11. Quoted in Chadwick, The Reformation, p. 270.
tual Genesis. 2002. Surveys the ideas of major Refor- 12. See J. W. O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard 43
mation figures against the background of important University Press, 1993), p. 376. 44
political issues. 13. Ibid., p. 298. 45
46
Lindbergh, Carter. The European Reformations. 1996. A 47
thorough discussion of the Protestant Reformation and 48
some discussion of Catholic issues. 49
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9 Martin Luther, On Christian Liberty
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T he idea of liberty or freedom has played a
powerful role in the history of Western society and
of it, even to a very small extent, can never write,
speak, think, or hear about it sufficiently. . . .
I hope that . . . I have attained some little
culture, but the meaning and understanding of liberty drop of faith, and that I can speak of this matter, if
16 has undergone continual change and interpretation. not with more elegance, certainly with more
17 In the Roman world, where slavery was a basic solidity. . . .
18 institution, liberty meant the condition of being a free A Christian man is the most free lord of all,
19 man, independent of obligations to a master. In the and subject to none; a Christian man is the most
20 Middle Ages possessing liberty meant having special dutiful servant of all, and subject to everyone.
21 privileges or rights that other persons or institutions Although these statements appear contradictory,
22 did not have. A lord or a monastery, for example, yet, when they are found to agree together, they
might speak of his or its liberties, and citizens in will do excellently for my purpose. They are both
23
London were said to possess the “freedom of the city,” the statements of Paul himself, who says, “Though
24 which allowed them to practice trades and I be free from all men, yet have I made myself a
own property without interference. Likewise, the first servant unto all” (I Cor. 9:19), and “Owe no man
26 chapter of Magna Carta (1215), often called the anything but to love one another” (Rom. 13:8).
27 “Charter of Liberties,” states: “Holy Church shall Now love is by its own nature dutiful and obedient
28 be free and have its rights entire and its liberties to the beloved object. Thus even Christ, though
29 inviolate,” meaning that the English church was Lord of all things, was yet made of a woman; made
30 independent of the authority of the king. under the law; at once free and a servant; at once
31 The idea of liberty also has a religious dimension, in the form of God and in the form of a servant.
32 and the reformer Martin Luther formulated a classic Let us examine the subject on a deeper and less
33 interpretation of liberty in his treatise On Christian simple principle. Man is composed of a twofold
Liberty (sometimes translated On the Freedom of a nature, a spiritual and a bodily. As regards the
34
Christian), arguably his finest piece. Written in Latin spiritual nature, which they name the soul, he is
35 for the pope but translated immediately into German called the spiritual, inward, new man; as regards
36 and published widely, it contains the main themes the bodily nature, which they name the flesh, he
37 of Luther’s theology: the importance of faith, the is called the fleshly, outward, old man. The Apostle
38 relationship of Christian faith and good works, the speaks of this: “Though our outward man perish,
39 dual nature of human beings, and the fundamental yet the inward man is renewed day by day” (II
40 importance of Scripture. Luther writes that Cor. 4:16). The result of this diversity is that in the
41 Christians were freed from sin and death through Scriptures opposing statements are made
42 Christ, not through their own actions. concerning the same man, the fact being that in
43 the same man these two men are opposed to one
44 Christian faith has appeared to many an easy thing; another; the flesh lusting against the spirit, and the
nay, not a few even reckon it among the social spirit against the flesh (Gal. 5:17).
45
virtues, as it were; and this they do because they We first approach the subject of the inward man,
46 have not made proof of it experimentally, and have that we may see by what means a man becomes
47 never tasted of what efficacy it is. For it is not justified, free, and a true Christian; that is, a
48 possible for any man to write well about it, or to spiritual, new, and inward man. It is certain that
49 understand well what is rightly written, who has absolutely none among outward things, under
50S not at some time tasted of its spirit, under the whatever name they may be reckoned, has any
51R pressure of tribulation; while he who has tasted influence in producing Christian righteousness or
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liberty, nor, on the other hand, unrighteousness or

slavery. This can be shown by an easy argument.
What can it profit to the soul that the body should
be in good condition, free, and full of life, that it
should eat, drink, and act according to its pleasure,
when even the most impious slaves of every kind of
vice are prosperous in these matters? Again, what
harm can ill health, bondage, hunger, thirst, or any
other outward evil, do to the soul, when even the
most pious of men, and the freest in the purity of On effective preaching, especially to the uneducated,
their conscience, are harassed by these things? Luther urged the minister “to keep it simple for the
Neither of these states of things has to do with the simple.” (Church of St. Marien, Wittenberg/The Bridgeman
liberty or the slavery of the soul. Art Library)
And so it will profit nothing that the body should
be adorned with sacred vestment, or dwell in holy God, bring salvation. “If thou shalt confess with thy
places, or be occupied in sacred offices, or pray, fast, mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine
and abstain from certain meats, or do whatever heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou
works can be done through the body and in the shalt be saved” (Rom. 9:9); . . . and “The just shall
body. Something widely different will be necessary live by faith” (Rom. 1:17). . . .
for the justification and liberty of the soul, since the But this faith cannot consist of all with works; that
things I have spoken of can be done by an impious is, if you imagine that you can be justified by those
person, and only hypocrites are produced by works, whatever they are, along with it. . . .
devotion to these things. On the other hand, it will Therefore, when you begin to believe, you learn at
not at all injure the soul that the body should be the same time that all that is in you is utterly guilty,
clothed in profane raiment, should dwell in profane sinful, and damnable, according to that saying, “All
places, should eat and drink in the ordinary fashion, have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”
Apago PDF Enhancer
should not pray aloud, and should leave undone all (Rom. 3:23). . . . When you have learned this, you
the things above mentioned, which may be done by will know that Christ is necessary for you, since He
hypocrites. has suffered and risen again for you, that, believing
. . . One thing, and one alone, is necessary for life, on Him, you might by this faith become another
justification, and Christian liberty; and that is the man, all your sins being remitted, and you being
most Holy Word of God, the Gospel of Christ, as He justified by the merits of another, namely Christ
says, “I am the resurrection and the life; he that alone.
believeth in me shall not die eternally” (John 9:25), . . . [A]nd since it [faith] alone justifies, it is
and also, “If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be evident that by no outward work or labour can the
free indeed” (John 8:36), and “Man shall not live by inward man be at all justified, made free, and saved;
bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out and that no works whatever have any relation to
of the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4). him. . . . Therefore the first care of every Christian
Let us therefore hold it for certain and firmly ought to be to lay aside all reliance on works, and
established that the soul can do without everything strengthen his faith alone more and more, and by it
except the Word of God, without which none at all grow in knowledge, not of works, but of Christ
of its wants is provided for. But, having the Word, it Jesus, who has suffered and risen again for him, as
is rich and wants for nothing, since that is the Word Peter teaches (I Peter 5).
of life, of truth, of light, of peace, of justification, of
salvation, of joy, of liberty, of wisdom, of virtue, of
grace, of glory, and of every good thing. . . . Questions for Analysis
But you will ask, “What is this Word, and by what
means is it to be used, since there are so many words 1. What did Luther mean by liberty?
of God?” I answer, “The Apostle Paul (Rom. 1) 2. Why, for Luther, was Scripture basic to
explains what it is, namely the Gospel of God, Christian life?
concerning His Son, incarnate, suffering, risen, and Source: Luther’s Primary Works, ed. H. Wace and C. A.
glorified through the Spirit, the Sanctifier.” To Buchheim (London: Holder and Stoughton, 1896). Reprinted in
preach Christ is to feed the soul, to justify it, to set it The Portable Renaissance Reader, ed. James Bruce Ross and Mary
free, and to save it, if it believes the preaching. For Martin McLaughlin (New York: Penguin Books, 1981),
faith alone, and the efficacious use of the Word of pp. 721–726.
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c h a p t e r 1
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European 3
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Exploration and 5
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Conquest, 1450–1650 8
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chapter preview 12
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World Contacts Before Columbus
• What was the Afro-Eurasian trading
world before Columbus?
P rior to 1400 Europeans were relatively marginal players in a
centuries-old trading system that linked Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Elite classes everywhere prized Chinese porcelains and silks, while wealthy
14
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The European Voyages members of the Celestial Kingdom, as China called itself, wanted ivory
18
of Discovery and black slaves from East Africa, and exotic goods and peacocks from
19
India. African people wanted textiles from India and cowrie shells from
• How and why did Europeans 20
the Maldive Islands. Europeans craved spices and silks, but they had few
undertake ambitious voyages of 21
desirable goods to offer their trading partners.
expansion that would usher in a 22
Within little more than a century, European nations had embarked on
new era of global contact? 23
a remarkably ambitious project to dominate this trading system. The Eu-
24
Europe and the World ropean search for Southeast Asian spices led to a new overseas empire in
25
After Columbus Apago PDF Enhancer
the Indian Ocean and the accidental discovery of the Western Hemi-
26
• What effect did overseas expansion sphere. Within a short time, South and North America had joined a
27
have on the conquered societies, on worldwide economic and imperial web. The results were trading net-
28
enslaved Africans, and on world trade? works and political empires of truly global proportions. The era of “glob-
29
alization” had begun.
Changing Attitudes and Beliefs 30
European states’ intrusions into Indian Ocean trade and into new
• How did culture and art in this 31
economies in the New World gave them wealth and power. Over time
32
period respond to social and cultural the old Asian-dominated trading world gave way to a new European-
33
transformation? dominated one that encompassed the vast territories of the Americas and
34
the Pacific Ocean. Global contacts created new forms of cultural exchange,
35
assimilation, conversion, and resistance. Europeans sought to impose their
36
cultural values on the people they encountered and struggled to com-
37
prehend the peoples and societies they found. New forms of racial preju-
38
dice emerged in this period, but so did new openness and curiosity about
39
different ways of life. Together with the developments of the Renaissance
40
and the Reformation, the Age of Discovery laid the foundations for the
41
modern world as we know it today.
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World Contacts Before Columbus 45
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Columbus did not sail west on a whim. To understand his voyages—and
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the European explorations that preceded and succeeded them—we must
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484 CHAPTER 15 • E U R O P E A N E X P L O R AT I O N A N D C O N Q U E S T, 1 4 5 0 – 1 6 5 0
1 first understand late medieval trade networks. Historians dalwood from the Moluccas; sugar from the Philippines;
2 now recognize important ties between Europe and other and Indian printed cotton and woven tapestries, copper
3 parts of the world prior to Columbus’s voyages, arguing weapons, incense, dyes, and opium. Merchants at Malacca
4 that a type of “world economy” linked the products and stockpiled goods in fortified warehouses while waiting
5 people of Europe, Asia, and Africa in the fifteenth cen- for the next monsoon. With its many mosques and ele-
6 tury. The West was not the dominant player in 1492, and gant homes, Malacca enjoyed the reputation of being a
7 the European voyages derived from the possibilities and sophisticated city, full of “music, ballads, and poetry.”1
8 constraints of this system. The global impact of the dis- Women in Southeast Asia enjoyed relatively high au-
9 coveries in the New World must be viewed in the context tonomy. Their important role in planting and harvesting
10 of this world trading system, which it would in turn rev- rice, the traditional agricultural crop, gave them author-
11 olutionize. ity and economic power. In contrast to Europe, the more
12 • What was the Afro-Eurasian trading world before daughters a Southeast Asian man had, the richer he was.
13 Columbus? At marriage the groom paid the bride (or sometimes her
14 family) a sum of money, called bride wealth, which re-
15 mained under her control. This practice was in sharp
16 contrast to the European dowry, which was provided by
17 the wife’s family and came under the husband’s control.
18
The Trading World of the Indian Ocean Married couples usually resided in the wife’s village and
19 The center of the pre-Columbian world trade network administered property jointly. All children, regardless of
20 was the Indian Ocean, the globe’s third-largest waterway gender, inherited equally, and even after Islam took root
21 (after the Atlantic and Pacific). To the west its arms reach in parts of the region, the rule that sons receive double
22 into the Red and Arabian Seas, through the former to the the inheritance of daughters was never implemented.
23 Mediterranean Sea, and through the latter into the Per- This respect for women’s capacity to handle financial
24 sian Gulf and southwestern Asia. To the north the Indian affairs carried over to the commercial sphere. Women
25 Ocean joins the Bay of Bengal; to the east the Pacific; and
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26 to the south the west coast of Australia (see Map 15.1). partners in family businesses, even undertaking long sea
27 The monsoon winds blow from the west or south be- voyages to accompany their wares. When Portuguese and
28 tween April and August, and from the northwest or Dutch men settled in the region and married local women,
29 northeast between December and March. These seasonal their wives continued to play an important role in trade
30 climate patterns determined the rhythms of trade. and commerce.
31 The location of the Indian Ocean made it a crossroads China played a key role in the fifteenth-century revival
32 for commercial and cultural exchange. Since Han and Ro- of Indian Ocean trade. Given its size and its sophisticated
33 man times, seaborne trade between China (always the big- artisanal production, China was an economic power-
34 gest market for Southeast Asian goods), India, the Middle house. Historians agree that medieval China had the
35 East, Africa, and Europe had flowed across the Indian most advanced economy in the world; one scholar’s con-
36 Ocean. From the seventh through the thirteenth cen- troversial theory is that its economic superiority to the
37 turies, the volume of this trade steadily increased. After a West continued to 1800.2
38 period of decline resulting from the Black Death, demand The Mongol emperors opened the doors of China to
39 for Southeast Asian goods accelerated once more in the the West, encouraging European traders like Marco Polo
40 late fourteenth century. to do business there. Marco Polo’s tales of his travels
41 Merchants congregated in a series of port cities strung from 1271 to 1295 and his encounter with the Great
42 around the ocean that harbored a bewildering array of Khan fueled Western fantasies about the exotic “Orient.”
43 peoples and cultures. The most developed area of this Unbeknownst to the West, the Mongols fell to the new
44 commercial web lay to the east on the South China Sea. Ming Dynasty in 1368. During the Ming Dynasty (1368–
45 In the fifteenth century the port of Malacca became a 1644), China entered a period of agricultural and com-
46 great commercial entrepôt, to which goods were shipped mercial expansion, population growth, and urbanization.
47 for temporary storage while awaiting redistribution to By the end of the dynasty, the Chinese population had
48 other places. To Malacca came Chinese porcelains, silks, doubled to perhaps 100 million people. The city of Nan-
49 and camphor (used in the manufacture of many medica- jing had one million inhabitants, making it the largest
50S tions, including those to reduce fevers); pepper, cloves, city in the world, while the new capital, Beijing, had
51R nutmeg, and raw materials such as sappanwood and san- more than six hundred thousand inhabitants.
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World Contacts Before Columbus • 485
Population growth was one reason for the Chinese de- Chronology 1
sire for more goods. Another was the celebrated naval 2
expeditions led by Admiral Zheng He. Between 1405 1443 Portuguese establish first African trading post 3
and 1433 Zheng He led seven voyages to achieve the at Arguim 4
emperor Yongle’s diplomatic, political, geographical, and 5
commercial goals. Yongle wanted to secure China’s hege- 1450–1650 Age of Discovery 6
mony over tributary states and form new tribute-paying 1492 Columbus lands on San Salvador 7
relations with profitable trade centers. Zheng He’s first 8
fleet was composed of 317 ships—including junks, sup- 1511 Portuguese capture Malacca from Muslims 9
ply ships, water tankers, warships, transports for horses, 1518 Atlantic slave trade begins 10
and patrol boats—carrying twenty-eight thousand sailors 11
and soldiers. Because it bore tons of beautiful porcelains, 1519–1522 Magellan’s expedition circumnavigates 12
the world
elegant silks, lacquer ware, and exquisite artifacts to be ex- 13
changed for goods abroad, the Chinese called it the “trea- 1520 Spaniards defeat Aztec army 14
sure fleet.” Sailing as far west as Egypt, the expeditions 15
1532 Pizarro arrives in Peru and defeats Inca Empire
brought back spices, books, hardwood, and a giraffe from 16
the kingdom of Mali for the imperial zoo. Zheng He may 1547 Oviedo, General History of the Indies 17
have been appointed commander because as a Muslim he 18
1570–1630 Worldwide commercial boom
could more easily negotiate with Muslim merchants on 19
the Indian Ocean. 1602 Dutch East India Company established 20
Court conflicts and the need to defend against renewed 21
Mongol encroachment led to the abandonment of the 22
expeditions and shipbuilding after the deaths of Zheng 23
He and the emperor. Despite the Chinese decision not Asian and Coromandel port cities persisted through the 24
to pursue overseas voyages, trade continued in the South
Apago PDF Enhancer early modern period. India itself was an important con- 25
China Sea. A vast immigration of Chinese people to tributor of goods to the world trading system. Most of 26
Southeast Asia, sometimes called the Chinese diaspora, the world’s pepper was grown in India, and Indian cot- 27
followed the expeditions. Immigrants carried with them ton and silk textiles, mainly from the Gujarat region, 28
Chinese culture, including social customs, diet, and prac- were also highly prized. 29
tical objects of Chinese technology—calendars, books, The Indian Ocean trading system was characterized by 30
scales for weights and measures, and musical instruments. ancient and active trade conducted from multicultural, 31
Another center of trade in the Indian Ocean was In- cosmopolitan port cities, most of which had some form of 32
dia, the crucial link between the Persian Gulf and the autonomous self-government. When the Portuguese ar- 33
Southeast Asian and East Asian trade networks. The sub- rived, they found a rich commercial world in which mu- 34
continent had ancient links with its neighbors to the tual self-interest had largely limited violence and attempts 35
northwest: trade between South Asia and Mesopotamia to monopolize trade. As one historian stated, “before the 36
dates back to the origins of civilization. Fashionable arrival of the Portuguese . . . in 1498 there had been no 37
women of the Roman Empire were addicted to Indian organised attempt by any political power to control the 38
cotton; and until the decline of Rome exotic animals, sea-lanes and the long-distance trade of Asia. . . . The In- 39
ivory, and Chinese silk also made their way to Europe dian Ocean as a whole and its different seas were not 40
through India. Trade with the Indian Ocean was revived dominated by any particular nations or empires.”3 41
by Arab merchants who circumnavigated India on their 42
way to trade in the South China Sea. The need for stop- 43
overs led to the establishment of trading posts at Gujarat 44
and on the Malabar coast, where the cities of Calicut and
Africa 45
Quilon became thriving commercial centers. Often neglected by historians, Africa played an impor- 46
The inhabitants of India’s southeast, Coromandel tant role in the world trade system before Columbus. 47
Coast, traditionally looked east to Southeast Asia, where Around 1450 Africa had a few large and developed em- 48
they had ancient trading and cultural ties. Hinduism and pires along with hundreds of smaller polities. From 1250 49
Buddhism arrived in Southeast Asia from India during until its defeat by the Ottomans in the sixteenth century, 50S
the Middle Ages, and a brisk trade between Southeast the Mameluke Egyptian empire was one of the most 51R
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Black Sea
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East
Suez i Silks
Y a ngz Perfumes
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Pe
Hormuz Porcelain Sea
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si a
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Dhufar
SIAM
South
INDIA
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Bay of
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Aden
Bengal
VIETNAM S e a Manila
Calicut CHAMPA
Cochin Spices CAMBODIA
Gems
Gold Ivory
E A S T Slaves
Ivory Ceylon
Mindanao
Patani Pepper
A F R I C A Acheh Spices
Pasai Pahang Brunei Camphor
Mogadishu Maldives Malacca Maluku
Borneo
M ala (Moluccas)
y Archipelago
Malindi Slaves Sulawesi
Sumatra
Mombasa The Spice Spices
Banten Islands
Kilwa Java Bali Banda
Slaves Islands
I N D I A N
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Sofala
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Trade routes
Voyages of Zheng He 0 500 1000 Mi.
MAP 15.1 The Afro-Eurasian Trading World Before Columbus The Indian Ocean was the center of the Afro-Eurasian trading
world. After a period of decline following the Black Death and the Mongol invasions, trade revived in the fifteenth century. Muslim
merchants dominated trade, linking ports in East Africa and the Red Sea with those in India and the Malay Archipelago. The Chi-
nese Admiral Zheng He’s voyages (1405–1433) followed the most important Indian Ocean trade routes, hoping to impose Ming
dominance of trade and tribute. (Source: Some data from The Times Atlas of World History, 3d ed., page 146.)
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The Port of Banten in Western Java Influenced by Muslim traders and emerging in the early sixteenth cen-
tury as a Muslim kingdom, Banten evolved into a thriving entrepôt. The city stood on the trade route to China 28
and, as this Dutch engraving suggests, in the seventeenth century the Dutch East India Company used Banten as 29
an important collection point for spices purchased for sale in Europe. (Archives Charmet/The Bridgeman Art Library) 30
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powerful on the continent. Its capital, Cairo, was a cen- reached Europe came from Sudan in West Africa and 34
ter of Islamic learning and religious authority as well as a from the Akan peoples living near present-day Ghana. 35
hub for Indian Ocean trade goods, which the Mamelukes After the introduction of camels around A.D. 300, trade 36
helped to re-orient through the Red Sea. Sharing in the routes crisscrossed the Sahara. In exchange for Saharan 37
newfound Red Sea prosperity was the African highland salt, Arab and African traders brought gold from the cities 38
state of Ethiopia, which in 1270, saw the rise of a new dy- of Niani and Timbuktu to be sold in the Mediterranean 39
nasty claiming descent from the biblical King Solomon ports of Fez, Marrakesh, Tunis, and Tripoli. Other trad- 40
and the Queen of Sheba. On the east coast of Africa ing routes led to the Egyptian cities of Alexandria and 41
Swahili-speaking city-states engaged in the Indian Ocean Cairo, where the Venetians held commercial privileges. 42
trade, exchanging ivory, rhinoceros horn, tortoise shells, Nations in the inland savannah that sat astride the 43
copra, and slaves for textiles, spices, cowrie shells, porce- north-south caravan routes grew wealthy from this trade. 44
lain, and other goods. The most important cities were In the mid-thirteenth century Sundiata Keita founded 45
Mogadishu, Mombasa, and Kilwa, which had converted the powerful kingdom of Mali. African merchants carried 46
to Islam by the eleventh century. Peopled by confident not only goods, but also ideas, helping spread Islam to 47
and urbane merchants, they were known for their pros- West Africa. The celebrated pilgrimage of Keita’s succes- 48
perity and culture. sor, Mansa Musa, to Mecca in 1324 underscores the 49
Another important African contribution to world trade links between West Africa and the Muslim world in this 50S
was gold. In the fifteenth century most of the gold that period. On his way to Mecca, Musa arrived in Cairo with 51R
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1 a caravan that included sixty thousand people and eighty tion to Prester John on their voyages along the African
2 camels, with more than two tons of gold for gifts. Word coast and were convinced they had found him when, in
3 of this spectacular caravan spread across Europe. The fa- 1520, a Portuguese embassy reached the Christian Ethio-
4 mous Spanish world map of 1375, known as the Catalan pian court.
5 atlas, depicts Musa as the king of Africa with scepter in
6 one hand and gold nugget in another. He reportedly even
7 discussed sending vessels to explore the Atlantic Ocean,
8 suggesting that not only Europeans envisaged westward
The Ottoman and Persian Empires
9 naval exploration. The Middle East was crucial to the late medieval world
10 Mansa Musa used his wealth to invest in new mosques trade system, serving as an intermediary for trade from all
11 and religious schools, making Timbuktu a renowned points of the compass. It was situated at the crossroads
12 center of culture and learning. The Muslim traveler Ibn between the Baltic States, Central Asia, and Russia to the
13 Battuta visited the city and remarked on the rigorous dis- north; Arabia, Egypt, and East Africa to the south; the
14 cipline in its religious schools and also on the “extraordi- Mediterranean, Europe, and West and North Africa to
15 nary” state of affairs between men and women. Not only the west; and Southeast and East Asia to the east. In ad-
16 did families trace descent through the mother’s line, but dition to serving as a conduit to trade, the Middle East
17 the “women show no bashfulness before men and do not was an important supplier of goods for foreign exchange,
18 veil themselves, though they are assiduous in attending especially silk and cotton.
19 the prayers.”4 Both husbands and wives, he reported, The most famous trade route leading through the
20 could have “friends” and “companions” of the opposite Middle East was the ancient Silk Road that linked the
21 sex without provoking dishonor or jealousy. By the time West to the Far East. After its collapse in the aftermath of
22 the Portuguese arrived, however, the Malian empire was Mongol rule in the fourteenth century, merchants turned
23 fading, to be replaced by the Songhay, who themselves to a northern overland route, which led from the Baltic
24 fell to Moroccan invasion at the end of the sixteenth cen- Sea to Russia, Central Asia, and China. Along this route
25 tury. The Portuguese diversion of gold away from the
Apago PDF Enhancer traveled slaves, fur and timber to the east, and Asian luxury
26 trans-Sahara routes weakened this area politically and goods to the west. Even more important were the two
27 economically, and led to its decline as a center of Islamic southern sea routes that brought products from the In-
28 scholarship. dian Ocean trading system. The first came across the Ara-
29 Gold was one important object of trade; slaves were bian Sea and then up the Red Sea past Aden to Cairo.
30 another. Slavery was practiced in Africa, as virtually The second led past Hormuz up the Persian Gulf and on
31 everywhere else in the world, before the arrival of Euro- to Baghdad. Standing at the mouths of two seas, Aden
32 peans. Arabic and African merchants crossed the Sahara and Hormuz had vital economic and strategic impor-
33 in both directions with slaves. They took West African tance. From the magnificent capitals of Cairo and Bagh-
34 slaves to the Mediterranean to be sold in European, dad, goods were sent to bustling trading posts on the
35 Egyptian, or Mideastern markets and also brought east- eastern Mediterranean coast, such as Alexandria, Damas-
36 ern Europeans—a major element of European slavery— cus, Beirut, and Aleppo.
37 to West Africa as slaves. In addition, Indian and Arabic Two great rival Islamic empires, the Turkish Ottomans
38 merchants traded slaves in the coastal regions of East and the Persian Safavids, dominated this region. The Ot-
39 Africa. European contact would revolutionize the magni- tomans combined excellent military strategy with efficient
40 tude and character of African slavery (see page 508). administration of their conquered territories. Under Sul-
41 Africa—or legends about Africa—played an important tan Mohammed II (r. 1451–1481), the Ottomans cap-
42 role in Europeans’ imagination of the outside world. tured Constantinople in May 1453, sending shock waves
43 They long cherished the belief in a Christian nation in through Europe. Renamed Istanbul, the city became the
44 Africa ruled by a mythical king, Prester John, thought to capital of the Ottoman Empire. With a population of
45 be a descendant of one of the three kings who visited Je- 600,000 to 750,000, it was by far the largest city in Eu-
46 sus after his birth. In 1165 a letter purportedly written by rope and the Middle East and rivaled the great Chinese
47 Prester John to the Byzantine emperor describing the cities in size.
48 king’s vast wealth and the fantastic subjects over whom
49 he ruled appeared in Europe. The letter also promised Improve Your Grade
50S friendship and solidarity with Christian Europe against Primary Source: The Fall of Constantinople to the
51R Islam. Portuguese explorers carried letters of introduc- Ottomans: A Lamentation
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Having completed the conquest of Anatolia in 1461,

the emperor Suleiman I (1494–1566) pressed northwest
into the Balkans and by the early sixteenth century con-
trolled the sea trade on the eastern Mediterranean. In
1516 the sultan’s forces took Syria and Palestine, fol-
lowed by Egypt in 1517 and the rest of northern Africa.
After defeating the Hungarian king in 1526 and bring-
ing portions of his kingdom into the empire, Suleiman
turned to the Habsburg state ruled by Ferdinand I, bro-
ther to Habsburg emperor Charles V. In 1529 the Turks
besieged the Habsburg capital of Vienna. After a siege
of several weeks and high casualties on both sides, the
Turks retreated, leaving Vienna as the westward limit of
Ottoman expansion into Europe.
Ottoman expansion had political, economic, and reli-
gious goals. The Ottomans wished to control the Balkans
and the Mediterranean so as to monopolize trade routes
with the West and spread Islamic rule. The Balkans them-
selves were a precious source of timber, dye, and silver.
With the defeat of the Mameluke empire, expansion into
Egypt gave the Ottomans new access to sources of Afri-
can gold and control over Red Sea shipping. Similarly,
conquest of Baghdad brought control of shipping west
out of the Persian Gulf.
Turkish expansion badly frightened Europeans. Ot-
Apago PDF Enhancer
toman armies seemed nearly invincible and the empire’s
desire for expansion limitless. In France in the sixteenth
century, twice as many books were printed about the
Turkish threat as about the American discoveries. The
strength of the Ottomans helps explain some of the mis-
sionary fervor Christians brought to new territories. It
also raised economic concerns. With trade routes to the
east in the hands of the Ottomans, Europeans were con-
vinced that they needed new trade routes.
Europeans were not alone in opposing Ottoman ambi- The Taking of Constantinople by the Turks, April 22,
tions. In the early sixteenth century the Persian Safavid 1453 The Ottoman conquest of the capital of the Byzantine
Empire in 1453 sent waves of shock and despair through
Empire became a powerful Muslim state, reaching its Europe. Capitalizing on the city’s strategic and commercial
height under Shah Abbas I (r. 1587–1629). Like the importance, the Ottomans made it the center of their empire.
Ottomans, the Persians were important intermediary fig- (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
ures in the Afro-Eurasian trading system. Persian mer-
chants could be found throughout this trading world in
diaspora communities they formed as far away as the In-
dian Ocean. Persia was also a major producer and ex- However, the two empires also relied on each other eco-
porter of silk. nomically; for example, the Ottoman silk industry de-
The Safavids had complex, often hostile relations with pended on raw silk imported from Iran.5
their Ottoman neighbors. Although both were Muslim Despite the fear generated by the Ottomans and the
states, the Ottomans’ Sunni faith clashed with the Per- military clashes between Ottoman and European forces,
sians’ adherence to Shi’ism. Economically, the two com- it is important to emphasize that no “iron curtain” sepa-
peted for control over trade routes to the east. These rated Christian Europe from the Muslim Middle East.
conflicts led to the Ottoman-Safavid war of 1615–1618 Despite explicit religious laws dividing the world into
and to periodic confrontations in the following years. Muslims and infidels, in practice the Ottoman state
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1 tolerated religious differences, protecting Christian and the sultan of Mameluke Egypt, opening permanent of-
2 Jewish lives and property. Foreign merchants, travelers, fices in Cairo, the gateway to trade from India, Southeast
3 and pilgrims were permitted to enter, and the cities of the Asia, and China.
4 empire had established settlements of Christian mer- Venice specialized in expensive luxury goods like spices,
5 chants (see Chapter 17). silks, and carpets. Venetian traders did not, as later Euro-
6 It is also important to emphasize the disunities within peans did, explore new routes to get to the sources of
7 each world. “Muslims” could be Mameluke Egyptians, Ot- supply of these goods. Instead, they obtained them from
8 tomans, Persians, Indians, Africans, or Southeast Asians. middlemen in the eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor.
9 In many ways Islam helped foster commerce by offering A little went a long way. Venetians purchased no more
10 a common Islamic commercial law and culture; however, than five hundred tons of spices a year around 1400, but
11 there were also many divisions among Muslims. Rivalries with a profit of around 40 percent. The most important
12 among European powers as well as among Muslim states by far was pepper, grown in India and Indonesia, which
13 like the Sunni Ottomans and the Shi’ite Persians encour- composed 60 percent of the spices they purchased in
14 aged a shifting pattern of pragmatic and self-interested 1400. In all, one historian has estimated that 70 percent
15 alliances that breached the borders supposedly dividing of the Western trade in spices belonged to the Venetians.6
16 East and West. Eventually the Turks formed a loose al- Other imported goods included grain and sugar from
17 liance with the Portuguese against the Persians, which Egypt and silk and cotton from Syria. Venetian mer-
18 helped both sides ameliorate their trading positions. For chants redistributed these goods throughout Europe.
19 his part, Shah Abbas I sent emissaries to Europe seeking Another major element of Venetian trade was slavery.
20 alliances against the Ottomans. He offered trade conces- Venetian merchants purchased slaves, many of whom
21 sions to the English for their help in eliminating the Por- were fellow Christians, in the Balkans. The men went to
22 tuguese from Hormuz. Before then the Safavids had Egypt for the sultan’s army or to work as agricultural
23 purchased arms from the Portuguese (acquired from In- laborers on Venetian possessions in the Mediterra-
24 dia) to use in combat with the Ottomans. nean. Young girls, who made up the majority of the trade,
25 Apago PDF Enhancer were sold in western Mediterranean ports as servants or
26 concubines.
27
Genoese and Venetian Middlemen The Venetians exchanged Eastern luxury goods for
28 Europe was the western terminus of the world trading European products they could trade abroad, including
29 system. Before the Portuguese and Spanish voyages, the Spanish and English wool, German metal goods, Flemish
30 Italian city-states of Venice and Genoa controlled the textiles, and silk cloth made in their own manufactures
31 European luxury trade with the East. Centuries-old rivals with imported raw materials. The demand for such goods
32 for this trade, Venice and Genoa both lost importance in the East, however, was low. To make up the difference,
33 with the rise of Ottoman power in the eastern Mediter- the Venetians earned currency in the shipping industry
34 ranean and with Portuguese, then Dutch, intrusion into and through trade in firearms and slaves. At least half of
35 the spice trade at its source. After a brilliant period dur- what they traded with the East took the form of precious
36 ing the late Middle Ages, they entered a long period of metal, much of it acquired in Egypt and North Africa.
37 decline. However, Italian experience in colonial adminis- When the Portuguese arrived in Asia, they found Vene-
38 tration, slaving, and international trade and finance served tian coins everywhere.
39 as crucial models for the Iberian states as they pushed Eu- The spice trade brought riches and power to Venice.
40 ropean expansion to new heights. Mariners, merchants, After the catastrophe of the Black Death, Venice reached
41 and financiers from Venice and Genoa—most notably the height of its glory in the 1400s. By 1500 the city’s
42 Christopher Columbus—played a crucial role in bringing population was 120,000, making it one of the largest in
43 the fruits of this experience to the Iberian Peninsula. Europe. From its origins as a small fishing village in the
44 Venice grew in importance with the creation of the sixth century A.D., Venice had created a sizable empire. It
45 Crusader kingdoms, gaining territory and special trading controlled an expansive region on the Italian peninsula
46 concessions in return for aiding the Crusader armies. The and had trading posts in North Africa, the Levant, and
47 Venetian fleet sacked Constantinople in 1204, placing a northern Europe in addition to outright colonies on the
48 new emperor on the throne and gaining exclusive trad- west coast of the Adriatic. The islands of Crete and later
49 ing rights. When the political situation reversed and they Cyprus were also controlled by Venice.
50S lost those privileges, the Venetians turned their attention Merchant wealth endowed the city with beautiful build-
51R south. In 1304 the city established formal relations with ings, art, and a rich and vibrant culture, whose legacy can
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Bellini: Procession in the Piazza San Marco The Piazza San Marco was, and remains, the principal 22
square of Venice. Located on the Grand Canal, it is home to Saint Mark’s Basilica and the palace of the doge, 23
the officer elected for life by the city’s aristocracy to rule the city. Many Venetian festivals, like this procession 24
recorded in 1496 by the great artist Gentile Bellini, took place in the square. (Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY) 25
27
28
29
still be appreciated today. The Venetian city-state organ- tinople, Genoa dominated the northern route to Asia 30
ized international trade meticulously; its impressive fleet through the Black Sea. Expansion in the thirteenth and 31
of state-sponsored ships was one of the finest naval forces fourteenth centuries took the Genoese as far as Persia 32
in Europe. and the Far East. In 1291 they sponsored an expedition 33
French invasions in the 1490s distracted and weakened into the Atlantic in search of “parts of India” by the Vi- 34
the city, as did the new claims on the spice trade made by valdi brothers. The ships were lost, and their exact desti- 35
the Portuguese in the early 1500s, which the Venetians’ nation and motivations remain unknown. However, the 36
Egyptian allies were unable to counter. The Ottoman voyage underlines the long history of Genoese aspira- 37
conquest of Egypt in 1516 raised Venice’s hopes briefly. tions for Atlantic exploration. 38
Eager to improve Red Sea trade and to oppose Portu- In the fifteenth century Genoa made a bold change of 39
guese attempts to monopolize the spice trade, the Ot- direction. With Venice claiming victory over the spice 40
tomans encouraged traders to bypass Portuguese ports. trade, the Genoese shifted focus from trade to finance and 41
Spices began to flow again through the Red Sea to from the Black Sea to the western Mediterranean. Given 42
Venetian merchants in Cairo. By the 1600s, however, the its location on the northwestern coast of Italy, Genoa had 43
Dutch had succeeded in monopolizing this trade, ending always been active in the western Mediterranean, trading 44
Venice’s centuries-old role as the main European entre- with North African ports, southern France, Spain, and 45
pôt for Asian spices. Venice also lost its eastern Mediter- even England and Flanders through the Strait of Gibral- 46
ranean colonies to Ottoman conquest, leading to a loss tar. When new voyages took place in the western Atlantic, 47
of supplies of slaves and other trade goods. Genoese merchants, navigators, and financiers provided 48
Venice’s ancient rival was Genoa. As was the case with their skills to the Iberian monarchs, whose own subjects 49
Venice, Genoa’s fortunes rose with its participation in the had much less commercial experience. The Genoese, for 50S
Crusades. Having undone Venetian control of Constan- example, ran many of the sugar plantations established on 51R
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1 the Atlantic islands colonized by the Portuguese. From quences for their own continent and the rest of the
2 their settlement in Seville, Genoese merchants financed planet.
3 Spanish colonization of the New World and conducted • How and why did Europeans undertake ambitious
4 profitable trade with its colonies. voyages of expansion that would usher in a new era of
5 The Genoese were also enthusiastic slavers. Like the global contact?
6 Venetians, they supplied slaves for agricultural labor on
7 their colonial possessions and as slave soldiers to Mame-
8 luke Egypt. Once more, the majority of the slaves were
9 young women sent to serve in southern Europe or
Causes of European Expansion
10 Genoa. It was a brutal trade: European expansion had multiple causes. By the middle
11 of the fifteenth century, Europe was experiencing a re-
In a ship sailing from the Crimea to Chios in 1455 30 per
12 vival of population and economic activity after the lows
cent of the slaves on board died. Genoese law accepted that
13 of the Black Death. While this revival was not sufficient
a master could beat his slave to death, whilst for the rape of
14 to create population pressure in Europe, it did create
a female the punishment was merely a modest fine combined
15 new demands for luxury goods from the East and for
with the obligation to compensate her owner for the damage
16 spices in particular. The fall of Constantinople in 1453
to his property.7
17 and subsequent Ottoman control of trade routes created
18 After the loss of the Black Sea—and thus the source obstacles to fulfilling these desires. Europeans needed to
19 of slaves—to the Ottomans, the Genoese sought new find new sources of precious metal to trade with the Ot-
20 supplies in the West, taking the Guanches (indigenous tomans or sources of supply for themselves and thereby
21 peoples from the Canary Islands), Muslim prisoners and eliminate Ottoman interference.
22 Jewish refugees from Spain, and by the early 1500s both Why were spices so desirable? Introduced into western
23 black and Berber Africans. With the growth of Spanish Europe by the Crusaders in the twelfth century, pepper,
24 colonies in the New World, Genoese merchants became nutmeg, ginger, mace, cinnamon, and cloves added fla-
25 important players in the Atlantic slave trade.Apago PDF Enhancer vor and variety to the monotonous diet of Europeans.
26 Spices evoked the scent of the Garden of Eden; they
27 seemed a marvel and a mystery. It is also important to re-
28 The European Voyages member that the term spices referred not only to flavor-
29 of Discovery ings added to food but also to perfumes, medicines,
30 drugs, and dyes. Take, for example, cloves, for which Eu-
31 As we have seen, Europe was by no means isolated before ropeans found many uses. If picked green and sugared,
32 the voyages of exploration and the “discovery” of the the buds could be transformed into conserve (a kind of
33 New World; the Europeans were aware of and in contact jam); if salted and pickled, cloves became a flavoring for
34 with the riches of the Indian Ocean trading world. From vinegar. Cloves sweetened the breath. When added to
35 the time of the Crusades, Italian merchants brought the food or drink, cloves were thought to stimulate the ap-
36 products of the East to luxury markets in Europe eager petite and clear the intestines and bladder. When crushed
37 for silks, spices, porcelain, and other fine goods. But be- and powdered, they were a medicine rubbed on the fore-
38 cause they did not produce many products desired by head to relieve head colds and applied to the eyes to
39 Eastern elites, Europeans were relatively modest players strengthen vision. Taken with milk, cloves were believed
40 in the Afro-Eurasian trading world. Their limited role to enhance the pleasures of sexual intercourse.
41 was reduced even further in the mid-fourteenth century, Apart from a desire for trade goods, religious fervor
42 when the Black Death, combined with the ravages of the was another important catalyst for expansion. The pas-
43 Mongol warlord Tamerlane, led to a collapse in trade sion and energy ignited by the Iberian reconquista en-
44 routes and commercial markets. couraged the Portuguese and Spanish to continue the
45 From these lows, however, Europeans would soon un- Christian crusade. Just seven months separated Isabella
46 dertake new and unprecedented expansion. As popula- and Ferdinand’s entry into Granada on January 2 and
47 tion and trade recovered, new European players entered Columbus’s departure westward on August 3, 1492.
48 the scene, eager to spread Christianity and to undo Ital- Overseas exploration was in some ways a transfer of their
49 ian dominance of trade with the East. A century after the religious zeal, enthusiasm for conquest and expansion,
50S plague, Iberian explorers began the overseas voyages that and certainty of God’s blessing on their ventures from
51R helped create the modern world, with staggering conse- the European continent to new non-Christian territories.
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The European Voyages of Discovery • 493
Since organized Muslim polities such as the Ottoman nal success in the spice trade. Like voyagers, monarchs 1
Empire were too strong to defeat, Iberians turned their shared a mix of motivations, from desire to please God to 2
attention to non-Christian peoples elsewhere. desire to win glory and profit from trade. 3
Combined with eagerness for profits and to spread For ordinary sailors, life at sea was dangerous, over- 4
Christianity was the desire for glory and the urge to chart crowded, unbearably stench-ridden, filled with hunger, 5
new waters. Scholars have frequently described the Euro- and ill-paid. For months at a time, 100 to 120 people 6
pean discoveries as a manifestation of Renaissance curios- lived and worked in a space of between 150 and 180 7
ity about the physical universe—the desire to know more square meters, with no available water except a small 8
about the geography and peoples of the world. The de- amount for drinking. Each person had an average of 1.5 9
tailed journals kept by such voyagers as Christopher meters of space, with more going to officers and wealthy 10
Columbus and Antonio Pigafetta (a survivor of Magel- passengers.11 A lucky sailor would find enough space on 11
lan’s world circumnavigation) attest to their wonder and deck to unroll his sleeping mat. This is not to mention the 12
fascination with the new peoples and places they visited. horses, cows, pigs, chickens, rats, and lice that accompa- 13
Individual explorers combined these motivations in nied the voyages. As one scholar concluded, “traveling on 14
unique ways. Christopher Columbus was a devout Chris- a ship must have been one of the most uncomfortable and 15
tian who was increasingly haunted by messianic obses- oppressive experiences in the world.”12 16
sions in the last years of his life. As Bartholomew Diaz Why did men choose to go to sea? They did so to es- 17
put it, his own motives were “to serve God and His cape poverty at home, to continue a family trade, to win a 18
Majesty, to give light to those who were in darkness and few crumbs of the great riches of empire, or to find a bet- 19
to grow rich as all men desire to do.” When Vasco da ter life as illegal immigrants in the colonies. Moreover, 20
Gama reached the port of Calicut, India, in 1498 and a many orphans and poor boys were placed on board as 21
native asked what the Portuguese wanted, he replied, young pages and had little say in the decision. Women 22
“Christians and spices.”8 The bluntest of the Spanish also paid a price for the voyages of exploration. Left alone 23
conquistadors, Hernando Cortés, announced as he pre- for months or years at a time, and frequently widowed, 24
pared to conquer Mexico, “I have come to win gold, not
Apago PDF Enhancer sailors’ wives struggled to feed their families. The widow 25
to plow the fields like a peasant.”9 of a sailor lost on Magellan’s 1519 voyage had to wait un- 26
Eagerness for exploration could be heightened by a lack til 1547 to collect her husband’s salary from the Crown.13 27
of opportunity at home. After the reconquista, enterpris- The people who stayed at home had a powerful impact 28
ing young men of the Spanish upper classes found their on the process. Court coteries and factions influenced 29
economic and political opportunities greatly limited. As a monarch’s decisions and could lavishly reward individ- 30
a study of the Castilian city of Ciudad Real shows, the uals or cut them out of the spoils of empire. Then there 31
ancient aristocracy controlled the best agricultural land was the public: the small number of people who could 32
and monopolized urban administrative posts. Great mer- read were a rapt audience for tales of fantastic places and 33
chants and a few nobles (surprisingly, since Spanish law unknown peoples. Cosmography, natural history, and ge- 34
forbade participation by nobles in commercial ventures) ography aroused enormous interest among educated 35
dominated the textile and leather-glove manufacturing people in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Just as sci- 36
industries. Consequently, many ambitious men turned to ence fiction and speculation about life on other plan- 37
the Americas to seek their fortunes.10 ets excite readers today, quasi-scientific literature about 38
Whatever the motivations, the voyages were made pos- Africa, Asia, and the Americas captured the imaginations 39
sible by the growth of government power. Mariners and of literate Europeans. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo’s 40
explorers did not possess the massive sums needed to ex- General History of the Indies (1547), a detailed eyewit- 41
plore mysterious oceans and control remote continents. ness account of plants, animals, and peoples, was widely 42
Reassertion of monarchical authority and state central- read. Indeed, the elite’s desire for the exotic goods 43
ization in the fifteenth century provided rulers with such brought by overseas trade helped propel the whole proc- 44
resources. In the fifteenth century Isabella and Ferdinand ess of expansion. 45
had consolidated their several kingdoms to achieve a 46
more united Spain and had revamped the Spanish bu- 47
reaucracy. The Spanish monarchy was stronger than be-
Technological Stimuli to Exploration 48
fore and in a position to support foreign ventures. In Technological developments in shipbuilding, weaponry, 49
Portugal the steadfast financial and moral support of and navigation provided another impetus for European 50S
Prince Henry the Navigator led to Portugal’s phenome- expansion. Since ancient times, most seagoing vessels had 51R
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1 been narrow, open boats called galleys, propelled largely Early cannon posed serious technical difficulties. Iron
2 by manpower. Slaves or convicts who had been sentenced cannon were cheaper than bronze to construct, but they
3 to the galleys manned the oars of the ships that sailed were difficult to cast effectively and were liable to crack
4 the Mediterranean, and both cargo ships and warships and injure artillerymen. Bronze guns, made of copper
5 carried soldiers for defense. Though well suited to the and tin, were less subject than iron to corrosion, but they
6 placid and thoroughly explored waters of the Mediter- were very expensive. All cannon were extraordinarily dif-
7 ranean, galleys could not withstand the rough winds and ficult to move, required considerable time for reloading,
8 uncharted shoals of the Atlantic. The need for sturdier and were highly inaccurate. They thus proved inefficient
9 craft, as well as population losses caused by the Black for land warfare. However, they could be used at sea.
10 Death, forced the development of a new style of ship that Great strides in cartography and navigational aids were
11 would not require soldiers for defense or much man- also made in this period. Around 1410 Arab scholars
12 power to sail. reintroduced Europeans to Ptolemy’s Geography. Writ-
13 In the course of the fifteenth century, the Portuguese ten in the second century A.D. by a Hellenized Egyptian,
14 developed the caravel, a small, light, three-masted sail- the work was a formidable synthesis of the geographical
15 ing ship. Though somewhat slower than the galley, the knowledge of the classical world. Its republication pro-
16 caravel held more cargo. Its triangular lateen sails and vided significant improvements over medieval cartogra-
17 sternpost rudder also made the caravel a much more phy, showing the world as round and introducing the
18 maneuverable vessel. When fitted with cannon, it could idea of latitude and longitude to plot position accurately.
19 dominate larger vessels, such as the round ships com- Ptolemy’s work also contained crucial errors. Ignorant of
20 monly used as merchantmen. the existence of the Americas, he showed the world as
21 By 1350 cannon—iron or bronze guns that fired iron much smaller than it is, so that Asia appeared not very
22 or stone balls—had been fully developed. These pieces of distant from Europe to the west. Based on this work, car-
23 artillery emitted frightening noises and great flashes of tographers fashioned new maps that combined classical
24 fire and could batter down fortresses and even city walls. knowledge with the latest information from mariners.
26
27
28 Ptolemy’s Geography The
29 recovery of Ptolemy’s Geogra-
phy in the early fifteenth
30 century gave Europeans new
31 access to ancient geographical
32 knowledge. This 1486 world
33 map, based on Ptolemy, is a
34 great advance over medieval
maps but contains errors with
35 significant consequences for
36 future exploration. It shows
37 the world watered by a single
38 ocean, with land covering
39 three-quarters of the world’s
surface and with Europe,
40 Africa, and Asia as the only
41 continents. Africa and Asia are
42 joined, making the Indian
43 Ocean a landlocked sea and
44 rendering the circumnaviga-
tion of Africa impossible. The
45 continent of Asia is stretched
46 far to the east, greatly short-
47 ening the distance from Eu-
48 rope to Asia. (Giraudon/Art
49 Resource, NY)
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First the Genoese and Venetians, and then the Por- 1

tuguese and Spanish, took the lead in these advances.14 2
The magnetic compass enabled sailors to determine 3
their direction and position at sea. The astrolabe, an 4
instrument invented by the ancient Greeks and 5
perfected by Muslim navigators, was used to de- 6
termine the altitude of the sun and other celestial 7
bodies. It permitted mariners to plot their lati- 8
tude, or position north or south of the equator. 9
Many scholars have argued that it was superior 10
European weaponry, shipbuilding, and naviga- 11
tional skill that allowed them to undertake such 12
astonishing voyages and to overcome the resis- 13
tance of numerically far superior forces. As in the 14
Industrial Revolution, they have argued, the key to 15
European success over others was its openness to new 16
technology and its interest in developing and adopting 17
the most advanced technologies. 18
These arguments have encountered criticism in recent 19
years. Some scholars have emphasized the extent to which 20
Nocturnal An instrument for determining the hour of night
European technology was borrowed from the East. For at sea by finding the progress of certain stars around the
21
example, gunpowder, the compass, and the sternpost polestar (center aperture). (National Maritime Museum, London) 22
rudder were all Chinese inventions. The lateen sail, 23
which allowed European ships to tack against the wind, 24
was a product of the Indian Ocean trading world and was
brought to the Mediterranean on Arab ships. Naviga-
historian concludes, “Neither in Asia nor anywhere else 26
tional aids, such as the astrolabe, were also acquired from was empire the inevitable corollary of technological 27
others, and advances in cartography drew on the rich tra- superiority.”15 28
dition of Judeo-Arabic mathematical and astronomical 29
learning in Iberia. This assistance sometimes assumed 30
human form. It was not his own seafaring abilities but as-
The Portuguese Overseas Empire 31
sistance from a local guide that helped Vasco da Gama At the end of the fourteenth century Portugal was a small 32
find a sea route from the East African coast to India. In and poor nation on the margins of European life whose 33
exploring new territories, European sailors thus called on principal activities were fishing and subsistence farming. 34
techniques and knowledge developed over centuries in It would have been hard for a European to predict Por- 35
China and the trading world of the Indian Ocean. tugal’s phenomenal success overseas in the next two cen- 36
Other historians have argued that technological ad- turies. Yet Portugal had a long history of seafaring and 37
vances were in themselves not that important. Not only navigation. Blocked from access to western Europe by 38
were cannon inaccurate and unreliable, but in the tropical Spain, the Portuguese turned to the Atlantic and North 39
conditions of Africa, India, and South America gunpow- Africa, whose waters they knew better than almost any 40
der got wet and cannon did not fire. Native populations other Europeans. Nature favored the Portuguese: winds 41
quickly acquired firepower from Europeans who were blowing along their coast offered passage to Africa, its 42
eager to profit from the weapons trade. These historians Atlantic islands, and, ultimately, Brazil. 43
have concluded that technological developments arose to In the early phases of Portuguese exploration, Prince 44
meet the needs of exploration, rather than being a neces- Henry (1394–1460), a younger son of the king, played a 45
sary precursor to them. To support this case, one scholar leading role. A nineteenth-century scholar dubbed Henry 46
points out that the first Portuguese voyages took place in “the Navigator” because of his support for the study of 47
whatever boats were available and with crews unable to geography and navigation and for the annual expeditions 48
make use of a compass or a sea chart. Columbus himself he sponsored down the western coast of Africa. Although 49
relied on dead reckoning—at which he proved extremely he never personally participated in voyages of exploration, 50S
adept—rather than on new navigational devices. As this Henry’s enthusiasm for discovery and his financial support 51R
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ARCTIC OCEAN
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GREENLAND
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Newfoundland
Amsterdam
1497 Antwerp
NORTH Quebec
AMERICA 1608
EUROPE
Page 496
1493 Lisbon Constantinople
Azores Seville ASIA JAPAN
1542
Ceuta PERSIA
NEW St. Augustine 1565 1415
CHINA Kyushu
Apago PDF Enhancer

Canary Is.
SPAIN San Salvador 1492 Hormuz
1507
PACIFIC
Cuba 1492
Guanajuato Zacatecas 1492 SAHARA Canton
1513
Muscat Macao OCEAN
Mexico City Vera1519
Cruz Puerto Rico Cape Verde Is. CAPE INDIA 1517
1519
Jamaica Timbuktu ARABIA Bombay
Hispaniola 1456 VERDE Goa Bay of
HONDURAS 1444 1510 PHILIPPINES
Cartagena 1492 Aden 1513 Bengal
GU
Trinidad Niani ETHIOPIA Calicut
SP 1498
PACIFIC Ceylon
IN
A 1498
Panama M NI
EA
1505
A SH AFRICA
1519
8
IN 149 Malacca 1509 152
1
Quito GOLD COAST
OCEAN
s
ca
1534 Borneo
Mombasa Sumatra
uc
INDIAN
14
1498 l New Guinea
97
PE
SOUTH o 11
Lima M 15
RU
Java
152
1535 AMERICA OCEAN
2
Mozambique
IL
AZ
Potosí ATLANTIC MADAGASCAR

BR
1500
Rio de Janeiro
1516 2
152
152
0 Santiago OCEAN
Buenos Aires Cape of Good Hope
1535
Strait of Magellan
Cape Horn
Magellan and crew

0 1500 3000 Km. Columbus
Spanish holdings Da Gama
0 1500 3000 Mi.
Portuguese holdings Other
1019763_ch_15.qxp 9/19/07 4:42 PM Page 497
ensured that Portugal did not abandon the effort despite 1

early disappointments. 2
The objectives of Portuguese policy included aristo- 3
cratic desires for martial glory, the historic Iberian cru- 4
sade to Christianize Muslims, and the quest to find gold, 5
slaves, an overseas route to the spice markets of India, 6
and the mythical king Prester John. Portugal’s conquest 7
of Ceuta, an Arab city in northern Morocco, in 1415 8
marked the beginning of European exploration and con- 9
trol of overseas territory. In the late 1420s, under Henry’s 10
direction, the Portuguese began to settle the Atlantic 11
islands of Madeira (ca 1420) and the Azores (1427). In 12
1443 the Portuguese founded their first African com- 13
mercial settlement at Arguim in present-day Mauritania. 14
By the time of Henry’s death in 1460, his support for 15
exploration was vindicated by thriving plantations on the 16
Atlantic islands and new access to gold. 17
Under King John II (r. 1481–1495) the Portuguese 18
established trading posts and forts on the gold-rich 19
Guinea coast and penetrated into the African continent 20
all the way to Timbuktu (see Map 15.2). Portuguese 21
ships transported gold to Lisbon, and by 1500 Portugal 22
controlled the flow of African gold to Europe. The 23
golden century of Portuguese prosperity had begun. 24
Still the Portuguese pushed farther south down the
west coast of Africa. In 1487 Bartholomew Diaz rounded 26
the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip, but storms 27
and a threatened mutiny forced him to turn back. On a 28
later expedition in 1497 Vasco da Gama commanded a 29
The Portuguese Fleet Embarked for the Indies This
fleet of four ships in search of a sea route to the Indian image shows a Portuguese trading fleet in the late fifteenth 30
Ocean trade. Da Gama’s ships rounded the Cape and century, bound for the riches of the Indies. Between 1500 and 31
sailed up the east coast of Africa. With the help of an In- 1635, over nine hundred ships sailed from Portugal to ports 32
dian guide, da Gama sailed across the Arabian Sea to the on the Indian Ocean, in annual fleets composed of five to ten 33
ships. (British Museum/HarperCollins Publishers/The Art Archive)
port of Calicut in India. Overcoming local hostility, he 34
returned to Lisbon loaded with spices and samples of In- 35
36
37
38
Mapping the Past dian cloth. He had failed to forge any trading alliances 39
with local powers, and Portuguese arrogance ensured the 40
MAP 15.2 Overseas Exploration and Conquest, Fif- 41
future hostility of Muslim merchants who dominated the
teenth and Sixteenth Centuries The voyages of discov-
ery marked a dramatic new phase in the centuries-old trading system. Nonetheless, he had proved the possibil- 42
migrations of European peoples. This map depicts the voyages ity of lucrative trade with the East via the Cape route. 43
of Ferdinand Magellan, Christopher Columbus, and Vasco da King Manuel (r. 1495–1521) promptly dispatched thir- 44
••
Gama. 1 What was the contemporary significance of each of these
voyages? 2 Was the importance of the voyages primarily economic,
teen ships under the command of Pedro Alvares Cabral, 45
46
•
political, or cultural? 3 Which voyage had the most impact, and why?
assisted by Diaz, to set up trading posts in India. On
April 22, 1500, Cabral’s fleet sighted the coast of Brazil
in South America and claimed it for the Crown of Portu-
47
48
Improve Your Grade Interactive gal. Cabral then proceeded south and east around the 49
Map: World Exploration, 1492–1535 Cape of Good Hope and reached India. Half the fleet 50S
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1 was lost on the return voyage, but the six spice-laden ves- In contrast to this lavish praise, Columbus has recently
2 sels that dropped anchor in Lisbon harbor in July 1501 been severely criticized. He enslaved and sometimes killed
3 more than paid for the entire expedition. Thereafter, a the Indians he encountered. He was a cruel and ineffec-
4 Portuguese convoy set out for passage around the Cape tive governor of Spain’s Caribbean colony. Moreover, he
5 every March. Lisbon became the entrance port for Asian did not discover the Americas: Native Americans had oc-
6 goods into Europe—but this was not accomplished with- cupied the New World for millennia before Columbus,
7 out a fight. and other Europeans, including the Vikings, had been
8 For centuries, port city-states had controlled the rich there before him. Not only did he not discover the con-
9 spice trade of the Indian Ocean, and they did not sur- tinents, but he also misunderstood what he found. Other
10 render it willingly. Portuguese commercial activities were writers have faulted Columbus as an opportunistic ad-
11 accompanied by the destruction or seizure of strategic venturer who originated European exploitation of the
12 coastal forts, which later served Portugal as both trading non-European world.
13 posts and military bases. Alfonso de Albuquerque, whom Rather than judging Columbus by debates and stan-
14 the Portuguese crown appointed as governor of India dards of our time, it is more important to put him into
15 (1509–1515), decided that these bases, not inland terri- the context of his own time. First, what kind of man was
16 tories, should control the Indian Ocean. Accordingly, his Columbus, and what forces or influences shaped him?
17 cannon blasted open the ports of Malacca, Calicut, Or- Second, in sailing westward from Europe, what were his
18 muz, and Goa, the vital centers of Muslim domination of goals? Third, did he achieve his goals, and what did he
19 South Asian trade. This bombardment laid the founda- make of his discoveries?
20 tion for Portuguese imperialism in the sixteenth and sev- Columbus grew up in Genoa and thus drew on the
21 enteenth centuries—a strange way to bring Christianity centuries-old tradition of Genoese participation in inter-
22 to “those who were in darkness.” As one scholar wrote national trade. In his dream of a westward passage to
23 about the opening of China to the West, “while Buddha the Indies, he embodied a long-standing Genoese ambi-
24 came to China on white elephants, Christ was borne on tion to circumvent Venetian domination of eastward
25 cannon balls.”16 Apago PDF Enhancer trade, which was now being claimed by the Portuguese.
26 In March 1493, between the voyages of Diaz and da Columbus was also very knowledgeable about the sea.
27 Gama, Spanish ships under a triumphant Genoese He had worked as a mapmaker, and he was familiar with
28 mariner named Christopher Columbus (1451–1506), in such fifteenth-century Portuguese navigational develop-
29 the service of the Spanish crown, entered Lisbon harbor. ments as portolans—written descriptions of the courses
30 Spain also had begun the quest for an empire. along which ships sailed, showing bays, coves, capes,
31 ports, and the distances between these places—and the
32 use of the magnetic needle as a nautical instrument. As
33 he implied in his Journal, he had acquired not only theo-
34
The Problem of Christopher Columbus retical but also practical experience: “I have spent twenty-
35 The year 1992, which marked the quincentenary of three years at sea and have not left it for any length of
36 Columbus’s first voyages to the Americas, spawned an time worth mentioning, and I have seen everything from
37 enormous amount of discussion about the significance of east to west [meaning he had been to England] and I
38 his voyages. Journalists, scholars, amateurs, and polemi- have been to Guinea [north and west Africa].”18 Al-
39 cists debated Columbus’s accomplishments and failures. though some of Columbus’s geographical information,
40 Until the 1980s most writers would have generally such as his measurement of the distance from Portugal to
41 agreed with Harvard historian Samuel Eliot Morison in Japan as 2,760 miles when it is actually 12,000, proved
42 his 1942 biography of the explorer: inaccurate, his successful thirty-three-day voyage to the
43 Caribbean owed a great deal to his seamanship.
The whole history of the Americas stems from the Four Voy-
44 Columbus was also a deeply religious man. He began
ages of Columbus; today a score of independent nations and
45 the Journal of his voyage to the Americas in the form of
dominions unite in homage to Columbus, the stout-hearted
46 a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain:
son of Genoa, who carried Christian civilization across the
47
Ocean Sea.17
48 On 2 January in the year 1492, when your Highnesses had
49 In 1942, the Western Powers believed they were engaged concluded their war with the Moors who reigned in Europe,
50S in a life-and-death struggle to defend “Christian civiliza- I saw your Highnesses’ banners victoriously raised on the
51R tion” against the evil of fascism. towers of the Alhambra, the citadel of the city, and the Moor-
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ish king come out of the city gates and kiss the hands of your to Spain, Columbus described the natives as handsome, 1
Highnesses and the prince, My Lord. And later in that same peaceful, and primitive people whose body painting re- 2
month, on the grounds of information I had given your High- minded him of the Canary Islands natives. He concluded 3
nesses concerning the lands of India . . . your Highnesses that they would make good slaves and could quickly be 4
decided to send me, Christopher Columbus, to see these converted to Christianity. (See the feature “Listening to 5
parts of India and the princes and peoples of those lands and the Past: Columbus Describes His First Voyage” on 6
consider the best means for their conversion.19 pages 518–519.) 7
Columbus received reassuring reports—via hand ges- 8
tures and mime—of the presence of gold and of a great 9
Columbus had witnessed the Spanish reconquest of king in the vicinity. From San Salvador, Columbus sailed 10
Granada and shared fully in the religious and nationalis- southwest, believing that this course would take him to 11
tic fervor surrounding that event. Like the Spanish rulers Japan or the coast of China. He landed on Cuba on Oc- 12
and most Europeans of his age, Columbus understood tober 28. Deciding that he must be on the mainland near 13
Christianity as a missionary religion that should be car- the coastal city of Quinsay (Hangzhou), he sent a small 14
ried to places and peoples where it did not exist. Al- embassy inland with letters from Ferdinand and Isabella 15
though Columbus certainly had material and secular and instructions to locate the grand city. 16
goals, first and foremost, as he wrote in 1498, he be- The landing party, however, found only sparsely pop- 17
lieved he was a divine agent: “God made me the messen- ulated villages. In response to this disappointment, 18
ger of the new heaven and the new earth of which he Columbus set a course that is still controversial among 19
spoke in the Apocalypse of St. John . . . and he showed historians. Instead of continuing north, he turned south- 20
me the post where to find it.”20 west, apparently giving up on his aim to meet the Great 21
What was the object of this first voyage? Columbus Khan in preference to trying to find gold among the 22
gave the answer in the very title of the expedition, “The peoples he had discovered. In January, having failed to 23
Enterprise of the Indies.” He wanted to find a direct find the source of gold but having made contact with na- 24
ocean trading route to Asia. Rejected by the Portuguese
Apago PDF Enhancer tives seemingly apt for Christianization and confident of 25
in 1483 and by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1486, the proj- the existence of gold somewhere in the vicinity, he 26
ect finally won the backing of the Spanish monarchy in headed back to Spain. 27
1492. The Santa Fe capitulations named Columbus Over the next decades, Columbus’s change of course 28
viceroy over any territory he might discover and gave was reconfirmed as the Spanish adopted the model of 29
him one-tenth of the material rewards of the journey. In- conquest and colonization they had already introduced 30
spired by the stories of Marco Polo, Columbus dreamed in the Canary Islands rather than one of exchange with 31
of reaching the court of the Great Khan (not realizing equals (as envisaged for the Mongol khan). On his sec- 32
that the Ming Dynasty had overthrown the Mongols in ond voyage, Columbus forcibly subjugated the island of 33
1368). Based on Ptolemy’s Geography and other texts, Hispaniola, enslaved its indigenous peoples, and laid the 34
he expected to pass the islands of Japan and then land on basis for a system of land grants tied to their labor ser- 35
the east coast of China. He carried letters from Ferdi- vice. Columbus himself, however, had little interest in or 36
nand and Isabella to the khan and an Arabic interpreter, capacity for governing. Revolt soon broke out against 37
for he assumed that the Great Khan must be in dialogue him and his brother on Hispaniola. A royal expedition 38
with Arabic-speaking powers. sent to investigate returned the brothers to Spain in 39
How did Columbus interpret what he had found, and chains. Columbus was quickly cleared of wrongdoing, 40
in his mind did he achieve what he had set out to do? but he did not recover his authority over the territories. 41
Columbus’s small fleet left the seaport of Palos on Au- Instead, they came under royal control. 42
gust 3 bound for a first stop at the Canary Islands, the Columbus was very much a man of his times. To the 43
westernmost outpost of European civilization. He landed end of his life in 1506, he believed that he had found 44
in the Bahamas on October 12, which he christened San small islands off the coast of Asia. He never realized the 45
Salvador. Columbus believed he had found some small scope of his achievement: to have found a vast continent 46
islands off the east coast of Cipangu (Japan). On en- unknown to Europeans, except for a fleeting Viking pres- 47
countering natives of the islands, he gave them some ence centuries earlier. He could not know that the scale 48
beads and “many other trifles of small value,” pronounc- of his discoveries would revolutionize world power, rais- 49
ing them delighted with these gifts and eager to trade. In ing issues of trade, settlement, government bureaucracy, 50S
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1 Brazil, which Cabral claimed as Portuguese territory. The

2
Later Explorers country’s name derives from the brazilwood trees found
3 News of Columbus’s first voyage rapidly spread across there, an important source of red dye (from the word
4 Europe. On April 1, 1493, a printer in Barcelona pub- brasa, or the reddish color of burning coals).
5 lished Columbus’s letter to Ferdinand and Isabella de- The search for profits determined the direction of
6 scribing what he had found. By the end of that month Spanish exploration and expansion into South America.
7 the letter had been translated into Latin and published in When it became apparent that placer mining (in which
8 Rome. Within a year printers in Paris, Basel, Antwerp, ore is separated from soil by panning) in the Caribbean
9 and Venice had brought out six more Latin editions, islands was unrewarding and that the Portuguese were
10 which were soon followed by translations into other Eu- reaping enormous riches in Asian trade, new routes to
11 ropean languages. In a 1503 letter Florentine navigator the East and new sources of gold and silver were sought.
12 Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512) wrote about his discov- In 1519 the Spanish ruler Charles V commissioned the
13 eries on the coast of modern-day Venezuela, stating: Portuguese mariner Ferdinand Magellan (1480–1521)
14 “Those new regions which we found and explored with to find a direct route to the spices of the Moluccas off the
15 the fleet . . . we may rightly call a New World.” This let- southeast coast of Asia. Magellan sailed southwest across
16 ter, titled Mundus Novus (The New World), was the first the Atlantic to Brazil, and after a long search along the
17 document to describe America as a continent separate coast he located the treacherous straits that now bear his
18 from Asia. In recognition of Amerigo’s bold claim, the name (see Map 15.2). The new ocean he sailed into after
19 continent was named for him. (When later cartographers a rough passage through the straits seemed so peaceful
20 realized that Columbus had made the discovery first, it that Magellan dubbed it the Pacific. He was soon to real-
21 was too late to change the maps.) ize his mistake. His fleet sailed north up the west coast of
22 To settle competing claims to the Atlantic discoveries, South America and then headed west into the immense
23 Spain and Portugal turned to Pope Alexander VI. The expanse of the Pacific toward the Malay Archipelago.
24 Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) gave Spain everything to (Some of these islands were conquered in the 1560s and
25 the west of an imaginary line drawn down the Atlantic
Apago PDF Enhancer named the “Philippines” for Philip II of Spain.)
26 and Portugal everything to the east. This arbitrary divi- Terrible storms, disease, starvation, and violence
27 sion worked in Portugal’s favor when in 1500 an expedi- haunted the expedition. Magellan had set out with a fleet
28 tion led by Pedro Alvares Cabral landed on the coast of of five ships and around 270 men. Sailors on two of the
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
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40
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48 World Map of Diogo Ribeiro, 1529 This map integrates the wealth of new information provided by European
explorers in the decades after Columbus’s 1492 voyage. Working on commission for the Spanish king Charles V, the
49 mapmaker incorporated new details on Africa, South America, India, the Malay Archipelago, and China. Note the
50S inaccuracy in his placement of the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, which are much too far east. This “mistake” was
51R intended to serve Spain’s interests in trade negotiations with the Portuguese. (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana)
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ships attempted mutiny on the South American coast; one (1485–1547) crossed from Hispaniola to mainland Mex- 1
ship was lost, and another ship deserted and returned to ico with six hundred men, seventeen horses, and ten can- 2
Spain before even traversing the straits. The trip across non. The conquest of Aztec Mexico had begun. 3
the Pacific took ninety-eight days, and the men survived Cortés landed at Vera Cruz in February 1519. In No- 4
on rats and sawdust. Magellan himself was killed in a skir- vember he entered Tenochtitlán (now Mexico City), 5
mish in the Philippines. The expedition had enough sur- capital of the sophisticated Aztec Empire ruled by Mon- 6
vivors to man only two ships, and one of them was tezuma II (r. 1502–1520). Larger than any European 7
captured by the Portuguese. One ship with eighteen men city of the time, the capital was the heart of a civilization 8
returned to Spain from the east by way of the Indian with advanced mathematics, astronomy, and engineering, 9
Ocean, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Atlantic in with a complex social system, and with oral poetry and 10
1522. The voyage had taken almost exactly three years. historical traditions. In less than two years Cortés had 11
Despite the losses, this voyage revolutionized Euro- destroyed the monarchy, gained complete control of the 12
peans’ understanding of the world by demonstrating the capital city, and extended his jurisdiction over much of 13
vastness of the Pacific. The earth was clearly much larger the Aztec Empire. Why did a strong people defending 14
than Columbus had believed. The voyage actually made its own territory succumb to a handful of Spaniards fight- 15
a small profit in spices, but Magellan had proved the ing in dangerous and unfamiliar circumstances? Scholars 16
westward passage to the Indies to be too long and dan- continue to debate this question. The best answer is that, 17
gerous for commercial purposes. Turning to its New at the time of the Spanish arrival, the Aztec Empire faced 18
World colonies, Spain abandoned the attempt to oust internal weaknesses brought on by the resentment of re- 19
Portugal from the Eastern spice trade. cently subjugated tribes and by the Aztecs’ own psychol- 20
Resounding success in this arena belonged to the ogy and attitudes toward war. 21
Dutch. By the end of the sixteenth century Amsterdam 22
Improve Your Grade
had overtaken Antwerp as the financial capital of Europe. 23
Primary Source: Cortés on the Aztecs: Two Letters
The Dutch had also embarked on foreign exploration to Charles V
24
and conquest. The Dutch East India Company, founded
The Spaniards arrived in late summer, when the Aztecs
in 1602, became the major organ of Dutch imperialism 26
and within a few decades expelled the Portuguese from were preoccupied with harvesting their crops and not 27
Ceylon and other East Indian islands. By 1650 the Dutch thinking of war. From the Spaniards’ perspective, the 28
West India Company had successfully intruded on the timing was ideal. A series of natural phenomena, signs, 29
Spanish possessions in the Americas, in the process gain- and portents seemed to augur disaster for the Aztecs. A 30
ing control of much of the African and American trade. comet was seen in daytime, and two temples were sud- 31
English and French explorations lacked the immediate, denly destroyed, one by lightning unaccompanied by 32
sensational results of those of the Spanish and Portu- thunder. These and other apparently inexplicable events 33
guese. In 1497 John Cabot, a Genoese merchant living had an unnerving and demoralizing effect on the Aztecs. 34
in London, sailed for Brazil but discovered Newfound- Even more important was the alienation of newly con- 35
land. The next year he returned and explored the New quered tribes and the Aztecs’ failure to provide an ef- 36
England coast, perhaps going as far south as Delaware. fective military resistance. The Aztec state religion, the 37
Since these expeditions found no spices or gold, Henry sacred cult of Huitzilopochtli, necessitated constant war- 38
VII lost interest in exploration. Between 1534 and 1541 fare against neighboring peoples to secure captives for 39
Frenchman Jacques Cartier made several voyages and religious sacrifice and laborers for agricultural and infra- 40
explored the St. Lawrence region of Canada. The first structural work. When Cortés landed, recently defeated 41
permanent French settlement, at Quebec, was founded tribes were not yet fully integrated into the empire. In- 42
in 1608. creases in tribute provoked revolt, which led to recon- 43
quest, retribution, and demands for higher tribute, which 44
in turn sparked greater resentment and fresh revolt. When 45
New World Conquest the Spaniards appeared, the Totonacs greeted them as 46
In the West Indies the slow recovery of gold, the short- liberators, and other subject peoples joined them against 47
age of a healthy labor force, and sheer restlessness sped the Aztecs.21 48
up Spain’s search for wealth. In 1519, the year Magellan Montezuma himself refrained from attacking the Span- 49
departed on his worldwide expedition, a brash and deter- iards as they advanced toward his capital and welcomed 50S
mined Spanish adventurer named Hernando Cortés Cortés and his men into Tenochtitlán. Historians have 51R
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27 The Aztec Capital of Tenochtitlán Occupying a large island, Tenochtitlán was laid out in concentric
circles. The administrative and religious buildings were at the heart of the city, which was surrounded
28 by residential quarters. Cortés himself marveled at the city in his letters: “It has four approaches by
29 means of artificial causeways. . . . The city is as large as Seville or Cordoba. . . . There are bridges, very
30 large, strong, and well constructed, so that, over many, ten horsemen can ride abreast. . . . The city has
31 many squares where markets are held. . . . There is one square, twice as large as that of Salamanca, all
32 surrounded by arcades, where there are daily more than sixty thousand souls, buying and selling. In the
service and manners of its people, their fashion of living was almost the same as in Spain, with just as
33 much harmony and order.” (The Newberry Library)
34
35
36
37 often condemned the Aztec ruler for vacillation and tary tactics. But for the Aztecs warfare was a ceremonial
38 weakness. But he relied on the advice of his state council, act in which “divide and conquer” had no place.
39 itself divided, and on the dubious loyalty of tributary Having allowed the Spanish forces to reunite, the en-
40 communities. When Cortés—with incredible boldness— tire population of Tenochtitlán attacked the invaders and
41 took Montezuma hostage, the emperor’s influence over killed many Spaniards. In retaliation, the Spaniards exe-
42 his people crumbled. cuted Montezuma. The Spaniards escaped from the city
43 Forced to leave Tenochtitlán to settle a conflict else- and inflicted a crushing defeat on the Aztec army at
44 where, Cortés placed his lieutenant, Alvarado, in charge. Otumba near Lake Texcoco on July 7, 1520. Aztec
45 Alvarado’s harsh rule drove the Aztecs to revolt, and they weapons proved no match for the terrifyingly noisy and
46 almost succeeded in destroying the Spanish garrison. lethal Spanish cannon, muskets, crossbows, and steel
47 When Cortés returned just in time, the Aztecs allowed swords. After this victory Cortés began the systematic
48 his reinforcements to join Alvarado’s besieged force. No conquest of Mexico.
49 threatened European or Asian state would have con- More amazing than the defeat of the Aztecs was the
50S ceived of doing such a thing: dividing an enemy’s army Spanish victory over the remote Inca Empire perched at
51R and destroying the separate parts was basic to their mili- 9,800 to 13,000 feet above sea level. Like the Aztecs, the
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Incas had created a civilization that rivaled the Europeans From 1493 to 1525 the Inca Huayna Capac ruled as 1
in population and complexity. The borders of this vast a benevolent despot (the word Inca refers both to the 2
empire were well fortified and were threatened by no for- ruler of the Andeans who lived in the valleys of the Andes 3
eign invaders. Like the Romans, the Incas had built an in present-day Peru and to the people themselves). His 4
extensive network of roads linking all parts of the empire, millions of subjects considered him a link between the 5
which permitted the operation of a highly efficient postal earth and the sun-god. In 1525 Huascar succeeded his 6
service. The imperial government taxed, fed, and pro- father as Inca and was crowned at Cuzco, the Incas’ cap- 7
tected its subjects. Grain was plentiful. Apart from an ital city, with the fringed headband symbolizing his impe- 8
outbreak of smallpox in a distant province—introduced rial office. However, his rule was threatened by the claims 9
by the Spaniards—no natural disaster upset the general of his half-brother Atauhualpa. Civil war ensued, and 10
peace. An army of fifty thousand loyal troops stood at the Atauhualpa emerged victorious.22 The five-year struggle 11
ruler’s disposal. may have exhausted him and damaged his judgment. 12
The Incas were totally isolated. They had no contact Francisco Pizarro (ca 1475–1541), a conquistador of 13
with other Amerindian cultures and knew nothing of modest Spanish origins, landed on the northern coast of 14
Aztec civilization or its collapse in 1520. Since about Peru on May 13, 1532, the very day Atauhualpa won the 15
1500 Inca scouts had reported “floating houses” on the decisive battle. The Spaniard soon learned about the war 16
seas manned by white men with beards, and tradesmen and its outcome. As Pizarro advanced across the steep 17
told of strange large animals with feet of silver (the ap- Andes toward Cuzco, Atauhualpa was proceeding to the 18
pearance of horseshoes in the brilliant sunshine). The capital for his coronation. Like Montezuma in Mexico, 19
Spanish told the Incas that they were sent by God— Atauhualpa was kept fully informed of the Spaniards’ 20
whom Incans may have associated with their creator-god movements, and he stopped at the provincial town of Ca- 21
Virocha—and the Incas initially believed these claims of jamarca. His plan was to lure the Spaniards into a trap, 22
good faith. seize their horses and ablest men for his army, and execute 23
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Doña Marina Translating for 31
Hernando Cortés During His 32
Meeting with Montezuma In
33
April 1519 Doña Marina (or La
Malinche as she is known in Mex- 34
ico) was among twenty women 35
given to the Spanish as slaves. Flu- 36
ent in Nahuatl and Yucatec Mayan 37
(spoken by a Spanish priest accom-
38
panying Cortés), she acted as an
interpreter and diplomatic guide for 39
the Spanish. She had a close per- 40
sonal relationship with Cortés and 41
bore his son Don Martín Cortés in 42
1522. Doña Marina has been seen
43
as a traitor to her people, as a vic-
tim of Spanish conquest, and as the 44
founder of the Mexican people. She 45
highlights the complex interaction 46
between native peoples and the 47
Spanish and the particular role
48
women often played as cultural
mediators between the two sides. 49
(American Museum of Natural History, 50S
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1 the rest. What had the Inca, surrounded by his thousands it into Mexico. Sugar was a great luxury in Europe, and
2 of troops, to fear? Atauhualpa thus accepted Pizarro’s in- demand was high. Around 1550 the discovery of silver
3 vitation to meet in the central plaza of Cajamarca with his at Zacatecas and Guanajuato in Mexico and Potosí in
4 bodyguards “unarmed so as not to give offense.” The present-day Bolivia stimulated silver rushes. How were
5 Spaniards captured him and collected an enormous ran- the cattle ranches, sugar plantations, and silver mines to
6 som in gold. Instead of freeing the new emperor, how- be worked? Obviously, by the Amerindians.
7 ever, they killed him. The Spanish quickly established the encomienda sys-
8 Decades of violence ensued, marked by Incan resis- tem. The Crown granted the conquerors the right to
9 tance and internal struggles among Spanish forces for the employ groups of Amerindians as agricultural or mining
10 spoils of empire. By the 1570s the Spanish crown had laborers or as tribute payers. Theoretically, the Spanish
11 succeeded in imposing control. With Spanish conquest, were forbidden to enslave the natives; in actuality, the
12 a new chapter opened in European relations with the encomiendas were a legalized form of slavery. The Euro-
13 New World. pean demand for sugar, tobacco, and silver prompted the
14 colonists to exploit the Amerindians mercilessly. Unac-
15 customed to forced labor, especially in the blistering heat
16 Europe and the World of tropical cane fields or in the dark, dank, and dangerous
17 After Columbus mines, they died in staggering numbers.
18 Students of the history of medicine have suggested
19 Europeans had maintained commercial relations with another crucial explanation for indigenous population
20 Asia and sub-Saharan Africa since Roman times. In the losses: disease. Contact with disease builds up bodily re-
21 Carolingian era the slave trade had linked northern Eu- sistance; peoples isolated from other societies are not ex-
22 rope and the Islamic Middle East. The High Middle Ages posed to some diseases and thus do not build resistance.
23 had witnessed a great expansion of trade with Africa and At the beginning of the sixteenth century Amerindians
24 Asia. But with the American discoveries, for the first probably had the unfortunate distinction of longer isola-
25 time commercial and other relations became worldwide,
Apago PDF Enhancer tion from the rest of humankind than any other people
26 involving all the continents except Australia. European on earth. Crowded concentrations of laborers in the
27 involvement in the Americas led to the acceleration of mining camps bred infection, which the miners carried to
28 global contacts. In time, these contacts had a profound their home villages. Having little or no resistance to dis-
29 influence on European society and culture. eases brought from the Old World, the inhabitants of the
30 • What effect did overseas expansion have on the highlands of Mexico and Peru, especially, fell victim to
31 conquered societies, on enslaved Africans, and on smallpox, typhus, influenza, and other diseases. Accord-
32 world trade? ing to one expert, smallpox caused “in all likelihood the
33 most severe single loss of aboriginal population that ever
34 occurred.”23 (The old belief that syphilis was a New
35 Spanish Settlement and Indigenous World disease imported to Europe by Columbus’s sailors
36 has been discredited by the discovery of pre-Columbian
37
Population Decline skeletons in Europe bearing signs of the disease.)
38 In the sixteenth century perhaps two hundred thousand Although disease was the most important cause of
39 Spaniards immigrated to the New World. Mostly soldiers indigenous population decline, there were many others.
40 demobilized from the Spanish and Italian campaigns and With the native population diverted from traditional
41 adventurers and drifters unable to find employment in agricultural work, cultivation of crops suffered, leading
42 Spain, they did not come to work. After assisting in the to malnutrition, reduced fertility rates, and starvation.
43 conquest of the Aztecs and the subjugation of the Incas, Women forced to work were separated from their infants,
44 these drifters wanted to settle down and become a ruling leading to high infant mortality rates in a population with
45 class. They carved out vast estates in temperate grazing no livestock to supply alternatives to breast milk. Malnu-
46 areas and imported Spanish sheep, cattle, and horses for trition and hunger in turn reduced resistance to disease.
47 the kinds of ranching with which they were familiar. In Many indigenous peoples died through outright vio-
48 coastal tropic areas unsuited for grazing the Spanish lence.24 According to the Franciscan missionary Barto-
49 erected huge sugar plantations. Columbus had intro- lomé de Las Casas (1474–1566), the Spanish maliciously
50S duced sugar into the West Indies; Cortés had introduced murdered thousands:
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Europe and the World After Columbus • 505
This infinite multitude of people [the Indians] was . . . with- of slave plantation agriculture in the New World.27 This 1
out fraud, without subtilty or malice . . . toward the Span- form of slavery had nothing to do with race; almost all 2
iards whom they serve, patient, meek and peaceful. . . . slaves were white. How, then, did black African slavery 3
To these quiet Lambs . . . came the Spaniards like most enter the European picture and take root in South and 4
c(r)uel Tygres, Wolves and Lions, enrag’d with a sharp and then North America? 5
tedious hunger; for these forty years past, minding nothing In 1453 the Ottoman capture of Constantinople 6
else but the slaughter of these unfortunate wretches, whom halted the flow of white slaves from the Black Sea region 7
with divers kinds of torments neither seen nor heard of be- and the Balkans. Mediterranean Europe, cut off from its 8
fore, they have so cruelly and inhumanely butchered, that traditional source of slaves, then turned to sub-Saharan 9
of three millions of people which Hispaniola itself did con- Africa, which had a long history of slave trading. The 10
tain, there are left remaining alive scarce three hundred centuries-old trans-Saharan trade was greatly stimulated 11
persons.25 by the existence of a ready market for slaves in the vine- 12
Las Casas’s remarks concentrate on the tropical low- yards and sugar plantations of Sicily and Majorca. (See 13
lands, but the death rate in the highlands was also over- the feature “Individuals in Society: Juan de Pareja.”) 14
whelming. Native to the South Pacific, sugar was taken in ancient 15
The Franciscan, Dominican, and Jesuit missionaries times to India, where farmers learned to preserve cane 16
who accompanied the conquistadors and settlers played juice as granules that could be stored and shipped. From 17
an important role in converting the Amerindians to there, sugar traveled to China and the Mediterranean, 18
Christianity, teaching them European methods of agri- where islands like Crete, Sicily, and Cyprus had the nec- 19
culture, and inculcating loyalty to the Spanish crown. In essary warm and wet climate. When Genoese and other 20
terms of numbers of people baptized, missionaries en- Italians colonized the Canary Islands and the Portuguese 21
joyed phenomenal success, though the depth of the settled on the Madeira Islands, sugar plantations came 22
Amerindians’ understanding of Christianity remains de- to the Atlantic. In this stage of European expansion, “the 23
batable. Missionaries, especially Las Casas, asserted that history of slavery became inextricably tied up with the 24
Apago PDF Enhancer
the Amerindians had human rights, and through Las history of sugar.”28 Originally sugar was an expensive 25
Casas’s persistent pressure the emperor Charles V abol- luxury that only the very affluent could afford, but pop- 26
ished the worst abuses of the encomienda system in 1531. ulation increases and monetary expansion in the fifteenth 27
For colonial administrators the main problem posed by century led to an increasing demand for it. 28
the astronomically high death rate was the loss of a sub- Resourceful Italians provided the capital, cane, and 29
jugated labor force. As early as 1511 King Ferdinand of technology for sugar cultivation on plantations in south- 30
Spain observed that the Amerindians seemed to be “very ern Portugal, Madeira, and the Canary Islands. Mean- 31
frail” and that “one black could do the work of four In- while, in the period 1490 to 1530, Portuguese traders 32
dians.”26 Thus was born an absurd myth and the new brought between three hundred and two thousand black 33
tragedy of the Atlantic slave trade. slaves to Lisbon each year (see Map 15.3), where they 34
performed most of the manual labor and constituted 10 35
percent of the city’s population. From there slaves were 36
Sugar and Slavery 37
transported to the sugar plantations of Madeira, the
Throughout the Middle Ages slavery was deeply en- Azores, and the Cape Verde Islands. Sugar and the small 38
trenched in the Mediterranean. The bubonic plague, Atlantic islands gave New World slavery its distinctive 39
famines, and other epidemics created a severe shortage of shape. Columbus himself, who spent a decade in Madeira, 40
agricultural and domestic workers throughout Europe, brought sugar plants on his voyages to “the Indies.” 41
encouraging Italian merchants to buy slaves from the 42
Balkans, Thrace, southern Russia, and central Anatolia. Improve Your Grade 43
Primary Source: Fifteenth-Century Slave Trade:
During the Renaissance the slave trade represented an 44
The Portuguese in West Africa
important aspect of Italian business enterprise: where 45
profits were high, papal threats of excommunication As already discussed, European expansion across the 46
failed to stop slave traders. The Genoese set up colonial Atlantic led to the economic exploitation of the Ameri- 47
stations in the Crimea and along the Black Sea, and ac- cas. In the New World, the major problem settlers faced 48
cording to an international authority on slavery, these was a shortage of labor. As early as 1495 the Spanish 49
outposts were “virtual laboratories” for the development solved the problem by enslaving the native Indians. In 50S
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ARCTIC OCEAN
9/19/07
Wheat
Timber
Fish Fur
Pottery Tar
4:42 PM
Pitch
Amsterdam
NETHERLANDS
NO R TH EUROPE
PORTUGAL SPAIN Venice Slaves
A M ER IC A Tools Tools ASIA
Cloth Cloth
ATLANTIC Lisbon Madrid JAPAN
M editerra Istanbul Silk
Silk nea Silver
Page 506
Charleston OCEAN Seville n Se PERSIA
New a
Rugs and
Orleans Tripoli Killims CHINA Ningbo Nagasaki
sses Porcelain
Slaves
NEW FLORIDA Alexandria Cairo Basra
Slav m, Mola Silk
SPAIN es r, Ru Muscat
Mexico k, Su
ga INDIA Calcutta Canton
Apago PDF Enhancer

Sil Red ARABIA
City CUBA HAITI Sea Macao Silver
Silver
ves
Vera Cruz PUERTO RICO es
GUJARAT
CAPE lav Arabian Goa
Sla
Acapulco S Manila
JAMAICA CURACAO (Neth.) VERDE Slaves Aden ves
Sea
Cartagena S l a th Slav PHILIPPINES PACIFIC
Sugar
Sil
GOLD ,
ld CloMALDIVES es
SPANISH
k
o
G e r,
Panama MAIN COAST
pp Ceylon
AFRICA OCEAN
,
ry
GUIANA Sla Pe l s
NEW el
Ivo
ves
GRANADA sh Malacca
ie
Equator wr 0˚
AS
Quito Co Slaves SUMATRA BORNEO
CC
es Mombasa
ves
Slav Sunda INDONESIA LU NEW
Sla
Lima Luanda O GUINEA
Strait M
PACIFIC SOUTH Bahia Slaves ANGOLA
INDIAN JAVA
PERU
AMERICA Mozambique OCEAN
OCEAN BRAZIL
Homeward
Trade
Sofala MADAGASCAR
MAURITIUS
Rio de Janeiro (Neth.)
Sp
ice s
Sp
Santiago Cape
s
ice
ATLANTIC Town
Buenos Aires es
Cape of Slav
OCEAN
Good Hope
Strait of Magellan
Cape Horn
Portuguese trade routes

Spanish trade routes Portuguese control
0 1500 3000 Km.
Dutch trade routes Spanish control

0 1500 3000 Mi.
Other major trade routes Dutch control
MAP 15.3 Seaborne Trading Empires in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries By the mid-seventeenth
century, trade linked all parts of the world, except for Australia. Notice that trade in slaves was not confined to the
Atlantic but involved almost all parts of the world.
Improve Your Grade Interactive Map: Worldwide Slave Trade
Individuals
in Society
Juan de Pareja
A marginal person is one who lives outside the main- freedom, to become effec-
stream of the dominant society, who is not fully assimi- tive in 1654. From 1654
lated into or accepted by that society. Apart from until his death Pareja
revealing little known aspects of past cultures, margin- worked in Madrid as an
alized people teach us much about the values and ideals independent painter. Al-
of the dominant society. Such a person was the Spanish though he received recog- Velázquez, Juan de Pareja (1650).
religious and portrait painter Juan de Pareja. nition for his work, only (The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Pareja was born in Antequera, an agricultural re- one painting survives: The Fletcher Fund, Rogers Fund, and Be-
gion and the old center of Muslim culture near Seville Calling of Saint Matthew, quest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot
in southern Spain. Of his parents we know nothing. signed and dated 1661 (1876–1967), by exchange, supple-
Because a rare surviving document calls him a “mu- (see page 540). Modern mented by gifts from friends of the
latto,” one of his parents must have been white and the art historians dispute its Museum, 1971. [1971.86]. Photograph
other must have had some African blood. The Spanish merit. Some believe it © 1986 The Metropolitan Museum of
word mulatto derives from the Arabic muwallad, a shows a forceful baroque Art)
person of mixed race, and some scholars, using religion energy and considerable
to describe ethnic category, speak of Pareja’s “Muslim originality; others consider it derivative of Velázquez.
descent.” The region from which he came makes that What does the public career of this seventeenth-
possible, but we do not know whether he actually century marginal person tell us about the man and his
believed in or practiced Islam. world? After living in Seville and Madrid, he traveled
In 1630 Pareja applied to the mayor of Seville for widely, visiting Genoa, Venice, Rome, and Naples.
Apago PDF Enhancer
permission to travel to Madrid to visit his brother and Travel may have broadened him, producing a cosmo-
“to perfect his art.” The document lists his occupation politan man. Pareja’s career suggests that a person of
as “a painter in Seville.” Since it mentions no other talent and ability could rise in Spanish society despite
name, it is reasonable to assume that Pareja arrived in the social and religious barriers that existed at the time.
Madrid a free man. Sometime between 1630 and 1648, Jonathan Brown, the leading authority on Velázquez,
however, he came into the possession of the artist describes Pareja’s appearance in Velázquez’s portrait as
Diego Velázquez (1599–1660); Pareja became a slave. “self-confident.” A more enthusiastic student writes,
In the twelfth century Muslim slaves helped build “The Metropolitan is probably the greatest museum in
the cathedral of Saint James at Santiago de Compostela, the world . . . and this [Velázquez’s portrait of Pareja]
one of the great shrines of medieval Christendom. is its greatest painting. . . . The man was technically a
During the long wars of the reconquista, Muslims and slave. . . . However, we can see from Velázquez’s paint-
Christians captured each other in battle and used the ing that the two were undeniably equals. That steady
defeated as slaves. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries look of self-controlled power can even make us wonder
had seen a steady flow of sub-Saharan Africans into the which of the two had a higher opinion of himself.”
Iberian Peninsula. Thus early modern Spain was a
slaveholding society. Questions for Analysis
How did Velázquez acquire Pareja? By purchase?
As a gift? Had Pareja fallen into debt or committed 1. Since slavery was an established institution in Spain,
some crime and thereby lost his freedom? We do not speculate on Velázquez’s possible reasons for giving
know. Velázquez, the greatest Spanish painter of the Pareja his freedom.
seventeenth century, had a large studio with many 2. What issues of cultural diversity might Pareja have
assistants. Pareja was set to grinding powders to faced in seventeenth-century Spain?
make colors and to preparing canvases. He must have Sources: Jonathan Brown, Velázquez: Painter and Courtier (New
demonstrated ability because, when Velázquez went to Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986); Grove Dictionary of
Rome in 1648, he chose Pareja to accompany him. Art (New York: Macmillan, 2000); Sister Wendy Beckett’s 1000
In 1650, as practice for a portrait of Pope Inno- Masterpieces (New York: Dorling Kindersley Inc., 1999).
cent X, Velázquez painted Pareja. That same year,
Velázquez signed the document that gave Pareja his Improve Your Grade
Going Beyond Individuals in Society
507
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A New World Sugar Refinery, Brazil Sugar was the most important and most profitable plantation crop in
23 the New World. This image shows the processing and refinement of sugar on a Brazilian plantation. Sugar cane
24 was grown, harvested, and processed by African slaves who labored under brutal and ruthless conditions to
25 generate enormous profits for plantation owners. (The Bridgeman Art Library/Getty Images)
Apago PDF Enhancer
26
27
28 the next two centuries the Portuguese, Dutch, and Eng- of death was from dysentery induced by poor-quality
29 lish followed suit. The horrifyingly rapid decline of the food and water, intense crowding, and lack of sanitation.
30 Amerindian population, however, led to the search for Men were often kept in irons during the passage, while
31 new forms of labor. women and girls were fair game for sailors. To increase
32 In Africa, where slavery was entrenched (as it was in profits, slave traders packed several hundred captives on
33 the Islamic world, southern Europe, and China), African each ship. One slaver explained that he removed his
34 kings and dealers sold black slaves to European mer- boots before entering the slave hold because he had to
35 chants who participated in the transatlantic trade. The crawl over their packed bodies.30
36 Portuguese brought the first slaves to Brazil; by 1600 The eighteenth century witnessed the peak of the At-
37 four thousand were being imported annually. After its lantic slave trade. In 1790 there were 757,181 blacks in a
38 founding in 1621, the Dutch West India Company, with total U.S. population of 3,929,625. When the first cen-
39 the full support of the government of the United sus was taken in Brazil in 1798, blacks numbered about
40 Provinces, transported thousands of Africans to Brazil 2 million in a total population of 3.25 million.
41 and the Caribbean. In the late seventeenth century, with
42 the chartering of the Royal African Company, the Eng-
43 lish got involved. Altogether, traders from all these coun-
The Columbian Exchange
44 tries brought an estimated ten million African slaves to An important historical study asserts that the most sig-
45 the Americas from 1650 to 1870. nificant changes brought about by the Columbian voy-
46 European sailors found the Atlantic passage cramped ages were biosocial. The Age of Discovery led to the
47 and uncomfortable, but conditions for African slaves migration of peoples, which in turn led to an exchange of
48 were lethal. Before 1700, when slavers decided it was fauna and flora—of animals, plants, and disease, a com-
49 better business to improve conditions, some 20 percent plex process known as the Columbian Exchange. Span-
50S of slaves died on the voyage.29 The most common cause ish and Portuguese immigrants to the Americas wanted
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the lifestyle and diet with which they were familiar. Foods cally, the white potato reached New England from old Eng- 1
that Iberian settlers considered essential—wheat for land in 1718. 2
bread, grapes for wine, olive oil for both culinary and 3
sacramental purposes—were not grown in America. So 4
the migrants sought to turn the New World into the Old: Silver and the Economic Effects 5
they searched for climatic zones favorable to those crops. 6
Everywhere they settled they raised wheat—in the high-
of Spain’s Discoveries 7
lands of Mexico, the Rio de la Plata, New Granada (in The sixteenth century has often been called Spain’s 8
northern South America), and Chile. By 1535 Mexico golden century, but silver was far more important than 9
was exporting wheat. Grapes did well in parts of Peru gold. The influence of Spanish armies, Spanish Catholi- 10
and Chile. It took the Spanish longer to discover areas cism, and Spanish wealth was felt all over Europe. This 11
where suitable soil and adequate rainfall would nourish greatness rested largely on the influx of silver from the 12
olive trees, but by the 1560s the coastal valleys of Peru Americas. 13
and Chile were dotted with olive groves. Columbus had In 1545, at an altitude of fifteen thousand feet where 14
brought sugar plants on his second voyage; Spaniards nothing grew because of the cold, and after a two-and-a- 15
also introduced rice and bananas from the Canary Is- half-month journey by pack animal from Lima, Peru, the 16
lands, and the Portuguese carried these items to Brazil. Spanish discovered an incredible source of silver at Potosí 17
All nonindigenous plants and trees had to be brought (in present-day Bolivia) in territory conquered from the 18
from Europe, but not all plants arrived intentionally. In Inca Empire. The place had no population. By 1600, 19
clumps of mud on shoes and in the folds of textiles came 160,000 people lived there, making it about the size of 20
immigrant grasses such as Kentucky bluegrass, daisies, the city of London. In the second half of the sixteenth 21
and the common dandelion. century Potosí yielded perhaps 60 percent of all the silver 22
Apart from wild turkeys and game, Native Americans mined in the world. From Potosí and the mines at Za- 23
had no animals for food; apart from alpacas and llamas, catecas and Guanajuato in Mexico, huge quantities of 24
they had no animals for travel or to use as beasts of bur-
Apago PDF Enhancer precious metals poured forth. To protect this treasure 25
den. (Human power had moved the huge stones needed from French and English pirates, armed convoys trans- 26
to build the monumental Aztec temples.) On his second ported it to Spain each year. Between 1503 and 1650, 16 27
voyage in 1493 Columbus introduced horses, cattle, million kilograms of silver and 185,000 kilograms of 28
sheep, dogs, pigs, chickens, and goats. The multiplica- gold entered Seville’s port. Spanish predominance, how- 29
tion of these animals proved spectacular. By the 1550s, ever, proved temporary. 30
when the Spaniards explored, they brought along herds In the sixteenth century Spain experienced a steady 31
of swine. The horse enabled the Spanish conquerors and population increase, creating a sharp rise in the demand 32
the Amerindians to travel faster and farther and to transfor food and goods. Spanish colonies in the Americas also 33
port heavy loads. represented a demand for products. Since Spain had ex- 34
In return, the Spanish and Portuguese took back to pelled some of its best farmers and businessmen—the 35
Europe the main American cereal, maize (corn), from Muslims and Jews—in the fifteenth century, the Spanish 36
Mexico; white potatoes from Peru; and many varieties economy was suffering and could not meet the new de- 37
of beans, squash, pumpkins, avocados, and tomatoes mands, and prices rose. Because the cost of manufactur- 38
(which Europeans distrusted, fearing that they were sex- ing cloth and other goods increased, Spanish products 39
ually stimulating). Maize was the great gift of the Amer- could not compete with cheaper products made else- 40
indians to all the peoples of the world as food for humans where in the international market. The textile industry 41
and livestock. Because maize grows in climates too dry was badly hurt. Prices spiraled upward faster than the 42
for rice and too wet for wheat, gives a high yield per unit government could levy taxes to dampen the economy. 43
of land, and has a short growing season, it proved an (Higher taxes would have cut the public’s buying power; 44
especially important crop for Europeans. Initially they with fewer goods sold, prices would have come down.) 45
looked on the white potato with contempt, but they Did the flood of silver bullion from America cause the 46
gradually recognized its nutritional value. Its cultivation inflation? Prices rose most steeply before 1565, but bul- 47
slowly spread from west to east—to Ireland, England, lion imports reached their peak between 1580 and 1620. 48
and France in the seventeenth century; and to Germany, Thus there is no direct correlation between silver imports 49
Poland, Hungary, and Russia in the eighteenth. Ironi- and the inflation rate. Did the substantial population 50S
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1 growth accelerate the inflation rate? It may have done so. American) silver. Throughout Asia the Portuguese traded
2 After 1600, when population pressure declined, prices in slaves—black Africans, Chinese, and Japanese. The
3 gradually stabilized. One fact is certain: the price revolu- Portuguese exported to India horses from Mesopotamia
4 tion severely strained government budgets. Several times and copper from Arabia; from India they exported hawks
5 between 1557 and 1647, Spain’s King Philip II and his and peacocks for the Chinese and Japanese markets.
6 successors repudiated the state debt, thereby undermin- Across the Atlantic Portuguese Brazil provided most
7 ing confidence in the government and leaving the econ- of the sugar consumed in Europe in the sixteenth and
8 omy in shambles. early seventeenth centuries. African slave labor produced
9 As Philip II paid his armies and foreign debts with sil- the sugar on the plantations of Brazil, and Portuguese
10 ver bullion, Spanish inflation was transmitted to the rest merchants controlled both the slave trade between West
11 of Europe. Between 1560 and 1600 much of Europe Africa and Brazil and the commerce in sugar between
12 experienced large price increases. Prices doubled and in Brazil and Portugal. The Portuguese were the first world-
13 some cases quadrupled. Spain suffered most severely, wide traders, and Portuguese was the language of the
14 but all European countries were affected. Because money Asian maritime trade.
15 bought less, people who lived on fixed incomes, such Spanish possessions in the New World constituted ba-
16 as the continental nobles, were badly hurt. Those who sically a land empire, and in the sixteenth century the
17 owed fixed sums of money, such as the middle class, pros- Spaniards devised a method of governing that empire
18 pered: in a time of rising prices, debts had less value each (see page 538). But across the Pacific the Spaniards also
19 year. Food costs rose most sharply, and the poor fared built a seaborne empire centered at Manila in the Philip-
20 worst of all. pines, which had been “discovered” by Ferdinand Mag-
21 In many ways, it was not Spain but China that con- ellan in 1521. Between 1564 and 1571 the Spanish
22 trolled the world trade in silver. The Chinese demanded navigator Miguel Lopez de Legazpi sailed from Mexico
23 silver for its products and for the payment of imperial and through a swift and almost bloodless conquest took
24 taxes. China was thus the main buyer of world silver, over the Philippine Islands. The city of Manila hence-
25 serving as a “sink” for half the world’s production of sil-
Apago PDF Enhancer forth served as the transpacific bridge between Spanish
26 ver. Just as China was the heart of world trade, so was it, America and the extreme Eastern trade.
27 not Europe, the center of the early modern bullion trade. Chinese silk, sold by the Portuguese in Manila for
28 The silver market drove world trade, with the Americas American silver, was transported to Acapulco in Mexico,
29 and Japan being mainstays on the supply side and China and from there it was carried overland to Vera Cruz for
30 dominating the demand side. re-export to Spain. Because hostile Pacific winds prohib-
31 ited direct passage from the Philippines to Peru, large
32 shipments of silk also went south from Acapulco to Peru
33
The Birth of the Global Economy (see Map 15.3). Spanish merchants could never satisfy
34 With the Europeans’ discovery of the Americas and their the European demand for silk, so huge amounts of bul-
35 exploration of the Pacific, the entire world was linked for lion went from Acapulco to Manila. In 1597, for exam-
36 the first time in history by seaborne trade. That trade ple, 12 million pesos of silver, almost the total value of
37 brought into being three successive commercial empires: the transatlantic trade, crossed the Pacific. After about
38 the Portuguese, the Spanish, and the Dutch. 1640 the Spanish silk trade declined because it could not
39 In the sixteenth century naval power and shipborne compete with Dutch imports.
40 artillery gave Portugal hegemony over the sea route to Stimulated by a large demand for goods in Europe,
41 India. To Lisbon the Portuguese fleet brought spices, India, China, and Japan, a worldwide commercial boom
42 which the Portuguese paid for with textiles produced at occurred from about 1570 to 1630. Many people
43 Gujarat and Coromandel in India and with gold and throughout the world profited: capitalists who advanced
44 ivory from East Africa (see Map 15.3). From their forti- money for voyages, captains and crews of ships, and port
45 fied bases at Goa on the Arabian Sea and at Malacca on officials. As spices moved westward or northward, as silks
46 the Malay Peninsula, ships of Malabar teak carried goods and porcelains moved southward and westward, and as
47 to the Portuguese settlement at Macao in the South cloth moved eastward and westward, these various goods
48 China Sea. From Macao Portuguese ships loaded with grew more valuable in the boom of long-distance trade.31
49 Chinese silks and porcelains sailed to the Japanese port In the latter half of the seventeenth century the world-
50S of Nagasaki and to the Philippine port of Manila, where wide Dutch seaborne trade predominated. The Dutch
51R Chinese goods were exchanged for Spanish (that is, Latin Empire was built on spices. In 1599 a Dutch fleet re-
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crative spice trade. The seaborne empires of Portugal, 1

Spain, and Holland paved the way for the eighteenth- 2
century mercantilist empires of France and Great Britain. 3
4
5
Spain’s Global Empire 6
Spanish expansion into the New World and Asia 7
are even more amazing when considered in 8
light of Spanish expansion within Europe itself. 9
As discussed in Chapter 14, Charles V com- 10
bined vast and scattered territories across Eu- 11
rope under his rule. From his father’s side, he 12
inherited in 1506 the Burgundian lands, 13
which included the Low Countries and Flan- 14
ders, and in 1519 the Habsburg domains in 15
Austria. As the grandson of Ferdinand and 16
Isabella, in 1516 he became the first monarch 17
to rule a united Spain. In 1530 he capped off 18
this list by being named Holy Roman emperor. 19
Under his reign, Spanish conquistadors brought 20
new territories to Spain’s colonial empire. Charles 21
ruled over a vast and multiethnic array of territories (see 22
Map 14.1 on page 460) and thus ruled the first global 23
empire in history. 24
Apago PDF Enhancer By 1556 Charles was exhausted by decades of admin- 25
Chinese Porcelain This porcelain from a seventeenth- istering this great empire. He had warred with France 26
century Chinese ship’s cargo, recovered from the sea, was and the Ottoman Empire throughout his reign. He had 27
intended for European luxury markets. (Christie’s Images) also devoted enormous energy to a futile attempt to 28
stamp out the burgeoning Protestant Reformation. (It 29
was he who summoned Martin Luther to the Diet of 30
Worms.) Charles abdicated the Spanish crown and the 31
turned to Amsterdam carrying 600,000 pounds of pep- Netherlands to his son Philip II of Spain and Austria, and 32
per and 250,000 pounds of cloves and nutmeg. Those other territories in central Europe and the title of Holy 33
who had invested in the expedition received a 100 per- Roman emperor to his brother Ferdinand. 34
cent profit. The voyage led to the establishment in 1602 Philip inherited his father’s overseas Spanish Empire as 35
of the Dutch East India Company, founded with the well as the cascade of silver now flowing from the Amer- 36
stated intention of capturing the spice trade from the icas. In today’s world we might view the birth of global- 37
Portuguese. ization as a monumental turning point; Philip, however, 38
The Dutch fleet, sailing from the Cape of Good Hope was more concerned with religious rivalries in Europe. 39
and avoiding the Portuguese forts in India, steered di- Traditional scholarship has depicted Philip as morose and 40
rectly for the Sunda Strait in Indonesia (see Map 15.3). melancholic, a religious bigot determined to re-impose 41
The Dutch wanted direct access to and control of the Roman Catholicism on northern Europe. Recent research 42
Indonesian sources of spices. In return for assisting In- portrays him as a more complicated figure. In his youth, 43
donesian princes in local squabbles and disputes with “he had visited northern Italy, the Alps, southern Ger- 44
the Portuguese, the Dutch won broad commercial con- many, the Rhineland, the Netherlands, parts of France, 45
cessions. Through agreements, seizures, and outright and southern England.”32 He had walked the streets 46
war, they gained control of the western access to the In- of Antwerp, Augsburg, Brussels, Cologne, London, and 47
donesian archipelago. Gradually, they acquired political Trent. With the exception of his father, no other Euro- 48
domination over the archipelago itself. Exchanging Eu- pean ruler of the time had traveled or seen so much or 49
ropean manufactured goods—armor, firearms, linens, and had accumulated so much political experience in interna- 50S
toys—the Dutch soon had a monopoly on the very lu- tional relations. 51R
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1 have been more heretics, and the country would be in a

2 lamentable state like others (the Netherlands) where
3 there is no inquisition as we have in Spain.”33 In this re-
4 spect, Philip II differed little from the Protestant reform-
5 ers Luther and Calvin, who initially called for individual
6 liberty of conscience and then insisted on the right of
7 church and civil powers to extirpate heresy within their
8 jurisdictions. Philip was a man of his times, and the times
9 did not favor religious toleration.
10 With his determination to crush heresy in the Low
11 Countries and with the enormous wealth of American
12 silver enabling him to hire the mercenary armies he
13 needed, why did Philip II have such trouble achieving his
14 goal? Philip was preoccupied with other parts of his vast
15 empire, especially the advance of the Ottoman Turks into
16 the western Mediterranean. This issue—combined with
17 the death of his son and heir Don Carlos and then a re-
18 volt of the Moriscos (Muslims) in Granada—made it im-
19 possible to concentrate on the Netherlands. At one point
20 in 1566 he complained, “I have so much on my mind
21 that I rarely know what I am doing or saying.” Only af-
22 ter Philip learned of the death of Suleiman the Magnifi-
23 cent did he feel able to focus on the Netherlands.34
24 But the Netherlands could not be separated in Philip’s
25 Apago PDF Enhancer mind from what he perceived as the “British problem.”
26 In 1586 Mary, Queen of Scots, cousin and heir of Eliza-
27 beth of England, became implicated in a plot to assassi-
28 nate Elizabeth. Hoping to reunite England with Catholic
29 Europe through Mary, Philip gave the conspiracy his full
30 backing. Mary was discovered and beheaded on Febru-
31 ary 18, 1587. News of her execution reached Philip in
32 mid-April. When Pope Sixtus V (1585–1590) learned of
33 Mary’s death on March 24 (the dates suggest the slow-
34 ness of communication in the late sixteenth century), he
35 promised to pay Philip one million gold ducats the mo-
36 ment Spanish troops landed in England. Conquering Eng-
37 land promised the additional benefit of cutting off
38 Philip II, ca 1533 This portrait of Philip II as a young man financial support to the Dutch rebels.
and crown prince of Spain is by the celebrated artist Titian,
39 who was court painter to Philip’s father, Charles V. After As plans for a naval expedition to attack England pro-
40 taking the throne, Philip became another great patron of the ceeded in 1587, two serious difficulties burdened the
41 artist. (Scala/Art Resource, NY) king. First, he was so badly crippled by gout that he
42 could not sign documents and needed a cane to walk,
43 painfully. Second, official reports indicated that the Ot-
44 After Philip buried his fourth wife, Anna of Austria, toman Turks might seize the moment of preoccupation
45 to whom he had been deeply devoted, contemporaries with the Netherlands and England to attack Spain from
46 noticed a more marked devotion to religion. He relied the Mediterranean. Philip prepared a vast fleet to sail
47 more and more on God for political help. On the issues from Lisbon to Flanders, fight off Elizabeth’s navy if
48 of the Inquisition and religious toleration, Philip was it attacked, rendezvous with the duke of Parma, com-
49 completely inflexible. He identified toleration with the mander of Spanish forces in the Netherlands, and es-
50S growth of heresy, civil disorder, violence, and bloodshed: cort barges carrying Parma’s troops across the English
51R “Had there been no inquisition (in Spain) there would Channel. On May 9, 1588, la felícissima armada—“the
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Changing Attitudes and Beliefs • 513
most fortunate fleet,” as it was ironically called in official 1

documents—sailed from Lisbon harbor composed of
New Ideas About Race 2
more than 130 vessels. The Spanish Armada met an Ancient Greeks and Romans were in close contact with 3
English fleet in the Channel. The English ships were Africa and they also practiced slavery, but they did not as- 4
smaller, faster, and more maneuverable, and many of sociate one with the other. Slavery, which was endemic in 5
them had greater firing power than their Spanish coun- the ancient world, stemmed from either capture in war or 6
terparts. A combination of storms and squalls, spoiled debt. Although generations could be born in captivity, 7
food and rank water, inadequate Spanish ammunition, no particular ethnic or racial associations were involved 8
and, to a lesser extent, English fire ships that caused the (see page 137). How did slavery come to be so closely as- 9
Spanish to scatter gave England the victory. The Armada sociated with race in the Age of Discovery? 10
was defeated before it even reached the Netherlands. On Settlers brought to the Americas the racial attitudes 11
the journey home many Spanish ships went down around they had absorbed in Europe. Their beliefs and attitudes 12
Ireland; perhaps 65 managed to reach home ports. toward Africans derived from Christian theological spec- 13
The battle in the Channel has frequently been de- ulation and Arab ideas. In the sixteenth and seventeenth 14
scribed as one of the decisive battles in world history. In centuries the English, for example, were extremely curi- 15
fact, it had mixed consequences. Spain soon rebuilt its ous about Africans’ lives and customs, and slavers’ ac- 16
navy, and after 1588 the quality of the Spanish fleet im- counts were extraordinarily popular. Travel literature 17
proved. The destruction of the Spanish Armada did not depicted Africans as savages because of their eating 18
halt the flow of silver from the New World. More silver habits, morals, clothing, and social customs; as barbar- 19
reached Spain between 1588 and 1603 than in any other ians because of their language and methods of war; and 20
fifteen-year period. The war between England and Spain as heathens because they were not Christian (nearly the 21
dragged on for years. identical language with which the English described the 22
The defeat of the Spanish Armada was decisive, how- Irish—see page 398). Africans were believed to possess a 23
ever, in the sense that it prevented Philip II from re- potent sexuality; African women were considered sexu- 24
imposing religious unity on western Europe by force.
Apago PDF Enhancer ally aggressive, with a “temper hot and lascivious.”35 25
He did not conquer England, and Elizabeth continued “At the time when Columbus sailed to the New 26
her financial and military support of the Dutch. In the World, Islam was the largest world religion, and the only 27
Netherlands neither side gained significant territory. The world religion that showed itself capable of expanding 28
borders of 1581 tended to become permanent. In 1609 rapidly in areas as far apart and as different from each 29
Philip III of Spain (r. 1598–1621) agreed to a truce, in ef- other as Senegal [in northwest Africa], Bosnia [in the 30
fect recognizing the independence of the United Prov- Balkans], Java, and the Philippines.”36 Medieval Arabic 31
inces. In seventeenth-century Spain memory of the loss of literature spoke of blacks’ physical repulsiveness, mental 32
the Spanish Armada contributed to a spirit of defeatism. inferiority, and primitivism. In contrast to civilized peo- 33
In England the victory contributed to a David and Go- ples from the Mediterranean to China, some Arab writers 34
liath legend that enhanced English national sentiment. absurdly claimed, sub-Saharan blacks were the only peo- 35
ples who had produced no sciences or stable states. 36
Though black kings, the Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun 37
Changing Attitudes and Beliefs alleged, sold their subjects without even a pretext of 38
crime or war, the victims bore no resentment because 39
The age of religious wars and overseas expansion was
they gave no thought to the future and had “by nature 40
characterized by an extraordinary degree of intellectual
few cares and worries; dancing and rhythm are for them 41
and artistic ferment. This effervescence can be seen in
inborn.”37 42
the development of the essay as a distinct literary genre,
Medieval Christians and Arabs therefore had similar 43
in other prose, in poetry, in drama, in art, and in music.
notions of blacks as primitive people ideally suited to 44
In many ways, literature, the visual arts, music, and the
enslavement. The racial biases that the Portuguese, Span- 45
drama of the period mirrored the social and cultural con-
ish, Dutch, and English brought to the New World, 46
ditions that gave rise to them. An important theme run-
however, derived primarily from Christian theological 47
ning through the culture of this time was the encounter
speculation. As Europeans turned to Africa for new 48
with radically new places and peoples.
sources of slaves, they used ideas about Africans’ primi- 49
• How did culture and art in this period respond to social tiveness and barbarity to defend slavery and even argue 50S
and cultural transformation? that enslavement benefited Africans by bringing the light 51R
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1 of Christianity to heathen peoples. Thus, the institution taigne had grown up during the French civil wars, perhaps
2 of slavery contributed to the dissemination of more rigid the worst kind of war. Religious ideology had set family
3 notions of racial inferiority. From rather vague assump- against family, even brother against brother. He wrote:
4 tions and prejudices, Europeans developed more elabo-
In this controversy . . . France is at present agitated by civil
5 rate ideological notions of racial superiority and inferiority
wars, the best and soundest side is undoubtedly that which
6 to safeguard the ever-increasing profits gained from plan-
maintains both the old religion and the old government of
7 tation slavery.
the country. However, among the good men who follow that
8
side . . . we see many whom passion drives outside the
9
bounds of reason, and makes them sometimes adopt unjust,
10 Michel de Montaigne and violent, and even reckless courses.38
11
12
Cultural Curiosity Though he remained a Catholic, Montaigne possessed
13 Racism was not the only possible reaction to the new detachment, independence, openness of mind, and the
14 worlds emerging in the sixteenth century. Decades of re- willingness to look at all sides of a question. As he wrote,
15 ligious fanaticism, bringing civil anarchy and war, led “other people’s reasons can serve to support me, but sel-
16 both Catholics and Protestants to doubt that any one dom to change my course. I listen to them all favorably
17 faith contained absolute truth. Added to these doubts and decently; but so far as I can remember, I have never
18 was the discovery of peoples in the New World who had up to this moment followed any but my own. I set little
19 radically different ways of life. These shocks helped pro- value on my own opinion, but I set just as little on those
20 duce ideas of skepticism and cultural relativism in the of others.”39
21 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Skepticism is a school Montaigne’s essay “On Cannibals” reveals the impact
22 of thought founded on doubt that total certainty or of overseas discoveries on one European’s consciousness.
23 definitive knowledge is ever attainable. The skeptic is His tolerant mind rejected the notion that one culture is
24 cautious and critical and suspends judgment. Cultural superior to another:
25 relativism suggests that one culture is not necessarily su-
Apago PDFI longEnhancer
had a man in my house that lived ten or twelve years
26 perior to another, just different. Both notions found ex-
in the New World, discovered in these latter days, and in that
27 pression in the work of Frenchman Michel de Montaigne
part of it where Villegaignon landed [Brazil]. . . .
28 (1533–1592).
I find that there is nothing barbarous and savage in [that]
29 Montaigne descended from a bourgeois family that
nation, . . . excepting, that every one gives the title of bar-
30 had made a fortune selling salted herring and wine and in
barism to everything that is not in use in his own country. As,
31 1477 had purchased the title and property of Montaigne
indeed, we have no other level of truth and reason, than the
32 in Gascony. His mother came from a Jewish family that
example and idea of the opinions and customs of the place
33 had been forced to flee Spain. Montaigne received a clas-
wherein we live.40
34 sical education, studied law, and secured a judicial ap-
35 pointment in 1554. He condemned the ancient nobility Montaigne’s rejection of dogmatism, his secularism,
36 for being more concerned with war and sports than with and his skepticism thus represented a basic change. In his
37 the cultivation of the mind. own time and throughout the seventeenth century, few
38 At the age of thirty-eight Montaigne resigned his judi- would have agreed with him. The publication of his
39 cial post, retired to his estate, and devoted the rest of his ideas, however, anticipated a basic shift in attitudes.
40 life to study, contemplation, and an effort to understand Montaigne inaugurated an era of doubt. “Wonder,” he
41 himself. His wealth provided him with the leisure time to said, “is the foundation of all philosophy, research is the
42 do so. A humanist, he believed that the object of life was means of all learning, and ignorance is the end.”41
43 to “know thyself,” for self-knowledge teaches men and
Improve Your Grade
44 women how to live in accordance with nature and God.
Primary Source: Michel de Montaigne on the Fallibility
45 Montaigne developed a new literary genre, the essay— of Human Understanding
46 from the French essayer, meaning “to test or try”—to ex-
47 press his thoughts and ideas.
48 Montaigne’s Essays provides insight into the mind of a
49 remarkably civilized man. From the ancient authors, espe-
Elizabethan and Jacobean Literature
50S cially the Roman Stoic Seneca, Montaigne acquired a sense In addition to the essay as a literary genre, the period
51R of calm, patience, tolerance, and broad-mindedness. Mon- fostered remarkable creativity in other branches of lit-
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Changing Attitudes and Beliefs • 515
erature. England, especially in the latter part of Eliza- Chamberlain’s Company and became co-owner of the 1
beth’s reign and in the first years of her successor, James I Globe Theatre, which after 1603 presented his plays. 2
(r. 1603–1625), witnessed remarkable literary expres- Shakespeare’s genius lay in the originality of his charac- 3
sion. The terms Elizabethan and Jacobean (referring to terizations, the diversity of his plots, his understanding of 4
the reign of James) are used to designate the English mu- human psychology, and his unexcelled gift for language. 5
sic, poetry, prose, and drama of this period. The poetry Shakespeare was a Renaissance man in his deep apprecia- 6
of Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586), such as Astrophel and tion of classical culture, individualism, and humanism. 7
Stella, strongly influenced later poetic writing. The Faerie Such plays as Julius Caesar, Pericles, and Antony and 8
Queene of Edmund Spenser (1552–1599) endures as one Cleopatra deal with classical subjects and figures. Several 9
of the greatest moral epics in any language. The rare po- of his comedies have Italian Renaissance settings. The 10
etic beauty of the plays of Christopher Marlowe (1564– nine history plays, including Richard II, Richard III, and 11
1593), such as Tamburlaine and The Jew of Malta, paved Henry IV, enjoyed the greatest popularity among Shake- 12
the way for the work of Shakespeare. Above all, the im- speare’s contemporaries. Written during the decade after 13
mortal dramas of William Shakespeare (1564–1616) and the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the history plays ex- 14
the stately prose of the Authorized, or King James, Bible press English national consciousness. 15
marked the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods as the Shakespeare’s later tragedies, including Hamlet, Oth- 16
golden age of English literature. ello, and Macbeth, explore an enormous range of human 17
William Shakespeare, the son of a successful glove problems and are open to an almost infinite variety of 18
manufacturer in Stratford-on-Avon, chose a career on interpretations. Othello portrays an honorable man de- 19
the London stage. By 1592 he had gained recognition as stroyed by a flaw in his own character and the satanic evil 20
an actor and playwright. He performed in the Lord of his supposed friend Iago. Macbeth’s central theme is 21
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Titus Andronicus With classical allusions, fifteen murders and executions, a Gothic queen who takes a black
lover, and incredible violence, this early Shakespearean tragedy (1594) was a melodramatic thriller that enjoyed 49
enormous popularity with the London audience. Modern critics believe that it foreshadowed King Lear with its 50S
emphasis on suffering and madness. (Reproduced by permission of the Marquess of Bath, Longleat House, Warminster, Wilts) 51R
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1 exorbitant ambition. Shakespeare analyzes the psychol- 1604, a group of Puritans urged James I to support a
2 ogy of sin in the figures of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, new translation of the Bible. The king assigned the task
3 whose mutual love under the pressure of ambition leads to a committee of scholars, and their version was pub-
4 to their destruction. The central figure in Hamlet, a play lished in 1611. Divided into chapters and verses, the Au-
5 suffused with individuality, wrestles with moral problems thorized Version is actually more a revision of earlier
6 connected with revenge and with the human being’s re- Bibles than an original work. Yet it provides a superb ex-
7 lationship to life and death. pression of the mature English vernacular of the early
8 Shakespeare’s last play, The Tempest, is now viewed by seventeenth century. Consider Psalm 37:
9 critics as one of his best. The sorcerer-prince Prospero and
Fret not thy selfe because of evill doers, neither bee thou
10 his daughter Miranda are stranded on an island by Pros-
envious against the workers of iniquitie.
11 pero’s treacherous brother. There Prospero finds and
For they shall soone be cut downe like the grasse; and
12 raises Caliban, whom he instructs in his own language
wither as the greene herbe.
13 and religion. After Caliban’s attempted rape of Miranda,
Trust in the Lord, and do good, so shalt thou dwell in the
14 Prospero enslaves him, earning the rage and resentment
land, and verely thou shalt be fed.
15 of his erstwhile pupil. Modern scholars often note the
16 echoes between this play and the realities of imperial con- The Authorized Version, so called because it was pro-
17 quest and settlement in Shakespeare’s day. It is no acci- duced under royal sponsorship (it had no official eccle-
18 dent, they argue, that the poet portrayed Caliban as a siastical endorsement), represented the Anglican and
19 monstrous, dark-skinned island native whose natural con- Puritan desire to encourage laypeople to read the Scrip-
20 dition is servitude. The author himself borrows words tures. It quickly achieved great popularity and displaced
21 from Montaigne’s essay “On Cannibals,” suggesting that all earlier versions. British settlers carried this Bible to the
22 his portrayal may have implied criticism of superior colo- North American colonies, where it became known as the
23 nial attitudes rather than an unqualified endorsement. King James Bible. For centuries the King James Bible has
24 Another great masterpiece of the Jacobean period was had a profound influence on the language and lives of
25 the Authorized Bible. At a theological conference in
Apago PDF Enhancer English-speaking peoples.
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33 Chapter Summary ACE the Test
34
35
36 • What was the Afro-Eurasian trading world before Eurasian trade world, ringed by cosmopolitan commercial
37 Columbus? cities such as Mombasa, Malacca, and Macao. Venetian
38 • How and why did Europeans undertake ambitious and Genoese merchants brought sophisticated luxury
39 voyages of expansion that would usher in a new era goods, like silks and spices, into western Europe from the
40 of global contact? East. Overall, though, Europeans played a minor role in
41 • What effect did overseas expansion have on the the Afro-Eurasian trading world, since they did not pro-
42 conquered societies, on enslaved Africans, and on duce many products desired by Eastern elites.
43 world trade? In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Europeans
44 gained access to large parts of the globe for the first time.
45
• How did culture and art in this period respond to European peoples had the intellectual curiosity, driving
social and cultural transformation?
46 ambition, and material incentive to challenge their mar-
47 ginal role in the pre-existing trade world. The revived
48 monarchies of the sixteenth century now possessed suf-
49 Prior to Columbus’s voyages, well-developed trade routes ficient resources to back ambitious seafarers like Chris-
50S linked the peoples and products of Africa, Asia, and Eu- topher Columbus and Vasco da Gama. Exploration and
51R rope. The Indian Ocean was the center of the Afro- exploitation contributed to a more sophisticated stan-
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dard of living, in the form of spices and Asian luxury Suggested Reading 1
goods, and to a terrible international inflation resulting 2
from the influx of South American silver and gold. Gov- Crosby, Alfred W. The Columbian Exchange: Biological 3
ernments, the upper classes, and the peasantry were and Cultural Consequences of 1492, 30th anniversary ed. 4
badly hurt by the resulting inflation. Meanwhile, the 2003. An innovative and highly influential account of 5
middle class of bankers, shippers, financiers, and manu- the environmental impact of Columbus’s voyages. 6
facturers prospered for much of the seventeenth century. Davis, David B. Slavery and Human Progress. 1984. A 7
Other consequences of European expansion had moving and authoritative account of New World slavery. 8
global proportions. Indian Ocean trade, long dominated Fernández-Armesto, Felip. Columbus. 1992. An excellent 9
by Muslim merchants operating from autonomous city- biography of Christopher Columbus. 10
ports, increasingly fell under the control of Portuguese 11
merchants sponsored by their Crown. In the New World Frederickson, George M. The Arrogance of Race: Histori- 12
Europeans discovered territories wholly unknown to cal Perspectives on Slavery, Racism, and Social Inequality. 13
them and forcibly established new colonies. The result- 1988. Analyzes the social and economic circumstances 14
ing Columbian exchange decimated native populations associated with the rise of plantation slavery. 15
and fostered exchange of a myriad of plant, animal, and Greenblatt, Stephen. Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder 16
viral species. The slave trade took on new proportions of of the New World. 1991. Describes the cultural impact of 17
scale and intensity, as many millions of Africans were New World discoveries on Europeans. 18
transported to labor in horrific conditions in the mines Northrup, David, ed. The Atlantic Slave Trade. 1994. Col- 19
and plantations of the New World. lected essays by leading scholars on many different as- 20
Cultural attitudes were challenged as well. While most pects of the slave trade. 21
Europeans did not question the superiority of Western 22
traditions and beliefs, new currents of religious skepti- Pérez-Mallaína, Pablo E. Spain’s Men of the Sea: Daily 23
cism and new ideas about race were harbingers of devel- Life on the Indies Fleet in the Sixteenth Century. 1998. A 24
description of recruitment, daily life, and career paths 25
Apago PDF Enhancer
opments to come. The essays of Montaigne, the plays
of Shakespeare, and the King James Bible remain classic for ordinary sailors and officers in the Spanish fleet. 26
achievements of the Western cultural heritage. They both Pomeranz, Kenneth, and Steven Topik. The World That 27
reflected dominant cultural values and projected new Trade Created: Society, Culture and the World Economy, 28
ideas into the future. 1400 to the Present. 1999. The creation of a world mar- 29
ket presented through rich and vivid stories of mer- 30
chants, miners, slaves, and farmers. 31
32
Key Terms Restall, Matthew. Seven Myths of Spanish Conquest. 2003.
33
A re-examination of common ideas about why and how
Malacca Santa Fe the Spanish conquered native civilizations in the New 34
entrepôt capitulations World. 35
Admiral Zheng He Treaty of Tordesillas 36
Mansa Musa Ferdinand Magellan Scammell, Geoffrey V. The World Encompassed: The First 37
Constantinople Hernando Cortés European Maritime Empires, c. 800–1650. 1981. A de- 38
spice trade Tenochtitlán tailed overview of the first European empires, including 39
Prince Henry Virocha the Italian city-states, Portugal, and Spain. 40
the Navigator Francisco Pizarro Schwarz, Stuart B., ed. Implicit Understandings: Observ- 41
General History of encomienda system ing, Reporting and Reflecting on the Encounters Between 42
the Indies sugar Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era. 43
caravel Columbian 1994. A collection of articles examining the cultural and 44
Ptolemy’s Geography exchange intellectual impact of encounters between Europeans 45
Vasco da Gama price revolution and non-Europeans during the Age of Discovery. 46
Christopher Spanish Armada Subrahamanyam, Sanjay. The Career and Legend of Vasco 47
Columbus skepticism da Gama. 1998. A probing biography that places Vasco 48
da Gama in the context of Portuguese politics and 49
society. 50S
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Columbus Describes His First Voyage
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O n his return voyage to Spain in January 1493,
Christopher Columbus composed a letter intended
and beautiful. They are most suitable for planting
crops and for raising cattle of all kinds, and there
17 for wide circulation and had copies of it sent ahead are good sites for building towns and villages. The
18 to Isabella and Ferdinand and others when the harbours are incredibly fine and there are many
ship docked at Lisbon. Because the letter sums up great rivers with broad channels and the majority
19
Columbus’s understanding of his achievements, it contain gold.‡ The trees, fruits and plants are very
20 is considered the most important document of his different from those of Cuba. In Hispaniola there
21 first voyage. Remember that his knowledge of Asia are many spices and large mines of gold and other
22 rested heavily on Marco Polo’s Travels, published metals. . . .§
23 around 1298. The inhabitants of this island, and all the rest
24 that I discovered or heard of, go naked, as their
25 Since I know that you will be pleased at the great
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26 success with which the Lord has crowned my of the women, however, cover a single place with
27 voyage, I write to inform you how in thirty-three a leaf of a plant or piece of cotton which they
28 days I crossed from the Canary Islands to the weave for the purpose. They have no iron or steel
29 Indies, with the fleet which our most illustrious or arms and are not capable of using them, not
sovereigns gave me. I found very many islands because they are not strong and well built but
30
with large populations and took possession of because they are amazingly timid. All the weapons
31 them all for their Highnesses; this I did by they have are canes cut at seeding time, at the end
32 proclamation and unfurled the royal standard. of which they fix a sharpened stick, but they have
33 No opposition was offered. not the courage to make use of these, for very
34 I named the first island that I found “San often when I have sent two or three men to a
35 Salvador,” in honour of our Lord and Saviour who village to have conversation with them a great
36 has granted me this miracle. . . . When I reached number of them have come out. But as soon as
37 Cuba, I followed its north coast westwards, and they saw my men all fled immediately, a father
38 found it so extensive that I thought this must be not even waiting for his son. And this is not
39 the mainland, the province of Cathay.* . . . From because we have harmed any of them; on the
40 there I saw another island eighteen leagues contrary, wherever I have gone and been able to
eastwards which I then named “Hispaniola.”† have conversation with them, I have given them
41
Hispaniola is a wonder. The mountains and some of the various things I had, a cloth and
42 hills, the plains and meadow lands are both fertile other articles, and received nothing in exchange.
43 But they have still remained incurably timid.
44 True, when they have been reassured and lost
*Cathay is the old name for China. In the log-book and
45 later in this letter Columbus accepts the native story that their fear, they are so ingenuous and so liberal
46 Cuba is an island that they can circumnavigate in some- with all their possessions that no one who has
47 thing more than twenty-one days, yet he insists here and not seen them would believe it. If one asks for
48 later, during the second voyage, that it is in fact part of anything they have they never say no. On the
the Asiatic mainland.
49 †Hispaniola is the second largest island of the West Indies;
50S Haiti occupies the western third of the island, the Domini- ‡This did not prove to be true.
§These statements are also inaccurate.
51R can Republic the rest.
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contrary, they offer a share to anyone with

demonstrations of heartfelt affection, and they
are immediately content with any small thing,
valuable or valueless, that is given them. I forbade
the men to give them bits of broken crockery,
fragments of glass or tags of laces, though if they
could get them they fancied them the finest
jewels in the world.
I hoped to win them to the love and service of
their Highnesses and of the whole Spanish nation
and to persuade them to collect and give us of the
things which they possessed in abundance and
which we needed. They have no religion and
are not idolaters; but all believe that power and
goodness dwell in the sky and they are firmly
convinced that I have come from the sky with
these ships and people. In this belief they gave
me a good reception everywhere, once they had
overcome their fear; and this is not because they Christopher Columbus, by Ridolpho Ghirlandio.
are stupid—far from it, they are men of great Friend of Raphael and teacher of Michelangelo,
intelligence, for they navigate all those seas, and Ghirlandio (1483–1561) enjoyed distinction as a
portrait painter, and so we can assume that this is
give a marvellously good account of everything— a good likeness of the older Columbus. (Scala/Art
but because they have never before seen men Resource, NY)
clothed or ships like these. . . .
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In all these islands the men are seemingly
conversion of so many peoples to our holy faith
content with one woman, but their chief or king
is allowed more than twenty. The women appear and for the temporal benefits which will follow,
to work more than the men and I have not been for not only Spain, but all Christendom will
able to find out if they have private property. As receive encouragement and profit.
far as I could see whatever a man had was shared This is a brief account of the facts. Written in
among all the rest and this particularly applies to the caravel off the Canary Islands.||
food. . . . In another island, which I am told is 15 February 1493
larger than Hispaniola, the people have no hair. At your orders
Here there is a vast quantity of gold, and from THE ADMIRAL
here and the other islands I bring Indians as
evidence.
In conclusion, to speak only of the results of Questions for Analysis
this very hasty voyage, their Highnesses can see
that I will give them as much gold as they require, 1. How did Columbus explain the success of his
if they will render me some very slight assistance; voyage?
also I will give them all the spices and cotton they 2. What was Columbus’s view of the Native
want. . . . I will also bring them as much aloes as Americans he met?
they ask and as many slaves, who will be taken
from the idolaters. I believe also that I have 3. Evaluate his statements that the Caribbean
found rhubarb and cinnamon and there will be islands possessed gold, cotton, and spices.
countless other things in addition. . . . 4. Why did Columbus cling to the idea that he
So all Christendom will be delighted that had reached Asia?
our Redeemer has given victory to our most
||Actually, Columbus was off Santa Maria in the Azores.
illustrious King and Queen and their renowned
kingdoms, in this great matter. They should hold
great celebrations and render solemn thanks to Source: The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Penguin
the Holy Trinity with many solemn prayers, for Classics, 1958), pp. 115–123. Copyright © J. M. Cohen,
the great triumph which they will have, by the 1958. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.
519
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1 Notes 20. Quoted in R. L. Kagan, “The Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella,” in

2 Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration, ed. J. A. Levenson (Wash-
1. A. Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680,. vol. 2: ington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1991), p. 60.
3 Expansion and Crisis (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 21. G. W. Conrad and A. A. Demarest, Religion and Empire: The Dy-
4 1993), Chaps. 1 and 2, pp. 1–131. namics of Aztec and Inca Expansionism (New York: Cambridge Uni-
5 2. Andre Gunder Frank, Re-Orient: Global Economy in the Asian Age versity Press, 1993), pp. 67–69.
6 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). 22. Ibid., pp. 135–139.
3. K. N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: An 23. Quoted in Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cul-
7
Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cam- tural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1972),
8 bridge University Press, 1985), p. 14. p. 39.
9 4. Quoted in Erik Gilbert and Jonathan T. Reynolds, Africa in World 24. Ibid., pp. 35–59.
10 History: From Prehistory to the Present (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: 25. Quoted in C. Gibson, ed., The Black Legend: Anti-Spanish Attitudes
11 Pearson, 2004), p. 93. in the Old World and the New (New York: Knopf, 1971), pp. 74–75.
5. Halil Inalcik and Donald Quataert, eds., An Economic and Social 26. Quoted in L. B. Rout, Jr., The African Experience in Spanish Amer-
12
History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge ica (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 23.
13 University Press, 1994), p. 219. 27. C. Verlinden, The Beginnings of Modern Colonization, trans. Y.
14 6. G. V. Scammell, The World Encompassed: The First European Mar- Freccero (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1970), pp. 5–6,
15 itime Empires, c. 800–1650 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 80–97.
16 1981), pp. 101, 104. 28. This section leans heavily on D. B. Davis, Slavery and Human Pro-
7. Ibid., p. 174. gress (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 54–62; the
17
8. Quoted in C. M. Cipolla, Guns, Sails, and Empires: Technological quotation is on p. 58.
18 Innovation and the Early Phases of European Expansion, 1400–1700 29. Herbert S. Klein, “Profits and the Causes of Mortality,” in David
19 (New York: Minerva Press, 1965), p. 132. Northrup, ed., The Atlantic Slave Trade (Lexington, Mass.: D. C.
20 9. Quoted in F. H. Littell, The Macmillan Atlas: History of Christianity Heath and Co., 1994), p. 116.
21 (New York: Macmillan, 1976), p. 75. 30. Malcolm Cowley and Daniel P. Mannix, “The Middle Passage,” in
10. See C. R. Phillips, Ciudad Real, 1500–1750: Growth, Crisis, and David Northrup, ed., The Atlantic Slave Trade (Lexington, Mass.:
22
Readjustment in the Spanish Economy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard D. C. Heath and Co., 1994), p. 101.
23 University Press, 1979), pp. 103–104, 115. 31. Reid, Southeast Asia, vol. 2, pp. 10–26.
24 11. Pablo E. Pérez-Mallaína, Spain’s Men of the Sea: Daily Life on the 32. H. Kamen, Philip of Spain (New Haven: Yale University Press,
Indies Fleet in the Sixteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins 1997), p. 77.
26 University Press, 1998), p. 130. 33. Quoted in ibid., p. 235.
12. Ibid., p. 133. 34. Parker, Grand Strategy of Philip II (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Uni-
27
13. Ibid., p. 19. versity Press, 2000), pp. 115–122; the quotation is on p. 119.
28 14. Scammell, The World Encompassed, p. 207. 35. Quoted in D. P. Mannix, with M. Cowley, Black Cargoes: A History
29 15. Ibid., p. 265. of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York: Viking Press, 1968), p. 19.
30 16. Quoted in Cipolla, Guns, Sails, and Empires, pp. 115–116. 36. See P. Brown, “Understanding Islam,” New York Review of Books,
31 17. S. E. Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher February 22, 1979, pp. 30–33.
Columbus (Boston: Little, Brown, 1942), p. 339. 37. Quoted in Davis, Slavery and Human Progress, pp. 43–44.
32
18. Quoted in F. Maddison, “Tradition and Innovation: Columbus’ 38. D. M. Frame, trans., The Complete Works of Montaigne (Stanford,
33 First Voyage and Portuguese Navigation in the Fifteenth Century,” Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1958), pp. 175–176.
34 in Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration, ed. J. A. Levenson 39. Ibid., p. 618.
35 (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1991), p. 69. 40. C. Cotton, trans., The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (New York:
36 19. J. M. Cohen, ed. and trans., The Four Voyages of Christopher A. L. Burt, 1893), pp. 207, 210.
Columbus (New York: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 37. 41. Ibid., p. 523.
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of his power: the sword of justice, the scepter of power, and the crown. The vigor and strength of the
52L king’s stocking-covered legs contrast with the age and wisdom of his lined face. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
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c h a p t e r 1
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Absolutism and 3
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Constitutionalism 5
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in Western 8
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Europe, ca 1589–1715 10
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chapter preview 12
13
Seventeenth-Century Crisis
and Rebuilding
• What were the common crises and
T he seventeenth century was a period of crisis and transformation.
Agricultural and manufacturing slumps meant that many people
struggled to feed themselves and their families. After a long period of
14
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17
achievements of seventeenth-century growth, population rates stagnated or even fell. Religious and dynastic
18
states? conflicts led to almost constant war, visiting violence and destruction on
19
Absolutism in France and Spain ordinary people.
20
The demands of war reshaped European states. Armies grew larger
• To what extent did French and than they had been since the time of the Roman Empire. To pay for these
21
Spanish monarchs succeed in creating 22
armies, governments greatly increased taxes. They also created new bu-
absolute monarchies? 23
reaucracies to collect the taxes and to foster economic activity that might
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The Culture of Absolutism increase state revenue. Despite numerous obstacles, European states suc-
25
Apago
• What cultural forms flourished under PDF Enhancer
ceeded in gathering more power during this period. What one historian
26
absolutist governments? described as the long European “struggle for stability” that originated
27
with the Reformation in the early sixteenth century was largely resolved
Constitutionalism 28
by 1680.1
• What is constitutionalism, and how 29
Important differences existed, however, in terms of which authority
did this form of government emerge in 30
within the state possessed sovereignty—the Crown or privileged groups.
31
England and the Dutch Republic? Between roughly 1589 and 1715 two basic patterns of government
32
emerged in Europe: absolute monarchy and the constitutional state. Al-
33
most all subsequent European governments have been modeled on one
34
of these patterns.
35
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SeventeenthCentury Crisis 38
and Rebuilding 39
40
Historians often refer to the seventeenth century as an “age of crisis.” Af- 41
ter the economic and demographic growth of the sixteenth century, Eu- 42
rope faltered into stagnation and retrenchment. This was partially due to 43
climate changes beyond anyone’s control, but it also resulted from the 44
bitterness of religious divides, the increased pressures exerted by govern- 45
ments, and the violence and dislocation of war. Overburdened peasants 46
and city-dwellers took action to defend themselves, sometimes profiting 47
48
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524 CHAPTER 16 • ABSOLUTISM AND CONSTITUTIONALISM IN WESTERN EUROPE, CA 1589–1715
1 from elite conflicts to obtain redress of their grievances. A small number of peasants in each village owned
2 In the long run, however, governments proved increas- enough land to feed themselves and the livestock and
3 ingly able to impose their will on the populace. This pe- ploughs necessary to work their land. These independent
4 riod witnessed a spectacular growth in army size as well farmers were leaders of the peasant village. They em-
5 as new forms of taxation, government bureaucracies, and ployed the landless poor, rented out livestock and tools,
6 increased state sovereignty. and served as agents for the noble lord. Below them were
7 • What were the common crises and achievements of small landowners and tenant farmers who did not have
8 seventeenth-century states? enough land to be self-sufficient. These families sold
9 their best produce on the market to earn cash for taxes,
10 rent, and food. At the bottom were the rural proletariat
11 who worked as dependent laborers and servants.
12
Economic and Demographic Crisis Rich or poor, bread was the primary element of the
13 In the seventeenth century the vast majority of western diet. Ignoring our modern health concerns, the richest
14 Europeans lived in the countryside. The hub of the rural ate a white loaf, leaving brown bread to those who could
15 world was the small peasant village centered on a church not afford better. Peasants paid stiff fees to the local miller
16 and a manor. Life was in many ways circumscribed by the for grinding grain into flour and sometimes to the lord
17 village, although we should not underestimate the mo- for the right to bake bread in his oven. Bread was most of-
18 bility induced by war, food shortage, fortune-seeking, ten accompanied with a soup made of roots, herbs, beans,
19 and religious pilgrimage. and perhaps a small piece of salt pork. One of the biggest
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An English Food Riot Nothing infuriated ordinary women and men more than the idea that merchants
48 and landowners were withholding grain from the market in order to push high prices even higher. In this
49 cartoon an angry crowd hands out rough justice to a rich farmer accused of hoarding. (Courtesy of the Trustees
50S of the British Museum)
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Seventeenth-Century Crisis and Rebuilding • 525
annual festivals in the rural village was the killing of the Chronology 1
family pig. The whole family gathered to help, sharing a 2
rare abundance of meat with neighbors and carefully salt- 1589–1610 Henry IV in France 3
ing the extra and putting down the lard. In some areas, 4
menstruating women were careful to stay away from the 1598 Edict of Nantes 5
kitchen for fear they might cause the lard to spoil. 1602 Dutch East India Company founded 6
Rural society lived on the edge of subsistence. A bad 7
harvest, an illness, or a drop in prices could lead to debt 1605–1715 Food riots common across Europe 8
and the loss of one’s land. Because of the crude technol- 1635 Birth of French Academy 9
ogy and low crop yield, peasants were constantly threat- 10
ened by scarcity and famine. The fear of hunger marked 1640–1680 Golden age of Dutch art (Vermeer, 11
popular culture, and death was a familiar presence. Van Steen, Rembrandt) 12
The seventeenth century put new stresses on this frag- 1642–1649 English civil war ends with execution 13
ile balance. A colder and wetter climate meant a shorter of Charles I 14
farming season. Conditions were so bad that scholars re- 15
1643–1715 Louis XIV in France
fer to this period as a “little ice age.” A bad harvest cre- 16
ated dearth; a series of bad harvests could lead to famine. 1648–1653 The Fronde 17
Recurrent famines had a significant effect on the popu- 18
1653–1658 Military rule in England under Oliver
lation levels of early modern Europe. Using parish regis- 19
Cromwell
ters, historians have traced the correspondence between 20
high prices on the one hand and burials and low birth 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees marks end of Spanish 21
and marriage rates on the other. Most people did not die imperial dominance 22
of outright starvation, but rather of diseases brought on 23
1660 Restoration of English monarchy under
by malnutrition and exhaustion. Facilitated by the weak- Charles II 24
ened population, outbreaks of bubonic plague continued
in Europe until the 1720s. 1665–1683 Jean-Baptiste Colbert applies 26
Industry also suffered. While the evidence does not mercantilism to France 27
permit broad generalizations, it appears that the output 1685 Edict of Nantes revoked 28
of woolen textiles, one of the most important European 29
manufactures, declined sharply in the first half of the cen- 1688–1689 Glorious Revolution in England 30
tury. Food prices were high, wages stagnated, and unem- 1701–1713 War of the Spanish Succession 31
ployment soared. This economic crisis was not universal: 32
it struck various regions at different times and to differ- 1713 Peace of Utrecht 33
ent degrees. In the middle decades of the century, Spain, 34
France, Germany, and England all experienced great eco- 35
nomic difficulties; but these years were the golden age of 36
the Netherlands. 37
Peasants and the urban poor were the first to suffer Seventeenth-Century State-Building: 38
from bad harvests and economic depression. When the 39
price of bread rose beyond their capacity to pay, they fre-
Common Obstacles and Achievements 40
quently took action. In towns they invaded the bakers’ In this context of economic and demographic depression, 41
shop to seize bread and resell it at a “just price.” In rural monarchs began to make new demands on their people. 42
areas groups of peasants attacked convoys taking grain Traditionally, historians have distinguished sharply between 43
away to the cities and also redistributed it for what they the “absolutist” governments of France, Spain, central 44
considered a fair price. Women often took the lead in Europe, and Russia and the constitutionally limited gov- 45
these actions, since their role as mothers with children to ernments of England and the Dutch Republic. Whereas ab- 46
feed gave them some impunity in authorities’ eyes. His- solutist monarchs gathered all power under their personal 47
torians have labeled this vision of a world in which com- control, Dutch and English rulers were obliged to respect 48
munity needs predominate over competition and profit a laws passed by representative institutions. More recently, 49
moral economy. historians have emphasized commonalities among these 50S
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1 powers. Despite their political differences, absolutist and grees—in overcoming the obstacles and achieving new
2 constitutional monarchs shared common projects of pro- levels of central control. Four achievements stand out
3 tecting and expanding their frontiers, raising new taxes, in particular: greater taxation, growth in armed forces,
4 and consolidating state control. larger and more efficient bureaucracies, and the increased
5 Rulers who wished to increase their authority encoun- ability to compel obedience from their subjects.
6 tered formidable obstacles. Some were purely material. Increasing the size and power of the state required
7 Without paved roads, telephones, or other modern new sources of revenue. Medieval kings frequently found
8 technology, it took weeks to convey orders from the temporary financial support through bargains with the
9 central government to the provinces. States like France nobility: the nobility agreed to an ad hoc grant of money
10 and Spain were vast, especially if we take their overseas in return for freedom from future taxation. Over the
11 empires into account. Rulers also suffered from a lack of course of the seventeenth century, rulers succeeded in
12 information about their realms, due to the limited size generating new levels of income by either forcing direct
13 of their bureaucracies. Without accurate knowledge of taxes ever higher or devising alternative methods of rais-
14 the number of inhabitants and the wealth they posing money.
15 sessed, it was impossible to police and tax the population Taxation both permitted and required a larger gov-
16 effectively. Cultural and linguistic differences presented ernment apparatus. This period witnessed the expansion
17 their own obstacles. Seventeenth-century Basques, Bre- of government bureaucracies and the creation of admin-
18 tons, Languedocians, and Alsatians spoke not French istrative techniques to improve communication and ef-
19 but their own languages. These differences decreased ficiency. Bureaucracies were now composed of career
20 even further their willingness to obey a distant officials appointed by and solely accountable to the king.
21 monarch’s commands. The backgrounds of these civil servants varied. They
22 A more concrete obstacle was the array of privileged sometimes came from the middle classes, as in France,
23 groups who shared in authority and its spoils. The tradi- the Netherlands, and England. In Spain and eastern Eu-
24 tional enemy of monarchical power was the nobility. rope, monarchs utilized members of the nobility instead
25 Across Europe, nobles retained great legal, military, polit-
Apago PDF Enhancer (see Chapter 17).
26 ical, and financial powers, not to mention the traditional Over time, government power added up to something
27 social prestige they commanded. Nobles were not alone close to sovereignty. A state may be termed sovereign
28 in opposing monarchs’ new claims. Other competitors when it possesses a monopoly over the instruments of
29 included the church, the legislative corps, town councils, justice and the use of force within clearly defined bound-
30 guilds, and other bodies that had acquired autonomy aries. In a sovereign state, no system of courts, such as ec-
31 over the course of the Middle Ages. In some countries clesiastical tribunals, competes with state courts in the
32 whole provinces held separate privileges and exemptions dispensation of justice; and private armies, such as those
33 granted when they entered the kingdom. This special sta- of feudal lords, present no threat to central authority be-
34 tus reinforced local power structures and identities. cause the state’s army is stronger. State law touches all
35 A long historical consensus held that absolutist mon- persons in the country. While seventeenth-century states
36 archs succeeded in breaking the power of these institu- did not acquire total sovereignty, they made important
37 tions, with Louis XIV of France serving as the model for strides toward that goal.
38 absolutist power across Europe. By contrast, mighty kings
39 were humbled in England and the Dutch Republic and
40 were forced to concede political power to elected repre-
Warfare and the Growth of Army Size
41 sentatives. Today, historians paint a more nuanced pic- The driving force of seventeenth-century state-building
42 ture of this divide. On the one hand, they emphasize the was warfare, characterized by dramatic changes in the size
43 extent to which absolutist monarchs had to compromise and style of armies. Medieval armies had been raised by
44 with existing power structures. Louis XIV succeeded be- feudal lords for particular wars or campaigns, after which
45 cause he co-opted and convinced nobles, rather than by the troops were disbanded. In the seventeenth century
46 crushing their power. On the other hand, historians also monarchs took command of recruiting and maintaining
47 recognize that traditional elites retained power in En- armies—in peacetime as well as wartime. Kings deployed
48 gland and the Netherlands. Constitutional limits did not their troops both inside and outside the country in the
49 mean democracy, the rule of the people. interests of the monarchy. Instead of serving their own
50S If we take a step back from the political differences, we interests, army officers were required to be loyal and obe-
51R see that these states all succeeded—albeit to varying de- dient to the monarchs who commanded them. New
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Seventeenth-Century Crisis and Rebuilding • 527
techniques for training and deploying soldiers meant a to pursue the ambitious foreign policies that caused his 1
rise in the professional standards of the army. alarmed neighbors to form coalitions against him. 2
Along with professionalization came an explosive The death toll was startlingly high for noble officers, 3
growth in army size. The French took the lead, with the who personally led their men in battle. The paramount 4
army growing from roughly 125,000 men in the Thirty value of honor for noblemen outshone concerns for 5
Years’ War (1630–1648) to 250,000 during the Dutch safety or material benefit. Nobles had to purchase their 6
War (1672–1678) and 340,000 during the War of the positions in the army and supply horses, food, uniforms, 7
League of Augsburg (1688–1697).2 This growth was and weapons for themselves and their troops. Royal 8
caused in part by changes in the style of armies. Muster- stipends did not begin to cover these expenses, and an of- 9
ing a royal army took longer than simply hiring a merce- ficer’s position could not be sold if he died in battle. The 10
nary band, giving enemies time to form coalitions. The only legacy an officer’s widow received was the debt in- 11
large coalitions Louis XIV confronted required him to curred to fund her husbands’ military career. It was not 12
fight on multiple fronts with huge armies. In turn, the until the 1760s that the French government assumed the 13
relative size and wealth of France among European na- costs of equipping troops. 14
tions allowed Louis to field enormous armies and thereby Other European powers were quick to follow the 15
French example. The rise of absolutism in 16
central and eastern Europe was similarly 17
marked by a vast expansion in the size of 18
armies (see Chapter 17). Great Britain fol- 19
lowed a similar, albeit distinctive pattern. In- 20
stead of building a land army, the British 21
focused on naval forces and eventually built 22
the largest navy in the world. 23
Many historians believe that the new loy- 24
Apago PDF Enhancer alty, professionalism, and size of the French 25
army is the best case for the success of abso- 26
lutism under Louis XIV. Whatever his com- 27
promises elsewhere, the French monarch had 28
firm control of his armed forces. As in so 29
many other matters, Louis’s model was fol- 30
lowed across Europe. 31
32
33
Popular Political Action 34
In the seventeenth century increased pres- 35
sures of taxation and warfare turned bread ri- 36
ots into armed uprisings. Popular revolts 37
were extremely common in England, France, 38
Spain, Portugal, and Italy in the mid-seven- 39
teenth century.3 In 1640 Philip IV of Spain 40
faced revolt in Catalonia, the economic center 41
of his realm. This was the same time he was 42
struggling to put down an uprising in Portu- 43
gal and the revolt of the northern provinces of 44
the Netherlands. In 1647 the city of Palermo, 45
The Spider and the Fly In reference to the insect symbolism (upper left), in Spanish-occupied Sicily, exploded in 46
the caption on the lower left side of this illustration states, “The noble is the protest over food shortages caused by a series 47
spider, the peasant the fly.” The other caption (upper right) notes, “The of bad harvests. Fearing public unrest, the city 48
more people have, the more they want. The poor man brings everything—
wheat, fruit, money, vegetables. The greedy lord sitting there ready to take government subsidized the price of bread, at- 49
everything will not even give him the favor of a glance.” This satirical print tracting even more starving peasants from the 50S
summarizes peasant grievances. (The New York Public Library/Art Resource, NY) countryside. When Madrid ordered an end to 51R
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1 subsidies, municipal leaders decided to lighten the loaf God; kings discovered or “found” the law and acknowl-
2 rather than raise prices. Not fooled by this change, local edged that they must respect and obey it. In the abso-
3 women led a bread riot, shouting “Long live the king lutist state, kings amplified these claims, asserting that, as
4 and down with the taxes and the bad government!” The they were chosen by God, they were responsible to God
5 uprising spread to the rest of the island and eventually to alone. They claimed exclusive power to make and enforce
6 Naples on the mainland. Apart from affordable food, laws, denying any other institution or group the author-
7 rebels demanded the suppression of extraordinary taxes ity to check their power.
8 and participation in municipal government. Some In 1651 in Leviathan, the English philosopher Thomas
9 dreamed of a republic in which noble tax exemptions Hobbes provided a theoretical justification for absolute
10 would be abolished. Despite initial successes, the revolt monarchical authority, arguing that any limits on or divi-
11 lacked unity and strong leadership and could not with- sions of government power would lead only to paralysis
12 stand the forces of aristocratic reaction.4 or civil war. At the court of Louis XIV the theologian
13 In France urban disorders became so frequent an as- Bossuet proclaimed that the king was the “image” of
14 pect of the social and political landscape as to be “a dis- God on earth and that it was a sacred duty to obey him:
15 tinctive feature of life.”5 Major insurrections occurred at “The prince need render account of his acts to no
16 Dijon in 1630 and 1668, at Bordeaux in 1635 and 1675, one. . . . Without this absolute authority the king could
17 at Montpellier in 1645, at Lyons in 1667–1668 and neither do good nor repress evil. It is necessary that his
18 1692, and at Amiens in 1685, 1695, 1704, and 1711. All power be such that no one can hope to escape him, and,
19 were characterized by deep popular anger, a vocabulary finally, the only protection of individuals against the pub-
20 of violence, and what a recent historian calls “the culture lic authority should be their innocence.” Historians have
21 of retribution”—that is, the punishment of royal “out- been debating since his reign how successfully Louis XIV
22 siders,” officials who attempted to announce or collect and other absolutist monarchs realized these claims.
23 taxes.6 These officials were sometimes seized, beaten, • To what extent did French and Spanish monarchs succeed
24 and hacked to death. For example, in 1673 Louis XIV’s in creating absolute monarchies?
25 imposition of new taxes on legal transactions, tobacco,
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26 and pewter ware provoked an uprising in Bordeaux.
27 Municipal and royal authorities often struggled to
28 overcome popular revolt. They feared that stern repres- The Foundations of Absolutism:
29 sive measures, such as sending in troops to fire on
30 crowds, would create martyrs and further inflame the sit-
Henry IV, Sully, and Richelieu
31 uation, while forcible full-scale military occupation of a Louis XIV’s absolutism had long roots. In 1589 his
32 city would be very expensive. The limitations of royal au- grandfather Henry IV (r. 1589–1610), the founder of
33 thority gave some leverage to rebels. Royal edicts were the Bourbon dynasty, acquired a devastated country.
34 sometimes suspended, prisoners released, and discussions Civil wars had wracked France since 1561. Catastrophi-
35 initiated. cally poor harvests meant that peasants across France
36 By the end of the seventeenth century, this leverage lived on the verge of starvation. Commercial activity had
37 had largely disappeared. Municipal governments were fallen to one-third its 1580 level. Nobles, officials, mer-
38 better integrated into the national structure, and local chants, and peasants wanted peace, order, and stability.
39 authorities had prompt military support from the central “Henri le Grand” (Henry the Great), as the king was
40 government. People who publicly opposed royal policies called, promised “a chicken in every pot” and inaugu-
41 and taxes received swift and severe punishment.7 rated a remarkable recovery. He was beloved because of
42 the belief that he cared about the people; he was the only
43 king whose statue the Paris crowd did not tear down in
44 the Revolution of 1789.
45 Absolutism in France and Aside from a short war in 1601, Henry kept France at
46 Spain peace. Maintaining that “if we are without compassion for
47 the people, they must succumb and we all perish with
48 In the Middle Ages jurists held that as a consequence of them,” Henry sharply lowered taxes on the overburdened
49 monarchs’ coronation and anointment with sacred oil, peasants. In compensation for lost revenues, in 1602–
50S they ruled “by the grace of God.” Law was given by 1604 he introduced the paulette, an annual fee paid by
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Absolutism in France and Spain • 529
royal officials to guarantee heredity in their offices. (Al- The constructive genius of Cardinal Richelieu is best 1
though effective at the time, the long-term effect of this reflected in the administrative system he established to 2
tax was to reduce royal control over officeholders.) strengthen royal control. He extended the use of the royal 3
Along with his able chief minister, the Protestant Max- commissioners called intendants. France was divided into 4
imilien de Béthune, duke of Sully, Henry IV laid the thirty-two généralités (districts), in each of which after 5
foundations for the growth of state power. He combined 1634 a royal intendant held a commission to perform 6
the indirect taxes on salt, sales, and transit and leased their specific tasks, often financial but also judicial and polic- 7
collection to financiers. Although the number of taxes de- ing. Intendants painstakingly collected information from 8
clined, revenues increased because of the revival of trade.8 local communities for Paris and delivered royal orders 9
Henry improved the infrastructure of the country, build- from the capital to their districts. Almost always recruited 10
ing new roads and canals and repairing the ravages of from the newer judicial nobility, the noblesse de robe or 11
years of civil war. In only twelve years he restored public robe nobility, intendants were appointed directly by the 12
order in France. monarch, to whom they were solely responsible. They 13
As a divinely appointed leader of his people, Henry could not be natives of the districts where they held au- 14
sought to heal the religious divisions that had torn France thority; thus they had no vested interest in their localities. 15
apart. In 1598 he issued the Edict of Nantes as a com- The intendants recruited men for the army, supervised the 16
promise between Catholics and Huguenots. The edict collection of taxes, presided over the administration of 17
allowed Protestants the right to worship in 150 tradition- local law, checked up on the local nobility, and regulated 18
ally Protestant towns throughout France; the king gave economic activities—commerce, trade, the guilds, mar- 19
the towns 180,000 écus to support the maintenance of ketplaces—in their districts. They were to use their power 20
their military garrisons. This was too much for some de- for three related purposes: to inform the central govern- 21
vout Catholics. Henry was murdered in 1610 by François ment about their généralités, to enforce royal orders, and 22
Ravaillac, a Catholic zealot, setting off national crisis. to undermine the influence of the regional nobility. As 23
the intendants’ power increased under Richelieu, so did 24
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Apago PDF Enhancer the power of the centralized French state. 25
Primary Source: Henry IV’s Edict of Nantes Grants
Limited Toleration to the Huguenots
Under Richelieu the French monarchy also reasserted 26
the principle of one people united by one faith. In 1627 27
After the death of Henry IV his wife, the queen-regent Louis XIII decided to end Protestant military and po- 28
Marie de’ Medici, headed the government for the child- litical independence because, he said, it constituted “a 29
king Louis XIII (r. 1610–1643). In 1624 Marie de’ state within a state.” According to Louis, Huguenots 30
Medici secured the appointment of Armand Jean du demanded freedom of conscience but did not allow 31
Plessis—Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642)—to the coun- Catholics to worship in their cities. He interpreted this 32
cil of ministers. It was a remarkable appointment. The inequity as political disobedience.9 Attention focused on 33
next year Richelieu became president of the council, and La Rochelle, fourth largest of the French Atlantic ports 34
after 1628 he was first minister of the French crown. and a major commercial center with strong ties to the 35
Richelieu used his strong influence over King Louis XIII northern Protestant states of Holland and England. 36
to exalt the French monarchy as the embodiment of the Louis personally supervised the siege of La Rochelle. Af- 37
French state. One of the greatest servants of that state, ter the city fell in October 1628, its municipal govern- 38
Richelieu struggled through the turmoil of the Thirty ment was suppressed and its walled fortifications were 39
Years’ War to maintain the monarchy’s position within destroyed. Although Protestants retained the right of 40
Europe and within its own borders. public worship, the king reinstated the Catholic liturgy, 41
Richelieu’s goal was to subordinate competing groups and Cardinal Richelieu himself celebrated the first Mass. 42
and institutions to the French monarchy. The nobility The fall of La Rochelle weakened the influence of aris- 43
constituted the foremost threat. Nobles ran the army, tocratic Huguenots and was one step in the removal of 44
controlled large provinces of France, sat in royal councils, Protestantism as a strong force in French life. 45
and were immune from direct taxation. Richelieu sought The elimination of potential dissidents at home did 46
to curb their power. In 1624 he succeeded in reshuffling not mean hostility to Protestants abroad. Foreign policy 47
the royal council, eliminating potential power brokers. under Richelieu aimed primarily at the destruction of the 48
Thereafter Richelieu dominated the council in an un- fence of Habsburg territories that surrounded France. 49
precedented way. Consequently, Richelieu supported the Habsburgs’ ene- 50S
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1 mies, including Protestants. In 1631 he signed a treaty essary. Neither side was strong enough to subjugate the
2 with the Lutheran king Gustavus Adolphus promising other; only violence and disorder could come from a re-
3 French support against the Catholic Habsburgs in what fusal to negotiate. This meant, in some ways, a victory for
4 has been called the Swedish phase of the Thirty Years’ the forces opposing the king, who were guaranteed the
5 War (see page 562). French influence became an impor- preservation of their traditional privileges. However, the
6 tant factor in the political future of the German Empire. Fronde also quelled—and in some cases killed—the most
7 Richelieu acquired for France extensive rights in Alsace in vociferous opponents of the Crown. The twin evils of no-
8 the east and Arras in the north. ble factionalism and popular riots left the French wishing
9 In building the French state, Richelieu knew that his for peace and for a strong monarch to re-impose order.
10 approach sometimes seemed to contradict traditional This was the legacy that Louis XIV inherited when he as-
11 Christian teaching. As a priest and bishop, how did he sumed personal rule in 1661. Humiliated by his flight
12 justify his policies? He developed his own raison d’état from Paris, he was determined to avoid any recurrence of
13 (reason of state): “Where the interests of the state are rebellion.
14 concerned, God absolves actions which, if privately com-
15 mitted, would be a crime.”10
16 Richelieu’s successor as chief minister for the boy-king
Louis XIV and Absolutism
17 Louis XIV was Cardinal Jules Mazarin (1602–1661). In the reign of Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715), the longest in
18 Along with the regent, Queen Mother Anne of Austria, European history, the French monarchy reached the
19 Mazarin continued Richelieu’s centralizing policies. His peak of absolutist development. In the magnificence of
20 struggle to increase royal revenues to meet the costs of his court, in the brilliance of the culture that he presided
21 war with Spain led to the uprisings of 1648–1653 known over and that permeated all of Europe, and in his re-
22 as the Fronde. The word fronde means “slingshot” or markably long life, the “Sun King” dominated his age.
23 “catapult,” and a frondeur was originally a street urchin The boy-king received an education appropriate for his
24 who threw mud at the passing carriages of the rich. The position. He learned to speak Italian and Spanish flu-
25 word came to be applied to the many individuals and
Apago PDF Enhancer ently, spoke and wrote elegant French, and knew some
26 groups who opposed the policies of the government. French history and a great deal of European geography.
27 The Fronde began among the robe nobility when the Louis also imbibed the devout Catholicism of his
28 judges of the Parisian high law court (the Parlement) re- mother, Anne of Austria, and throughout his long life
29 jected Anne and Mazarin’s proposal to raise new rev- scrupulously performed his religious duties. Religion,
30 enues by rescinding judicial salaries. The arrest of several Anne, and Mazarin all taught Louis the doctrine of the
31 magistrates sparked a popular riot in the capital, whose divine right of kings: God had established kings as his
32 inhabitants had suffered to meet the costs of war. With rulers on earth, and they were answerable ultimately to
33 the boy-king, Anne of Austria fled the capital for safety. God alone. Though kings were divinely anointed and
34 Essentially traditional and conservative, the magistrates shared in the sacred nature of divinity, they could not
35 agreed to a compromise with the government that simply do as they pleased. They had to obey God’s laws
36 largely favored their demands. and rule for the good of the people.
37 The second stage of the Fronde saw the conflict extend Louis worked very hard at the business of governing.
38 to the noblesse d’épée or sword nobility, who were also He ruled his realm through several councils of state, which
39 angered by the increasing powers of the central govern- he personally attended, and through the intendants who
40 ment. The Prince de Condé, one of the highest nobles acted for the councils in the provinces. A stream of ques-
41 in France, entered open warfare against the Crown, fol- tions and instructions flowed between local districts and
42 lowed by other nobles and their followers. Popular re- Versailles, helping centralize and standardize a hopelessly
43 bellions led by aristocratic factions broke out in the complex administration. Louis insisted on taking a per-
44 provinces and spread to Paris.11 As rebellion continued, sonal role in many of the decisions issued by the councils.
45 civil order broke down completely. In 1651 Anne’s re- Councilors of state came from the recently ennobled
46 gency ended with the declaration of Louis as king in his or the upper middle class. Royal service provided a means
47 own right. Much of the rebellion died away, and its lead- of social mobility. These professional bureaucrats served
48 ers came to terms with the government. the state in the person of the king, but they did not share
49 The conflicts of the Fronde had significant results for power with him. Louis stated that he chose bourgeois
50S the future. First, it became apparent that compromise be- officials because he wanted “people to know by the rank
51R tween the king and the sword and robe nobility was nec- of the men who served him that he had no intention of
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7
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Rubens: The Death of Henry IV and the Proclamation of the Regency (1622–1625) In 1622 the regent 22
Marie de’ Medici commissioned Peter Paul Rubens to paint a cycle of paintings depicting her life. This one
portrays two distinct moments: the assassination of Henry IV (shown on the left ascending to Heaven), and 23
Marie’s subsequent proclamation as regent. The queen is seated on a throne in mourning clothes, with the 24
goddess Athena on her right (representing Prudence), a woman in the air holding a rudder (symbolizing re-
gency), and the personification of France kneeling before her offering an orb (symbolizing government). The 26
other twenty-three canvasses in the cycle similarly glorify Marie, a tricky undertaking given her unhappy mar- 27
riage to Henry IV and her tumultuous relationship with her son Louis XIII, who removed her from the regency
in 1617. As in this image, Rubens frequently resorted to allegory and classical imagery to elevate the events of 28
Marie’s life. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY) 29
30
31
32
33
sharing power with them.”12 If great ones were the Catholic baptism of Huguenots, and the exile of Hugue- 34
king’s advisers, they would seem to share the royal au- not pastors who refused to renounce their faith. The re- 35
thority; professional administrators from the middle class sult was the departure of some of his most loyal and 36
would not. industrially skilled subjects. 37
Despite increasing financial problems, Louis never There had been so many mass conversions of Protes- 38
called a meeting of the Estates General. The nobility tants in France that the king’s second wife, Madame de 39
therefore had no means of united expression or action. Maintenon, could say that “nearly all the Huguenots 40
Nor did Louis have a first minister; he kept himself free were converted.” Moreover, Richelieu had already de- 41
from worry about the inordinate power of a Richelieu. prived French Calvinists of political rights. Why, then, 42
Louis also used spying and terror—a secret police force, did Louis XIV undertake such an apparently unnecessary, 43
a system of informers, and the practice of opening private cruel, and self-destructive measure? First, Louis consid- 44
letters—to eliminate potential threats. ered religion primarily a political question. Although he 45
Religion was also a tool of national unity under Louis, was personally tolerant, he hated division within the 46
who continued Richelieu’s persecution of Protestants. In realm and insisted that religious unity was essential to his 47
1685 Louis revoked the Edict of Nantes, by which his royal dignity and to the security of the state. As he put 48
grandfather Henry IV had granted liberty of conscience it, his goal was “one king, one law, one faith.” Second, 49
to French Huguenots. The new law ordered the destruc- while France in the early years of Louis’s reign permitted 50S
tion of Huguenot churches, the closing of schools, the religious liberty, it was not a popular policy. Aristocrats 51R
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1 had long petitioned Louis to crack down on Protestants. diminish; and with the wealth of the nation increased, its
2 His decision to do so won him enormous praise: “If the power and prestige would be enhanced.
3 flood of congratulation means anything, it . . . was prob- Colbert attempted to accomplish self-sufficiency by
4 ably the one act of his reign that, at the time, was popu- supporting old industries and creating new ones, espe-
5 lar with the majority of his subjects.”13 cially in textiles, the most important sector of the econ-
6 Louis’s personal hold on power, his exclusion of great omy. To ensure high-quality finished products, Colbert
7 nobles from his councils, and his ruthless pursuit of re- reinforced the system of state inspection and regulation
8 ligious unity persuaded many earlier historians that his and formed guilds in many industries. Colbert encour-
9 reign witnessed the creation of an absolute monarchy. aged foreign craftsmen to immigrate to France, and he
10 Louis supposedly crushed the political pretensions of the gave them special privileges. He also took measures to
11 nobility, leaving them with social grandeur and court bring more female workers into the labor force. To pro-
12 posing but no real power. A later generation of historians tect French goods, he abolished many domestic tariffs
13 has revised that view, showing the multiple constraints on and enacted high foreign tariffs, which prevented foreign
14 Louis’s power and his need to cooperate with the nobles. products from competing with French ones.
15 Louis may have declared his absolute power, but in prac- One of Colbert’s most ambitious projects was the cre-
16 tice he governed through collaboration with nobles, who ation of a merchant marine to transport French goods.
17 maintained tremendous prestige and authority in their He gave bonuses to French shipowners and shipbuilders
18 ancestral lands. Scholars also underline the traditional na- and established a method of maritime conscription, arse-
19 ture of Louis’s motivations. Like his predecessors, Louis nals, and academies for training sailors. In 1661 France
20 XIV sought to enhance the glory of his dynasty and his possessed 18 unseaworthy vessels; by 1681 it had 276
21 country, mostly through war. The creation of a new state frigates, galleys, and ships of the line. In 1664 Colbert
22 apparatus was a means to that goal, not an end in itself. founded the Company of the East Indies with (unful-
23 filled) hopes of competing with the Dutch for Asian trade.
24
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25 Financial and Economic Management
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Primary Source: Colbert Promotes “The Advantages
26
27
Under Louis XIV: Colbert of Overseas Trade”
28 France’s ability to build armies and fight wars depended Colbert also hoped to make Canada—rich in untapped
29 on a strong economy. The king named Jean-Baptiste minerals and some of the best agricultural land in the
30 Colbert (1619–1683), the son of a wealthy merchant- world—part of a vast French empire. He gathered four
31 financier of Reims, as controller general of finances. Col- thousand peasants from western France and shipped
32 bert came to manage the entire royal administration and them to Canada, where they peopled the province of
33 proved himself a financial genius. His central principle Quebec. (In 1608, one year after the English arrived at
34 was that the wealth and the economy of France should Jamestown, Virginia, Sully had established the city of
35 serve the state. He did not invent the system called “mer- Quebec, which became the capital of French Canada.)
36 cantilism,” but he rigorously applied it to France. Subsequently, the Jesuit Jacques Marquette and the mer-
37 Mercantilism is a collection of governmental policies chant Louis Joliet sailed down the Mississippi River and
38 for the regulation of economic activities, especially com- took possession of the land on both sides as far south as
39 mercial activities, by and for the state. In seventeenth- present-day Arkansas. In 1684 the French explorer
40 and eighteenth-century economic theory, a nation’s in- Robert La Salle continued down the Mississippi to its
41 ternational power was thought to be based on its wealth, mouth and claimed vast territories and the rich delta for
42 specifically its gold supply. Because resources were lim- Louis XIV. The area was called, naturally, “Louisiana.”
43 ited, mercantilist theory held, state intervention was Colbert’s most pressing concern was tax collection. Ex-
44 needed to secure the largest part of a limited resource. To tensive military reform, war, an expanding professional
45 accumulate gold, a country always had to sell more goods bureaucracy, and the court at Versailles cost a great deal
46 abroad than it bought. Colbert thus insisted that France of money. Yet there were many difficulties in raising
47 should be self-sufficient, able to produce within its bor- taxes. English kings relied on one national assembly, Par-
48 ders everything French subjects needed. Consequently, liament, for consent to taxation for the entire country.
49 the outflow of gold would be halted; debtor states would The French system was both more complicated and more
50S pay in bullion; unemployment and poverty would greatly inequitable. In some provinces, provincial estates (rep-
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resentative bodies of clergy, nobles, and ENGLAND SPANISH 1

Lille NETHERLANDS
commoners) held the authority to negotiate Tournai 2
nel ARTOIS
with the Crown over taxes. In provinces Chan 3
E n g lis h
without estates, the king held direct control PICARDY 4
ATLANTIC
over taxation through his intendants. ILE-DE-
5
Throughout France the nobility and clergy OCEAN FRANCE 6
NORMANDY
enjoyed exemption from the direct property Paris CHAMPAGNE 7
CE
tax, or taille; even bourgeois city-dwellers 8
ALSA
BRITTANY MAINE
often gained exemption from it. This meant ORLÉANAIS
9
that the tax burden fell most heavily on ANJOU 10
FRANCHE-
those with the least wealth. Finally, the TOURAINE
NIVERNAIS COMTÉ 11
BERRY
practice of subcontracting tax collection to France in 1667
BURGUNDY
12
financiers, known as tax-farmers, meant that Gained by treaty of POITOU
BOURBONNAIS
13
Aix-la-Chapelle, 1668
a good portion of state money fell into pri- Gained by treaty MARCHE 14
of Nijmegen, 1678
vate hands. Gained by Peace of
SAINTONGE
ANGOUMOIS
LYONNAIS 15
LIMOUSIN
Despite these difficulties, Colbert man- Utrecht, 1713 AUVERGNE
16
aged to raise revenues significantly by crack- DAUPHINY 17
ing down on inefficiencies and corruption. Bay of 18
GUYENNE AND GASCONY
During Colbert’s tenure as controller gen- Biscay 19
COUNTY OF
ORANGE VENAISSIN
eral, Louis was able to pursue his goals PROVENCE
20
without massive tax increases and without LANGUEDOC 21
creating a stream of new offices. The con- xvii
NAVARRE
BÉARN
22
stant pressure of warfare after Colbert’s 0 50 100 Km. FOIX
ROUSSILLON Mediterranean Sea 23
SPAIN
death, however, undid many of his eco- 0 50 100 Mi. 24
nomic achievements. Apago PDF Enhancer 25
MAP 16.1 The Acquisitions of Louis XIV, 1668–1713 26
The desire for dynastic glory and the weakness of his German 27
Louis XIV’s Wars neighbors encouraged Louis’s wars, but his country paid a 28
Louis XIV wrote that “the character of a conqueror is re- high price for his acquisitions. 29
garded as the noblest and highest of titles.” In pursuit of 30
the title of conqueror, he kept France at war for thirty- 31
three of the fifty-four years of his personal rule. In 1666 32
Louis appointed François le Tellier (later, marquis de policy in his eyes, it appeared frighteningly aggressive to 33
Louvois) as secretary of state for war. Under the king’s onlookers. In 1667, using a dynastic excuse, he invaded 34
watchful eye, Louvois created a professional army that Flanders, part of the Spanish Netherlands, and Franche- 35
was modern in the sense that the French state, rather Comté in the east. In consequence, he acquired twelve 36
than private nobles, employed the soldiers. Louvois uti- towns, including the important commercial centers of 37
lized several methods in recruiting troops: dragooning, Lille and Tournai (see Map 16.1). Five years later Louis 38
in which press gangs seized men off the streets; conscrip- personally led an army of over one hundred thousand 39
tion; and, after 1688, lottery. With these techniques, the men into Holland, and the Dutch ultimately saved them- 40
French army grew to some 340,000 men at its height, selves only by opening the dikes and flooding the coun- 41
enormous by the standards of the day. Louvois also im- tryside. The Dutch war lasted six years and eventually 42
posed new levels of professionalization. Uniforms and involved the Holy Roman Empire and Spain. At the 43
weapons were standardized and a rational system of train- Treaty of Nijmegen (1678), Louis gained additional 44
ing and promotion devised. This new military machine Flemish towns and all of Franche-Comté. In 1681 Louis 45
gave one state the potential to dominate the affairs of the seized the city of Strasbourg, and three years later he sent 46
continent for the first time in European history. his armies into the province of Lorraine. At that moment 47
Louis’s supreme goal was to expand France to what the king seemed invincible. In fact, Louis had reached 48
he considered its “natural” borders and to secure those the limit of his expansion. The wars of the 1680s and 49
lands from any threat of outside invasion. A defensive 1690s brought no additional territories. 50S
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1 Louis understood his wars largely as defensive under- crowns would never be united. France surrendered New-
2 takings, but his enemies naturally viewed French expan- foundland, Nova Scotia, and the Hudson Bay territory to
3 sion with great alarm. Louis’s wars inspired the formation England, which also acquired Gibraltar, Minorca, and
4 of Europe-wide coalitions against him. As a result, he control of the African slave trade from Spain. The Dutch
5 was obliged to support a huge army in several different gained little because Austria received the former Spanish
6 theaters of war. This task placed unbearable strains on Netherlands (see Map 16.2).
7 French resources, especially given the inequitable system The Peace of Utrecht had important international
8 of taxation. consequences. It represented the balance-of-power prin-
9 Claude Le Peletier, Colbert’s successor as minister of ciple in operation, setting limits on the extent to which
10 finance, resorted to the devaluation of the currency and any one power—in this case, France—could expand. The
11 the old device of selling offices and tax exemptions. Col- treaty completed the decline of Spain as a great power. It
12 bert’s successors also created new income taxes in 1695 vastly expanded the British Empire, and it gave European
13 and 1710, which nobles and clergymen had to pay for powers experience in international cooperation. The
14 the first time. In exchange for this money, the king reaf- Peace of Utrecht also marked the end of French expan-
15 firmed the traditional social hierarchies by granting hon- sion. Thirty-five years of war had brought rights to all
16 ors, pensions, and titles to the nobility. Moreover, he did of Alsace and the gain of important cities in the north
17 not lessen the burden on commoners, who had to pay such as Lille, as well as Strasbourg. But at what price? In
18 the new taxes as well as the old ones. 1714 an exhausted France hovered on the brink of bank-
19 A series of bad harvests between 1688 and 1694 added ruptcy. It is no wonder that when Louis XIV died on
20 social to fiscal catastrophe. The price of wheat skyrock- September 1, 1715, many subjects felt as much relief as
21 eted. The result was widespread starvation, and in many they did sorrow.
22 provinces the death rate rose to several times the normal
23 figure. Parish registers reveal that France buried at least
24 one-tenth of its population in those years, perhaps 2 mil- The Decline of Absolutist Spain
25 lion in 1693 and 1694 alone. Rising grain prices, new
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Enhancer
26 taxes for war, a slump in manufacturing, and the constant
Seventeenth Century
27 nuisance of pillaging troops all meant great suffering for Spanish absolutism and greatness had preceded those of
28 the French people. France wanted peace at any price and the French. In the sixteenth century Spain (or, more pre-
29 won a respite for five years, which was shattered by the cisely, the kingdom of Castile) had developed the standard
30 War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1713). features of absolutist monarchy: a permanent bureaucracy
31 In 1700 the childless Spanish king Charles II (r. 1665– staffed by professionals employed in the various councils
32 1700) died, opening a struggle for control of Spain and of state, a standing army, and national taxes, the servicios,
33 its colonies. His will bequeathed the Spanish crown and which fell most heavily on the poor. France depended on
34 its empire to Philip of Anjou, Louis XIV’s grandson financial and administrative unification within its bor-
35 (Louis’s wife, Maria-Theresa, had been Charles’s sister). ders; Spain had developed an international absolutism
36 This testament violated a prior treaty by which the Euro- on the basis of silver bullion from Peru. Spanish gold
37 pean powers had agreed to divide the Spanish possessions and silver, armies, and glory had dominated the conti-
38 between the king of France and the Holy Roman em- nent for most of the sixteenth century. In 1580 the Span-
39 peror, both brothers-in-law of Charles II. Claiming that ish crown annexed Portugal, putting an end to earlier
40 he was following both Spanish national interests and conflicts over the boundaries of their overseas empires.
41 French dynastic and national interests, Louis broke with The Inquisition continued to ensure a dogmatic Cath-
42 the treaty and accepted the will. olic orthodoxy in Spain. Converted Jews and Muslims
43 In 1701 the English, Dutch, Austrians, and Prussians were always under suspicion and subject to imprison-
44 formed the Grand Alliance against Louis XIV. The allied ment and even execution. In 1609 Philip III expelled all
45 powers united to prevent France from becoming too converted Muslims, known as Moriscos, from Spain.
46 strong in Europe and to check France’s expanding com- Some three hundred thousand individuals left the coun-
47 mercial power in North America, Asia, and Africa. The try, many going to the Ottoman Empire and North
48 war dragged on until 1713. The Peace of Utrecht, which Africa. This measure satisfied the king’s Catholic con-
49 ended the war, applied the principle of partition. Louis’s science and his fears of potential insurrection, but it was
50S grandson Philip remained the first Bourbon king of Spain destructive for Spanish society, which lost precious skilled
51R on the understanding that the French and Spanish workers and merchants.
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Tiepolo: The Triumph of Spain This painting is from the ceiling of the Royal Palace in Madrid. 31
Arguably the greatest Italian painter of the eighteenth century, Giovanni Tiepolo depicted the Spanish 32
Empire as the self-assured champion of Christian cultural values in Europe and America. (Palacio Real de 33
Madrid/The Bridgeman Art Library)
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By the early seventeenth century the seeds of disaster time, the native Indians and African slaves who toiled in 37
were sprouting. By 1715 agricultural crisis and popula- the South American silver mines suffered frightful epi- 38
tion decline, the loss of artisans and merchants, failure to demics of disease. Ultimately, the lodes started to run dry, 39
invest in productive enterprises, and intellectual isolation and the quantity of metal produced steadily declined. 40
and psychological malaise all combined to reduce Spain In Madrid, however, royal expenditures constantly ex- 41
to a second-rate power. The fabulous and seemingly in- ceeded income. To meet mountainous state debt and de- 42
exhaustible flow of silver from Mexico and Peru, to- clining revenues, the Crown repeatedly devalued the 43
gether with the sale of cloth, grain, oil, and wine to the coinage and declared bankruptcy. In 1596, 1607, 1627, 44
colonies, had greatly enriched Spain. In the early seven- 1647, and 1680, Spanish kings found no solution to the 45
teenth century, however, the Dutch and English began problem of an empty treasury other than to cancel the 46
to trade with the Spanish colonies, cutting into the rev- national debt. Given the frequency of cancellation, na- 47
enues that had gone to Spain. Mexico and Peru them- tional credit plummeted. 48
selves developed local industries, further lessening their In contrast to the other countries of western Europe, 49
need to buy from Spain. Between 1610 and 1650 Span- Spain had only a tiny middle class. Public opinion, taking 50S
ish trade with the colonies fell 60 percent. At the same its cue from the aristocracy, condemned moneymaking 51R
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as vulgar and undignified. Those with influence or con- But he clung to the grandiose belief that the solution to 1
nections sought titles of nobility and social prestige. Spain’s difficulties rested in a return to the imperial tra- 2
Thousands entered economically unproductive profes- dition. Unfortunately, the imperial tradition demanded 3
sions: there were said to be nine thousand monasteries in the revival of war with the Dutch at the expiration of a 4
the province of Castile alone. The flood of gold and sil- twelve-year truce in 1622 and a long war with France 5
ver had produced severe inflation, pushing the costs of over Mantua (1628–1659). Spain thus became embroiled 6
production in the textile industry to the point that in the Thirty Years’ War. These conflicts, on top of an 7
Castilian cloth could not compete in colonial and inter- empty treasury, brought disaster. 8
national markets. Many businessmen found so many ob- In 1640 Spain faced serious revolts in Catalonia and 9
stacles in the way of profitable enterprise that they simply Portugal. The Portuguese succeeded in regaining inde- 10
gave up.14 pendence from Habsburg rule under their new king, 11
Spanish aristocrats, attempting to maintain an extrava- John IV (r. 1640–1656). In 1643 the French inflicted a 12
gant lifestyle they could no longer afford, increased the crushing defeat on a Spanish army at Rocroi in what is 13
rents on their estates. High rents and heavy taxes in turn now Belgium. By the Treaty of the Pyrenees of 1659, 14
drove the peasants from the land. Agricultural produc- which ended the French-Spanish conflict, Spain was 15
tion suffered, and peasants departed for the large cities, compelled to surrender extensive territories to France. 16
where they swelled the ranks of unemployed beggars. This treaty marked the decline of Spain as a great power. 17
Their most Catholic majesties, the kings of Spain, Spain’s long conflict with France ended with the be- 18
had no solutions to these dire problems. If one can dis- queathing of the Spanish crown to a French prince, ig- 19
cern personality from pictures, the portraits of Philip III niting the War of the Spanish Succession. 20
(r. 1598–1622), Philip IV (r. 1622–1665), and Charles Seventeenth-century Spain was the victim of its past. 21
II (r. 1665–1700) hanging in the Prado, the Spanish na- It could not forget the grandeur of the sixteenth cen- 22
tional museum in Madrid, reflect the increasing weakness tury and look to the future. The bureaucratic councils 23
of the dynasty. Philip III, a pallid, melancholy, and deeply of state continued to function as symbols of the abso- 24
pious man handed the government over to the duke of
Apago PDF Enhancer lute Spanish monarchy. But because those councils were 25
Lerma, who used it to advance his personal and familial staffed by aristocrats, it was the aristocracy that held real 26
wealth. Philip IV left the management of his several king- power. Spanish absolutism had been built largely on 27
doms to Gaspar de Guzmán, count-duke of Olivares. slave-produced gold and silver. When the supply of bul- 28
Olivares was an able administrator who has often been lion decreased, the power and standing of the Spanish 29
compared to Richelieu. He did not lack energy and ideas, state declined. 30
and he succeeded in devising new sources of revenue. The most cherished Spanish ideals were military glory 31
and strong Roman Catholic faith. In the seventeenth 32
century Spain lacked the finances and the manpower to 33
fight the expensive wars in which it got involved. Spain 34
Mapping the Past also ignored the new mercantile ideas and scientific 35
methods because they came from heretical nations, Hol- 36
MAP 16.2 Europe in 1715 The series of treaties com- land and England. The incredible wealth of South Amer- 37
monly called the Peace of Utrecht (April 1713–November
1715) ended the War of the Spanish Succession and redrew ica destroyed what remained of the Spanish middle class 38
the map of Europe. A French Bourbon king succeeded to the and created contempt for business and manual labor. 39
Spanish throne. France surrendered to Austria the Spanish The decadence of the Habsburg dynasty and the lack 40
Netherlands (later Belgium), then in French hands, and France of effective royal councilors also contributed to Spanish 41
recognized the Hohenzollern rulers of Prussia. Spain ceded failure. Spanish leaders seemed to lack the will to reform. 42
Gibraltar to Great Britain, for which it has been a strategic
naval station ever since. Spain also granted to Britain the Pessimism and fatalism permeated national life. In the 43
asiento, the contract for supplying African slaves to reign of Philip IV, a royal council was appointed to plan 44
•
America. 1 Identify the areas on the map that changed hands as a
result of the Peace of Utrecht. How did these changes affect the balance
the construction of a canal linking the Tagus and Man-
zanares Rivers in Spain. After interminable debate, the
45
46
•
of power in Europe? 2 How and why did so many European countries
possess scattered or discontiguous territories? What does this suggest
committee decided that “if God had intended the rivers 47
potential for future conflict? •

about European politics in this period? 3 Does this map suggest to be navigable, He would have made them so.”
In the brilliant novel Don Quixote, Spanish writer Mi-
guel de Cervantes (1547–1616) produced one of the
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25 Peeter Snayers: Spanish Troops (detail) The long wars that Spain fought over Dutch indepen-
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dence, in support of Habsburg interests in Germany, and against France left the country militarily ex-
hausted and financially drained by the mid-1600s. Here Spanish troops—thin, emaciated, and probably
27 unpaid—straggle away from battle. (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. Photo: José Baztan y Alberto Otero)
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32 great masterpieces of world literature. Don Quixote delin- perial lands. In the sixteenth century the Crown divided
33 eates the whole fabric of sixteenth-century Spanish soci- its New World territories into four viceroyalties, or ad-
34 ety. The main character, Don Quixote, lives in a world of ministrative divisions: New Spain, which consisted of
35 dreams, traveling about the countryside seeking military Mexico, Central America, and present-day California,
36 glory. From the title of the book, the English language Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, with the capital at
37 has borrowed the word quixotic. Meaning “idealistic but Mexico City; Peru, originally all the lands in continental
38 impractical,” the term characterizes seventeenth-century South America, later reduced to the territory of modern
39 Spain. As a leading scholar has written, “The Spaniard Peru, Chile, Bolivia, and Ecuador, with the viceregal seat
40 convinced himself that reality was what he felt, believed, at Lima; New Granada, including present-day Venezuela,
41 imagined. He filled the world with heroic reverberations. Colombia, Panama, and, after 1739, Ecuador, with Bo-
42 Don Quixote was born and grew.”15 gotá as its administrative center; and La Plata, consisting
43 of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, with Buenos Aires
44 as the capital.
45
Colonial Administration Within each territory, the viceroy, or imperial gover-
46 Whatever its problems within Europe, Spain continued nor, exercised broad military and civil authority as the
47 to rule a vast empire in the Americas. Columbus, Cortés, direct representative of the sovereign in Madrid. The
48 and Pizarro had claimed the lands they had “discovered” viceroy presided over the audiencia, a board of twelve to
49 for the Crown of Spain. How were these lands governed? fifteen judges that served as his advisory council and the
50S According to the Spanish theory of absolutism, the highest judicial body. The reform-minded Spanish king
51R Crown was entitled to exercise full authority over all im- Charles III (r. 1759–1788) introduced the system of in-
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The Culture of Absolutism • 539
tendants, pioneered by the Bourbon kings of France, to 1

the New World territories. These royal officials possessed
Baroque Art and Music 2
broad military, administrative, and financial authority Throughout European history, the cultural tastes of one 3
within their intendancies and were responsible not to the age have often seemed unsatisfactory to the next. So it 4
viceroy but to the monarchy in Madrid. was with the baroque. The term baroque itself may have 5
From the early sixteenth century to the beginning of come from the Portuguese word for an “odd-shaped, 6
the nineteenth century, the Spanish monarchy acted on imperfect pearl” and was commonly used by late- 7
the mercantilist principle that the colonies existed for the eighteenth-century art critics as an expression of scorn 8
financial benefit of the home country. The mining of for what they considered an overblown, unbalanced style. 9
gold and silver was always the most important industry in These critics also scorned the Gothic style of medieval 10
the colonies. The Crown claimed the quinto, one-fifth of cathedrals in favor of a classicism inspired by antiquity 11
all precious metals mined in South America. Gold and sil- and the Renaissance. Specialists now agree that the ba- 12
ver yielded the Spanish monarchy 25 percent of its total roque style marked one of the high points in the history 13
income. In return, it shipped manufactured goods to the of Western culture. 14
Americas and discouraged the development of native Rome and the revitalized Catholic Church of the later 15
industries. sixteenth century played an important role in the early 16
The Portuguese governed their colony of Brazil in a development of the baroque. The papacy and the Jesuits 17
similar manner. After the union of the Crowns of Portu- encouraged the growth of an intensely emotional, exu- 18
gal and Spain in 1580, Spanish administrative forms were berant art. These patrons wanted artists to go beyond the 19
introduced. Local officials called corregidores held judi- Renaissance focus on pleasing a small, wealthy cultural 20
cial and military powers. Mercantilist policies placed se- elite. They wanted artists to appeal to the senses and 21
vere restrictions on Brazilian industries that might thereby touch the souls and kindle the faith of ordinary 22
compete with those of Portugal. In the seventeenth cen- churchgoers while proclaiming the power and confidence 23
tury the use of black slave labor made possible the culti- of the reformed Catholic Church. In addition to this un- 24
vation of coffee and cotton, and in the eighteenth
Apago PDF Enhancer derlying religious emotionalism, the baroque drew its 25
century Brazil led the world in the production of sugar. sense of drama, motion, and ceaseless striving from the 26
The unique feature of colonial Brazil’s culture and soci- Catholic Reformation. The interior of the famous Jesuit 27
ety was its thoroughgoing intermixture of Indians, Church of Jesus in Rome—the Gesù—combined all these 28
whites, and blacks. characteristics in its lavish, shimmering, wildly active dec- 29
orations and frescoes. 30
Taking definite shape in Italy after 1600, the baroque 31
style in the visual arts developed with exceptional vigor in 32
Catholic countries—in Spain and Latin America, Austria, 33
The Culture of Absolutism southern Germany, and Poland. Yet baroque art was 34
Under absolutist monarchs, culture became an instru- more than just “Catholic art” in the seventeenth century 35
ment of state power. The baroque style in art and music and the first half of the eighteenth. True, neither Protes- 36
flourished in the context of the Catholic Reformation. tant England nor the Netherlands ever came fully under 37
Baroque masters like Rubens painted portraits celebrat- the spell of the baroque, but neither did Catholic France. 38
ing the glory of European monarchs. The baroque was And Protestants accounted for some of the finest exam- 39
particularly popular in Spain, Italy, and central Europe. ples of baroque style, especially in music. The baroque 40
Along with art, architecture became an important tool style spread partly because its tension and bombast spoke 41
for absolutist monarchs. Louis XIV made the magnificent to an agitated age that was experiencing great violence 42
palace of Versailles the center of his kingdom, inspiring and controversy in politics and religion. 43
imitators across Europe (see Chapter 17). Even language In painting, the baroque reached maturity early with 44
reflected the growing power of the Crown. Within France Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), the most outstanding 45
Richelieu established an academy to oversee French liter- and most representative of baroque painters. Studying in 46
ature and language. Outside its borders French became his native Flanders and in Italy, where he was influenced 47
the common language of the European elite. by masters of the High Renaissance such as Michelangelo, 48
Rubens developed his own rich, sensuous, colorful style, 49
• What cultural forms flourished under absolutist
which was characterized by animated figures, melodra- 50S
governments?
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26 Juan de Pareja: The Calling of Saint Matthew Using rich but subdued colors, Pareja depicts the biblical text
(Mark 2:13–17), with Jesus in traditional first-century dress and the other figures, arranged around a table covered
27 with an Oriental carpet, in seventeenth-century apparel. Matthew, at Jesus’ right hand, seems surprised by the “call.”
28 Pareja, following a long tradition, includes himself (standing, rear center). (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid/The
29 Bridgeman Art Library)
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33 in glorifying monarchs such as Queen Mother Marie de’ Organist and choirmaster of several Lutheran churches
34 Medici of France (see the painting on page 531). He was across Germany, Bach was equally at home writing sec-
35 also a devout Catholic; nearly half of his pictures treat ular concertos and sublime religious cantatas. Bach’s
36 Christian subjects. Yet one of Rubens’s trademarks was organ music combined the baroque spirit of invention,
37 fleshy, sensual nudes who populate his canvases as Ro- tension, and emotion in an unforgettable striving toward
38 man goddesses, water nymphs, and remarkably volup- the infinite. Unlike Rubens, Bach was not fully appreci-
39 tuous saints and angels. ated in his lifetime, but since the early nineteenth century
40 Rubens was enormously successful. To meet the de- his reputation has grown steadily.
41 mand for his work, he established a large studio and hired
42 many assistants to execute his rough sketches and gigan-
43 tic murals. Sometimes the master artist added only the
Court Culture
44 finishing touches. Rubens’s wealth and position—on oc- For much of the seventeenth century, the courts of Eu-
45 casion he was given special diplomatic assignments by the rope looked to France, and to the palace of Versailles, for
46 Habsburgs—affirmed that distinguished artists contin- cultural as well as political inspiration. (See the feature
47 ued to enjoy the high social status they had won in the “Listening to the Past: The Court at Versailles” on pages
48 Renaissance. 556–557.) Versailles began as a modest hunting lodge.
49 In music, the baroque style reached its culmination al- Under Louis XIV’s orders, his architects, Le Nôtre and
50S most a century later in the dynamic, soaring lines of the Le Vau, turned what the duke of Saint-Simon called “the
51R endlessly inventive Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). most dismal and thankless of sights” into a magnificent
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The Culture of Absolutism • 541
palace. Everywhere, the viewer had a sense of grandeur, loyalty and services—dominated political life. Patronage 1
vastness, and elegance. Enormous staterooms became flowed from the court to the provinces; it was the mech- 2
display galleries for inlaid tables, Italian marble statuary, anism through which Louis gained cooperation from so- 3
tapestries woven at the royal factory in Paris, and beauti- cial elites. 4
ful furniture. In the gigantic Hall of Mirrors, hundreds One family demonstrates the interplay between the 5
of candles illuminated the domed ceiling, where allegor- state’s rationalizing impulses and its reliance on very tra- 6
ical paintings celebrated the king’s victories. The formal ditional patterns of nepotism and patronage. Long cred- 7
gardens celebrated the rationality and order imposed by ited as the “modernizer” of the French army, the 8
the Sun King; its classical sculptures depicted Louis as minister Louvois acquired his position through family 9
Apollo, king of the gods. ties, not merit. His father, Michel LeTellier was secretary 10
In 1682 Louis formally established his court at Ver- of war from 1643 to 1677; Louvois succeeded his father 11
sailles, which became the center of the kingdom: a model in this position from 1677 to his death in 1691 and was 12
of rational order and the perfect symbol of the king’s succeeded in turn by his own son Barbézieux from 1691 13
power. The art and architecture of Versailles were tools of to 1701. The Louvois family not only had powerful con- 14
Louis’s policy, used to overawe his subjects and foreign nections within the French bureaucracy, but also bought 15
visitors. The Russian tsar Peter the Great imitated Ver- court offices for younger family members to ensure their 16
sailles in the construction of his palace, Peterhof, as did influence at Versailles. 17
the Prussian emperor Frederick the Great in his palace at Although they were denied public offices and posts, 18
Potsdam outside Berlin and the Habsburgs at Schon- women played a central role in the patronage system. At 19
brunn outside Vienna. (See the feature “Images in Soci- court, the king’s wife, mistresses, and other female rela- 20
ety: Absolutist Palace Building” on pages 568–569.) tives used their high rank to establish their own patron- 21
The palace was the summit of political, social, and cul- age relations. They recommended individuals for honors, 22
tural life. The king required all great nobles to spend at advocated policy decisions, and brokered alliances be- 23
least part of the year in attendance on him at Versailles. tween noble factions. Noblewomen played a similar role, 24
Between three thousand and ten thousand people occu-
Apago PDF Enhancer bringing their family connections to marriage to form 25
pied the palace each day. Given the demand for space, powerful social networks. Onlookers sometimes resented 26
even high nobles had to make do with cramped and un- the influence of powerful women at court. The Duke of 27
comfortable living quarters. The palace gardens, and the Saint-Simon said of Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV’s 28
palace itself on some occasions, were open to the public, mistress and secret second wife: 29
allowing even local peasants a glimpse of their sovereign. 30
More than a royal residence or administrative center, The power of Madame de Maintenon was, as may be imag- 31
Versailles was a mirror of French greatness to the world. ined, immense. She had everybody in her hands, from the 32
Much has been made of the “domestication” of the highest and most favored ministers to the meanest subject of 33
nobility at Versailles. Elaborate rituals attended every the realm. Many people have been ruined by her, without 34
moment of Louis’s day, from waking up and dressing in having been able to discover the author of the ruin, search as 35
the morning to removing his clothing and retiring at they might. 36
night. Nobles had to follow a tortuous system of court 37
etiquette, and they vied for the honor of serving the 38
monarch, with the highest in rank claiming the privilege
French Classicism 39
to hand the king his shirt. Endless squabbles broke out To this day, culture is a central element of French national 40
over what type of chair one could sit on at court and the pride and identity. French emphasis on culture dates back 41
order in which great nobles entered and were seated in to Cardinal Richelieu, whose efforts at state centraliza- 42
the chapel for Mass. tion embraced cultural activities. In 1635 he gave official 43
These rituals were far from meaningless or trivial. The recognition to a group of scholars interested in grammar 44
king controlled immense resources and privileges; access and rhetoric. Thus was born the French Academy. With 45
to him meant favored treatment for pensions, military Richelieu’s encouragement, the French Academy began 46
and religious posts, honorary titles, and a host of other the preparation of a dictionary to standardize the French 47
benefits. Courtiers sought these rewards for themselves language; the dictionary was completed in 1694 and has 48
and for their family members and followers. As in ancient been updated in many successive editions. The Academy 49
Rome, patron-client relations—in which a higher-ranked survives today as a prestigious society, and retains au- 50S
individual protected a lower-ranked one in return for thority over correct usage in the French language. 51R
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1 Scholars characterize the art and literature of the age women and deal with the power of female passion. Louis
2 of Louis XIV as French classicism. By this they mean that preferred Mithridate and Britannicus because of the
3 the artists and writers of the late seventeenth century im- “grandeur” of their themes. For simplicity of language,
4 itated the subject matter and style of classical antiquity, symmetrical structure, and calm restraint, the plays of
5 that their work resembled that of Renaissance Italy, and Racine represent the finest examples of French classi-
6 that French art possessed the classical qualities of disci- cism. His tragedies and Molière’s comedies are still pro-
7 pline, balance, and restraint. This was a movement away duced today.
8 from the perceived excesses of baroque style. With Versailles as the center of European politics,
9 Louis XIV danced gracefully at court ballets in his French culture grew in international prestige. Beginning
10 youth and was an enthusiastic patron of the arts. Music in the reign of Louis XIV, French became the language of
11 and theater frequently served as backdrops for court cere- polite society and international diplomacy. French also
12 monials. Louis favored Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687), gradually replaced Latin as the language of scholarship
13 whose orchestral works combined lively animation with and learning. The royal courts of Sweden, Russia, Poland,
14 the restrained austerity typical of French classicism. Lully and Germany all spoke French. In the eighteenth century
15 also composed court ballets, and his operatic productions the great Russian aristocrats were more fluent in French
16 were a powerful influence throughout Europe. Louis sup- than in Russian. In England the first Hanoverian king,
17 ported François Couperin (1668–1733), whose harpsi- George I, spoke fluent French and only halting English.
18 chord and organ works possessed the regal grandeur the France inspired a cosmopolitan European culture in the
19 king loved, and Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1634–1704), late seventeenth century, which looked to Versailles as
20 whose solemn religious music entertained him at meals. its center.
21 Charpentier received a pension for the Te Deums, hymns
22 of thanksgiving, he composed to celebrate French mili-
23 tary victories. Constitutionalism
24 Louis XIV loved the stage, and in the plays of Molière
25
26
Apago PDFWhile
and Racine his court witnessed the finest achievements in
the history of the French theater. When Jean-Baptiste
France and later Prussia, Russia, and Austria solved
Enhancer
the question of sovereignty with the absolutist state,
27 Poquelin (1622–1673), the son of a prosperous tapestry England and Holland evolved toward the constitutional
28 maker, refused to join his father’s business and entered state. Constitutionalism is the limitation of government
29 the theater, he took the stage name “Molière.” As play- by law. Constitutionalism also implies a balance between
30 wright, stage manager, director, and actor, Molière pro- the authority and power of the government, on the one
31 duced comedies that exposed the hypocrisies and follies hand, and the rights and liberties of the subjects, on
32 of society through brilliant caricature. Tartuffe satirized the other.
33 the religious hypocrite; Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (The A nation’s constitution may be written or unwritten. It
34 Bourgeois Gentleman) attacked the social parvenu; and may be embodied in one basic document, occasionally re-
35 Les Précieuses ridicules (The Pretentious Young Ladies) vised by amendment, like the Constitution of the United
36 mocked the pretensions of the précieuses, elite women States. Or it may be only partly formalized and include
37 who ran intellectual salons and wrote and spoke in an el- parliamentary statutes, judicial decisions, and a body of
38 egant and pretentious manner. In structure Molière’s traditional procedures and practices, like the English
39 plays followed classical models, but they were based on and Dutch constitutions. Whether written or unwritten,
40 careful social observation. Molière made the bourgeoisie a constitution gets its binding force from the govern-
41 the butt of his ridicule; he stopped short of criticizing the ment’s acknowledgment that it must respect that consti-
42 high nobility, reflecting the policy of his royal patron. tution—that is, that the state must govern according to
43 the laws. In a constitutional monarchy, a king or queen
Improve Your Grade
44 serves as the head of state and possesses some residual
Primary Source: Molière’s Bourgeois Gentlewoman,
45 Mme. Jourdain, Rejects a Noble Son-in-Law
political authority, but the ultimate, or sovereign, power
46 rests in the electorate.
47 While Molière dissected social mores, his contempo- A constitutional government is not the same as a dem-
48 rary Jean Racine (1639–1699) based his tragic dramas ocratic government. In a complete democracy, all the
49 on Greek and Roman legends. His persistent theme was people have the right to participate either directly or in-
50S the conflict of good and evil. Several plays—Andromaque, directly (through their elected representatives) in the gov-
51R Bérénice, Iphigénie, and Phèdre—bear the names of ernment of the state. Most men could not vote in Europe
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Constitutionalism • 543
until the late nineteenth century, and women gained the I, a monarch has a divine (or God-given) right to his au- 1
franchise only in the twentieth century. thority and is responsible only to God. Rebellion is the 2
• What is constitutionalism, and how did this form of worst of political crimes. If a king orders something evil, 3
government emerge in England and the Dutch Republic? the subject should respond with passive disobedience but 4
should be prepared to accept any penalty for noncom- 5
pliance. James went so far as to lecture the House of 6
Absolutist Claims in England Commons: “There are no privileges and immunities 7
which can stand against a divinely appointed King.” This 8
(1603–1649) notion, implying total royal jurisdiction over the liber- 9
In 1588 Queen Elizabeth I of England exercised very ties, persons, and properties of English men and women, 10
great personal power; by 1689 the English monarchy was formed the basis of the Stuart concept of absolutism. 11
severely circumscribed. Change in England was anything Such a view ran directly counter to the long-standing 12
but orderly. Seventeenth-century England executed one English idea that a person’s property could not be taken 13
king and experienced a bloody civil war; experimented away without due process of law. James’s expression of 14
with military dictatorship, then restored the son of the such views before the English House of Commons was a 15
murdered king; and finally, after a bloodless revolution, grave political mistake. 16
established constitutional monarchy. Political stability The House of Commons guarded the state’s pocket- 17
came only in the 1690s. After such a violent and tumul- book, and James and later Stuart kings badly needed to 18
tuous century, how did England produce a constitutional open that pocketbook. Elizabeth had left James a sizable 19
monarchy? What combination of political, socioeconomic, royal debt. Elizabeth had managed to escape public dis- 20
and religious factors brought on a civil war in 1642–1649 approbation for the debt, but James was left to face the 21
and then the constitutional settlement of 1688–1689? consequences. Elizabeth had also left her Stuart succes- 22
The extraordinary success of Elizabeth I rested on her sors a House of Commons that appreciated its own fi- 23
political shrewdness and flexibility, her careful manage- nancial strength and intended to use that strength to 24
ment of finances, her wise selection of ministers, her
Apago PDF Enhancer acquire a greater say in the government of the state. The 25
clever manipulation of Parliament, and her sense of royal knights and burgesses who sat at Westminster in the 26
dignity and devotion to hard work. A rare female mon- late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries wanted a 27
arch, Elizabeth imposed her authority in part by refusing voice in royal expenditures, religious reform, and foreign 28
to marry. If she had married, proper wifely submission to affairs. Essentially, the Commons wanted a measure of 29
her husband would have made it difficult to assert royal sovereignty. 30
authority over her subjects. The problem with this strat- Profound social changes had occurred since the six- 31
egy was that it left the queen with no immediate heir to teenth century. The English House of Commons during 32
continue her legacy. the reigns of James I and his son Charles I (r. 1625– 33
In 1603 Elizabeth’s Scottish cousin James Stuart suc- 1649) was very different from the assembly Henry VIII 34
ceeded her as James I (r. 1603–1625). King James was had manipulated into passing his Reformation legisla- 35
well educated, learned, and, with thirty-five years’ expe- tion. The dissolution of the monasteries and the sale of 36
rience as king of Scotland, politically shrewd. But he was monastic land had enriched many people. Enclosure of 37
not as interested in displaying the majesty of monarchy as the common lands and new agricultural techniques had 38
Elizabeth had been. Urged to wave at the crowds who also enriched landowners, while many people invested 39
waited to greet their new ruler, James complained that he successfully in commercial ventures, such as the expand- 40
was tired and threatened to drop his breeches “so they ing cloth industry. These developments led to a great 41
can cheer at my arse.” The new king failed to live up to deal of social mobility. Both in commerce and in agricul- 42
the role expected of him in England. Moreover, in con- ture, the English in the late sixteenth and early seven- 43
trast to Elizabeth, James was a poor judge of character, teenth centuries were capitalists, investing their profits to 44
and in a society already hostile to the Scots, James’s Scot- make more money. 45
tish accent was a disadvantage.16 The typical pattern was for the commercially successful 46
James’s greatest problems, however, arose in resistance to set themselves up as country gentry, thus creating an 47
to his claims for monarchical authority. Like his French elite group that possessed a far greater proportion of land 48
counterpart, James was devoted to the theory of the di- and of the national wealth in 1640 than had been the 49
vine right of kings. He expressed his ideas in his essay case in 1540. Small wonder that in 1640 someone could 50S
“The Trew Law of Free Monarchy.” According to James declare in the House of Commons that “We could buy 51R
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1 in the formulation of state policies. The Stuart kings,

2 however, considered such ambitions intolerable and a
3 threat to their divine-right prerogative. Consequently, at
4 every Parliament between 1603 and 1640, bitter squab-
5 bles erupted between the Crown and the articulate and
6 legally minded Commons. Charles I’s attempt to govern
7 without Parliament (1629–1640) and to finance his gov-
8 ernment by arbitrary nonparliamentary levies, brought
9 the country to a crisis.
10
11
12
Religious Divides
13 Religious issues also embittered relations between the
14 king and the House of Commons. In the early seven-
15 teenth century increasing numbers of English people felt
16 dissatisfied with the Church of England established by
17 Henry VIII and reformed by Elizabeth. Many Puritans
18 (see page 463) believed that the Reformation had not
19 gone far enough. They wanted to “purify” the Anglican
20 church of Roman Catholic elements—elaborate vestments
21 and ceremonials, bishops, and even the giving and wear-
22 ing of wedding rings.
23 It is difficult to establish what proportion of the Eng-
24 lish population was Puritan. According to present schol-
25 Apago PDF Enhancer arly consensus, the dominant religious groups in the
26 early seventeenth century were Calvinist; their more zeal-
27 ous members were Puritans. It also seems clear that many
28 English people were attracted by the socioeconomic
29 Van Dyck: Charles I (ca 1635) Anthony Van Dyck was the implications of John Calvin’s theology. Calvinism empha-
30 greatest of Rubens’s many students. In 1633 he became court sized hard work, sobriety, thrift, competition, and post-
painter to Charles I. His portrait of Charles just dismounted
31 from a horse emphasizes the aristocratic bearing, elegance,
ponement of pleasure, and it tended to link poverty with
32 and innate authority of the king. This monarch seemingly weakness and moral corruption. These values, which have
33 needs no pomp or magnificence to display his sovereignty. Van frequently been called the “Protestant ethic” or “capital-
34 Dyck’s success led to innumerable commissions by members ist ethic,” fit in precisely with the economic approaches
35 of the court and aristocratic society. He had a profound influ- and practices of many successful business people and
ence on English portraiture and was revered, for example, by
36 Gainsborough. Some scholars believe that this portrait influ-
farmers. While it is hazardous to identify capitalism with
37 enced Rigaud’s 1701 portrait of Louis XIV (see page 522). Protestantism—there were many successful Catholic cap-
38 (Scala/Art Resource, NY) italists, for example—the “Protestant virtues” repre-
39 sented the prevailing values of members of the House of
40 Commons.
41 Puritans wanted to abolish bishops in the Church of
42 the House of Lords three times over.” Increased wealth England, and when James I said, “No bishop, no king,”
43 had also produced a better-educated and more articulate he meant that the bishops were among the chief sup-
44 House of Commons. Many members had acquired at porters of the throne. His son Charles I gave the impres-
45 least a smattering of legal knowledge, which they used to sion of being sympathetic to Roman Catholicism. First,
46 search for medieval precedents from which to argue Charles married the French Catholic princess Henrietta
47 against the king. Maria, a daughter of Henry IV. Charles also supported
48 In England, unlike France, there was no social stigma the policies of William Laud (1573–1645), archbishop
49 attached to paying taxes. Members of the House of of Canterbury, who tried to impose elaborate ritual on
50S Commons were willing to assess and pay taxes provided all churches. Laud insisted on complete uniformity of
51R they had some say in the expenditure of those taxes and church services and enforced that uniformity through an
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ecclesiastical court called the “Court of High Commis- In 1641 the Commons passed the Triennial Act, which 1
sion.” People believed that the country was being led compelled the king to summon Parliament every three 2
back to Roman Catholicism. years. The Commons impeached Archbishop Laud and 3
In 1637 Laud attempted to impose two new elements abolished the Court of High Commission, then went 4
on church organization in Scotland: a new prayer book, further and threatened to abolish bishops. King Charles, 5
modeled on the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, and fearful of a Scottish invasion—the original reason for 6
bishoprics, which the Presbyterian Scots firmly rejected. summoning Parliament—accepted these measures. Un- 7
The Scots therefore revolted. To finance an army to put derstanding and peace were not achieved, however, 8
down the Scots, King Charles was compelled to summon partly because radical members of the Commons pushed 9
Parliament in November 1640. increasingly revolutionary propositions, and partly be- 10
Charles I was an intelligent man, but contemporaries cause Charles maneuvered to rescind those he had al- 11
found him deceitful, dishonest, and treacherous. After ready approved. 12
quarreling with Parliament over his right to collect cus- The next act in the conflict was precipitated by the 13
toms duties on wine and wool and over what the Com- outbreak of rebellion in Ireland. Ever since Henry II had 14
mons perceived as religious innovations, Charles had conquered Ireland in 1171, English governors had merci- 15
dissolved Parliament in 1629. From 1629 to 1640, he lessly ruled the land, and English landlords had ruthlessly 16
ruled without Parliament, financing his government exploited the Irish people. The English Reformation had 17
through extraordinary stopgap levies considered illegal made a bad situation worse: because the Irish remained 18
by most English people. For example, the king revived a Catholic, religious differences united with economic and 19
medieval law requiring coastal districts to help pay the political oppression. In 1641 the Catholic gentry led an 20
cost of ships for defense, but he levied the tax, called uprising in response to a feared invasion by anti-Catholic 21
“ship money,” on inland as well as coastal counties. Most forces of the Long Parliament. 22
members of Parliament believed that such taxation with- 23
out consent amounted to despotism. 24
Consequently, they were not willing to
trust the king with an army. Moreover, 26
many supported the Scots’ resistance to 27
Charles’s religious innovations and had 28
little wish for military action against 29
them. Accordingly, this Parliament, 30
called the “Long Parliament” because it 31
sat from 1640 to 1660, enacted legisla- 32
tion that limited the power of the 33
monarch and made arbitrary govern- 34
ment impossible. 35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
Puritan Occupations These twelve en- 46
gravings depict typical Puritan occupations 47
and show that the Puritans came primarily 48
from the artisan and lower middle classes.
The governing classes and peasants adhered 49
to the traditions of the Church of England. 50S
(Visual Connection Archive) 51R
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1 Without an army, Charles I could neither come to of the army. In 1647 Cromwell’s forces captured the
2 terms with the Scots nor respond to the Irish rebellion, king and dismissed members of the Parliament who op-
3 and the Long Parliament remained unwilling to place an posed his actions. In 1649 the remaining representatives,
4 army under a king it did not trust. After a failed attempt known as the “Rump Parliament,” put Charles on trial
5 to arrest parliamentary leaders, Charles left London for for high treason, a severe blow to the theory of divine-
6 the north of England. There, he recruited an army drawn right monarchy. Charles was found guilty and beheaded
7 from the nobility and its cavalry staff, the rural gentry, on January 30, 1649, an act that sent shockwaves around
8 and mercenaries. The parliamentary army was composed Europe.
9 of the militia of the city of London, country squires with
10 business connections, and men with a firm belief in the
11 spiritual duty of serving. Puritanical Absolutism in England:
12 The English civil war (1642–1649) tested whether sov-
13 ereignty in England was to reside in the king or in Parlia-
Cromwell and the Protectorate
14 ment. In 1645 Parliament reorganized its forces into the With the execution of Charles, kingship was abolished. A
15 New Model Army under the leadership of Sir Thomas commonwealth, or republican government, was pro-
16 Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell, a member of the House of claimed. Theoretically, legislative power rested in the sur-
17 Commons who had emerged as a military leader during viving members of Parliament, and executive power was
18 the war. After three years of inconclusive fighting, parlia- lodged in a council of state. In fact, the army that had de-
19 mentary forces finally defeated the king’s armies at the feated the king controlled the government, and Oliver
20 Battles of Naseby and Langport in the summer of 1645. Cromwell controlled the army. Though called the Pro-
21 To all appearances, the war was over and the parliamen- tectorate, the rule of Cromwell (1653–1658) consti-
22 tary side had prevailed. The only remaining issue was to tuted military dictatorship.
23 obtain formal recognition from Charles on restrictions The army prepared a constitution, the Instrument of
24 on royal authority and church reform. Charles, though, Government (1653), that invested executive power in a
25 refused to concede defeat. Both sides jockeyed for posi-
Apago PDF Enhancer lord protector (Cromwell) and a council of state. The in-
26 tion, waiting for a decisive event. This arrived in the form strument provided for triennial parliaments and gave Par-
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37 Cartoon of 1649: “The
38 Royall Oake of Brittayne”
Chopping down this tree
39 signifies the end of royal
40 authority, stability, Magna
41 Carta (see page 272), and
42 the rule of law. As pigs
43 graze (representing the
unconcerned common
44 people), being fattened for
45 slaughter, Oliver Cromwell,
46 with his feet in Hell, quotes
47 Scripture. This is a royalist
48 view of the collapse of
Charles I’s government and
49 the rule of Cromwell. (Cour-
50S tesy of the Trustees of the
51R British Museum)
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liament the sole power to raise taxes. But after repeated Charles I, who returned from exile on the continent to 1
disputes, Cromwell tore the document up. He continued take the throne. At the same time, both houses of Parlia- 2
the standing army and proclaimed quasi-martial law. He ment were restored, together with the established Angli- 3
divided England into twelve military districts, each gov- can church, the courts of law, and the system of local 4
erned by a major general. The state rigorously censored government through justices of the peace. The Restora- 5
the press, forbade sports, and kept the theaters closed in tion failed to resolve two serious problems, however. 6
England. On the issue of religion, Cromwell favored What was to be the attitude of the state toward Puritans, 7
some degree of toleration, and the Instrument of Gov- Catholics, and dissenters from the established church? 8
ernment gave all Christians except Roman Catholics the And what was to be the relationship between the king 9
right to practice their faith. As for Irish Catholicism, and Parliament? 10
Cromwell identified it with sedition and heresy. In Sep- About the first of these issues, Charles II, an easygoing 11
tember 1649 his army crushed a rebellion at Drogheda and sensual man, was basically indifferent. He was not 12
and massacred the garrison. Another massacre followed interested in doctrinal issues. Members of Parliament 13
in October. These brutal acts left a legacy of Irish hatred were, and they enacted a body of laws that sought to 14
for England that has not yet subsided. Cromwell de- compel religious uniformity. Those who refused to re- 15
fended his actions by claiming to have acted only against ceive the Eucharist of the Church of England could not 16
soldiers in arms and said that a strong deterrent would vote, hold public office, preach, teach, attend the univer- 17
prevent future bloodshed. After Cromwell’s departure sities, or even assemble for meetings, according to the 18
for England, the atrocities worsened. Sir William Petty, Test Act of 1673. But these restrictions could not be en- 19
who served the English government in Ireland, estimated forced. When the Quaker William Penn held a meeting 20
that over six hundred thousand people, or one-third of of his Friends and was arrested, the jury refused to con- 21
Ireland’s population, died or were exiled as a result of the vict him. 22
civil wars. The English banned Catholicism in Ireland, In politics Charles II was determined “not to set out 23
executed priests, and confiscated land from Catholics for in his travels again,” which meant that he intended to 24
English and Scottish settlers. Apago PDF Enhancer get along with Parliament. Generally good rapport ex- 25
In England, Cromwell’s regulation of the nation’s isted between the king and the strongly royalist Parlia- 26
economy had features typical of seventeenth-century ab- ment that had restored him. This rapport was due largely 27
solutism. The lord protector’s policies were mercantilist, to the king’s appointment of a council of five men who 28
similar to those Colbert established in France. Cromwell served both as his major advisers and as members of 29
enforced a Navigation Act (1651), requiring that English Parliament, thus acting as liaison agents between the ex- 30
goods be transported on English ships. The Navigation ecutive and the legislature. This body—known as the 31
Act was a great boost to the development of an English “Cabal” from the names of its five members (Clifford, 32
merchant marine and brought about a short but success- Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley-Cooper, and Lauder- 33
ful war with the commercially threatened Dutch. Crom- dale)—was an ancestor of the later cabinet system. Al- 34
well also welcomed the immigration of Jews because of though its members sometimes disagreed and intrigued 35
their skills, and they began to return to England after among themselves, it gradually came to be accepted that 36
four centuries of absence. the Cabal was answerable in Parliament for the decisions 37
Military government collapsed when Cromwell died in of the king. This development gave rise to the concept of 38
1658 and his ineffectual son succeeded him. Fed up with ministerial responsibility: royal ministers must answer to 39
military rule, the English longed for a return to civilian the Commons. 40
government, restoration of the common law, and social Harmony between the Crown and Parliament rested 41
stability. Government by military dictatorship was an ex- on the understanding that Charles would summon fre- 42
periment that the English never forgot or repeated. By quent Parliaments and that Parliament would vote him 43
1660 they were ready to restore the monarchy. sufficient revenues. But Parliament did not grant him an 44
adequate income. Accordingly, in 1670 Charles entered 45
into a secret agreement with his cousin Louis XIV 46
The Restoration of the (Charles’s mother Henrietta-Maria was the daughter of 47
Henry IV, Louis’ grandfather). The French king would 48
English Monarchy give Charles two hundred thousand pounds annually, and 49
The Restoration of 1660 re-established the monarchy in in return Charles would relax the laws against Catholics, 50S
the person of Charles II (r. 1660–1685), eldest son of gradually re-Catholicize England, support French policy 51R
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1 against the Dutch, and convert to Catholicism himself. nized the supremacy of Parliament. The revolution of
2 When the details of this treaty leaked out, a great wave 1688 established the principle that sovereignty, the ulti-
3 of anti-Catholic fear swept England. This fear was com- mate power in the state, was divided between king and
4 pounded by a crucial fact: with no legitimate heir, Charles Parliament and that the king ruled with the consent of
5 would be succeeded by his Catholic brother, James, duke the governed.
6 of York. A combination of hatred for French absolutism The men who brought about the revolution quickly
7 and hostility to Catholicism produced virtual hysteria. framed their intentions in the Bill of Rights, the corner-
8 The Commons passed an exclusion bill denying the suc- stone of the modern British constitution. The principles
9 cession to a Roman Catholic, but Charles quickly dis- of the Bill of Rights were formulated in direct response
10 solved Parliament, and the bill never became law. to Stuart absolutism. Law was to be made in Parliament;
11 When James II (r. 1685–1688) succeeded his brother, once made, it could not be suspended by the Crown.
12 the worst English anti-Catholic fears, already aroused by Parliament had to be called at least once every three
13 Louis XIV’s revocation of the Edict of Nantes, were real- years. Both elections to and debate in Parliament were to
14 ized. In violation of the Test Act, James appointed Ro- be free in the sense that the Crown was not to interfere
15 man Catholics to positions in the army, the universities, in them (this aspect of the bill was widely disregarded in
16 and local government. When these actions were chal- the eighteenth century). The independence of the judici-
17 lenged in the courts, the judges, whom James had ap- ary was established. No longer could the Crown get the
18 pointed, decided for the king. The king was suspending judicial decisions it wanted by threats of removal. There
19 the law at will and appeared to be reviving the absolutism was to be no standing army in peacetime—a limitation
20 of his father and grandfather. He went further. Attempt- designed to prevent the repetition of Cromwellian mili-
21 ing to broaden his base of support with Protestant dis- tary government. The Bill of Rights granted “that the
22 senters and nonconformists, James issued a declaration of subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their
23 indulgence granting religious freedom to all. defense suitable to their conditions and as allowed by
24 Two events gave the signals for revolution. First, seven law,”17 meaning that Catholics could not possess arms
25 bishops of the Church of England petitioned the king
Apago PDF Enhancer because the Protestant majority feared them. Additional
26 that they not be forced to read the declaration of indul- legislation granted freedom of worship to Protestant dis-
27 gence because of their belief that it was an illegal act. senters and nonconformists and required that the En-
28 They were imprisoned in the Tower of London but sub- glish monarch always be Protestant.
29 sequently acquitted amid great public enthusiasm. Sec- The Glorious Revolution found its best defense in po-
30 ond, in June 1688 James’s second wife produced a male litical philosopher John Locke’s Second Treatise of Civil
31 heir. A Catholic dynasty seemed ensured. The fear of a Government (1690). Locke (1632–1704) maintained
32 Roman Catholic monarchy supported by France and rul- that people set up civil governments to protect life, lib-
33 ing outside the law prompted a group of eminent per- erty, and property. A government that oversteps its proper
34 sons to offer the English throne to James’s Protestant function—protecting the natural rights of life, liberty,
35 daughter Mary and her Dutch husband, Prince William and property—becomes a tyranny. (By “natural” rights
36 of Orange. In December 1688 James II, his queen, and Locke meant rights basic to all men because all have the
37 their infant son fled to France and became pensioners ability to reason.) Under a tyrannical government, the
38 of Louis XIV. Early in 1689 William and Mary were people have the natural right to rebellion. Such rebellion
39 crowned king and queen of England. can be avoided if the government carefully respects the
40 rights of citizens and if people zealously defend their lib-
41 erty. Arguing for a close relationship between economic
42 The Triumph of England’s Parliament: and political freedom, Locke linked economic liberty and
43 Constitutional Monarchy and private property with political freedom. On the basis of
44 this link, he justified limiting the vote to property own-
45
Cabinet Government ers. Locke served as the great spokesman for the liberal
46 The English call the events of 1688 and 1689 the “Glo- English revolution of 1688 and 1689 and for representa-
47 rious Revolution” because it replaced one king with an- tive government. His idea that there are natural or uni-
48 other with a minimum of bloodshed. It also represented versal rights equally valid for all peoples and societies was
49 the destruction, once and for all, of the idea of divine- especially popular in colonial America. (Colonists also
50S right monarchy. William and Mary accepted the English appreciated his arguments that Native Americans had no
51R throne from Parliament and in so doing explicitly recog- property rights since they did not cultivate the land and,
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by extension, no political rights because they possessed dependence from Spain as the Republic of United 1
no property.) Provinces of the Netherlands—an independence that was 2
confirmed by the Peace of Westphalia ending the Thirty 3
Improve Your Grade
Years’ War in 1648 (see page 563). The seventeenth cen- 4
Primary Source: John Locke’s Vindication for the
tury witnessed an unparalleled flowering of Dutch scien- 5
Glorious Revolution: The Social Contract
tific, artistic, and literary achievement. In this period, often 6
The events of 1688 and 1689 did not constitute a dem- called the “golden age of the Netherlands,” Dutch ideas 7
ocratic revolution. The revolution placed sovereignty in and attitudes played a profound role in shaping a new 8
Parliament, and Parliament represented the upper and modern worldview. At the same time, the United 9
classes. The great majority of English people acquired no Provinces was another model of the development of the 10
say in their government. The English revolution estab- modern constitutional state. 11
lished a constitutional monarchy; it also inaugurated an Within each province, an oligarchy of wealthy mer- 12
age of aristocratic government that lasted at least until chants called “regents” handled domestic affairs in the 13
1832 and in many ways until 1928, when women re- local Estates. The provincial Estates held virtually all the 14
ceived full voting rights. power. A federal assembly, or States General, handled 15
matters of foreign affairs, such as war. But the States 16
General did not possess sovereign authority; all issues 17
The Dutch Republic in the had to be referred back to the local Estates for approval. 18
The States General appointed a representative, the stad- 19
Seventeenth Century holder, in each province. As the highest executive there, 20
In the late sixteenth century the seven northern prov- the stadholder carried out ceremonial functions and was 21
inces of the Netherlands fought for and won their in- responsible for defense and good order. Maurice and 22
23
24
26
Jan Steen: The Christening 27
Feast As the mother, 28
surrounded by midwives, rests in 29
bed (rear left) and the father 30
proudly displays the swaddled
child, thirteen other people, 31
united by gestures and gazes, 32
prepare the celebratory meal. 33
Very prolific, Steen was a master 34
of warm-hearted domestic 35
scenes. In contrast to the order
and cleanliness of many seven- 36
teenth-century Dutch genre 37
paintings, Steen’s more disor- 38
derly portrayals gave rise to the 39
epithet “a Jan Steen household,” 40
meaning an untidy house. (Wal-
lace Collection, London/The Bridge- 41
man Art Library) 42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
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1 Room from Het Scheepje (The

2 Little Ship) A retired sea captain
3 who became a successful brewer in
Haarlem owned the house (adjacent
4 to his brewery) that included this
5 room. The brass chandelier, plates,
6 tiles, Turkish rug on the table (proba-
7 bly from Transylvania in the Ottoman
8 Empire), oak mantelpiece, and panel-
ing make this a superb example of a
9 Dutch domestic interior during the
10 golden age. A bed built into the wall
11 paneling was warmed at night by coals
12 in the pan hanging by the fireplace.
(Room from Het Scheepje, Haarlem, The
13
Netherlands, early 17th century. Philadel-
14 phia Museum of Art, Gift of Edward W.
15 Bok. 1928-66-1)
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25 William Louis, the sons of William the Silent, held the of-
Apago PDFencouraged
Enhancera sturdy people who had waged a centuries-
26 fice of stadholder in all seven provinces. As members of
old struggle against the sea.
27 the House of Orange, they were closely identified with Alone of all European peoples in the seventeenth cen-
28 Dutch patriotism. The regents in each province jealously tury, the Dutch practiced religious toleration. Peoples of
29 guarded local independence and resisted efforts at cen- all faiths were welcome within their borders. Although
30 tralization. Nevertheless, Holland, which had the largest there is scattered evidence of anti-Semitism, Jews enjoyed
31 navy and the most wealth, dominated the republic and a level of acceptance and assimilation in Dutch business
32 the States General. Significantly, the Estates assembled at and general culture unique in early modern Europe. (See
33 Holland’s capital, The Hague. the feature “Individuals in Society: Glückel of Hameln.”)
34 The government of the United Provinces had none of For example, Benedict Spinoza (1632–1677), a descen-
35 the standard categories of seventeenth-century political dant of Spanish Jews who fled the Inquisition, passed his
36 organization. The Dutch were not monarchical but rather entire life in Amsterdam, supporting himself as a lens
37 fiercely republican. The government was controlled by grinder while producing important philosophical trea-
38 wealthy merchants and financiers. Though they were rich, tises. The urbanity of Dutch society allowed a rare degree
39 their values were strongly middle class, not aristocratic. of religious freedom. As long as business people con-
40 The Dutch republic was not a strong federation but a ducted their religion in private, the government did not
41 confederation—that is, a weak union of strong provinces. interfere with them.
42 The provinces were a temptation to powerful neighbors, In the Dutch Republic, toleration paid off: it attracted
43 yet the Dutch resisted the long Spanish effort at recon- a great deal of foreign capital and investment. Deposits at
44 quest and withstood both French and English attacks in the Bank of Amsterdam were guaranteed by the city
45 the second half of the century. council, and in the middle years of the century the bank
46 The political success of the Dutch rested on the phe- became Europe’s best source of cheap credit and com-
47 nomenal commercial prosperity of the Netherlands. The mercial intelligence and the main clearing-house for bills
48 moral and ethical bases of that commercial wealth were of exchange. People of all races and creeds traded in Am-
49 thrift, frugality, and religious toleration. John Calvin had sterdam, at whose docks on the Amstel River five thou-
50S written, “From where do the merchant’s profits come ex- sand ships were berthed. Joost van den Vondel, the poet
51R cept from his own diligence and industry?” This attitude of Dutch imperialism, exulted:
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Individuals in 1
Society 2
3
4
Glückel of Hameln 5
6
In 1690 a Jewish widow in the small German town of wedding of her eldest 7
8
Hameln* in Lower Saxony sat down to write her auto- daughter. The rising pros-
biography. She wanted to distract her mind from the perity of Chayim’s busi- 9
terrible grief she felt over the death of her husband and nesses allowed the couple 10
to provide her twelve children with a record “so you to maintain up to six 11
will know from what sort of people you have sprung, servants. 12
lest today or tomorrow your beloved children or grand- Glückel was deeply 13
children came and know naught of their family.” Out of religious, and her culture 14
her pain and heightened consciousness, Glückel (1646– was steeped in Jewish 15
1724) produced an invaluable source for scholars. literature, legends, and
Gentleness and deep mutual
16
She was born in Hamburg two years before the end mystical and secular
of the Thirty Years’ War. In 1649 the merchants of works. Above all, she devotion seem to pervade Rem- 17
Hamburg expelled the Jews, who moved to nearby relied on the Bible. Her brandt’s The Jewish Bride. 18
Altona, then under Danish rule. When the Swedes language, heavily sprin- (Rijksmuseum-Stichting Amsterdam) 19
overran Altona in 1657–1658, the Jews returned to kled with scriptural refer- 20
Hamburg “purely at the mercy of the Town Council.” ences, testifies to a rare familiarity with the basic book 21
Glückel’s narrative proceeds against a background of Western civilization. The Scriptures were her conso- 22
of the constant harassment to which Jews were sub- lation, the source of her great strength in a hostile 23
jected—special papers, permits, bribes—and in Hameln world. 24
she wrote, “And so it has been to this day and, I fear, Students who would learn about business practices, 25
will continue in like fashion.” Apago PDF Enhancer the importance of the dowry in marriage, childbirth, 26
When Glückel was “barely twelve,” her father be- the ceremony of bris, birthrates, family celebrations,
27
trothed her to Chayim Hameln. She married at age and even the meaning of life can gain a good deal from
fourteen. She describes him as “the perfect pattern of the memoirs of this extraordinary woman who was, in
28
the pious Jew,” a man who stopped his work every the words of one of her descendants, the poet Heinrich 29
day for study and prayer, fasted, and was scrupulously Heine, “the gift of a world to me.” 30
honest in his business dealings. Only a few years older 31
than Glückel, Chayim earned his living dealing in pre- Questions for Analysis 32
cious metals and in making small loans on pledges 33
(articles held on security). This work required his con- 1. Consider the ways in which Glückel of Hameln was 34
stant travel to larger cities, markets, and fairs, often in both an ordinary and an extraordinary woman of
35
bad weather, always over dangerous roads. Chayim her times. Would you call her a marginal or a
central person in her society? 36
consulted his wife about all his business dealings. As 37
he lay dying, a friend asked if he had any last wishes. 2. How was Glückel’s life affected by the broad events
and issues of the seventeenth century? 38
“None,” he replied. “My wife knows everything. She
shall do as she has always done.” For thirty years
39
* A town immortalized by the Brothers Grimm. In 1284 the town 40
Glückel had been his friend, full business partner, and contracted with the Pied Piper to rid it of rats and mice; he lured
wife. They had thirteen children, twelve of whom sur- them away by playing his flute. When the citizens refused to 41
vived their father, eight then unmarried. As Chayim pay, he charmed away their children in revenge. 42
had foretold, Glückel succeeded in launching the boys 43
Source: The Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln, (New York:
in careers and in providing dowries for the girls. 44
Schocken Books, 1977).
Glückel’s world was her family, the Jewish commu- 45
nity of Hameln, and the Jewish communities into which 46
her children married. Social and business activities took 47
her to Amsterdam, Baiersdorf, Bamberg, Berlin, Cleves, 48
Danzig, Metz, and Vienna, so her world was not nar-
49
row or provincial. She took great pride that Prince Improve Your Grade
Frederick of Cleves, later king of Prussia, danced at the Going Beyond Individuals in Society
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1
2
3
SCANDINAVIA
4 Timber Iron
North Sea Tar Copper
5 Herring Pitch Fur
THE
Wool BALTIC
6 Amsterdam Wheat
ATLANTIC Rye
7 NETHERLANDS
OCEAN FRANCE E U R O P E ASIA
8 Wine
NORTH
9 AMERICA Azores Wool
Tulips JAPAN
10 Tobacco
CHINA
Canton Nagasaki
11 Canary Is. Tea Silk
Silk Amoy
Chinsura Porcelain Luxury goods
12 West Indies Calcutta Macao Port Zeelandia
13 Tobacco
Sugar
Bombay INDIA
Goa
Madras Cloth Manila PACIFIC
14 Curaçao Cape
Verde Is.
AFRICA
Cochin Negapatam PHILIPPINES
15 Slaves Ceylon Colombo OCEAN
Stabroek Cloves Borneo
(Georgetown) GUIANA Malacca
Cinnamon Camphor, Pepper, Sandalwood
16 Equator
Sugar
Moluccas Equator
Mombasa Spices, Slaves
17 DUTCH
Zanzibar
Pepper
Sunda Strait Batavia
Macassar New
Guinea
BRAZIL Java
18 SOUTH (1630–1654)
Sugar
INDIAN OCEAN Tea
Teak
Timor
Mozambique
19 AMERICA Madagascar
20 Homeward
trade Mauritius NEW HOLLAND
(Unknown except for
21 West Coast)
Cape Town
22 Dutch Trade Routes Provisioning
Station
23 Areas under Dutch control
24 Ports under Dutch control 0 1500 3000 Km.
25 Other major ports
Apago PDF Enhancer
26 Spices Goods shipped to the Netherlands 0 1500 3000 Mi.
27
28 MAP 16.3 Seventeenth-Century Dutch Commerce Dutch wealth rested on commerce, and commerce
29 depended on the huge Dutch merchant marine, manned by perhaps forty-eight thousand sailors. The fleet
30 carried goods from all parts of the globe to the port of Amsterdam.
31
32
33
34
35 God, God, the Lord of Amstel cried, hold every conscience ropean total. All the wood for these ships had to be im-
36 free; ported: the Dutch bought whole forests from Norway.
37 And Liberty ride, on Holland’s tide, with billowing sails They also bought entire vineyards from French growers
38 to sea, before the grapes were harvested. They controlled the
39 And run our Amstel out and in; let freedom gird the bold, Baltic grain trade, buying entire wheat and rye crops in
40 And merchant in his counting house stand elbow deep Poland, east Prussia, and Swedish Pomerania. Because
41 in gold.18 the Dutch dealt in bulk, nobody could undersell them.
42 Foreign merchants coming to Amsterdam could buy
43 The fishing industry was the original cornerstone of anything from precision lenses for the microscope (re-
44 the Dutch economy. For half the year, from June to De- cently invented by Dutchman Anton van Leeuwenhoek)
45 cember, fishing fleets combed the dangerous English to muskets for an army of five thousand. Although Dutch
46 coast and the North Sea and raked in tiny herring. Prof- cities became famous for their exports—diamonds and
47 its from herring stimulated shipbuilding, and even before linens from Haarlem, pottery from Delft—Dutch wealth
48 1600 the Dutch were offering the lowest shipping rates depended less on exports than on transport.
49 in Europe. The Dutch merchant marine was the largest In 1602 a group of the regents of Holland formed the
50S in Europe. In 1650 contemporaries estimated that the Dutch East India Company, a joint stock company. The
51R Dutch had sixteen thousand merchant ships, half the Eu- investors each received a percentage of the profits pro-
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portional to the amount of money they had put in. The low price of bread meant that, compared to other 1
Within half a century the Dutch East India Company had places in Europe, a higher percentage of the worker’s in- 2
cut heavily into Portuguese trading in East Asia. The come could be spent on fish, cheese, butter, vegetables, 3
Dutch seized the Cape of Good Hope, Ceylon, and and even meat. A scholar has described the Netherlands 4
Malacca and established trading posts in each place. In as “an island of plenty in a sea of want.” Consequently, 5
the 1630s the Dutch East India Company was paying its the Netherlands experienced very few of the food riots 6
investors about a 35 percent annual return on their in- that characterized the rest of Europe.19 7
vestments. The Dutch West India Company, founded in Although the initial purpose of the Dutch East and 8
1621, traded extensively with Latin America and Africa West India Companies was commercial—the import of 9
(see Map 16.3). spices and silks to Europe—the Dutch found themselves 10
Trade and commerce brought the Dutch prodigious involved in the imperialist exploitation of parts of East 11
wealth. In the seventeenth century the Dutch enjoyed Asia and Latin America, with great success. In 1652 the 12
the highest standard of living in Europe, perhaps in the Dutch founded Cape Town on the southern tip of Africa 13
world. Amsterdam and Rotterdam built massive grana- as a fueling station for ships planning to cross the Pacific. 14
ries where the surplus of one year could be stored against But war with France and England in the 1670s hurt the 15
possible shortages the next. Thus, except in the 1650s, United Provinces. The long War of the Spanish Succes- 16
when bad harvests reduced supplies, food prices fluctu- sion—in which the Dutch prince William of Orange, 17
ated very little. By the standards of Cologne, Paris, or who was King William III of England, utilized English 18
London, salaries were high for all workers—except wealth in the Dutch fight against Louis XIV—was a 19
women, but even women’s wages were high when com- costly drain on Dutch labor and financial resources. The 20
pared with those of women in other parts of Europe. All peace signed in 1713 to end the war marked the begin- 21
classes of society, including unskilled laborers, ate well. ning of Dutch economic decline. 22
23
24
26
27
28
29
31
32
• What were the common crises and achievements authority. Despite these obstacles, most European states 33
of seventeenth-century states? emerged from the seventeenth century with increased 34
• To what extent did French and Spanish monarchs powers and more centralized control. Whether they ruled 35
succeed in creating absolute monarchies? through monarchical fiat or parliamentary negotiation, 36
European governments strengthened their bureaucracies, 37
• What cultural forms flourished under absolutist
governments? raised more taxes, and significantly expanded their armies. 38
According to Thomas Hobbes, the central drive in 39
• What is constitutionalism, and how did this form every human is “a perpetual and restless desire of Power, 40
of government emerge in England and the Dutch
after Power, that ceaseth only in Death.” The seventeenth 41
Republic?
century solved the problem of sovereign power in two 42
fundamental ways: absolutism and constitutionalism. 43
Under Louis XIV France witnessed the high point of ab- 44
Most parts of Europe experienced the seventeenth cen- solutist ambition in western Europe. The king saw him- 45
tury as a period of severe economic, social, and military self as the representative of God on earth, and it has been 46
crisis. Across the continent, rulers faced popular rebel- said that “to the seventeenth century imagination God 47
lions from their desperate subjects, who were pushed to was a sort of image of Louis XIV.”20 Under Louis’s rule, 48
the brink by poor harvests, high taxes, and decades of war. France developed a centralized bureaucracy, a professional 49
Many forces, including powerful noblemen, the church, army, and a state-directed economy, all of which he per- 50S
and regional and local loyalties, constrained the state’s sonally supervised. 51R
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1 Despite his claims to absolute power, historians now

2 agree that Louis XIV ruled, in practice, by securing the Key Terms
3 collaboration of high nobles. In exchange for confirma- moral economy viceroyalties
4 tion of their ancient privileges, the nobles were willing to sovereignty quinto
5 cooperate with the expansion of state power. This was a popular revolts baroque
6 common pattern in attempts at absolutism across Eu- Edict of Nantes patronage
7 rope. In Spain, where monarchs made similar claims to intendants French classicism
8 absolute power, the seventeenth century witnessed eco- noblesse de robe constitutionalism
9 nomic catastrophe and a decline in royal capacities. Span- (robe nobility) Puritans
10 ish rule continued in the colonies and foreshadowed a Fronde New Model Army
11 revival of Spanish fortunes in the eighteenth century. noblesse d’épée Protectorate
12 France’s dominant political role in Europe elevated its (sword nobility) Test Act
13 cultural influence as well. French became the common divine right of kings Second Treatise of
14 language of the European elite, as all heads turned to absolute monarchy Civil Government
15 Versailles and the radiant aristocratic culture emanating mercantilism States General
16 from it. Within France, the Bourbon monarchy pursued estates stadholder
17 culture as one more aspect of absolutist policy, creating Peace of Utrecht Dutch East India
18 cultural academies, sponsoring playwrights and musi- Don Quixote Company
19 cians, and repressing Protestantism with a bloody hand.
20 As Louis XIV personified absolutist ambitions, so Stu-
21 art England exemplified the evolution of the constitu- Improve Your Grade Flashcards
22 tional state. The conflicts between Parliament and the
23 first two Stuart rulers, James I and Charles I, tested
24 where sovereign power would reside. The resulting civil Suggested Reading
25 war did not solve the problem. The Instrument of Gov-
Apago PDFBeik,Enhancer
William. Urban Protest in Seventeenth-Century
26 ernment provided for a balance of government authority France. 1997. Explores urban violence in France during
27 and recognition of popular rights; as such, the Instru- harsh years of economic and social crisis.
28 ment has been called the first modern constitution. Un-
29 fortunately, it lacked public support. James II’s absolutist Benedict, Philip, and Myron P. Gutmann, eds. Early
30 tendencies brought on the Glorious Revolution of 1688 Modern Europe: From Crisis to Stability. 2005. A helpful
31 and 1689, and the people who made that revolution set- introduction to the many facets of the seventeenth-
32 tled three basic issues: sovereign power was divided be- century crisis.
33 tween king and Parliament, with Parliament enjoying the Burke, Peter. The Fabrication of Louis XIV. 1992. Explains
34 greater share; government was to be based on the rule of the use of architecture, art, medals, and other symbols
35 law; and the liberties of English people were made ex- to promote the king’s image.
36 plicit in written form in the Bill of Rights. Collins, James B. The State in Early Modern France. 1995.
37 Having won independence from Spain, the United A detailed and well-argued survey of French adminis-
38 Provinces of the Netherlands provided another model of tration from Louis XIII to Louis XVI.
39 constitutional government, one dominated by wealthy
40 urban merchants rather than the landed gentry who con- Elliott, John H. Richelieu and Olivares. 1984. A com-
41 trolled the English system. The federal constitution of the parison of the chief ministers of France and Spain that
42 Netherlands invested power in the Estates General, but also reveals differences and similarities in the countries
43 diluted their authority by giving veto power to provincial they led.
44 assemblies. Dominated by Holland, the Netherlands pro- Gaunt, Peter, ed. The English Civil War: The Essential
45 vided a shining example of industriousness, prosperity, Readings. 2000. A collection showcasing leading histo-
46 and relative tolerance for the rest of Europe. rians’ interpretations of the civil war.
47 Hutton, Ronald. Charles II: King of England, Scotland
48 and Ireland. 1989. A reliable and highly readable biog-
49 raphy of King Charles II.
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Israel, Jonathan. The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness 2. John A. Lynn, “Recalculating French Army Growth,” in The Mili- 1
and Fall, 1477–1806. 1995. A thorough study of the po- tary Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of 2
Early Modern Europe, ed. Clifford J. Rogers (Boulder, Colo.: West-
litical history of the republic. view Press, 1995), p. 125.
3
Kettering, Sharon. Patronage in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth- 3. G. Parker and L. M. Smith, “Introduction,” and N. Steensgaard, 4
Century France. 2002. A collection of essays exploring “The Seventeenth Century Crisis,” in The General Crisis of the Sev- 5
enteenth Century, ed. G. Parker and L. M. Smith (London: Rout- 6
the role of patronage in politics and noble life, includ- ledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), pp. 1–53, esp. p. 12.
ing women’s role in patronage networks. 7
4. H. G. Koenigsberger, “The Revolt of Palermo in 1647,” Cam-
bridge Historical Journal 8 (1944–1946): 129–144.
8
Lynn, John A. Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army, 9
5. See W. Beik, Urban Protest in Seventeenth-Century France: The
1610–1715. 1997. Examines the tremendous growth and Culture of Retribution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 10
professionalization of the French army under Louis XIV. 1997), p. 1. 11
Pagden, Anthony. Spanish Imperialism and the Political 6. Ibid. 12
7. See ibid., chaps. 1, 2, 3, and 11.
Imagination. 1990. Explores Spanish ideas of empire, 8. Ibid., pp. 22–26.
13
primarily in Italy and the Americas. 9. See M. Turchetti, “The Edict of Nantes,” in The Oxford Encyclo- 14
Schama, Simon. The Embarrassment of Riches: An Inter- pedia of the Reformation, ed. H. J. Hillerbrand, vol. 3 (New York: 15
Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 126–128. 16
pretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age. 1987. A 10. Quoted in J. H. Elliott, Richelieu and Olivares (Cambridge: Cam-
lengthy but vivid and highly readable account of Dutch 17
bridge University Press, 1984), p. 135; and in W. F. Church,
culture in the seventeenth century, including a chapter Richelieu and Reason of State (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
18
on the mania for speculation on the tulip market. Press, 1972), p. 507. 19
11. James B. Collins, The State in Early Modern France (Cambridge: 20
Te Brake, Wayne. Shaping History: Ordinary People in Eu- Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 65–78. 21
ropean Politics, 1500–1700. 1998. Examines the political 12. Quoted in J. Wolf, Louis XIV (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968), 22
activities of the non-elite in early modern Europe. p. 146.
23
13. Ibid.
Underdown, David. Revel, Riot, and Rebellion. 1985. Dis- 14. J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469–1716 (New York: Mentor Books, 24
cusses ordinary people’s roles in the English civil war.
Apago PDF Enhancer 1963), pp. 306–308. 25
15. B. Bennassar, The Spanish Character: Attitudes and Mentalities from 26
Wrightson, Keith. English Society, 1580–1680. 1982. Good the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century, trans. B. Keen (Berkeley:
coverage of English political and social issues of the sev- 27
University of California Press, 1979), p. 125.
enteenth century. 16. For a revisionist interpretation, see J. Wormald, “James VI and I:
28
Two Kings or One?” History 62 (June 1983): 187–209. 29
Young, John, ed. Celtic Dimensions of the British Civil 17. C. Stephenson and G. F. Marcham, Sources of English Constitu- 30
Wars. 1997. Explores Scotland and Ireland and their in- tional History (New York: Harper & Row, 1937), p. 601. 31
volvement in the civil wars in Great Britain. 18. Quoted in D. Maland, Europe in the Seventeenth Century (New 32
York: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 198–199. Copyright © 1967 by A & C
Black Ltd.
33
19. S. Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch 34
Culture in the Golden Age (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 35
Notes pp. 165–170; quotation is on p. 167. 36
1. The classic study Theodore K. Rabb, The Struggle for Stability in 20. C. J. Friedrich and C. Blitzer, The Age of Power (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cor- 37
Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975). nell University Press, 1957), p. 112.
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The Court at Versailles
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A lthough the duke of Saint-Simon (1675–1755)
was a soldier, courtier, and diplomat, his enduring
He availed himself of the frequent festivities at
Versailles, and his excursions to other places, as
a means of making the courtiers assiduous in
17 reputation rests on The Memoirs (1788), his their attendance and anxious to please him; for
18 eyewitness account of the personality and court of he nominated beforehand those who were to take
Louis XIV. A nobleman of extremely high status, part in them, and could thus gratify some and
19
Saint-Simon resented Louis’s high-handed treatment inflict a snub on others. He was conscious that
20 of the ancient nobility and his promotion of newer the substantial favours he had to bestow were not
21 nobles and the bourgeoisie. The Memoirs, excerpted nearly sufficient to produce a continual effect; he
22 here, remains a monument of French literature and had therefore to invent imaginary ones, and no
23 an indispensable historical source, partly for its one was so clever in devising petty distinctions
24 portrait of the court at Versailles. and preferences which aroused jealousy and
25 Apago PDF Enhancer emulation. The visits to Marly later on were very
26 Very early in the reign of Louis XIV the Court useful to him in this way; also those to Trianon
27 was removed from Paris, never to return. The [Marly and Trianon were small country houses],
28 troubles of the minority had given him a dislike where certain ladies, chosen beforehand, were
29 to that city; his enforced and surreptitious flight admitted to his table. It was another distinction
from it still rankled in his memory; he did not to hold his candlestick at his coucher; as soon as
30
consider himself safe there, and thought cabals he had finished his prayers he used to name the
31 would be more easily detected if the Court was courtier to whom it was to be handed, always
32 in the country, where the movements and choosing one of the highest rank among those
33 temporary absences of any of its members would present. . . .
34 be more easily noticed. . . . No doubt that he was Not only did he expect all persons of
35 also influenced by the feeling that he would be distinction to be in continual attendance at
36 regarded with greater awe and veneration when Court, but he was quick to notice the absence of
37 no longer exposed every day to the gaze of the those of inferior degree; at his lever [formal rising
38 multitude. from bed in the morning], his coucher [prepara-
39 His love-affair with Mademoiselle de la Vallière, tions for going to bed], his meals, in the gardens
40 which at first was covered as far as possible with of Versailles (the only place where the courtiers
a veil of mystery, was the cause of frequent in general were allowed to follow him), he used
41
excursions to Versailles. . . . The visits of Louis to cast his eyes to right and left; nothing escaped
42 XIV becoming more frequent, he enlarged the him, he saw everybody. If any one habitually
43 château by degrees till its immense buildings living at Court absented himself he insisted on
44 afforded better accommodation for the Court knowing the reason; those who came there only
45 than was to be found at St. Germain, where most for flying visits had also to give a satisfactory
46 of the courtiers had to put up with uncomfortable explanation; any one who seldom or never
47 lodgings in the town. The Court was therefore appeared there was certain to incur his displeasure.
48 removed to Versailles in 1682, not long before If asked to bestow a favour on such persons he
49 the Queen’s death. The new building contained would reply haughtily: “I do not know him”; of
50S an infinite number of rooms for courtiers, and the such as rarely presented themselves he would say,
51R King liked the grant of these rooms to be “He is a man I never see”; and from these
regarded as a coveted privilege. judgements there was no appeal.
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He always took great pains to find

out what was going on in public places,
in society, in private houses, even family
secrets, and maintained an immense
number of spies and tale-bearers. These
were of all sorts; some did not know
that their reports were carried to him;
others did know it; there were others,
again, who used to write to him directly,
through channels which he prescribed;
others who were admitted by the
backstairs and saw him in his private
room. Many a man in all ranks of life
was ruined by these methods, often very
unjustly, without ever being able to
discover the reason; and when the King
had once taken a prejudice against a
man, he hardly ever got over it. . . . Louis XIV was extremely proud of the gardens
No one understood better than Louis XIV at Versailles and personally led ambassadors and
the art of enhancing the value of a favour by his
Apago PDF Enhancer other highly ranked visitors on tours of the
manner of bestowing it; he knew how to make extensive palace grounds. (Erich Lessing/Art
the most of a word, a smile, even of a glance. If Resource, NY)
he addressed any one, were it but to ask a trifling
question or make some commonplace remark, all
eyes were turned on the person so honored; it
was a mark of favour which always gave rise to
comment. . . .
He loved splendour, magnificence, and Questions for Analysis
profusion in all things, and encouraged similar
tastes in his Court; to spend money freely on 1. What was the role of etiquette and ceremony at
equipages [the king’s horse carriages] and the court of Versailles? How could Louis XIV
buildings, on feasting and at cards, was a sure use them in everyday life at court to influence
way to gain his favour, perhaps to obtain the and control nobles?
honour of a word from him. Motives of policy
had something to do with this; by making 2. How important do you think Louis’s
expensive habits the fashion, and, for people in individual character and personality were to his
a certain position, a necessity, he compelled his style of governing? What challenges might this
courtiers to live beyond their income, and present to his successors?
gradually reduced them to depend on his bounty 3. Consider the role of ceremony in some
for the means of subsistence. This was a plague modern governments, such as the U.S.
which, once introduced, became a scourge to the government. How does it compare to Louis
whole country, for it did not take long to spread XIV’s use of ceremony as portrayed by Saint-
to Paris, and thence to the armies and the Simon?
provinces; so that a man of any position is now
4. Do you think Saint-Simon is an objective and
estimated entirely according to his expenditure on
trustworthy recorder of life at court? Why?
his table and other luxuries. This folly, sustained
by pride and ostentation, has already produced Source: F. Arkwright, ed., The Memoirs of the Duke de Saint-
widespread confusion; it threatens to end in Simon, vol. 5 (New York: Brentano’s, n.d.), pp. 271–274,
nothing short of ruin and a general overthrow. 276–278.
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Peter the Great’s magnificent new crown, created for his joint coronation in 1682 with his half-brother
Ivan. (State Museum of the Kremlin, Moscow)
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c h a p t e r 1
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Absolutism in 3
4
Central and 5
6
7
Eastern Europe 8
9
to 1740 10
11
chapter preview 12
13
Warfare and Social Change in
Central and Eastern Europe
• What social and economic changes
T he crises of the seventeenth century—religious division, economic
depression, and war—were not limited to the West. Central and east-
ern Europe experienced even more catastrophic dislocation, with German
14
15
16
17
affected central and eastern Europe lands serving as the battleground of the Thirty Years’ War and borders
18
from 1400 to 1650? constantly vulnerable to attack from the east. In Prussia and Habsburg
19
The Rise of Austria and Prussia Austria absolutist states emerged in the aftermath of this conflict.
20
Russia and the Ottoman Turks also developed absolutist governments.
• How and why did the rulers of These empires seemed foreign and exotic to western Europeans, who saw
21
Austria and Prussia, each in different 22
them as the antithesis of their political, religious, and cultural values. To
political and social environments, 23
Western eyes, their monarchs respected law—either divine or constitu-
manage to build powerful absolute 24
tional—while Eastern despots ruled with an iron fist. The Ottoman Mus-
Apago PDF Enhancer
monarchies that proved more durable 25
lim state was home to fanaticism and heresy, and even Russian Orthodoxy
26
than that of Louis XIV? had rituals and traditions, if not core beliefs, that differed sharply from
27
The Development of Russia either Catholicism or Protestantism. Beneath the surface, however, these
28
and the Ottoman Empire Eastern governments shared many similarities with Western ones.
29
The most successful Eastern empires lasted until 1918, far longer than
• What were the distinctive features 30
monarchical rule endured in France, the model of absolutism under
of Russian and Ottoman absolutism 31
Louis XIV. Eastern monarchs had a powerful impact on architecture and
in this period? 32
the arts, encouraging new monumental construction to reflect their
33
glory. Questions about the relationship between East and West remain
34
potent today, when Turkey’s bid for membership in the European Union
35
is controversial both at home and abroad.
36
37
38
Warfare and Social Change in 39
Central and Eastern Europe 40
41
When absolute monarchy emerged in the seventeenth century, it built on 42
social and economic foundations laid between roughly 1400 and 1650. 43
In those years the elites of eastern Europe—with the major exception of 44
the Ottoman rulers in the Balkans—rolled back the gains made by the 45
peasantry during the High Middle Ages and re-imposed a harsh serfdom 46
on the rural masses. The nobility also reduced the importance of the 47
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560 CHAPTER 17 • ABSOLUTISM IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE TO 1740
1 towns and the middle classes. This process differed from ing a two-week period after the fall harvest. Eastern peas-
2 developments in western Europe, where peasants won ants were losing their status as free and independent men
3 greater freedom and the urban middle class continued its and women.
4 rise. The Thirty Years’ War represented the culmination Second, lords steadily took more of their peasants’ land
5 of these changes. Decades of war in central Europe led to and imposed heavier labor obligations. Instead of being
6 depopulation and economic depression, which allowed independent farmers paying freely negotiated rents, peas-
7 lords to impose ever-harsher controls on the peasantry. ants became forced laborers on the lords’ estates. By the
8 • What social and economic changes affected central and early 1500s, lords in many territories could command
9 eastern Europe from 1400 to 1650? their peasants to work without pay as many as six days
10 a week.
11 The gradual erosion of the peasantry’s economic posi-
12 tion was bound up with manipulation of the legal system.
13
Origins of Serfdom The local lord was also the local prosecutor, judge, and
14 The period from 1050 to 1300 was a time of general eco- jailer. There were no independent royal officials to pro-
15 nomic expansion in eastern Europe characterized by the vide justice or uphold the common law, allowing lords to
16 growth of trade, towns, and population. This meant rule in their own favor in disputes with peasants.
17 clearing the forests and colonizing the frontier beyond
18 the Elbe River. Eager to attract settlers to sparsely popu-
19 lated lands, the rulers of eastern Europe offered new-
The Consolidation of Serfdom
20 comers economic and legal incentives, providing land on Between 1500 and 1650 the social, legal, and economic
21 excellent terms and granting greater personal freedom. conditions of peasants in eastern Europe continued to
22 These benefits were also gradually extended to the local decline, and free peasants became serfs. In Poland nobles
23 Slavic populations, even those of central Russia. Thus, by gained complete control over their peasants in 1574, af-
24 1300 serfdom had all but disappeared in eastern Europe. ter which they could legally inflict the death penalty
25 Peasants bargained freely with their landlords and moved
Apago PDF Enhancer whenever they wished. In Prussia in 1653 peasants were
26 about as they pleased. Opportunities and improvements assumed to be tied to their lords in hereditary subjuga-
27 in the East had a positive impact on the West, where the tion—bound to their lords and the land from one gener-
28 weight of serfdom was also reduced between 1100 and ation to the next. In Russia peasants’ right to move from
29 1300. Thus fundamental social and economic develop- an estate was permanently abolished in 1603. In 1649
30 ments moved in tandem across Europe in the High Mid- the tsar lifted the nine-year time limit on the recovery of
31 dle Ages. runaways and eliminated all limits on lords’ authority over
32 After about 1300, however, as Europe’s population and their peasants. Although political development in the var-
33 economy declined grievously, mostly as a result of the ious Eastern states differed, the legal re-establishment of
34 Black Death, East and West parted paths. Across Europe, permanent hereditary serfdom was the common fate of
35 lords sought to solve their economic problems by more Eastern peasants by the mid-seventeenth century.
36 heavily exploiting the peasantry. This reaction generally The consolidation of serfdom accompanied the growth
37 failed in the West, where by 1500 almost all peasants of estate agriculture, particularly in Poland and eastern
38 were free or had their serf obligations greatly reduced. Germany. In the sixteenth century European economic
39 East of the Elbe, however, the landlords won. expansion and population growth resumed after the great
40 Eastern landlords successfully used their political and declines of the late Middle Ages. Prices for agricultural
41 police power against the peasantry in two ways. First, commodities also rose sharply as gold and silver flowed in
42 they restricted or eliminated the peasants’ time-honored from the New World. Thus Polish and German lords had
43 right of freedom of movement. Thus a peasant could no powerful economic incentives to increase the production
44 longer leave the land without his lord’s permission, and of their estates. And they did. Lords seized more peas-
45 the lord had no reason to make such concessions. In ant land for their own estates and then demanded more
46 Prussian territories by 1500 the law required that run- unpaid labor on those enlarged estates. Though the es-
47 away peasants be hunted down and returned to their tates were generally inefficient and technically backward,
48 lords. Until the mid-fifteenth century, medieval Russian the great Polish nobles and middle-rank German lords
49 peasants were free to move wherever they wished. There- squeezed sizable profits from their impoverished peas-
50S after this freedom was gradually curtailed, so that by ants. Surpluses in wheat and timber were sold to foreign
51R 1497 a Russian peasant had the right to move only dur- merchants, who exported them to the growing cities of
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Warfare and Social Change in Central and Eastern Europe • 561
the West. Thus the poor East helped feed the wealthier Chronology 1
West. 2
The re-emergence of serfdom in eastern Europe can- ca 1400–1650 Re-emergence of serfdom in eastern 3
not be explained by economic factors alone. Western Eu- Europe 4
rope experienced similar agricultural and population 5
decline in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but its 1462–1505 Reign of Ivan III in Russia 6
peasants won better rather than harsher conditions. It 1533–1584 Reign of Ivan the Terrible in Russia 7
seems likely that political, rather than economic, factors 8
were crucial. Eastern lords enjoyed much greater political 1620 Habsburgs crush Protestantism in Bohemia 9
power than did their Western counterparts. In the late 1620–1740 Growth of absolutism in Austria and 10
Middle Ages central and eastern Europe experienced in- Prussia 11
numerable wars and general political chaos, which al- 12
1640–1688 Reign of Frederick William in Prussia
lowed noble landlords to increase their political power. 13
There were, for example, many disputed royal succes- 1652 Nikon reforms Russian Orthodox Church 14
sions, so that weak kings were forced to grant political 15
1670–1671 Cossack revolt led by Razin
16
ca 1680–1750 Construction of palaces by absolutist 17
rulers 18
19
1683–1718 Habsburgs defend Vienna, win war with
20
Ottoman Turks
21
1702 Peter the Great founds St. Petersburg 22
23
1713–1740 Growth of Prussian military
24
26
27
favors to win the nobility’s support. Thus while strong 28
monarchs and effective central government were rising in 29
Spain, France, and England, kings were generally losing 30
power in the East and could not resist the demands of 31
lords regarding peasants. 32
Moreover, most Eastern monarchs did not oppose the 33
growth of serfdom. The typical king was only first among 34
noble equals. He, too, wanted to squeeze his peasants. 35
The Western concept of sovereignty, as embodied in a 36
king who protected the interests of all his people, was not 37
well developed in eastern Europe before 1650. 38
It was not only the peasants who suffered. Also with 39
the approval of kings, landlords systematically under- 40
mined the medieval privileges of the towns and the 41
power of the urban classes. Instead of selling products to 42
local merchants, landlords sold directly to foreigners. For 43
example, Dutch ships sailed up the rivers of Poland and 44
eastern Germany to the loading docks of the great es- 45
tates, completely bypassing the local towns. Moreover, 46
Estonia in the 1660s The Estonians were conquered by “town air” no longer “made people free,” for the Eastern 47
German military nobility in the Middle Ages and reduced to towns had lost their medieval right of refuge and were 48
serfdom. The German-speaking nobles ruled the Estonian
peasants with an iron hand, and Peter the Great reaffirmed now compelled to return runaways to their lords. The 49
their domination when Russia annexed Estonia (see Map 17.3 population of the towns and the importance of the urban 50S
on page 573). (Mansell Collection/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images) middle classes declined greatly. 51R
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1 witnessed additional Catholic victories. The Catholic im-

2
The Thirty Years’ War perial army led by Albert of Wallenstein swept through
3 The Holy Roman Empire was a confederation of hun- Silesia, north to the Baltic, and east into Pomerania, scor-
4 dreds of principalities, independent cities, duchies, and ing smashing victories. Wallenstein, an unscrupulous op-
5 other polities loosely united under an elected emperor. portunist who used his vast riches to build an army loyal
6 An uneasy truce had prevailed in the Holy Roman Em- only to himself, seemed interested more in carving out his
7 pire since the Peace of Augsburg of 1555 (see page 459). own empire than in aiding the Catholic cause. He quar-
8 According to the settlement, the faith of the prince de- reled with the Catholic League, and soon the Catholic
9 termined the religion of his subjects. Later in the century, forces were divided. Religion was eclipsed as a basic issue
10 however, Catholics grew alarmed because Lutherans, in of the war.
11 violation of the Peace of Augsburg, were steadily acquir- Habsburg power peaked in 1629. The emperor issued
12 ing German bishoprics. The spread of Calvinism further the Edict of Restitution, whereby all Catholic properties
13 confused the issue: the Augsburg settlement had per- lost to Protestantism since 1552 were restored, and only
14 tained only to Lutheranism and Catholicism, so Calvin- Catholics and Lutherans were allowed to practice their
15 ists ignored it and converted several princes. Also, the faiths. When Wallenstein began ruthless enforcement,
16 militantly active Jesuits had reconverted several Lutheran Protestants throughout Europe feared the collapse of the
17 princes to Catholicism. Lutherans feared that the Augs- balance of power in north-central Europe.
18 burg principles would be undermined by Catholic and The third, or Swedish, phase of the war (1630–1635)
19 Calvinist gains. Lutheran princes felt compelled to form began with the arrival in Germany of the Swedish king
20 the Protestant Union (1608), and Catholics retaliated Gustavus Adolphus (r. 1594–1632). The ablest admin-
21 with the Catholic League (1609). Each alliance was de- istrator of his day and a devout Lutheran, he intervened
22 termined that the other should make no religious or ter- to support the empire’s oppressed Protestants. Cardinal
23 ritorial advance. Dynastic interests were also involved; Richelieu, chief minister of King Louis XIII of France
24 the Spanish Habsburgs strongly supported the goals of (r. 1610–1643), subsidized the Swedes, hoping to weaken
25 their Austrian relatives—the unity of the empire and the
Apago PDF Enhancer Habsburg power in Europe. In 1631, with a small but
26 preservation of Catholicism within it. well-disciplined army equipped with superior muskets,
27 Violence erupted in 1617 when Ferdinand of Styria, Gustavus Adolphus won a brilliant victory at Breitenfeld.
28 the new Catholic king in Bohemia, closed some Protes- Again in 1632 he was victorious at Lützen, though he
29 tant churches. On May 23, 1618, Protestants hurled two was fatally wounded in the battle.
30 of Ferdinand’s officials from a castle window in Prague. The participation of the Swedes in the Thirty Years’
31 They fell seventy feet but survived: Catholics claimed War proved decisive for the future of Protestantism and
32 that angels had caught them; Protestants said that the of- German history. When Gustavus Adolphus landed on
33 ficials had fallen on a heap of soft horse manure. Called German soil, he headed a Baltic empire under Swedish in-
34 the “defenestration of Prague,” this event marked the fluence. The Swedish victories ended the Habsburg ambi-
35 beginning of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). tion to unite the German states under imperial authority.
36 The war is traditionally divided into four phases. The Gustavus Adolphus’s death in 1632, followed by the
37 first, or Bohemian, phase (1618–1625) was characterized Swedes’ defeat at the Battle of Nördlingen in 1634,
38 by civil war in Bohemia between the Catholic League, prompted the French to enter the war on the Protestant
39 led by Ferdinand, and the Protestant Union, headed by side, beginning the French, or international, phase of the
40 Frederick, the elector of the Palatinate. The Bohemians Thirty Years’ War (1635–1648). For almost a century
41 fought for religious liberty and independence from Habs- French foreign policy was based on opposition to the
42 burg rule. In 1620 Catholic forces defeated Frederick at Habsburgs because a weak empire enhanced France’s in-
43 the Battle of the White Mountain. Ferdinand, who had ternational stature. In 1635 Cardinal Richelieu declared
44 recently been elected Holy Roman emperor as Ferdinand war on Spain and again sent financial and military assis-
45 II, followed up his victories by wiping out Protestantism tance to the Swedes and the German Protestant princes.
46 in Bohemia through forcible conversions and Jesuit mis- The war dragged on. The French, Dutch, and Swedes,
47 sionary work. Within ten years Bohemia was completely supported by Scots, Finns, and German mercenaries,
48 Catholic. burned, looted, and destroyed German agriculture and
49 The second, or Danish, phase of the war (1625– commerce. The Thirty Years’ War lasted so long because
50S 1629)—so called because of the leadership of the Protes- neither side had the resources to win a quick, decisive vic-
51R tant king Christian IV of Denmark (r. 1588–1648)— tory. Finally, in October 1648 peace was achieved.
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seventeenth-century Dutch illustration, brawling soldiers take over a peasant’s home, eat his food, steal his posses- 26
sions, and insult his family. Peasant retaliation sometimes proved swift and bloody. (Rijksmuseum-Stichting Amsterdam) 27
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the future kingdom of Brandenburg-Prussia. The agree- 32
Consequences of the Thirty Years’ War ment also denied the papacy the right to participate in 33
The 1648 Peace of Westphalia that ended the Thirty central European religious affairs—a restriction symbol- 34
Years’ War marked a turning point in European history. izing the reduced political role of the church. In religion, 35
Conflicts fought over religious faith ended. The treaties the Peace of Westphalia made the Augsburg agreement 36
recognized the sovereign, independent authority of more of 1555 permanent, with the sole modification that Cal- 37
than three hundred German princes (see Map 17.1). vinism, along with Catholicism and Lutheranism, would 38
Since the time of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II be a legally permissible creed. The north German states 39
(1194–1250) , Germany had followed a pattern of state- remained Protestant, the south German states Catholic. 40
building different from that of France and England: the The Thirty Years’ War was probably the most destruc- 41
emperor shared authority with the princes. After the tive event for the central European economy and so- 42
Peace of Westphalia, the emperors’ power continued to ciety prior to the twentieth century. Perhaps one-third of 43
be severely limited, and the Holy Roman Empire re- urban residents and two-fifths of the rural population 44
mained a loosely knit federation. died. Entire areas were depopulated by warfare, by the 45
The peace agreement acknowledged the independence flight of refugees, and by disease. Typhus, dysentery, 46
of the United Provinces of the Netherlands. France ac- bubonic plague, and syphilis accompanied the move- 47
quired the province of Alsace along with the advantages ments of armies. 48
of the weakened status of the empire. Sweden received a Because the Thirty Years’ War was fought on German 49
large cash indemnity and jurisdiction over German terri- soil, the empire experienced untold losses in agricultural 50S
tories along the Baltic Sea, leaving it as a major threat to land, livestock, trade, and commerce. The trade of south- 51R
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SWEDEN
NORWAY FINLAND
K
AR
DENM SWEDEN
ESTONIA RUSSIA
9/17/07
SCOTLAND
Edinburgh LIVONIA
North See Inset
PO
Sea
M IRELAND DENMARK
ER Baltic
3:03 PM
BREMEN WISMAR JUTLAND
AN Copenhagen
IA Dublin Sea
VERDEN
Vilna
ENGLAND Gdansk
Lübeck (Danzig) PRUSSIA
PO
Hamburg MERA NIA
UNITED MECKLENBURG
Page 564
London PROVINCES
Amsterdam BRANDENBURG POLAND
Austrian Habsburg lands Berlin
Essen Magdeburg Warsaw
Spanish Habsburg lands Breitenfeld
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Antwerp Cologne
El
SPANISH 1631
be
Lützen 1632
Other German states
Rh
NETHERLANDS SAXONY
Rocroi SILESIA
ine
Swedish lands by 1648 1643 UPPER White Mountain 1620 Dni
ep
PALATINATE LOWER er
Paris PALATINATE Prague
Boundary of Holy Roman Empire Nantes
BOHEMIA
MORAVIA
Nördingen 1634
Major battles BAVARIA
Loire
FRANCHE- Augsburg
COMTÉ Vienna MOLDAVIA
FRANCE Zurich STYRIA Pest
SWITZERLAND Buda
Geneva
HUNGARY TRANSYLVANIA
ATLANTIC SAVOY
CRIMEA
RE
T
ON
PU CARNIOLA
OCEAN MILAN BL
IC
DM
OF V
E NIC E
IE
P GENOA WALLACHIA
CROATIA
Belgrade
B l ac k Se a
Eb
ro
PORTUGAL
Tagu
SPAIN FLORENCE
PAPAL
s STATES
Madrid
CORSICA
Lisbon (To Genoa)
Rome
Constantinople
NAPLES
Naples
Seville SARDINIA
BALEARIC IS.
Palermo
SICILY
Athens
0 150 300 Km.
0 150 300 Mi. CRETE

(To Rep. of Venice)
MAP 17.1 Europe After the Thirty Years’ War Which country emerged from the Thirty Years’ War as the
strongest European power? What dynastic house was that country’s major rival in the early modern period?
Improve Your Grade Interactive Map:
Europe During Thirty Years’ War
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The Rise of Austria and Prussia • 565
ern cities such as Augsburg, already hard hit by the shift 1

in transportation routes from the Mediterranean to the
The Austrian Habsburgs 2
Atlantic, was virtually destroyed. All of Europe was expe- The Austrian Habsburgs controlled a scattered group of 3
riencing severe inflation due to the influx of Spanish sil- territories in central and eastern Europe. By 1618 the 4
ver, but the destruction of land and foodstuffs made the Habsburg realm included the German-speaking provinces 5
price rise worse in central Europe than anywhere else. of Austria, Tyrol, and Styria; the Czech-speaking king- 6
Agricultural areas suffered catastrophically. Many small dom of Bohemia; and parts of the kingdom of Hungary. 7
farmers lacked the revenue to rework their holdings and Habsburg lands encompassed different languages, eth- 8
had to become day laborers. In parts of central Europe, nicities, and religious affiliations; some lay within the 9
especially in areas east of the Elbe River, loss of land con- Holy Roman Empire and some beyond its borders. 10
tributed to the consolidation of serfdom.1 Like all of central Europe, the Habsburgs emerged 11
Although the Thirty Years’ War contributed to the legal from the Thirty Years’ War impoverished and exhausted. 12
and economic decline of the majority of the population, Their efforts to destroy Protestantism in the German 13
some people prospered. Nobles and landlords bought lands and to turn the weak Holy Roman Empire into a 14
the land of failed small farmers, thereby acquiring even real state had failed. Although the Habsburgs remained 15
greater estates. Northern towns such as Lübeck, Ham- the hereditary emperors, real power lay in the hands of a 16
burg, and Bremen as well as Essen in the Ruhr area also bewildering variety of separate political jurisdictions, in- 17
prospered because of the many refugees they attracted. cluding independent cities, small principalities, medium- 18
size states such as Bavaria and Saxony, and some of the 19
territories of Prussia and the Habsburgs. 20
Defeat in central Europe encouraged the Habsburgs 21
The Rise of Austria and Prussia to turn away from a quest for imperial dominance and to 22
Serfdom and the Thirty Years’ War aided Eastern rulers focus inward and eastward in an attempt to unify their di- 23
greatly in their attempts to build absolute monarchies. verse holdings. An important step in this direction had 24
Apago PDF Enhancer
These rulers not only fought one another but also battled occurred in Bohemia during the Thirty Years’ War. Protes- 25
with armies of invaders from Asia. In this atmosphere of tantism had been strong among the Czechs in Bohemia. 26
continual wartime emergency, monarchs were able to in- The lesser Czech nobility was largely Protestant in 1600 27
crease the powers of the central state. In exchange for and had considerable political power because it domi- 28
leaving nobles the unchallenged masters of their peasants, nated the Bohemian Estates—the representative body 29
the would-be absolutist monarchs of central and eastern of the different estates, or legal orders. The Habsburgs 30
Europe gradually gained political power in three key ar- believed that religious diversity fatally weakened royal 31
eas. First, they imposed permanent taxes without consent. power. If they could not impose Catholicism in the em- 32
Second, they maintained permanent standing armies to pire, at least they could do so in their own domains. 33
police the country and fight abroad. Third, they con- In 1618 the Bohemian Estates rose up in defense of 34
ducted relations with other states as they pleased. Protestant rights. The Habsburgs crushed the revolt in 35
As with all general historical developments, there 1620 at the Battle of the White Mountain. The victorious 36
were important variations on the absolutist theme in king, Ferdinand II (r. 1619–1637), drastically reduced 37
eastern Europe. Royal absolutism in Prussia was the power of the Bohemian Estates. He also confiscated 38
stronger and more effective than in Austria. This would the landholdings of many Protestant nobles and gave 39
give Prussia a thin edge in the struggle for power in east- them to a few loyal Catholic nobles and to the foreign 40
central Europe in the eighteenth century. Prussian-style aristocratic mercenaries who led his armies. After 1650 a 41
absolutism had great long-term political significance, for large portion of the Bohemian nobility was of recent ori- 42
it was a rising Prussia that unified the German people in gin and owed everything to the Habsburgs. 43
the nineteenth century and imposed on them a militaris- With the help of this new nobility, the Habsburgs es- 44
tic stamp. tablished direct rule over Bohemia. The condition of the 45
enserfed peasantry worsened substantially: three days per 46
• How and why did the rulers of Austria and Prussia, week of unpaid labor—the robot—became the norm, and 47
each in different political and social environments, manage
a quarter of the serfs worked for their lords every day but 48
to build powerful absolute monarchies that proved more
Sundays and religious holidays. Protestantism was also 49
durable than that of Louis XIV?
stamped out. The reorganization of Bohemia was a giant 50S
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The Battle of Mohács, 1526 The Süleymanname (Book of Suleiman), a biography, contains these fascinat-
ing illustrations of the great Ottoman victory at Mohács, which enabled the Turks to add Hungary to their
expanding empire. In the right panel, Suleiman in a white turban sits on a black horse surrounded by his
personal guard, while his janissary soldiers fire their muskets and cannon at the enemy. In the left panel, the
Europeans are in disarray, in contrast to the Turks’ discipline and order. (Topkapi Saray Museum)
step toward creating absolutist rule. As in France in the kingdom of Hungary was divided between the Ot-
same years, the pursuit of religious unity was an essential tomans and the Habsburgs. Transylvania in the east be-
element of absolutism. came an Ottoman dependent, while the Habsburgs
After the Thirty Years’ War, Ferdinand III (r. 1637– ruled the west and north. In the 1540s the Ottomans
1657) continued to build state power. He centralized the organized their Hungarian territories into provinces of
government in the hereditary German-speaking prov- the empire. Warfare between the Ottomans and the
inces, which formed the core Habsburg holdings. For Habsburgs devastated Hungary during the sixteenth
the first time, a permanent standing army was ready to century. Between 1683 and 1699 the Habsburgs pushed
put down any internal opposition. the Ottomans from most of Hungary and Transylvania.
The recovery of all of the former kingdom of Hungary
was completed in 1718.
Austrian Rule in Hungary The Hungarian nobility, despite its reduced strength,
The Habsburg monarchy then turned toward the plains effectively thwarted the full development of Habsburg
of Hungary. After the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the absolutism. Throughout the seventeenth century Hun-
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garian nobles—the most numerous in Europe—rose in which allowed them to increase their holdings even more 1
revolt against attempts to impose absolute rule. They at the expense of smaller landowners. 2
never triumphed decisively, but neither were they crushed In 1713 Charles VI (r. 1711–1740) proclaimed the so- 3
the way the Czech nobility had been in 1620. called Pragmatic Sanction, which stated that Habsburg 4
The Hungarians resisted because many of them re- possessions were never to be divided, even if it meant al- 5
mained Protestants, especially in areas formerly ruled by lowing a woman to take the throne. Lacking a male heir, 6
the Turks. Ottoman rule had been relatively light-handed Charles spent much of his reign trying to get this princi- 7
compared to the harsh reconversion efforts of the Habs- ple accepted within and beyond his realm. His success re- 8
burgs. Until the end of the seventeenth century the Ot- sulted in the crowning of his daughter Maria Theresa 9
tomans still ruled parts of Hungary, providing a powerful upon Charles’s death in 1740. 10
military ally to nobles in areas recovered by the Habs- 11
burgs. Finally, the Hungarian nobility, and even part of 12
the peasantry, became attached to a national ideal long
Prussia in the Seventeenth Century 13
before most of the other peoples of eastern Europe. Hun- After 1400 a revitalized landed nobility became the un- 14
garian nobles were determined to maintain as much in- disputed ruling class in eastern Germany. The Hohen- 15
dependence and local control as possible. In 1703, with zollern family, which ruled through its senior and junior 16
the Habsburgs bogged down in the War of the Spanish branches as the imperial electors of Brandenburg and the 17
Succession (see page 534), the Hungarians rose in one dukes of Prussia, had little real power. Nothing sug- 18
last patriotic rebellion under Prince Francis Rákóczy. gested that this family and its territories would ever play 19
Rákóczy and his forces were eventually defeated, but an important role in European or even regional affairs. 20
the Habsburgs had to accept a compromise. Charles VI The elector of Brandenburg had the right to help 21
restored many of the traditional privileges of the aristoc- choose the Holy Roman emperor, which bestowed pres- 22
racy in return for Hungarian acceptance of hereditary tige, but the elector had no military strength of his own. 23
Habsburg rule. Thus Hungary, unlike Austria and Bo- Moreover, Brandenburg, the area around Berlin and the 24
hemia, was never fully integrated into a centralized, ab-
Apago PDF Enhancer elector’s power base, was a land-locked combination of 25
solute Habsburg state. sand and swamp (see Map 17.2) that lacked defensible 26
Despite checks on their ambitions in Hungary, the Habs- natural frontiers. Contemporaries contemptuously called 27
burgs made significant achievements in state-building by it the “sand-box of the Holy Roman Empire.”2 28
forging consensus with the church and the nobility. A The territory of the elector’s cousin, the duke of Prus- 29
sense of common identity and loyalty to the monarchy sia, was completely separated from Brandenburg and 30
grew among elites in Habsburg lands, even to a certain was part of the kingdom of Poland. By 1600 Prussia’s 31
extent in Hungary. The best evidence for this consensus German-speaking peasants had much in common with 32
is the spectacular sums approved by the estates for the Polish peasants, for both ethnic groups had seen most of 33
growth of the army. By the end of the seventeenth cen- their freedoms reduced or revoked by their noble land- 34
tury Emperor Leopold commanded a standing army of a lords. (Poland’s numerous lesser nobles dominated the 35
hundred thousand men funded by contributions from Polish state, which was actually a constitutional republic 36
the provincial estates. German became the language of headed by an elected king who had little real power.) In 37
the common culture and, with ongoing Protestant con- 1618 the junior branch of the Hohenzollern family died 38
version and emigration, zealous Catholicism also helped out, and Prussia reverted to the elector of Brandenburg. 39
fuse a collective identity. Vienna became the political and The elector of Brandenburg was a helpless spectator in 40
cultural center of the empire. By 1700 it was a thriving the Thirty Years’ War, his territories alternately ravaged 41
city with a population of one hundred thousand, with its by Swedish and Habsburg armies. Population fell drasti- 42
own version of Versailles, the royal palace of Schönbrunn. cally, and many villages disappeared. Yet this devastation 43
(See the feature “Images in Society: Absolutist Palace paved the way for Hohenzollern absolutism because for- 44
Building” on pages 568–569.) eign armies dramatically weakened the political power of 45
Empowered by the imperial government, the landed the estates, which helped the very young elector Freder- 46
nobility took charge of economic recovery. The nobles ick William (r. 1640–1688), later known as the “Great 47
increased the burdens of serfdom and profited from the Elector,” to ride roughshod over traditional representa- 48
war’s population losses to take over vast tracts of land. tive rights and to take a giant step toward royal abso- 49
With technical and commercial innovations, they created lutism. This constitutional struggle was the most crucial 50S
a new form of capitalist, market-oriented agriculture, in Prussian history until that of the 1860s. 51R
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1
2
3
4
Images in Society
5 noted that every descendant of a princely family
6 Absolutist Palace Building “imagines himself to be something like Louis XIV.
7 He builds his Versailles, has his mistresses, and main-
8
9
10
11
B y 1700 palace building had become a veritable
obsession for the rulers of central and eastern Europe.
tains his army.”* The elector-archbishop of Mainz, the
ruling prince of that city, confessed apologetically that
“building is a craze which costs much, but every fool
Their dramatic palaces symbolized the age of absolutist likes his own hat.”†
12 power, just as soaring Gothic cathedrals had expressed In central and eastern Europe, the favorite noble
13 the idealized spirit of the High Middle Ages. With its servants of royalty became extremely rich and power-
14 classically harmonious, symmetrical, and geometric ful, and they too built grandiose palaces in the capital
15 design, Versailles, shown in Image 1, served as the cities. These palaces were in part an extension of the
16 model for the wave of palace building that began in monarch, for they surpassed the buildings of less-
17 the last decade of the seventeenth century. favored nobles and showed all the high road to fame
18 Located ten miles southwest of Paris, Versailles be- and fortune. Take, for example, the palaces of Prince
19 gan as a modest hunting lodge built by Louis XIII in Eugene of Savoy, a French nobleman who became
20 1623. His son, Louis XIV, loved the site so much that Austria’s most famous military hero. It was Eugene
21 he spent decades enlarging and decorating the original who led the Austrian army, smashed the Turks, fought
22 chateau. Between 1668 and 1670, his architect Louis Louis XIV to a standstill, and generally guided the
23 Le Vau enveloped the old building within a much triumph of absolutism in Austria. Rewarded with great
24 larger second structure that still exists today. In 1682 wealth by his grateful king, Eugene called on the lead-
the new palace became the official residence of the Sun ing architects of the day, J. B. Fischer von Erlach and
26 King and his court, although construction continued
27 until 1710, when the royal chapel was completed. At
28 any one time, several thousand people lived in the
29 bustling and crowded palace. The awesome splendor
30 of the eighty-yard Hall of Mirrors, replete with floor-
31 to-ceiling mirrors and ceiling murals illustrating the
32 king’s triumphs, contrasted with the strong odors
33 from the courtiers who commonly relieved themselves
34 in discreet corners. Royal palaces like Versailles were
35 intended to overawe the people and proclaim their
36 owners’ authority and power.
37 In 1693 Charles XI of Sweden, having reduced the
38 power of the aristocracy, ordered the construction of
39 his Royal Palace, which dominates the center of Stock-
40 holm to this day. Another such palace was Schönbrunn,
41 an enormous Viennese Versailles begun in 1695 by
42 Emperor Leopold to celebrate Austrian military victo-
43 ries and Habsburg might. Image 2 shows architect
44 Joseph Bernhard Fischer von Erlach’s ambitious plan
45 for Schönbrunn palace. Erlach’s plan emphasizes the
46 palace’s vast size and its role as a site for military
47 demonstrations. Ultimately financial constraints re-
48 sulted in a more modest building. Image 1 Pierre-Denis Martin: View of the Chateau de
49 Petty German princes contributed mightily to the Versailles, 1722 (Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, Versailles/
50S palace-building mania. Frederick the Great of Prussia Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY)
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Image 2 Project for the Palace at Schönbrunn (ca 1700) Image 4 View of the Petit Parc at Versailles
(Austrian National Library, Vienna) from the Canal (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
delight of sovereign and courtiers. The terraces and

waterworks of these gardens served as showcases for
the latest techniques in military and civil engineering.
Exotic plants and elaborate designs testified to the
sovereign’s global trading networks and elevated taste.
The gardens at Versailles, shown in Image 4, exem-
plify absolutist palace gardens. In the foreground of
this image we see a mock naval campaign being en-
Apago PDF Enhancer acted on the canal for the edification of courtiers.
For diplomatic occasions, Louis XIV himself wrote
lengthy guides for viewing the gardens of Versailles.
Modern visitors can still follow his itineraries. The
themes of the sculptures in the Versailles gardens also
hailed Louis’s power, with images of Apollo, the sun-
god, and Neptune, the sea-god, making frequent
appearances.
Image 3 Prince Eugene’s Summer Palace, Vienna (Erich Compare the image of Prince Eugene’s summer
Lessing/Art Resource, NY) palace with the plans for Schönbrunn and the palace
of Versailles. What did concrete objects and the ma-
nipulation of space accomplish for these rulers that
Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt, to consecrate his mere words could not? What disadvantages might
glory in stone and fresco. Fischer built Eugene’s Win- stem from using architecture in this way? Is the use
ter (or Town) Palace in Vienna, and he and Hilde- of space and monumental construction still a
brandt collaborated on the prince’s Summer Palace political tool in today’s world?
on the city’s outskirts, shown in Image 3. The prince’s
summer residence featured two baroque gems, the *Quoted in R. Ergang, The Potsdam Fuhrer: Frederick William I,
Lower Belvedere and the lovely Upper Belvedere, Father of Prussian Militarism (New York: Octagon Books, 1972),
completed in 1722 and shown here. The building’s p. 13.
†Quoted in J. Summerson, in The Eighteenth Century: Europe in the
interior is equally stunning, with crouching giants Age of Enlightenment, ed. A. Cobban (New York: McGraw-Hill,
serving as pillars and a magnificent great staircase. 1969), p. 80.
Palace gardens were an extension of the architec-
ture. The rational orderliness and symmetry of a gar-
den showed that the ruler’s force extended even to Improve Your Grade
nature, which offered its subjugated pleasures to the Going Beyond Images in Society
569
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1 Austrian terrritory at end of

2 a Thirty Years' War (1648)
Se Austrian acquisitions by end
3 North c
lti of Turkish Wars (1699)
4 Sea Ba Königsberg Austrian acquisitions after decisive
PRUSSIA victory over Ottoman Empire (1718)
5 EASTERN
POMERANIA
Prussian terrritory at Great Elector's
6 accession (1640)
El b Prussian acquisitions by
e
7 Great Elector's death (1688)
Prussian acquisitions by end of
8 BRANDENBURG
War of the Austrian Succession (1748)
RAVENSBURG Berlin Warsaw
9 Boundary of the Holy Roman Empire
CLEVE MAGDEBURG
10 POLAND
Leipzig
11 Cologne
MARK
SAXONY
Od
er 0 100 200 Km.
SILESIA
12 s e 0 100 200 Mi.
eu
13 Prague
M
14 BOHEMIA CA
MORAVIA RP
15
ne
hi
A
R
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TH
be BAVARIA AUSTRIA
IA
nu
Da
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Munich
17 Vienna
M
BREISGAU Pest
TS
18 Buda
.
STYRIA TRANSYLVANIA
19 TYROL HUNGARY
CARINTHIA
20 Zenta
Mohács
21 IA
CARNIOLA
22 Venice AT SLAVONIA be
O Karlowitz nu
CR Da
23 Passarowitz
24
Ad

ri
at
26 ic
Se OTTOMAN EMPIRE
27 Mediterranean Sea a
28
29
MAP 17.2 The Growth of Austria and Brandenburg-Prussia to 1748 Austria expanded to the southwest
30 into Hungary and Transylvania at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. It was unable to hold the rich German
31 province of Silesia, however, which was conquered by Brandenburg-Prussia.
32
33
34
35 When he came to power in 1640, the twenty-year-old The struggle between the Great Elector and the provin-
36 Great Elector was determined to unify his three provinces cial estates was long and intense. After the Thirty Years’
37 and enlarge them by diplomacy and war. These provinces War, noble representatives zealously reasserted the es-
38 were Brandenburg; Prussia, inherited in 1618; and scat- tates’ control over taxes. Yet first in Brandenburg in 1653
39 tered holdings along the Rhine, inherited in 1614 (see and then in Prussia between 1661 and 1663, the Great
40 Map 17.2). Each was inhabited by German-speakers, but Elector eventually had his way.
41 each had its own estates. Although the estates had not To pay for the permanent standing army he first es-
42 met regularly during the chaotic Thirty Years’ War, taxes tablished in 1660, Frederick William forced the estates to
43 could not be levied without their consent. The estates of accept the introduction of permanent taxation without
44 Brandenburg and Prussia were dominated by the nobility consent. The estates’ power declined rapidly thereafter,
45 and the landowning classes, known as the Junkers. But for the Great Elector had both financial independence
46 this was also the case in most European countries that and superior force. The state’s total revenue tripled dur-
47 had representative bodies, including the English Parlia- ing his reign, and the size of the army leaped by ten. In
48 ment before and after the civil war. Had the estates suc- 1688 a population of one million was supporting a peace-
49 cessfully resisted the absolutist demands of the Great time standing army of thirty thousand.
50S Elector, they too might have evolved toward more Two factors were central to the Great Elector’s tri-
51R broadly based constitutionalism. umph. First, as in the formation of every absolutist state,
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war was a decisive factor. The ongoing struggle between Frederick William was intensely attached to military 1
Sweden and Poland for control of the Baltic after 1648 life. He had, for example, an extreme fondness for tall sol- 2
and the wars of Louis XIV in western Europe created an diers, whom he credited with superior strength and endur- 3
atmosphere of permanent crisis. The nomadic Tatars of ance. Profoundly militaristic in temperament, Frederick 4
the Crimea in southern Russia swept through Prussia in William always wore an army uniform, and he lived the 5
the winter of 1656–1657, killing and carrying off thou- highly disciplined life of the professional soldier. He be- 6
sands as slaves. This invasion softened up the estates and gan his work by five or six in the morning; at ten he al- 7
strengthened the urgency of the Great Elector’s demands most always went to the parade ground to drill or inspect 8
for more military funding. his troops. His love of the army was based on a hard- 9
Second, the nobility proved willing to accept Frederick headed conception of the struggle for power. Years later 10
William’s new claims in exchange for reconfirmation of he summed up his life’s philosophy in his instructions 11
their own privileges. The Junkers had long dominated the to his son: “A formidable army and a war chest large 12
government through the estates, but they refused to join enough to make this army mobile in times of need can 13
representatives of the towns in a common front. Instead, create great respect for you in the world, so that you can 14
they accepted a compromise with the state whereby the speak a word like the other powers.”4 This unshakable 15
bulk of the new taxes fell on towns and the Junkers re- belief that the welfare of king and state depended on the 16
ceived legal confirmation of their authority over the serfs. army above all else reinforced Frederick William’s passion 17
The elector used naked force to break the liberties of the for the soldier’s life. 18
towns; the main leader of urban opposition in the key The cult of military power provided the rationale for 19
city of Königsberg, for example, was arrested and impris- a great expansion of absolutism in Prussia. As the king 20
oned for life without trial. put it: “I must be served with life and limb, with house 21
Like Louis XIV, the Great Elector built his absolutist and wealth, with honour and conscience, everything must 22
state on collaboration with traditional elites, reaffirming be committed except eternal salvation—that belongs to 23
their privileges in return for loyal service and revenue. He God, but all else is mine.”5 To achieve these extraordi- 24
also created a larger centralized government bureaucracy
Apago PDF Enhancer nary demands, Frederick William created a strong cen- 25
to oversee his realm and to collect the new taxes. Pre- tralized bureaucracy and eliminated the last traces of the 26
existing representative institutions were bypassed. The parliamentary estates and local self-government. 27
Diet of Brandenburg did not meet again after 1652. In The king’s power grab brought him into considerable 28
1701 the elector’s son, Frederick I, received the elevated conflict with the Junkers. In his early years he even 29
title of king of Prussia (instead of elector) as a reward for threatened to destroy them; yet, in the end, the Prussian 30
aiding the Holy Roman emperor in the War of the Span- nobility was not destroyed but enlisted—into the army. 31
ish Succession. Responding to a combination of threats and opportuni- 32
ties, the Junkers became the officer caste. A new com- 33
promise was worked out whereby the proud nobility 34
imperiously commanded the peasantry in the army as 35
The Consolidation of well as on the estates. 36
Prussian Absolutism Penny-pinching and hard-working, Frederick William 37
achieved results. Above all, he built a first-rate army with 38
Frederick William I, “the Soldiers’ King” (r. 1713–1740),
third-rate resources. The standing army increased from 39
completed his grandfather’s work. Though crude and
thirty-eight thousand to eighty-three thousand during 40
ruthless, Frederick William I was the most talented re-
his reign. Prussia, twelfth in Europe in population, had 41
former produced by the Hohenzollern family. Under his
the fourth largest army by 1740. Moreover, soldier for 42
rule, Prussia built the best army in Europe for its size and
soldier, the Prussian army was the best in Europe, aston- 43
transformed into a model military state. It was he who
ishing foreign observers with its precision, skill, and dis- 44
truly established Prussian absolutism and gave it its unique
cipline. For the next two hundred years Prussia and then 45
character. In the words of a famous historian of Prussia:
Prussianized Germany would win many crucial military 46
For a whole generation, the Hohenzollern subjects were vic- battles. 47
timized by a royal bully, imbued with an obsessive bent for Frederick William and his ministers also built an ex- 48
military organization and military scales of value. This left a ceptionally honest and conscientious bureaucracy to ad- 49
deep mark upon the institutions of Prussiandom and upon minister the country and foster economic development. 50S
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“blue boys” so much that he hated to “spend” them.

This most militaristic of kings was, paradoxically, almost
always at peace.
Nevertheless, Prussians paid a heavy and lasting price
for the obsessions of their royal drillmaster. Civil society
became rigid and highly disciplined, and Prussia became
the “Sparta of the North”; unquestioning obedience was
the highest virtue. As a Prussian minister later summed
up, “To keep quiet is the first civic duty.”6 Thus the poli-
cies of Frederick William I combined with harsh peasant
bondage and Junker tyranny to lay the foundations for a
highly militaristic country.
The Development of Russia

and the Ottoman Empire
A favorite parlor game of nineteenth-century intellectu-
als was debating whether Russia was a Western (Euro-
pean) or non-Western (Asian) society. This question was
particularly fascinating because it was unanswerable. To
this day Russia differs fundamentally from the West in
some basic ways, though its history has paralleled that of
the West in other aspects.
Apago PDF Enhancer There was no question in the mind of Europeans, how-
ever, that the Ottomans were outsiders. Even absolutist
rulers disdained Ottoman sultans as cruel and tyrannical
despots. Despite stereotypes, the Ottomans were in many
ways more tolerant than the West, providing protection
and security to other religions while steadfastly maintaining
their Muslim faith. The Ottoman state combined the Byz-
antine heritage of the territory they conquered with Persian
and Arab traditions. Flexibility and openness to other ideas
and practices were sources of strength for the empire.
• What were the distinctive features of Russian and
Ottoman absolutism in this period?
The Mongol Yoke and

the Rise of Moscow
The eastern Slavs might have emerged from the Middle
Ages weak and politically divided had it not been for the
A Prussian Giant Grenadier Frederick William I wanted
tall, handsome soldiers. He dressed them in tight bright uni- Mongol conquest of the Kievan principality. The Mon-
forms to distinguish them from the peasant population from gols were nomadic tribes from present-day Mongolia who
which most soldiers came. He also ordered several portraits of had been temporarily unified in the thirteenth century by
his favorites from his court painter, J. C. Merk. Grenadiers Chinggis Khan (1162–1227). In five years his armies sub-
wore the miter cap instead of an ordinary hat so that they dued all of China. His successors then turned westward,
could hurl their heavy grenades unimpeded by a broad brim.
(The Royal Collection © 2007, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II) smashing everything in their path and reaching the plains
of Hungary before pulling back in 1242. The Mongol
army—the Golden Horde—used terror to reduce con-
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The Development of Russia and the Ottoman Empire • 573
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Mapping the Past 17
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Kiev MAP 17.3 The Expansion of Russia to
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n 1725 After the disintegration of the Kievan
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BE Tsaritsyn (New) Saray state and the Mongol conquest, the princes of
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COSSACKS Saray Moscow and their descendants gradually
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Belgrade territory. 1 Compare this map with Map 17.4, 23

WALLACHIA
C which shows Ottoman expansion from 1300. What
explains the fantastic success of both the Russians
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as

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and the Ottomans in expanding their territories? Why

pi
Black Sea
T
an
O 26
T
Tiflis was the sixteenth century such an important period

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A GEORGIA for expansion? 2 How do you explain the geo-

N 27
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Constantinople
E graphical direction that expansion followed in each 28
•
ARMENIA
M Ankara
P Principality of Moscow, ca 1300 case? 3 What happened after the periods shown on
IR
these maps? Did the territorial development of the
29
E Acquisitions by Ivan III's accession (1462)
Athens
two states diverge from each other or follow the same 30
Acquisitions under Ivan III (1462–1505)
trajectory? 31
Acquisitions by death of Ivan the Terrible (1584)
32
Acquisitions by Peter the Great's accession (1689)
200 400 Km.
Improve Your 33
0 Acquisitions under Peter the Great (1689–1725)
0 200 400 Mi.
Grade Interactive Map: Expansion of 34
Major battles
Russia to 1725 35
36
37
quered peoples to submission. As a show of force, the Unification transformed the internal political situation. 38
army would destroy an entire city, slaughtering the whole Although the Mongols conquered, they were quite willing 39
population before burning the city to the ground. to use local princes as obedient servants and tax collectors. 40
The Mongols ruled the eastern Slavs for more than Thus, they did not abolish the title of “great prince,” be- 41
two hundred years, the period of the so-called Mongol stowing it instead on the prince who served them best and 42
Yoke. They built their capital of Saray on the lower Volga paid them most handsomely. Beginning with Alexander 43
(see Map 17.3) and forced the rival Slavic princes to sub- Nevsky in 1252, the princes of Moscow became particu- 44
mit to their rule and to give them tribute and slaves. If larly adept at serving the Mongols. They loyally put down 45
conquered peoples rebelled, the Mongols used ruthless popular uprisings and collected the khan’s taxes. As re- 46
violence to re-impose control. The Mongol khan was ac- ward, the princes of Moscow emerged as hereditary great 47
knowledged by all the eastern Slavs as the supreme ruler. princes. Eventually the Muscovite princes were able to de- 48
stroy their princely rivals. Ivan III (r. 1462–1505) consol- 49
Improve Your Grade
idated power around Moscow and won Novgorod, almost 50S
Primary Source: Russia’s Conquest by the Mongols:
A Song to Lost Lands reaching the Baltic Sea (see Map 17.3). 51R
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By about 1480 Ivan III felt strong enough to stop ac-

knowledging the khan as his supreme ruler. To legiti-
mize their new authority, the princes of Moscow drew
on two sources of authority. First, they declared them-
selves autocrats, meaning that, like the khans, they were
the sole source of power. In addition to political author-
ity, Moscow also took over Mongol tribute relations and
borrowed institutions like the tax system, postal routes,
and the census.
The second source of legitimacy lay in Moscow’s claim
to the political and religious inheritance of the Byzantine
Empire. The title tsar is a contraction of caesar. After the
fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, the princes
of Moscow saw themselves as the heirs of both the cae-
sars and Orthodox Christianity, the one true faith. All the
other kings of Europe were heretics; only the tsars were
rightful and holy rulers. The idea was promoted by Or-
thodox churchmen, who spoke of “holy Russia” as the
“Third Rome.” Ivan’s marriage to the daughter of the
last Byzantine emperor further enhanced the aura of
Moscow’s imperial inheritance.
Historians long took at face value the tsars’ claims to
unlimited autocratic power over their people, from the
peasants to the highest-ranking nobles or boyars. More
recently they have begun to emphasize the considerable
Apago PDFIvanEnhancer
the Terrible Ivan IV, the first to take the title tsar of
Russia, executed many Muscovite boyars and their peasants
consensus that existed between the nobility and the self-
styled autocrat. Along with Mongol tribute relations, and servants. His ownership of all the land, trade, and indus-
try restricted economic development. (National Museum, Copen-
Moscow inherited a tradition of ruling in cooperation hagen, Denmark)
with local elites. The tsars’ success in combining grandi-
ose claims to power with an extremely limited govern-
ment apparatus is explained through their collaboration
with boyars in Moscow and with the provincial gentry.
The Russian Orthodox Church helped cement this con- with gold coins pouring down on his head, Ivan majesti-
sensus. Since the national borders of Russia corresponded cally crowned himself, taking the august title of tsar for
to the borders of the church, religion was a source of pa- the first time.
triotic nationalism and loyalty to the Crown. Selecting the beautiful and kind Anastasia of the Ro-
The tsars ensured the loyalty of the elite in part by cre- manov family as his queen, the young tsar soon declared
ating new nobles personally loyal to them. These new no- war on the remnants of Mongol power. He defeated the
bles made up the service nobility, whose members held khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan between 1552 and
the tsar’s land on the explicit condition that they serve in 1556, adding vast new territories to the realm and laying
his army. the foundations for the huge, multiethnic Russian em-
pire. In the course of these wars, Ivan virtually abolished
the old distinction between hereditary boyar private
Tsar and People to 1689 property and land temporarily granted for service. All
Developments in Russia took a chaotic turn with the nobles, old and new, had to serve the tsar in order to
reign of Ivan IV (r. 1533–1584), the famous “Ivan the hold land.
Terrible,” who ascended the throne at age three. His In 1557 Ivan turned westward, and for the next
mother died, possibly poisoned, when he was eight, leav- twenty-five years he waged an exhausting, unsuccessful
ing Ivan to suffer insults and neglect from the boyars at war primarily against the large Polish-Lithuanian state.
court. At age sixteen he suddenly pushed aside his hated Quarreling with the boyars over the war and suspecting
advisers, and in an awe-inspiring ceremony, complete them of a role in the sudden death of his beloved Anas-
1019763_ch_17.qxp 9/17/07 3:03 PM Page 575
tasia in 1560, the increasingly demented Ivan struck land and to the noble landholders, who in turn served 1
down all who stood in his way. A reign of terror ensued the tsar. 2
in which Ivan jailed and executed anyone he suspected of Simultaneously, urban traders and artisans were also 3
opposing him. He created a special corps of black-clad bound to their towns and jobs so that the tsar could tax 4
soldiers to execute his alleged enemies, along with their them more heavily. Ivan assumed that the tsar owned 5
families, friends, servants, and peasants. Many victims Russia’s trade and industry, just as he owned all the land. 6
were intimates of the court from the leading boyar fami- The urban classes had no security in their work or prop- 7
lies of Moscow. Their large estates were broken up and erty, and even the wealthiest merchants were dependent 8
reapportioned. Ivan gave about half of the land acquired agents of the tsar. Royal monopolization and service ob- 9
through such purges to the lower service nobility; the ligations checked the growth of the Russian middle classes 10
rest he maintained as a personal domain. and stood in sharp contrast to developments in western 11
Ivan also took strides toward making all commoners Europe, where the middle classes were gaining security in 12
servants of the tsar. His endless wars and violent purges their private property. 13
depopulated much of central Russia. As the service nobles As so often in Russia, the death of an iron-fisted 14
demanded more from the remaining peasants, growing tyrant—in this case, Ivan the Terrible in 1584—opened an 15
numbers fled toward wild, recently conquered territories era of violent struggles for power. Ivan’s son, Theodore, 16
to the east and south. There they formed free groups and died in 1598 without an heir, ushering in the “Time of 17
outlaw armies known as Cossacks and maintained a pre- Troubles” (1598–1613). The close relatives of the de- 18
carious independence. The solution to the problem of ceased tsar intrigued against and murdered one another, 19
peasant flight was to tie peasants ever more firmly to the alternately fighting and welcoming the invading Swedes 20
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Saint Basil’s Cathedral, 24
Moscow With its sloping Apago PDF Enhancer 25
roofs and colorful onion- 26
shaped domes, Saint Basil’s is a 27
striking example of powerful 28
Byzantine influences on Rus-
sian culture. According to 29
tradition, an enchanted Ivan 30
the Terrible blinded the cathe- 31
dral’s architects to ensure that 32
they would never duplicate 33
their fantastic achievement,
which still dazzles the beholder 34
in today’s Red Square. (George 35
Holton/Photo Researchers) 36
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1 and Poles. Cossack bands, led by a former slave named Russian army. The great profits from Siberia’s natural re-
2 Ivan Bolotnikov, marched northward, rallying peasants sources, especially furs, funded the Romanov’s bid for
3 and slaughtering nobles and officials. Cossacks and peas- great power status.
4 ants called for the “true tsar,” who would restore their
5 freedom of movement, reduce their heavy taxes, and
6 lighten the yoke imposed by the landlords.
The Reforms of Peter the Great
7 This social explosion from below brought the nobles, Heir to the first efforts at state-building, Peter the Great
8 big and small, to their senses. They put aside their quar- (r. 1682–1725) embarked on a tremendous campaign to
9 rels and finally crushed the Cossack rebellion at the gates accelerate and complete these processes. A giant for his
10 of Moscow. In 1613 the nobles elected Ivan the Terri- time, at six feet seven inches, and possessing enormous
11 ble’s sixteen-year-old grandnephew, Michael Romanov, energy and willpower, Peter was determined to build and
12 the new hereditary tsar (r. 1613–1645). Michael’s elec- improve the army. He was equally determined to con-
13 tion was represented as a restoration of tsarist autocracy. tinue the tsarist tradition of territorial expansion. After
14 (See the feature “Listening to the Past: A Foreign Trav- 1689 Peter ruled independently for thirty-six years, only
15 eler in Russia” on pages 586–587.) one of which was peaceful.
16 Although the new tsar successfully reconsolidated cen- Fascinated by weapons and foreign technology, the
17 tral authority, social and religious uprisings continued tsar led a group of 250 Russian officials and young no-
18 through the seventeenth century. In 1652 the patriarch bles on an eighteen-month tour of western European
19 Nikon determined to bring “corrupted” Russian practices capitals. Traveling unofficially to avoid lengthy diplo-
20 of worship into line with the Greek Orthodox model. matic ceremonies, Peter worked with his hands at various
21 The self-serving church hierarchy quickly went along, crafts and met with foreign kings and experts. He was
22 but the intensely religious common people resisted. They particularly impressed with the growing power of the
23 saw Nikon as the Antichrist who was stripping them of Dutch and the English, and he considered how Russia
24 the only thing they had—the true religion of “holy Rus- could profit from their example.
25 sia.” Great numbers left the church and formed commu-
Apago PDF Enhancer Returning to Russia, Peter entered into a secret al-
26 nities of “Old Believers,” who were hunted down and liance with Denmark and Poland to wage a sudden war of
27 persecuted. As many as twenty thousand people burned aggression against Sweden. Despite the country’s small
28 themselves alive, singing the “hallelujah” in their chants population and limited agricultural resources, Swedish
29 three times rather than twice, as Nikon had demanded. rulers in the seventeenth century had developed a strong
30 After the Great Schism, the Russian masses were alienated absolutist state and had built an excellent standing army.
31 from the established church, which became dependent Like other absolutist rulers, Charles XI of Sweden built a
32 on the state for its authority. beautiful palace in his capital, modeled after Louis XIV’s
33 The Cossacks revolted once more against a state that Versailles. Expanding beyond its borders, Sweden held
34 was doggedly trying to reduce them to serfdom. Under substantial territory in northern Germany, Finland, and
35 Stenka Razin they moved up the Volga River in 1670 and Estonia. Yet these possessions were scattered and ap-
36 1671, attracting a great army of urban poor and peasants, peared vulnerable. Above all, Peter and his allies believed
37 killing landlords and government officials, and proclaim- that their combined forces could win easy victories be-
38 ing freedom from oppression. Eventually this rebellion cause Sweden was in the hands of a new and inexperi-
39 was defeated. enced king.
40 The normal obstacles to state-building were exacer- Eighteen-year-old Charles XII (1697–1718) surprised
41 bated in Russia’s case by the huge size of its territory, its Peter. He defeated Denmark quickly in 1700, then
42 thinly spread population, and the economic devastation turned on Russia. In a blinding snowstorm, his well-
43 wrought by the Time of Troubles. Nevertheless, Ro- trained professional army attacked and routed unsuspect-
44 manov tsars made several important achievements during ing Russians besieging the Swedish fortress of Narva on
45 the second half of the seventeenth century. After a long the Baltic coast. Peter and the survivors fled in panic to
46 war, Russia gained a large mass of Ukraine from weak Moscow. It was, for the Russians, a grim beginning to
47 and decentralized Poland in 1667 (see Map 17.3) and the long and brutal Great Northern War, which lasted
48 completed the conquest of Siberia by the end of the cen- from 1700 to 1721.
49 tury. Territorial expansion was accompanied by growth Suffering defeat and faced with a military crisis, the en-
50S of the bureaucracy and the army. Russian tsars turned to ergetic Peter responded with a long series of practical but
51R imported foreign experts to help build and reform the far-reaching measures designed to increase state power,
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Gustaf Cederstrom: The Swedish Victory at Narva (1701) This poignant re-creation focuses on the 32
contrast between the Swedish officers in handsome dress uniforms and the battered Russian soldiers laying 33
down their standards in surrender. Charles XII of Sweden scored brilliant, rapid-fire victories over Denmark, 34
Saxony, and Russia, but he failed to make peace with Peter while he was ahead and eventually lost Sweden’s
holdings on the Baltic coast. (The National Museum of Fine Arts, Stockholm)
35
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37
strengthen his armies, and gain victory. Tightening up placed them in his service. These measures gradually 38
Muscovy’s old service system, he required every noble- combined to make the army and government more pow- 39
man, great or small, to serve in the army or in the civil erful and efficient. 40
administration—for life. Since a more modern army and Peter also greatly increased the service requirements of 41
government required skilled technicians and experts, Pe- commoners. In the wake of the Narva disaster, he estab- 42
ter created schools and universities to produce them. lished a regular standing army of more than two hundred 43
One of his most hated reforms was requiring a five-year thousand peasant-soldiers commanded by officers from 44
education away from home for every young nobleman. the nobility. In addition, special forces of Cossacks and 45
Peter established an interlocking military-civilian bu- foreigners numbered more than one hundred thousand. 46
reaucracy with fourteen ranks, and he decreed that all The departure of a drafted peasant boy was celebrated by 47
had to start at the bottom and work toward the top. his family and village almost like a funeral, since the re- 48
Some people of non-noble origins rose to high positions cruit was drafted for life. The peasantry also served with 49
in this embryonic meritocracy. Drawing on his experi- its taxes, which increased threefold during Peter’s reign. 50S
ence abroad, Peter searched out talented foreigners and Serfs were arbitrarily assigned to work in the growing 51R
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1 Peter the Great in 1723 This compelling portrait by Grig-

2 ory Musikiysky captures the strength and determination of
3 the warrior-tsar after more than three decades of per-
sonal rule. In his hand Peter holds the scepter, sym-
4 bol of royal sovereignty, and across his breastplate
5 is draped an ermine fur, a mark of honor. In the
6 background are the battleships of Russia’s new
7 Baltic fleet and the famous St. Peter and St.
8 Paul Fortress that Peter built in St. Peters-
burg. (Kremlin Museums, Moscow/The Bridge-
9 man Art Library)
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24 number of factories and mines. Most of these industrial Improve Your Grade
25 enterprises were directly or indirectly owned by the state, Primary Source: Peter the Great Imposes Western
26
Apago PDF Enhancer
and they were worked almost exclusively for the military. Styles on the Russians
27 The constant warfare of Peter’s reign consumed 80 to
At the same time, vast numbers of Russians hated Peter’s
28 85 percent of all revenues and brought only modest ter-
massive changes. For nobles, one of Peter’s most detested
29 ritorial expansion. Yet the Great Northern War with Swe-
reforms was the imposition of unigeniture—inheritance of
30 den was crowned in the end by Russian victory. Peter’s
land by one son alone—cutting daughters and other sons
31 new war machine crushed the smaller army of Sweden in
from family property. For peasants, the reign of the reform-
32 Ukraine at Poltava in 1709, one of the most significant
ing tsar saw a significant increase in the bonds of serfdom.
33 battles in Russian history. The war dragged on until
The gulf between the enserfed peasantry and the educated
34 1721, but Sweden never regained the offensive. Estonia
nobility widened more, even though all were caught up in
35 and present-day Latvia (see Map 17.3) came under Rus-
the demands of the sovereign.
36 sian rule for the first time. Russia became the dominant
Thus Peter built on the service obligations of old Mus-
37 power on the Baltic Sea and very much a European Great
covy. His monarchical absolutism was truly the culmi-
38 Power. If victory or defeat is the ultimate historical crite-
nation of the long development of a unique Russian
39 rion, Peter’s reforms were a success.
civilization. Yet the creation of a more modern army and
40 There were other important consequences of Peter’s
state introduced much that was new and Western to Rus-
41 reign. Because of his feverish desire to use modern tech-
sia. This development paved the way for Russia to move
42 nology to strengthen the army, many Westerners and
somewhat closer to the European mainstream in its
43 Western ideas flowed into Russia for the first time. For
thought and institutions during the Enlightenment, es-
44 Peter, modernization meant westernization. He thus re-
pecially under Catherine the Great.
45 quired nobles to shave their heavy beards and wear West-
46 ern clothing, previously banned in Russia. He required
47 them to attend parties where young men and women
48 would mix together and freely choose their own spouses.
The Growth of St. Petersburg
49 He forced a warrior elite to accept administrative service Nothing exemplifies the scope of Peter’s reforms like his
50S as an honorable occupation. From these efforts a new creation of St. Petersburg. In 1700, when the Great
51R class of Western-oriented Russians began to emerge. Northern War began, the city did not exist; there was
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only a small Swedish fortress on one of the waterlogged army had to be Western and permanent. From such a 1
islands at the mouth of the Neva River, where it flows “window on Europe,” Peter believed, it would be easier to 2
into the Baltic Sea. In 1702 Peter the Great’s armies reform the country militarily and administratively. 3
seized this desolate outpost. Within a year the reforming These general political goals matched Peter’s architec- 4
tsar decided to build a new city there and to make it, tural ideas, which had been influenced by his travels in 5
rather than ancient Moscow, his capital. western Europe. First, Peter wanted a comfortable, 6
To secure the Baltic coast, military construction was “modern” city. Modernity meant broad, straight, stone- 7
the main concern for the next eight years. A mighty paved avenues; houses built in a uniform line and not 8
fortress was built on the newly named Peter Island, and a haphazardly set back from the street; large parks; canals 9
port and shipyards were built across the river on the for drainage; stone bridges; and street lighting. Second, 10
mainland as a Russian navy came into being. From the all buildings had to conform to detailed architectural reg- 11
inhospitable northern marshland Peter would create a fu- ulations set down by the government. Finally, each social 12
ture metropolis gloriously bearing his name. group—the nobility, the merchants, the artisans, and so 13
After the decisive Russian victory at Poltava in 1709 on—was to live in a certain section of town. In short, the 14
greatly reduced the threat of Swedish armies, Peter moved city and its population were to conform to a carefully de- 15
into high gear. In one imperious decree after another, he fined urban plan. 16
ordered his people to build a city equal to any in the world. Peter used the traditional methods of Russian autoc- 17
Such a city had to be Western and modern, just as Peter’s racy to build his modern capital. Its creation was just one 18
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St. Petersburg, ca 1760 Rastrelli’s remodeled Winter Palace, which housed the royal family until
the Russian Revolution of 1917, stands on the left along the Neva River. The Navy Office with its 49
famous golden spire and other government office buildings are nearby and across the river. Russia 50S
became a naval power and St. Petersburg a great port. (Michael Holford) 51R
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1 of the heavy obligations he dictatorially imposed on all of the empire as driven by an insatiable lust for warfare and
2 Russian society. The peasants bore the heaviest burdens. conquest. In their view the fall of Constantinople was a
3 Just as the government drafted peasants for the army, it catastrophe and the taking of the Balkans a despotic im-
4 also drafted twenty-five thousand to forty thousand men prisonment of those territories. The Ottoman Empire
5 each summer to labor in St. Petersburg for three months seemed the epitome of Eastern exoticism, religious fa-
6 without pay. Every ten to fifteen peasant households had naticism, and tyranny. From the perspective of the Ot-
7 to furnish one worker each summer and then pay a spe- tomans, the world looked very different. The siege of
8 cial tax in order to feed him in St. Petersburg. Constantinople liberated a glorious city from its long de-
9 Peasants hated this forced labor, and each year one- cline under the Byzantines. Rather than being a de-
10 fourth to one-third of those sent risked brutal punish- spoiled captive, the Balkans became a haven for refugees
11 ment to run away. Many peasant construction workers fleeing the growing intolerance of Western Christian
12 died from hunger, sickness, and accidents. Thus beautiful powers. The Ottoman Empire provided Jews, Muslims,
13 St. Petersburg was built by the shoveling, carting, and and even some Christians safety from the Inquisition and
14 paving of a mass of conscripted serfs. religious war: the Iberian powers tried to impose Chris-
15 Peter also drafted more privileged groups to his city. tianity through conversion or exile, but Islam and Judaism
16 Nobles were summarily ordered to build costly stone remained part of the conversation of post-Reformation
17 houses and palaces in St. Petersburg and to live in them Europe because of the presence of the Ottoman Empire
18 most of the year. The more serfs a noble possessed, the at Europe’s gate.
19 bigger his dwelling had to be. Merchants and artisans The Ottomans came out of Central Asia as conquering
20 were also commanded to settle and build in St. Peters- warriors, settled in Anatolia (present-day Turkey), and
21 burg. These nobles and merchants were then required to created one of history’s greatest empires (see pages 466
22 pay for the city’s avenues, parks, canals, embankments, and 566). At their peak in the mid-sixteenth century un-
23 and bridges, all of which were costly in money and lives der Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566),
24 because they were built on a swamp. The building of St. they ruled the most powerful empire in the world. Their
25 Petersburg was, in truth, an enormous direct tax levied
Apago PDF Enhancer possessions stretched from western Persia across North
26 on the wealthy, which in turn forced the peasantry to do Africa and into the heart of central Europe (see Map
27 most of the work. 17.4). In 1690 a Turkish visitor to Versailles wrote in his
28 By the time of Peter’s death in 1725, there were at travel diary: “The King of France is the Sultan Suleiman
29 least six thousand houses and numerous impressive gov- of our time.”
30 ernment buildings in St. Petersburg. The city blossomed Ottoman expansion borrowed from the peoples they
31 in the eighteenth century, at least in its wealthy show- conquered. They were heirs to the Byzantine Empire
32 piece sections. Peter’s youngest daughter, Elizabeth and, through it, of Rome and its vision of universal em-
33 (r. 1741–1762), named as her chief architect Bartolomeo pire. From the Byzantines, they adopted the tax structure
34 Rastrelli, who came to Russia from Italy as a boy of fif- and the use of religion to bind together a diverse empire.
35 teen in 1715. Combining Italian and Russian traditions From the Persians, the Ottomans borrowed political and
36 into a unique, wildly colorful St. Petersburg style, Ras- financial practices, and from the Arabs, religion and spir-
37 trelli built many palaces for the nobility and all the larger ituality. This openness and adaptability—missing from
38 government buildings erected during Elizabeth’s reign. most Western accounts of the Ottomans—was largely re-
39 He also rebuilt the Winter Palace as an enormous, aqua- sponsible for the empire’s longevity.
40 colored royal residence, now the Hermitage Museum. When the Ottomans captured Constantinople in
41 All the while St. Petersburg grew rapidly, and its almost 1453, they fulfilled a long-held Islamic dream. They also
42 three hundred thousand inhabitants in 1782 made it one shattered a bulwark of Christian identity. Founded by the
43 of the world’s largest cities. Peter and his successors cre- emperor who introduced the Christian church to mighty
44 ated a magnificent royal city from nothing, which unmis- Rome, for a millennium Constantinople had stood as a
45 takably proclaimed the power of Russia’s rulers and the symbol of Christianity and its links to imperial power.
46 creative potential of the absolutist state. Though the Byzantine Empire gradually shrank, the city
47 itself had withstood numerous sieges. The loss of Con-
48 stantinople was not just symbolic but strategic as well.
49
The Growth of the Ottoman Empire The city stands at the natural gateway between the Black
50S Most Christian Europeans perceived the Ottomans as the and Mediterranean Seas, between Europe and the
51R antithesis of their own values and traditions and viewed Balkans. With the capture of Constantinople—renamed
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BOHEMIA C Dn
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RUSSIA
A
HOLY ROMAN Y 2
RP
Vienna AR Vo
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EMPIRE HU KHANATE OF
ga
AUSTRIA Don 3
HI
ALPS OF
Pest
AN
THE CRIMEA
M Buda TRANSYLVANIA MOLDAVIA YEDISAN
O 4
MT
Venice TURKISH
D
HUNGARY
NG
S.
Mohács 5
KI
Karlowitz
WALLACHIA
BOSNIA
Belgrade
Bucharest CIRCASSIA 6
SERBIA Danube
Corsica BULGARIA
7
Sofia Black Sea Ca sp i a n
Rome RAGUSA MONTENEGRO CA
UC
8
ASU Sea
Sardinia Constantinople SM
TS
9
NAPLES RUMELIA (Istanbul) GEORGIA .
ARMENIA 10
Preveze
Brusa Angora 11
KURDISTAN 12
L an
Sicily Ionian Lepanto Smyrna ANATOLIA
Tunis
ds d
Sea 13
Teheran
is p u
KARAMAN Adana 14
M Aleppo
ted
ed Crete 15
wit
ite Cyprus SYRIA
rra
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nean MESOPOTAMIA 16
ers
PERSIA
Tripoli Sea 17
ia
Damascus Baghdad
SYRIAN T
18
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Alexandria
Jerusalem tes 19
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Cairo 21
Pe
LIBYAN si 22
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S A H A R A an
DESERT EGYPT G 23
ul
f 24
Ni
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0 250 500 Km. 26
Aswan 27
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28
dS
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ea
Mecca
Major battles 30
Ottoman state, ca 1300 31
Ottoman Empire under Suleiman, 1566 32
Tributary states of the sultan, 1566 33
34
MAP 17.4 The Ottoman Empire at Its Height, 1566 The Ottomans, like their great rivals the Habs- 35
burgs, rose to rule a vast dynastic empire encompassing many different peoples and ethnic groups. The army 36
and the bureaucracy served to unite the disparate territories into a single state under an absolutist ruler.
37
38
Istanbul—the Ottomans and Islam occupied a perma- ethnic groups living in southeastern Europe and the east- 39
nent place in the European landscape. By 1600 Istanbul ern Mediterranean. In 1529 their European expansion 40
was one of the largest cities in the world, with a popula- was halted with a failed siege of the Habsburg capital, Vi- 41
tion of seven hundred thousand. enna. The Ottoman loss at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, 42
Ottoman expansion continued to the south as well. against the Christian Holy League, confirmed the limits 43
The Ottomans first conquered Syria and Iraq, and in of their ambitions in Europe. 44
1517 Sultan Selim I (r. 1512–1520) invaded the Egyp- The Ottoman Empire was originally built on a unique 45
tian Mameluke empire and quickly captured Egypt, model of state and society. There was an almost complete 46
North Africa, and the Arabian peninsula. His successor, absence of private landed property. Agricultural land was 47
Suleiman the Magnificent, turned north, capturing the personal hereditary property of the sultan, and peas- 48
Bosnia, Croatia, Romania, Ukraine, and part of Hungary ants paid taxes to use the land. There was therefore no 49
at the Battle of Mohács in 1526. For the next hundred security of landholding and no hereditary nobility, two 50S
and fifty years, the Ottomans ruled the many different key features of western European society. 51R
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1 The Ottomans also employed a distinctive form of gov-

2 ernment administration. The top ranks of the bureaucracy
3 were staffed by the sultan’s slave corps. Because Muslim
4 law prohibited enslaving other Muslims, the sultan’s
5 agents purchased slaves along the borders of the empire.
6 Within the realm, the sultan levied a “tax” of one thou-
7 sand to three thousand male children on the conquered
8 Christian populations in the Balkans every year. Young
9 slaves were raised in Turkey as Muslims and were trained
10 to fight and to administer. The most talented rose to the
11 top of the bureaucracy, where they might acquire wealth
12 and power; the less fortunate formed the brave and skill-
13 ful core of the sultan’s army, the janissary corps. Lurid ac-
14 counts of weeping Christian boys being carried off into
15 Ottoman slavery did much to foster the idea of the brutal,
16 fanatical Turk in the European mind.
17 After 1453 Istanbul became the capital of the empire
18 and, with the transfer of the caliphate from Cairo, the re-
19 ligious center of Sunni Islam. The “old palace” was for
20 the sultan’s female family members, who lived in isolation
21 under the care of eunuchs. The newly constructed Top-
22 kapi Palace was where officials worked and young slaves
23 trained for future administrative or military careers. To
24 prevent wives from bringing foreign influence into gov-
25 ernment—a constant concern in the West—sultans pro-
Apago PDFThe Enhancer
Sultan’s Harem at Topkapi Palace, Istanbul Sul-
26 created only with their concubines and not with official
tan Suleiman I created separate quarters at the Topkapi Palace
27 wives. They also adopted a policy of allowing each concu- for his wife Hürrem and her ladies-in-waiting. His successors
28 bine to produce only one male heir. At a young age, each transferred all of their wives, concubines, and female family
29 son went to govern a province of the empire under his members to the harem at Topkapi, carefully situated out of
sight of the staterooms and courtyards where public affairs
30 mother’s supervision. These practices were intended to took place. The harem was the object of intense curiosity and
31 stabilize power and prevent a recurrence of the civil wars fascination in the West. (Vanni/Art Resource, NY)
32 of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.
33 Sultan Suleiman undid these policies when he boldly
34 married his concubine and had several children with her. enteenth century as the janissaries formed alliances with
35 He established a wing in the Topkapi Palace for his own court factions that resulted in the overthrow or execu-
36 female family members and his brothers’ families. Start- tion of several Ottoman sultans.
37 ing with Suleiman, imperial wives began to take on more In the late seventeenth century the Ottomans suc-
38 power. Marriages were arranged between sultans’ daugh- ceeded in marshaling their forces for one last attack on
39 ters and high-ranking servants, creating powerful new the Habsburgs, and a huge Turkish army laid siege to Vi-
40 members of the imperial household. Over time, the sul- enna in 1683. After holding out against great odds for
41 tan’s exclusive authority waned in favor of a more bu- two months, the city was relieved at the last minute by
42 reaucratic administration. These changes brought the reinforcements, and the Ottomans were forced to re-
43 Ottoman court closer to the European model of faction- treat. Soon the retreat became a rout. As Russian and
44 alism, intrigue, and informal female power. (See the fea- Venetian allies attacked on other fronts, the Habsburgs
45 ture “Individuals in Society: Hürrem.”) conquered almost all of Hungary and Transylvania by
46 In this period the Ottoman Empire experienced the 1699 (see Map 17.4). The Habsburgs completed their
47 same economic and social crises that affected the rest victory in 1718, with the Treaty of Passarowitz. These
48 of Europe. In the 1580s and 1590s rebellions broke out defeats might have led to reform of Ottoman political,
49 among many different groups in the vast empire: frus- military, and economic structures. They did not, and the
50S trated students, underpaid janissaries, and ambitious empire’s strength slowly eroded and with it Western fears
51R provincial governors. Revolts continued during the sev- of the Ottoman threat.
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Individuals in
Society
Hürrem privileged diplomatic
status. She brought a
particularly feminine
I n Muslim culture harem means a sacred place or a sanc- touch to diplomatic
tuary, which is forbidden to profane outsiders. The term relations, sending the
was applied to the part of the household occupied by Persian shah and the
women and children and forbidden to men outside the Polish king personally
family. The most famous member of the Ottoman sultan’s embroidered articles.
harem was Hürrem, wife of Suleiman the Magnificent. Hürrem used her
Hürrem (1505?–1558) came to the harem as a slave- enormous pension to
concubine. Like many of the sultan’s concubines, Hürrem contribute a mosque,
was of foreign birth. Tradition holds that she was born two schools, a hospi-
Aleksandra Lisowska in what was the kingdom of Poland tal, a fountain, and Hürrem and her ladies in the
and today is Ukraine. She was captured during a Tatar two public baths to harem.
raid and enslaved. Between 1517 and 1520, when she was Istanbul. In Jerusalem, (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
about fifteen years old, she entered the imperial harem. Mecca, and Istanbul,
Venetian reports insist that she was not outstandingly she provided soup kitchens and hospices for pilgrims
beautiful but was possessed of wonderful grace, charm, and the poor. She died in 1558, eight years before her
and good humor. These qualities gained her the Turkish husband. Her son Selim II (r. 1566–1574) inherited the
nickname Hürrem, or “joyful one.” After her arrival in throne.
the harem, Hürrem quickly became the imperial favorite. Drawing from reports of contemporary Western ob-
Suleiman’s love for Hürrem led him to break all prece- servers, historians depicted Hürrem as a manipulative and
dents for the role of a concubine, including the rule that power-hungry social climber. They saw her career as the
Apago PDF Enhancer
concubines must cease having children once they give beginning of a “sultanate of women” in which strong im-
birth to a male heir. By 1531 Hürrem had given birth to perial leadership gave way to court intrigue and dissipa-
one daughter and five sons. In 1533 or 1534 Suleiman tion. More recent historians have emphasized the
entered formal marriage with his consort—an unprece- intelligence and courage Hürrem demonstrated in navigat-
dented honor for a concubine. He reportedly gave his ing the ruthlessly competitive world of the harem.
exclusive attention to his wife and also defied convention Hürrem’s journey from Ukrainian maiden to harem
by allowing Hürrem to remain in the palace throughout slave girl to sultan’s wife captured enormous public atten-
her life instead of accompanying her son to a provincial tion. She is the subject of numerous paintings, plays, and
governorship as other concubines had done. novels as well as of an opera, a ballet, and a symphony by
Contemporaries were shocked by Hürrem’s influence the composer Haydn. Interest in and suspicion of Hürrem
over the sultan and resentful of the apparent role she continues. In 2003 a Turkish miniseries once more depicted
played in politics and diplomacy. The Venetian ambassa- her as a scheming intriguer.
dor Bassano wrote that “the Janissaries and the entire
court hate her and her children likewise, but because the Questions for Analysis
Sultan loves her, no one dares to speak.”* She was sus-
pected of using witchcraft to control the sultan and ac- 1. Compare Hürrem to other powerful early modern
cused of ordering the death of the sultan’s first-born son women such as Isabella of Castile, Elizabeth I of
(with another mother) in 1553. These stories were based England, and Catherine de’ Medici of France.
on court gossip and rumor. The correspondence between 2. What can an exceptional woman like Hürrem reveal
Suleiman and Hürrem, unavailable until the nineteenth about the broader political and social world in which
century, along with Suleiman’s own diaries, confirms her she lived?
status as the sultan’s most trusted confidant and adviser. *Cited in Galina Yermolenko, “Roxolana: The Greatest Empresse of
During his frequent absences, the pair exchanged passion- the East,” in The Muslim World 95 (2005): 2.
ate love letters. Hürrem included information about the
Source: Leslie P. Pierce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty
political situation and warnings about any potential upris-
in the Ottoman Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
ings. She also intervened in affairs between the empire and
her former home. She wrote to Polish king Sigismund
Augustus and seems to have helped Poland attain its Improve Your Grade
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1 Religious Diversity in manufacturers and financiers, and Greeks as mariners and

2 shipowners, although all three groups participated in all
3 the Ottoman Empire Ottoman occupations in the sixteenth and seventeenth
4 Despite Western perceptions, the Ottomans were more centuries.7 Religious diversity was mostly a source of
5 tolerant of religious differences than were the Europeans. strength for the Ottomans, allowing them to integrate
6 They recognized Christians and Jews as “peoples of the many different ethnicities into the empire and to profit
7 Book” who followed the same biblical tradition as Islam. from the skills and networks of each group.
8 Building on the practices of the great Middle Eastern Despite its tolerance, the Ottoman Empire was an ex-
9 empires, the Ottomans divided their subjects into reli- plicitly Islamic state. Members of the Muslim religious
10 gious communities, and each millet, or “nation,” enjoyed elite were educated at religious schools (medreses) at-
11 autonomous self-government under its religious leaders. tached to mosques. Muftis supervised mosques and reli-
12 (The Ottoman Empire recognized Orthodox Christians, gious schools and wrote interpretations of Islamic law, and
13 Jews, Armenian Christians, and Muslims as distinct mil- state-appointed kadis administered the law. Whereas non-
14 lets.) The millet system created a powerful bond between Muslims had their own courts for dealings among them-
15 the Ottoman ruling class and the different religious lead- selves, any conflict involving a Muslim was regulated by a
16 ers, who supported the sultan’s rule in return for exten- kadi in an Islamic court. Wariness of the Islamic courts en-
17 sive authority over their own communities. Each millet couraged non-Muslims to deal with their own as much as
18 collected taxes for the state, regulated group behavior, possible. However, the Ottomans showed the same open-
19 and maintained law courts, schools, synagogues, and hos- ness in law as in empire building. They adopted the most
20 pitals for its people. Individuals outside the ruling elite flexible of Muslim law traditions, and they accepted
21 had status only through their millet membership. provincial law codes that respected pre-existing local
22 Supported and reassured by religious toleration and laws. Under Suleiman the Magnificent and his successors,
23 cultural autonomy, non-Muslim minorities coexisted and a process of legal centralization began; provincial laws
24 commingled with the Muslim majority. Greek, Jewish, were codified and standardized. The sultan’s claim to be
and Armenian merchants moved easily to and from Eu- caliph—the guide for the community of all Muslims—
26 rope, drawing Ottomans and Europeans closer together helped legitimize this process of legal centralization. The
27 despite recurring war and conflict. Armenian merchants legal reforms won Suleiman the title “the Lawgiver” from
28 excelled as international silk merchants, Jews as textile his subjects.
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38 the Middle Ages, peasants and townspeople lost freedom
39 • What social and economic changes affected central and fell under the economic, social, and legal authority of
40 and eastern Europe from 1400 to 1650? the nobles, who increased their power and prestige.
41 • How and why did the rulers of Austria and Prussia, Within this framework of resurgent serfdom and en-
42 each in different political and social environments, trenched nobility, Austrian and Prussian monarchs fash-
43 manage to build powerful absolute monarchies that ioned absolutist states in the seventeenth and early
44 proved more durable than that of Louis XIV? eighteenth centuries. These monarchs won absolutist
45 • What were the distinctive features of Russian and control over standing armies, taxation, and representa-
46 Ottoman absolutism in this period? tive bodies, but they did not question underlying social
47 and economic relationships. Indeed, they enhanced the
48 privileges of the nobles, who filled enlarged armies and
49 From about 1400 to 1650 social and economic develop- growing state bureaucracies. In exchange for entrenched
50S ments in eastern Europe diverged from those in western privileges over their peasants, nobles thus cooperated
51R Europe. In the East, after enjoying relative freedom in with the growth of state power.
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In Russia the social and economic trends were similar, reign of Peter the Great and his opening of Russia to 1
but the timing of political absolutism was different. the West. 2
Mongol conquest and rule were a crucial experience, and 3
Ingrao, Charles W. The Habsburg Monarchy, 1618–1815,
a harsh indigenous tsarist autocracy was firmly in place by 4
2d ed. 2000. An excellent synthesis of the political and
the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century. 5
social development of the Habsburg empire in the early
More than a century later Peter the Great succeeded in 6
modern period.
modernizing Russia’s traditional absolutism by reform- 7
ing the army and the bureaucracy. Farther to the east, the Kappeler, Adreas. The Russian Empire: Ethnicity and Na- 8
Ottoman sultans developed a distinctive political and tionalism. 2001. Explains the rise of a multiethnic em- 9
economic system in which all land theoretically belonged pire in Russia from the seventeenth century on. 10
to the sultan, who was served by a slave corps of admin- Kollmann, N. Shields. By Honor Bound: State and Society 11
istrators and soldiers. The Ottoman Empire was rela- in Early Modern Russia. 1999. An excellent study of pol- 12
tively tolerant on religious matters and served as a haven itics and values among the Russian elite. 13
for Jews and other marginalized religious groups. 14
Lincoln, W. Bruce. Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and
Triumphant absolutism interacted spectacularly with 15
the Rise of Modern Russia. 2001. Captures the spirit of
the arts. Central and eastern European rulers built grandi- 16
Peter the Great’s new northern capital.
ose palaces, and even whole cities, like St. Petersburg, to 17
glorify their power and majesty. McKay, Derek. The Great Elector: Frederick William of 18
Brandenburg-Prussia. 2001. Examines the formative 19
years of Prussian power. 20
Key Terms Murphey, Rhoads. Ottoman Warfare, 1500–1700. 1999. A 21
good introduction to Ottoman military history, includ- 22
serfdom Junkers 23
ing warfare between the Ottomans and European states.
hereditary subjugation Mongol Yoke 24
Protestant Union tsar Ogilvie, Sheilagh, and Bob Scribner, eds. Germany: A New
Peace of Westphalia boyars Economic and Social History, 1450–1800, 2 vols. 1996. A
26
absolutism service nobility broad overview of life in central Europe in the early
27
Bohemian Estates Cossacks modern period.
28
Battle of Mohács sultan Parker, Geoffrey. The Thirty Years War, 2d ed. 1997. The 29
Pragmatic Sanction millet system standard account of the Thirty Years’ War. 30
elector of Brandenburg 31
Quataert, Donald. The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922. 2000.
A recent synthesis of Ottoman history by a leading 32
Improve Your Grade Flashcards historian. 33
34
Riasanovsky, Nicholas V., and Mark Steinberg. A History
35
of Russia to 1855. 2004. An excellent starting place for
Suggested Reading students interested in Russian history. 36
Bushkovitch, Paul. Peter the Great: The Struggle for Power, 37
1671–1725. 2001. An outstanding biography of the Rus- 38
sian tsar. Notes 39
1. H. Kamen, “The Economic and Social Consequences of the Thirty 40
Engel, Barbara A. Women in Russia, 1700–2000. 2004. An Years’ War,” Past and Present 39 (April 1968): 44–61. 41
excellent account of the role of women in Russian soci- 2. Quoted in F. L. Carsten, The Origins of Prussia (Oxford: Claren- 42
ety over three centuries. don Press, 1954), p. 175.
43
3. H. Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy, and Autocracy: The Pruss-
Goffman, Daniel. The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern ian Experience, 1660–1815 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), p. 38. 44
Europe. 2002. An original and valuable study of Ot- 4. Ibid., p. 43. 45
toman relations with the European world. 5. Quoted in R. A. Dorwart, The Administrative Reforms of Frederick 46
William I of Prussia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 47
Hagen, William W. Ordinary Prussians: Brandenburg Junk- 1953), p. 226.
ers and Villagers, 1500–1840. 2002. Provides a fascinat- 6. Quoted in Rosenberg, Bureaucracy, Aristocracy, and Autocracy,
48
ing encounter with the people of a Prussian estate. p. 40. 49
7. D. Goffman, The Ottoman Empire and Early Modern Europe (Cam- 50S
Hughes, Lindsey, ed. Peter the Great and the West: New bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 9–18, 83–91. 51R
Perspectives. 2001. Essays by leading scholars on the 52L
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A Foreign Traveler in Russia
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among people of every station, clergy and laity,
14 high and low, men and women, old and young,
15 eventeenth-century Russia remained a remote that when they are seen now and then lying
16 and mysterious land for western and even central about in the streets, wallowing in the mud, no
17 Europeans, who had few direct contacts with the attention is paid to it, as something habitual. If a
18 tsar’s dominion. Developing their ideas of refined cart driver comes upon such a drunken pig whom
society and gradual progress (see Chapter 18), he happens to know, he shoves him onto his cart
19
Westerners portrayed eastern Europe as more and drives him home, where he is paid his fare.
20 “barbaric” and less “civilized” than their No one ever refuses an opportunity to drink and
21 homelands. Thus they expanded eastern Europe’s to get drunk, at any time and in any place, and
22 undeniably harsher social and economic conditions usually it is done with vodka. . . .
23 to encompass a very debatable cultural and moral The Russians being naturally tough and born,
24 inferiority. as it were, for slavery, they must be kept under a
25 Knowledge of Russia came mainly from occasional
Apago PDF Enhancer harsh and strict yoke and must be driven to do
26 travelers who had visited Muscovy and sometimes their work with clubs and whips, which they
27 wrote accounts of what they saw. The most famous suffer without impatience, because such is their
28 of these accounts was by the German Adam Olearius station, and they are accustomed to it. Young and
29 (ca 1599–1671), who was sent to Moscow by the half-grown fellows sometimes come together on
duke of Holstein on three diplomatic missions in certain days and train themselves in fisticuffs, to
30
the 1630s. These missions ultimately proved accustom themselves to receiving blows, and,
31 unsuccessful, but they provided Olearius with a rich since habit is second nature, this makes blows
32 store of information for his Travels in Muscovy, from given as punishment easier to bear. Each and all,
33 which the following excerpts are taken. Published in they are slaves and serfs. . . .
34 German in 1647 and soon translated into several Because of slavery and their rough and hard
35 languages (but not Russian), Olearius’s unflattering life, the Russians accept war readily and are well
36 but well-informed study played a major role in suited to it. On certain occasions, if need be,
37 shaping European ideas about Russia. they reveal themselves as courageous and daring
38 soldiers. . . .
39 The government of the Russians is what political Although the Russians, especially the common
40 theorists call a “dominating and despotic populace, living as slaves under a harsh yoke, can
monarchy,” where the sovereign, that is, the tsar bear and endure a great deal out of love for their
41
or the grand prince who has obtained the crown masters, yet if the pressure is beyond measure,
42 by right of succession, rules the entire land alone, then it can be said of them: “Patience, often
43 and all the people are his subjects, and where the wounded, finally turned into fury.” A dangerous
44 nobles and princes no less than the common indignation results, turned not so much against
45 folk—townspeople and peasants—are his serfs their sovereign as against the lower authorities,
46 and slaves, whom he rules and treats as a master especially if the people have been much oppressed
47 treats his servants. . . . by them and by their supporters and have not
48 If the Russians be considered in respect to their been protected by the higher authorities. And
49 character, customs, and way of life, they are justly once they are aroused and enraged, it is not easy
50S to be counted among the barbarians. . . . The vice to appease them. Then, disregarding all dangers
51R of drunkenness is so common in this nation, that may ensue, they resort to every kind of
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The brutality of serfdom is

shown in this illustration from
Olearius’s Travels in Muscovy.
(University of Illinois Library,
Champaign)
violence and behave like

madmen. . . . They own little;
most of them have no feather
beds; they lie on cushions,
straw, mats, or their clothes; they sleep on In the Kremlin and in the city there are a
benches and, in winter, like the non-Germans great many churches, chapels, and monasteries,
[natives] in Livonia, upon the oven, which serves both within and without the city walls, over
them for cooking and is flat on the top; here two thousand in all. This is so because every
husband, wife, children, servants, and maids nobleman who has some fortune has a chapel
huddle together. In some houses in the built for himself, and most of them are of stone.
countryside we saw chickens and pigs under the The stone churches are round and vaulted
benches and the ovens. . . . Russians are not used inside. . . . They allow neither organs nor any
to delicate food and dainties; their daily food other musical instruments in their churches,
consists of porridge, turnips, cabbage, and saying: Instruments that have neither souls nor
cucumbers, fresh and pickled, and in Moscow life cannot praise God. . . .
mostly of big salt fish which stink badly, because In their churches there hang many bells,
of the thrifty use of salt, yet are eaten with sometimes five or six, the largest not over two
relish. . . .
Apago PDF Enhancer
hundredweights. They ring these bells to summon
The Russians can endure extreme heat. In the people to church, and also when the priest during
bathhouse they stretch out on benches and let mass raises the chalice. In Moscow, because of the
themselves be beaten and rubbed with bunches multitude of churches and chapels, there are
of birch twigs and wisps of bast (which I could several thousand bells, which during the divine
not stand); and when they are hot and red all service create such a clang and din that one
over and so exhausted that they can bear it no unaccustomed to it listens in amazement.
longer in the bathhouse, men and women rush
outdoors naked and pour cold water over their
bodies; in winter they even wallow in the snow Questions for Analysis
and rub their skin with it as if it were soap; then
they go back into the hot bathhouse. And since 1. In what ways were all social groups in Russia
bathhouses are usually near rivers and brooks, similar, according to Olearius?
they can throw themselves straight from the hot 2. How did Olearius characterize the Russians in
into the cold bath. . . . general? What supporting evidence did he offer
Generally noble families, even the small for his judgment?
nobility, rear their daughters in secluded
3. Does Olearius’s account help explain Stenka
chambers, keeping them hidden from outsiders;
Razin’s rebellion? In what ways?
and a bridegroom is not allowed to have a look
at his bride until he receives her in the bridal 4. On the basis of these representative passages,
chamber. Therefore some happen to be deceived, why do you think Olearius’s book was so
being given a misshapen and sickly one instead of popular and influential in central and western
a fair one, and sometimes a kinswoman or even a Europe?
maidservant instead of a daughter; of which there Source: G. Vernadsky and R. T. Fisher, Jr., eds., A Source
have been examples even among the highborn. Book for Russian History from Early Times to 1917, vol. 1
No wonder therefore that often they live together (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), pp. 249–251.
like cats and dogs and that wife-beating is so Copyright © 1972 by Yale University Press. Reprinted by
common among Russians. . . . permission of Yale University Press.
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Voltaire, the renowned Enlightenment thinker, leans forward on the left to exchange ideas and
51R
witty conversation with Frederick the Great, king of Prussia. (Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/
52L Art Resource, NY)
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c h a p t e r 1
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Toward a New 3
4
Worldview, 5
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1540–1789 8
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10
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chapter preview 12
13
The Scientific Revolution
• What was revolutionary in new
attitudes toward the natural world?
T he intellectual developments of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies created the modern worldview that the West continues to
hold—and debate—to this day. In the seventeenth century fundamentally
14
15
16
17
The Enlightenment new ways of understanding the natural world emerged. Those leading the
18
changes saw themselves as philosophers and referred to their field of study
• How did the new worldview affect 19
as “natural philosophy.” In the nineteenth century scholars hailed their
the way people thought about society 20
achievements as a “scientific revolution” that produced modern science
and human relations? 21
as we know it. The new “science” created in the seventeenth century en-
22
The Enlightenment tailed the search for precise knowledge of the physical world based on the
23
and Absolutism union of experimental observations with sophisticated mathematics.
24
• What impact did this new way Whereas medieval scholars looked to authoritative texts like the Bible or
25
of thinking have on political Apago PDF Enhancer
the classics, seventeenth-century natural philosophers performed experi-
26
developments and monarchical ments and relied on increasingly complex mathematical calculations. The
27
absolutism? resulting conception of the universe and its laws remained in force until
28
Einstein’s discoveries in the first half of the twentieth century.
29
In the eighteenth century philosophers extended the use of reason
30
from nature to human society. They sought to bring the light of reason
31
to bear on the darkness of prejudice, outmoded traditions, and igno-
32
rance. Self-proclaimed members of an “Enlightenment” movement, they
33
wished to bring the same progress to human affairs as their predecessors
34
had brought to the understanding of the natural world. While the scien-
35
tific revolution ushered in modern science, the Enlightenment created
36
concepts of human rights, equality, progress, universalism, and tolerance
37
that still guide Western societies today.
38
While many view the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment as
39
bedrocks of the achievement of Western civilization, others have seen a
40
darker side. For these critics, the mastery over nature permitted by the
41
scientific revolution threatens to overwhelm the earth’s fragile equilib-
42
rium, and the belief in the universal application of “reason” can lead to
43
arrogance and intolerance, particularly intolerance of other people’s spir-
44
itual values. Such vivid debates about the legacy of these intellectual and
45
cultural developments testify to their continuing importance in today’s
46
world.
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590 CHAPTER 18 • T O WA R D A N E W W O R L D V I E W, 1 5 4 0 – 1 7 8 9
1 the great Greek philosopher of the fourth century B.C.

2 The Scientific Revolution These ideas had gradually been recovered during the
3 Middle Ages. Medieval theologians such as Thomas
4 The emergence of modern science was a development of Aquinas brought Aristotelian philosophy into harmony
5 tremendous long-term significance. A noted historian with Christian doctrines. According to this revised Aris-
6 has even said that the scientific revolution of the late six- totelian view, a motionless earth was fixed at the center of
7 teenth and seventeenth centuries “outshines everything the universe. Around it moved ten separate transparent
8 since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance crystal spheres. In the first eight spheres were embedded,
9 and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere in- in turn, the moon, the sun, the five known planets, and
10 ternal displacements, within the system of medieval Chris- the fixed stars. Then followed two spheres added during
11 tendom.” The scientific revolution was “the real origin the Middle Ages to account for slight changes in the po-
12 both of the modern world and the modern mentality.”1 sitions of the stars over the centuries. Beyond the tenth
13 This statement is an exaggeration, but not much of one. sphere was Heaven, with the throne of God and the souls
14 Of all the great civilizations, only that of the West devel- of the saved. Angels kept the spheres moving in perfect
15 oped modern science. With the scientific revolution West- circles.
16 ern society began to acquire its most distinctive traits. Aristotle’s views, suitably revised by medieval philoso-
17 • What was revolutionary in new attitudes toward the phers, also dominated thinking about physics and mo-
18 natural world? tion on earth. Aristotle had distinguished sharply between
19 the world of the celestial spheres and that of the earth—
20 the sublunar world. The spheres consisted of a perfect,
21 incorruptible “quintessence,” or fifth essence. The sub-
22
Scientific Thought in 1500 lunar world, however, was made up of four imperfect,
23 Since developments in astronomy and physics were at the changeable elements. The “light” elements (air and fire)
24 heart of the scientific revolution, one must begin with naturally moved upward, while the “heavy” elements
25 the traditional European conception of the universe. It is
Apago PDF Enhancer (water and earth) naturally moved downward. These nat-
26 important to remember that the practitioners of the sci-
27 entific revolution did not consider their field science but
28 rather natural philosophy. Their intention was not to
29 create modern science but to ask fundamental questions
30 about the nature of the universe, its purpose, and how it
31 functioned. They did not set supernatural questions
32 aside, as do modern scientists, but incorporated
33 them in their speculations, which made reference
34 not only to Christian theology but often to
35 magic, alchemy, and astrology as well. The di-
36 viding line between matter and spirit, or reason
37 and faith, was much less rigid for participants
38 in the scientific revolution than it is for scien-
39 tists today.
40 In the early 1500s natural philosophy was
41 still based primarily on the ideas of Aristotle,
42
43
44
45 The Aristotelian Universe as Imagined in the
46 Sixteenth Century A round earth is at the center,
47 surrounded by spheres of water, air, and fire. Beyond this
48 small nucleus, the moon, the sun, and the five planets were
embedded in their own rotating crystal spheres, with the
49 stars sharing the surface of one enormous sphere. Beyond,
50S the heavens were composed of unchanging ether. (Image
51R Select/Art Resource, NY)
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The Scientific Revolution • 591
ural directions of motion did not always prevail, however, Chronology 1

for elements were often mixed together and could be af- 2
fected by an outside force such as a human being. Aristo- ca 1540–1690 Scientific revolution 3
tle and his followers also believed that a uniform force 4
moved an object at a constant speed and that the object 1543 Copernicus, On the Revolutions of the 5
would stop as soon as that force was removed. Heavenly Spheres 6
Aristotle’s ideas about astronomy and physics were ac- 1564–1642 Life of Galileo 7
cepted with minor revisions for two thousand years, and 8
with good reason. First, they offered an understandable, 1571–1630 Life of Kepler 9
commonsense explanation for what the eye actually saw. 1662 Royal Society of London founded 10
Second, Aristotle’s science as interpreted by Christian 11
theologians fit neatly with Christian doctrines. It estab- 1687 Newton, Principia and law of universal 12
gravitation
lished a home for God and a place for Christian souls. It 13
put human beings at the center of the universe and made 1690 Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding 14
them the critical link in a “great chain of being” that 15
ca 1690–1780 Enlightenment
stretched from the throne of God to the most lowly in- 16
sect on earth. Thus examination of the natural world was 1694–1778 Life of Voltaire 17
primarily a branch of theology, and it reinforced religious 18
1700–1789 Growth of book publishing
thought. 19
1720–1780 Rococo style in art and decoration 20
21
The Copernican Hypothesis ca 1740–1780 Salons led by elite women
22
The desire to explain and thereby glorify God’s handi- 1740–1786 Reign of Frederick the Great of Prussia 23
work led to the first great departure from the medieval 24
ca 1750–1790 Enlightened absolutists
system. This departure was the work of the Polish clergy-
man and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543).
1751–1765 Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopedia 26
As a young man Copernicus studied church law and as- 27
1762 Rousseau, The Social Contract
tronomy in various European universities. He saw how 28
professional astronomers still depended for their most ac- 1762–1796 Reign of Catherine the Great of Russia 29
curate calculations on the second century B.C. work of 30
1780–1790 Reign of Joseph II of Austria
Ptolemy. Author of a geographical synthesis that pro- 31
foundly influenced European voyages of exploration (see 32
page 494), Ptolemy was also a great astronomer. His 33
achievement had been to work out complicated rules to 34
explain the minor irregularities in the movement of the Yet Copernicus was a cautious man. Fearing the ridicule 35
planets. These rules enabled stargazers and astrologers to of other astronomers, he did not publish his On the Rev- 36
track the planets with greater precision. Many people olutions of the Heavenly Spheres until 1543, the year of 37
then (and now) believed that the changing relationships his death. 38
between planets and stars influenced events on earth. The Copernican hypothesis had enormous scientific 39
The young Copernicus was uninterested in astrology and religious implications, many of which the conserva- 40
and felt that Ptolemy’s cumbersome and occasionally in- tive Copernicus did not anticipate. First, it put the stars 41
accurate rules detracted from the majesty of a perfect at rest, their apparent nightly movement simply a result 42
Creator. He preferred an old Greek idea being discussed of the earth’s rotation. Thus it destroyed the main reason 43
in Renaissance Italy: that the sun, rather than the earth, for believing in crystal spheres capable of moving the 44
was at the center of the universe. Finishing his university stars around the earth. Second, Copernicus’s theory sug- 45
studies and returning to a church position in East Prus- gested a universe of staggering size. If in the course of a 46
sia, Copernicus worked on his hypothesis from 1506 to year the earth moved around the sun and yet the stars ap- 47
1530. Never questioning the Aristotelian belief in crys- peared to remain in the same place, then the universe was 48
tal spheres or the idea that circular motion was most per- unthinkably large. Finally, by characterizing the earth as 49
fect and divine, Copernicus theorized that the stars and just another planet, Copernicus destroyed the basic idea 50S
planets, including the earth, revolved around a fixed sun. of Aristotelian physics—that the earthly world was quite 51R
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1 different from the heavenly one. Where, then, was the believed that all the planets revolved around the sun and
2 realm of perfection? Where were Heaven and the throne that the entire group of sun and planets revolved in turn
3 of God? around the earth-moon system.
4 It was left to Brahe’s brilliant young assistant, Jo-
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5 hannes Kepler (1571–1630), to go much further. Kepler
Primary Source: Commentariolus: Copernicus Outlines
6 was a medieval figure in many ways. Coming from a mi-
His Thesis
7 nor German noble family and trained for the Lutheran
8 The Copernican hypothesis brought sharp attacks from ministry, he long believed that the universe was built on
9 religious leaders, especially Protestants. Martin Luther mystical mathematical relationships and a musical har-
10 spoke of him as the “new astrologer who wants to prove mony of the heavenly bodies. Working and reworking
11 that the earth moves and goes round. . . . The fool wants Brahe’s mountain of observations in a staggering effort
12 to turn the whole art of astronomy upside down.” after the Dane’s death, this brilliant mathematician even-
13 Luther noted that “as the Holy Scripture tells us, so did tually went beyond mystical intuitions.
14 Joshua bid the sun stand still and not the earth.” 2 John Kepler formulated three famous laws of planetary mo-
15 Calvin also condemned Copernicus. Catholic reaction tion. First, building on Copernican theory, he demon-
16 was milder at first. The Catholic Church had never held strated in 1609 that the orbits of the planets around the
17 to literal interpretations of the Bible, and not until 1616 sun are elliptical rather than circular. Second, he demon-
18 did it officially declare the Copernican hypothesis false. strated that the planets do not move at a uniform speed
19 This slow reaction also reflected the slow progress of in their orbits. Third, in 1619 he showed that the time a
20 Copernicus’s theory for many years. Other events were planet takes to make its complete orbit is precisely related
21 almost as influential in creating doubts about traditional to its distance from the sun. Kepler’s contribution was
22 astronomical ideas. In 1572 a new star appeared and monumental. Whereas Copernicus had speculated, Kepler
23 shone very brightly for almost two years. The new star, proved mathematically the precise relations of a sun-
24 which was actually a distant exploding star, made an centered (solar) system. His work demolished the old sys-
25 enormous impression on people. It seemed to contradict
Apago PDF Enhancer tem of Aristotle and Ptolemy, and in his third law he came
26 the idea that the heavenly spheres were unchanging and close to formulating the idea of universal gravitation.
27 therefore perfect. In 1577 a new comet suddenly moved While Kepler was unraveling planetary motion, a young
28 through the sky, cutting a straight path across the sup- Florentine named Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was chal-
29 posedly impenetrable crystal spheres. It was time, as a lenging all the old ideas about motion. Like so many early
30 typical scientific writer put it, for “the radical renovation scientists, Galileo was a poor nobleman first marked for
31 of astronomy.”3 a religious career. However, he soon became fascinated
32 by mathematics. A brilliant student, in 1589 Galileo be-
33 came a professor of mathematics at age twenty-five. He
34
From Brahe to Galileo proceeded to examine motion and mechanics in a new
35 One astronomer who agreed was Tycho Brahe (1546– way. Indeed, his great achievement was the elaboration
36 1601). Born into a prominent Danish noble family, Brahe and consolidation of the experimental method. That is,
37 was tremendously impressed by a partial eclipse of the rather than speculate about what might or should hap-
38 sun at an early age. Completing his studies abroad and pen, Galileo conducted controlled experiments to find
39 returning to Denmark, he established himself as Europe’s out what actually did happen. In his famous acceleration
40 leading astronomer with his detailed observations of the experiment, he showed that a uniform force—in this
41 new star of 1572. Aided by generous grants from the case, gravity—produced a uniform acceleration. Here is
42 king of Denmark, Brahe built the most sophisticated ob- how Galileo described his pathbreaking method and con-
43 servatory of his day. For twenty years he meticulously ob- clusion in his Two New Sciences:
44 served the stars and planets with the naked eye. An
45 imposing man who had lost a piece of his nose in a duel A piece of wooden moulding . . . was taken; on its edge was
46 and replaced it with a special bridge of gold and silver al- cut a channel a little more than one finger in breadth. Hav-
47 loy, a noble who exploited his peasants arrogantly and ing made this groove very straight, smooth and polished,
48 approached the heavens humbly, Brahe contributed a and having lined it with parchment, also as smooth and pol-
49 great mass of data. His limited understanding of mathe- ished as possible, we rolled along it a hard, smooth and very
50S matics prevented him, however, from making much round bronze ball. . . . Noting . . . the time required to make
51R sense out of his data. Part Ptolemaic, part Copernican, he the descent . . . we now rolled the ball only one-quarter the
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length of the channel; and having measured the time of its I feel sure that the moon is not perfectly smooth, free from 1
descent, we found it precisely one-half of the former. . . . In inequalities, and exactly spherical, as a large school of 2
such experiments [over many distances], repeated a full philosophers considers with regard to the moon and the 3
hundred times, we always found that the spaces traversed other heavenly bodies. On the contrary, it is full of inequali- 4
were to each other as the squares of the times, and that this ties, uneven, full of hollows and protuberances, just like the 5
was true for all inclinations of the plane.4 surface of the earth itself, which is varied. . . . The next ob- 6
ject which I have observed is the essence or substance of 7
With this and other experiments, Galileo formulated the
the Milky Way. By the aid of a telescope anyone may behold 8
law of inertia. Rest was not the natural state of objects.
this in a manner which so distinctly appeals to the senses 9
Rather, an object continues in motion forever unless
that all the disputes which have tormented philosophers 10
stopped by some external force. Aristotelian physics was
through so many ages are exploded by the irrefutable evi- 11
in shambles.
dence of our eyes, and we are freed from wordy disputes 12
In the tradition of Brahe, Galileo also applied the ex-
upon the subject. For the galaxy is nothing else but a mass of 13
perimental method to astronomy. On hearing details
innumerable stars planted together in clusters.5 14
about the invention of the telescope in Holland, Galileo
15
made one for himself and trained it on the heavens. He Reading these famous lines, one feels a crucial corner
16
quickly discovered the first four moons of Jupiter, which in Western civilization being turned. The traditional reli-
17
clearly suggested that Jupiter could not possibly be em- gious worldview, which rested on determining and ac-
18
bedded in any impenetrable crystal sphere. This discov- cepting the proper established authority, was beginning
19
ery provided new evidence for the Copernican theory, to give way to a new method. This new method of learn-
20
in which Galileo already believed. Galileo then pointed ing and investigating was the greatest accomplishment
21
his telescope at the moon. He wrote in 1610 in Siderus of the entire scientific revolution, for it proved capable of
22
Nuncius: great extension. A historian investigating documents of
23
24
Galileo’s Paintings of the 26
Moon When Galileo published 27
the results of his telescopic obser-
vations of the moon, he added 28
these paintings to illustrate the 29
marvels he had seen. Galileo made 30
two telescopes, which are shown 31
here. The larger one magnifies 32
fourteen times, the smaller one
twenty times. (Biblioteca Nazionale 33
Centrale, Florence/Art Resource, NY; 34
Museum of Science, Florence/Art 35
Resource, NY) 36
37
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1 the past, for example, is not so different from a Galileo

2 studying stars and rolling balls.
3 Galileo was employed in Florence by the Medici grand
4 dukes of Tuscany, and his work eventually aroused the ire
5 of some theologians. The issue was presented in 1624 to
6 Pope Urban VIII, who permitted Galileo to write about
7 different possible systems of the world as long as he did
8 not presume to judge which one actually existed. After
9 the publication in Italian of his widely read Dialogue on
10 the Two Chief Systems of the World in 1632, which openly
11 lampooned the traditional views of Aristotle and Ptolemy
12 and defended those of Copernicus, Galileo was tried for
13 heresy by the papal Inquisition. Imprisoned and threat-
14 ened with torture, the aging Galileo recanted, “renounc-
15 ing and cursing” his Copernican errors.
16
17
18
Newton’s Synthesis
19 The accomplishments of Kepler, Galileo, and other sci-
20 entists had taken effect by about 1640. The old astron-
21 omy and physics were in ruins, and several fundamental
22 breakthroughs had been made. The new findings had
23 not, however, been fused together in a new synthesis, a
24 single explanatory system that would comprehend mo-
25 tion both on earth and in the skies. That synthesis, which
Apago PDF Enhancer
26 prevailed until the twentieth century, was the work of
27 Isaac Newton (1642–1727). Isaac Newton This portrait suggests the depth and com-
plexity of the great genius. Is the powerful mind behind those
28 Newton was born into lower English gentry and at- piercing eyes thinking of science or of religion, or perhaps of
29 tended Cambridge University. A genius who spectacularly both? (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
30 united the experimental and theoretical-mathematical
31 sides of modern science, Newton was also fascinated by
32 alchemy. He sought the elixir of life and a way to change
In the preceding books I have laid down the principles of
33 base metals into gold and silver. Newton was also in-
philosophy [that is, science]. . . . These principles are the
34 tensely religious. He was far from being the perfect ratio-
laws of certain motions, and powers or forces, which chiefly
35 nalist so endlessly eulogized by writers in the eighteenth
have respect to philosophy. . . . It remains that from the same
36 and nineteenth centuries.
principles I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the
37 Of his intellectual genius and incredible powers of
World.
38 concentration there can be no doubt. Arriving at some
39 of his most basic ideas about physics in 1666 at age Newton made good his grandiose claim. His towering
40 twenty-four, but unable to prove these theories mathe- accomplishment was to integrate in a single explanatory
41 matically, he attained a professorship and studied optics system the astronomy of Copernicus, as corrected by
42 for many years. In 1684 Newton returned to physics for Kepler’s laws, with the physics of Galileo and his prede-
43 eighteen extraordinarily intensive months. For weeks on cessors. Newton did this by means of a set of mathemat-
44 end he seldom left his room except to read his lectures. ical laws that explain motion and mechanics. These laws of
45 His meals were sent up, but he usually forgot to eat dynamics are complex, and it took scientists and engineers
46 them, his mind fastened like a vise on the laws of the two hundred years to work out all their implications. Nev-
47 universe. He opened the third book of his immortal ertheless, the key feature of the Newtonian synthesis was
48 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, published the law of universal gravitation. According to this law,
49 in Latin in 1687 and generally known as the Principia, every body in the universe attracts every other body in the
50S with these lines: universe in a precise mathematical relationship, whereby
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the force of attraction is proportional to the quantity of perfect tables to help seamen find their latitude. This re- 1
matter of the objects and inversely proportional to the sulted in the first European navigation manual. Naviga- 2
square of the distance between them. The whole uni- tional problems were also critical in the development of 3
verse—from Kepler’s elliptical orbits to Galileo’s rolling many new scientific instruments, such as the telescope, 4
balls—was unified in one majestic system. barometer, thermometer, pendulum clock, microscope, 5
and air pump. Better instruments, which permitted more 6
accurate observations, often led to important new knowl- 7
Causes of the Scientific Revolution edge. Galileo with his telescope was by no means unique. 8
The scientific revolution drew on long-term developments Better instruments were part of a fourth factor in the 9
in European culture. The first was the development of scientific revolution: the development of better ways of 10
the medieval university. By the thirteenth century perma- obtaining knowledge about the world. Two important 11
nent universities with professors and large student bod- thinkers, Francis Bacon (1561–1626) and René Descartes 12
ies had been established in western Europe to train the (1596–1650), represented key aspects of this improve- 13
lawyers, doctors, and church leaders society required. By ment in scientific methodology. 14
1300 philosophy had taken its place alongside law, med- The English politician and writer Francis Bacon was 15
icine, and theology. Medieval philosophers developed a the greatest early propagandist for the new experimental 16
limited but real independence from theologians and a method. Rejecting the Aristotelian and medieval method 17
sense of free inquiry. They nobly pursued a body of of using speculative reasoning to build general theories, 18
knowledge and tried to arrange it meaningfully by means Bacon argued that new knowledge had to be pursued 19
of abstract theories. through empirical experimental research. The researcher 20
Within this framework what we now think of as science who wants to learn more about leaves or rocks should 21
was able to emerge as a minor but distinct branch of phi- not speculate about the subject but should rather col- 22
losophy. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries leading lect a multitude of specimens and then compare and an- 23
universities established new professorships of mathemat- alyze them, he said. General principles will then emerge. 24
ics, astronomy, and physics (natural philosophy) within
Apago PDF Enhancer Bacon’s contribution was to formalize the empirical 25
their faculties of philosophy. Although the prestige of the method, which had already been used by Brahe and Gal- 26
new fields was low, critical thinking was now applied to ileo, into the general theory of inductive reasoning known 27
scientific problems by a permanent community of schol- as empiricism. 28
ars. And an outlet existed for the talents of a Galileo or a 29
Improve Your Grade
Newton: all the great pathfinders either studied or taught 30
Primary Source: Francis Bacon Rejects Superstition
at universities. and Extols the Virtue of Science
31
Second, the Renaissance also stimulated scientific pro- 32
gress. The recovery of the finest works of Greek mathe- The French philosopher René Descartes was a true ge- 33
matics—a byproduct of Renaissance humanism’s ceaseless nius who made his first great discovery in mathematics. 34
search for the knowledge of antiquity—greatly improved As a twenty-three-year-old soldier serving in the Thirty 35
European mathematics. The recovery of more texts also Years’ War, he experienced a life-changing intellectual vi- 36
showed that classical mathematicians had their differ- sion on a single night in 1619. Descartes saw that there 37
ences; Europeans were thus forced to try to resolve these was a perfect correspondence between geometry and al- 38
ancient controversies by means of their own efforts. Fi- gebra and that geometrical, spatial figures could be ex- 39
nally, Renaissance patrons, especially in Italy, often suppressed as algebraic equations and vice versa. A major 40
ported scientists as well as artists and writers. Various step forward in the history of mathematics, Descartes’s 41
rulers and wealthy business people funded scientific in- discovery of analytic geometry provided scientists with 42
vestigations, as the Medicis of Florence did for Galileo. an important new tool. 43
The navigational problems of long sea voyages in the Descartes’s greatest achievement was to develop his 44
age of overseas expansion were a third factor in the sci- initial vision into a whole philosophy of knowledge and 45
entific revolution. Ship captains on distant shores needed science. He decided it was necessary to doubt every- 46
to be able to chart their positions as accurately as possible thing that could reasonably be doubted and then, as in 47
so that reliable maps could be drawn and the risks of in- geometry, to use deductive reasoning from self-evident 48
ternational trade reduced. As early as 1484 the king of principles to ascertain scientific laws. Descartes’s reason- 49
Portugal appointed a commission of mathematicians to ing ultimately reduced all substances to “matter” and 50S
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13
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15
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17
18
19
The Observatory at Nuremberg The quest for scientific knowledge in the seventeenth century was
20 already an expensive undertaking that required teamwork and government support, as this encyclopedic
21 illustration suggests. Nuremberg was a historic center of commerce and culture in southern Germany, and
22 its observatory played a pioneering role in early astronomical advances. (Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg)
23
24
25
26
Apago PDFtrast,
“mind”—that is, to the physical and the spiritual. His
view of the world as consisting of two fundamental enti-
supposedly suppressed scientific theories that con-
Enhancer
flicted with its teachings and thus discouraged scientific
27 ties is known as Cartesian dualism. Descartes was a pro- progress. The truth is more complicated. All Western
28 foundly original and extremely influential thinker. religious authorities—Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish—
29 Bacon’s inductive experimentalism and Descartes’s de- opposed the Copernican system to a greater or lesser
30 ductive, mathematical reasoning are combined in the extent until about 1630, by which time the scientific rev-
31 modern scientific method, which began to crystallize in olution was definitely in progress. The Catholic Church
32 the late seventeenth century. Neither man’s extreme ap- was initially less hostile than Protestant and Jewish reli-
33 proach was sufficient by itself. Bacon’s inability to appre- gious leaders, and Italian scientists played a crucial role
34 ciate the importance of mathematics and his obsession in scientific progress right up to the trial of Galileo in
35 with practical results clearly showed the limitations of 1633. Thereafter, the Counter-Reformation church be-
36 antitheoretical empiricism. Likewise, some of Descartes’s came more hostile to science, a change that helped ac-
37 positions—he believed, for example, that it was possible count for the decline of science in Italy (but not in
38 to deduce the whole science of medicine from first prin- Catholic France) after 1640. At the same time, Protestant
39 ciples—demonstrated the inadequacy of rigid, dogmatic countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark became
40 rationalism. Thus the modern scientific method has quite “pro-science,” especially countries that lacked a
41 joined precise observations and experimentalism with the strong religious authority capable of imposing religious
42 search for general laws that may be expressed in rigor- orthodoxy on scientific questions.
43 ously logical, mathematical language. This was certainly the case with Protestant England
44 Finally, there is the question of the role of religion in after 1630. English religious conflicts became so intense
45 the development of science. Just as some historians have that the authorities could not impose religious unity on
46 argued that Protestantism led to the rise of capitalism, anything, including science. Significantly, the forerunners
47 others have concluded that Protestantism was a funda- of the Royal Society agreed to discuss only “neutral” sci-
48 mental factor in the rise of modern science. Protestant- entific questions so as not to come to blows over closely
49 ism, particularly in its Calvinist varieties, supposedly made related religious and political disputes. The work of Ba-
50S scientific inquiry a question of individual conscience and con’s many followers during Oliver Cromwell’s common-
51R not of religious doctrine. The Catholic Church, in con- wealth helped solidify the neutrality and independence of
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science. Bacon advocated the experimental approach pre- own countries. In addition, some sectors of accomplish- 1
cisely because it was open-minded and independent of ment were more accessible to women, with fine arts be- 2
preconceived religious and philosophical ideas. Neutral ing the most important. Women excelled as makers of 3
and useful, science became an accepted part of life and wax anatomical models and as botanical and zoological 4
developed rapidly in England after about 1640. illustrators. Because the new scientific method relied on 5
precise observation, illustration became a highly valued 6
skill. Women were also very much involved in informal 7
Science and Society scientific communities, attending salons, participating in 8
The rise of modern science had many consequences, some scientific experiments, and writing learned treatises. Some 9
of which are still unfolding. First, it went hand in hand female intellectuals were recognized as full-fledged mem- 10
with the rise of a new and expanding social group—the bers of the philosophical dialogue. In England, Margaret 11
international scientific community. Members of this Cavendish, Anne Conway, and Mary Astell all con- 12
community were linked together by common interests 13
and shared values as well as by journals and the learned 14
scientific societies founded in many countries in the later 15
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Expansion of 16
knowledge was the primary goal of this community, and 17
scientists’ material and psychological rewards depended 18
on their success in this endeavor. Thus science became 19
competitive, and even more scientific advance was in- 20
evitable. Second, as governments intervened to support 21
and sometimes direct research, the new scientific com- 22
munity became closely tied to the state and its agendas. 23
National academies of science were created under state 24
sponsorship in London in 1662, Paris in 1666, Berlin in
1700, and later across Europe. 26
Third, the scientific revolution introduced not only 27
new knowledge about nature but also a new and revolu- 28
tionary way of obtaining such knowledge—the modern 29
scientific method. In addition to being both theoretical 30
and experimental, this method was highly critical. It re- 31
fused to base its conclusions on tradition and established 32
sources, on ancient authorities and sacred texts. This crit- 33
ical attitude to established authority would inspire think- 34
ers to question traditions in other domains as well. 35
Some things did not change in the scientific revolu- 36
tion. New “rational” methods for approaching nature 37
did not question traditional inequalities between the 38
sexes—and may have worsened them in some ways. 39
When Renaissance courts served as centers of learning, 40
talented noblewomen could find niches in study and re- 41
search. The rise of a professional scientific community 42
raised barriers for women because the new academies Metamorphoses of the Caterpillar and Moth Maria 43
Sibylla Merian (1647–1717), the stepdaughter of a Dutch
that furnished professional credentials did not accept fe- painter, became a celebrated scientific illustrator in her own 44
male members. (This continued for a long time. Marie right. Her finely observed pictures of insects in the South 45
Curie, the first person to win two Nobel prizes, was re- American colony of Surinam introduced many new species, 46
jected by the French Academy of Science in 1911 be- shown in their various stages of development. For Merian, 47
cause she was a woman.6) science was intimately tied with art: she not only painted but 48
also bred caterpillars and performed experiments on them.
There were, however, a number of noteworthy excep- Her two-year stay in Surinam, accompanied by a teenage 49
tions. In Italy, universities and academies did offer posts daughter, was a daring feat for a seventeenth-century woman. 50S
to women, attracting some foreigners spurned by their (Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY) 51R
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1 tributed to debates about Descartes’s mind-body dual- progress. Armed with the proper method of discovering
2 ism, among other issues. Descartes himself conducted an the laws of human existence, Enlightenment thinkers be-
3 intellectual correspondence with the princess Elizabeth lieved that it was at least possible for human beings to
4 of Bohemia, of whom he stated: “I attach more weight to create better societies and better people. Their belief was
5 her judgement than to those messieurs the Doctors, who strengthened by some modest improvements in eco-
6 take for a rule of truth the opinions of Aristotle rather nomic and social life during the eighteenth century.
7 than the evidence of reason.”7 • How did the new worldview affect the way people
8 If women themselves played a limited role in scientific thought about society and human relations?
9 discovery, scholars have recently emphasized the impor-
10 tance of representations of femininity and masculinity in
11 the scientific revolution. Nature was often depicted as a
12 female, whose veil of secrecy needed to be stripped away
The Emergence of the Enlightenment
13 and penetrated by male experts. In the same time period, Loosely united by certain key ideas, the European En-
14 the Americas were similarly depicted as a female terrain lightenment was a broad intellectual and cultural move-
15 whose potentially fertile lands needed to be controlled ment that gained strength gradually and did not reach its
16 and impregnated by male colonists. maturity until about 1750. Yet it was the generation that
17 The scientific revolution had few consequences for came of age between the publication of Newton’s Prin-
18 economic life and the living standards of the masses until cipia in 1687 and the death of Louis XIV in 1715 that
19 the late eighteenth century. True, improvements in the tied the crucial knot between the scientific revolution and
20 techniques of navigation facilitated overseas trade and a new outlook on life. Talented writers of that generation
21 helped enrich states and merchant companies. But sci- popularized hard-to-understand scientific achievements
22 ence had relatively few practical economic applications. for the educated elite.
23 Thus the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century The most famous and influential popularizer was a
24 was first and foremost an intellectual revolution. For versatile French man of letters, Bernard de Fontenelle
25 more than a hundred years its greatest impact was on
Apago PDF Enhancer (1657–1757), who set out to make science witty and en-
26 how people thought and believed. tertaining—as easy to read as a novel—for a broad non-
27 scientific audience. This was a tall order, but Fontenelle
28 largely succeeded. His most famous work, Conversations
29 The Enlightenment on the Plurality of Worlds (1686), begins with two elegant
30 figures walking in the gathering shadows of a large park.
31 The scientific revolution was the single most important One is a woman, a sophisticated aristocrat, and the other
32 factor in the creation of the new worldview of the is her friend, perhaps even her lover. They gaze at the
33 eighteenth-century Enlightenment. This worldview, which stars, and their talk turns to a passionate discussion of . . .
34 has played a large role in shaping the modern mind, grew astronomy! The man confides that “each star may well be
35 out of a rich mix of diverse and often conflicting ideas. a different world,” then gently stresses how error is giv-
36 For the talented (and not-so-talented) writers who es- ing way to truth. At one point he explains:
37 poused them, these ideas competed vigorously for the at-
There came on the scene . . . one Copernicus, who made
38 tention of a growing public of well-educated but fickle
short work of all those various circles, all those solid skies,
39 readers, who remained a minority of the population. De-
which the ancients had pictured to themselves. . . . Fired
40 spite the diversity, three central concepts stand at the
with the noble zeal of a true astronomer, he took the earth
41 core of Enlightenment thinking. The most important
and spun it very far away from the center of the universe,
42 and original idea was that the methods of natural science
where it had been installed, and in that center he put the sun,
43 could and should be used to examine and understand all
which had a far better title to the honor.8
44 aspects of life. This was what intellectuals meant by rea-
45 son, a favorite word of Enlightenment thinkers. Nothing Rather than despair at this dismissal of traditional under-
46 was to be accepted on faith. Everything was to be sub- standing, Fontenelle’s lady rejoices in the knowledge that
47 mitted to rationalism, a secular, critical way of thinking. the human mind is capable of making great progress.
48 A second important Enlightenment concept was that the This concept of progress was essentially a creation of
49 scientific method was capable of discovering the laws of the later seventeenth century. Medieval and Reformation
50S human society as well as those of nature. Thus was social thinkers had been concerned primarily with sin and sal-
51R science born. Its birth led to the third key idea, that of vation. The humanists of the Renaissance had empha-
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The Enlightenment • 599
sized worldly matters, but they had looked backward.

They had believed it might be possible to equal the mag-
nificent accomplishments of the ancients, but they did
not ask for more. Fontenelle and like-minded writers had
come to believe that, at least in science and mathematics,
their era had gone far beyond antiquity. Progress, at least
intellectual progress, was very possible.
Fontenelle and other writers of his generation were also
instrumental in bringing science into conflict with religion.
This was a major innovation because many seventeenth-
century scientists, both Catholic and Protestant, did not
draw antireligious implications from their scientific find-
ings and believed that their work exalted God. The great-
est scientist of them all, Isaac Newton, was a devout, if
unorthodox, Christian who saw all his studies as directed
toward explaining God’s message. Fontenelle, in contrast,
was skeptical about absolute truth and cynical about the
claims of organized religion. Since such unorthodox
views could not be stated openly in an absolute monar-
chy like Louis XIV’s France, Fontenelle made his point
through subtle editorializing about science. His depic-
tion of the cautious Copernicus as a self-conscious revo-
lutionary was typical. In Eulogies of Scientists, Fontenelle
exploited with endless variations the fundamental theme
of rational, progressive scientists versus prejudiced, reac-
Apago PDF Enhancer
tionary priests.
The progressive and antireligious implications that
writers such as Fontenelle drew from the scientific revo-
lution reflected a very real crisis in European thought at
the end of the seventeenth century. This crisis had its
roots in several intellectual uncertainties and dissatisfac- Popularizing Science The frontispiece illustration of
tions, of which the demolition of Aristotelian-medieval Fontenelle’s Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds invites the
science was only one. reader to share the pleasures of astronomy with an elegant
A second uncertainty involved the whole question of lady and an entertaining teacher. The drawing shows the
religious truth. The destructive wars of religion that cul- planets revolving around the sun. (By permission of the Syndics of
Cambridge University Library)
minated in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) had been
fought, in part, because religious freedom was an intoler-
able idea in Europe in the early seventeenth century.
Both Catholics and Protestants had believed that reli-
gious truth was absolute and therefore worth fighting XIV and found refuge in the Netherlands. A teacher by
and dying for. Most Catholics and Protestants also be- profession and a crusading journalist by inclination, Bayle
lieved that a strong state required unity in religious faith. took full advantage of the toleration and intellectual free-
Yet the disastrous results of the many attempts to impose dom of his adopted land. He critically examined the reli-
such religious unity, such as Louis XIV’s brutal expulsion gious beliefs and persecutions of the past in his Historical
of the French Huguenots in 1685, led some people to and Critical Dictionary, written in French and published
ask whether ideological conformity in religious matters in the Netherlands in 1697. Demonstrating that human
was really necessary. Others skeptically asked if religious beliefs had been extremely varied and very often mis-
truth could ever be known with absolute certainty and taken, Bayle concluded that nothing can ever be known
concluded that it could not. beyond all doubt. In religion as in philosophy, human-
The most famous of these skeptics was Pierre Bayle ity’s best hope was open-minded toleration. Bayle’s
(1647–1706), a French Huguenot who despised Louis skepticism was very influential. Reprinted frequently in
1019763_ch_18.qxp 9/17/07 3:08 PM Page 600
1 the Netherlands and in England, his four-volume Dictio- proudly proclaimed that they, at long last, were bringing
2 nary was found in more private libraries of eighteenth- the light of knowledge to their ignorant fellow creatures
3 century France than was any other book. in an Age of Enlightenment.
4 The rapidly growing travel literature on non-European Philosophe is the French word for “philosopher,” and
5 lands and cultures was a third cause of uncertainty. In the it was in France that the Enlightenment reached its high-
6 wake of the great discoveries, Europeans were learning est development. There were at least three reasons for
7 that the peoples of China, India, Africa, and the Ameri- this. First, French was the international language of the
8 cas all had their own very different beliefs and customs. educated classes in the eighteenth century, and the edu-
9 Europeans shaved their faces and let their hair grow. cation of the rich and the powerful across Europe often
10 Turks shaved their heads and let their beards grow. In lay in the hands of French tutors espousing Enlighten-
11 Europe a man bowed before a woman to show respect. ment ideas. France’s cultural leadership was reinforced by
12 In Siam a man turned his back on a woman when he met the fact that it was still the wealthiest and most populous
13 her because it was disrespectful to look directly at her. country in Europe.
14 Countless similar examples discussed in the travel ac- Second, after the death of Louis XIV, French abso-
15 counts helped change the perspective of educated Euro- lutism and religious orthodoxy remained strong, but
16 peans. They began to look at truth and morality in not too strong. Critical books were often banned by the
17 relative, rather than absolute, terms. If anything was pos- censors, and their authors were sometimes jailed or ex-
18 sible, who could say what was right or wrong? iled—but they were not tortured or burned. Intellectual
19 A fourth cause and manifestation of European intellec- radicals battled against powerful opposition in France,
20 tual turmoil was John Locke’s epoch-making Essay Con- but they did not face the overwhelming restraints gener-
21 cerning Human Understanding. Published in 1690—the ally found in eastern and east-central Europe.
22 same year Locke published his famous Second Treatise Third, the French philosophes were indeed philoso-
23 of Civil Government (see page 548)—Locke’s essay bril- phers, asking fundamental philosophical questions about
24 liantly set forth a new theory about how human beings the meaning of life, God, human nature, good and evil,
25 learn and form their ideas. In doing so, he rejected the
Apago PDF Enhancer and cause and effect. But in the tradition of Bayle and
26 prevailing view of Descartes, who had held that all people Fontenelle, they were not content with abstract argu-
27 are born with certain basic ideas and ways of thinking. ments or ivory-tower speculations. They were determined
28 Locke insisted that all ideas are derived from experience. to reach and influence all the French (and European) eco-
29 The human mind at birth is like a blank tablet, or tabula nomic and social elites, many of which were joined to-
30 rasa, on which the environment writes the individual’s gether in the eighteenth-century concept of the “republic
31 understanding and beliefs. Human development is thereof letters,” an imaginary, transnational realm constituted
32 fore determined by education and social institutions, for by all members of the educated or enlightened public.
33 good or for evil. Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Un- Suspicious of the people but intensely committed to
34 derstanding passed through many editions and transla- reason, reform, and slow, difficult progress, the great
35 tions. Along with Newton’s Principia, it was one of the philosophes and their imitators were not free to write as
36 dominant intellectual inspirations of the Enlightenment. they wished, since it was illegal in France to openly criti-
37 cize either church or state. Their most radical works had
38 to circulate in manuscript form. Knowing that direct at-
39
The Philosophes and the Public tacks would probably be banned or burned, the philo-
40 By the time Louis XIV died in 1715, many of the ideas sophes wrote novels and plays, histories and philosophies,
41 that would soon coalesce into the new worldview had dictionaries and encyclopedias, all filled with satire and
42 been assembled. Yet Christian Europe was still strongly double meanings to spread their message to the public.
43 attached to its traditional beliefs, as witnessed by the One of the greatest philosophes, the baron de Montes-
44 powerful revival of religious orthodoxy in the first half of quieu (1689–1755), brilliantly pioneered this approach
45 the eighteenth century (see pages 672–673). By the out- in The Persian Letters, an extremely influential social satire
46 break of the American Revolution in 1775, however, a published in 1721. This work consisted of amusing let-
47 large portion of western Europe’s educated elite had em- ters supposedly written by two Persian travelers, Usbek
48 braced many of the new ideas. This acceptance was the and Rica, who see European customs in unique ways and
49 work of one of history’s most influential groups of intel- thereby allow Montesquieu to cleverly criticize existing
50S lectuals, the philosophes. It was the philosophes who practices and beliefs.
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Like many Enlightenment philosophes, Montesquieu frontline defenders of liberty against royal despotism. 1
saw relations between men and women as particularly Apprehensive about the uneducated poor, Montesquieu 2
representative of overall social and political systems. He was clearly no democrat, but his theory of separation of 3
used the oppression of women in the Persian harem, powers had a great impact on France’s wealthy, well- 4
described in letters from Usbek’s wives, to symbolize educated elite. The constitutions of the young United 5
Eastern political tyranny. At the end of the book, the re- States in 1789 and of France in 1791 were based in large 6
bellion of Usbek’s harem against the cruel eunuchs he part on this theory. 7
left in charge of them demonstrates that despotism must 8
Improve Your Grade
ultimately fail. Montesquieu also uses the Persians’ ob- 9
Primary Source: Montesquieu Identifies the Necessity
servations of habitual infidelity among French wives and 10
for the Separation of Governmental Powers
the strength of female power behind the throne to poke 11
fun at European social and political customs. As Rica The most famous and in many ways most represen- 12
remarks: tative philosophe was François Marie Arouet, who was 13
known by the pen name Voltaire (1694–1778). In his 14
The thing is that, for every man who has any post at court, in
long career, this son of a comfortable middle-class fam- 15
Paris, or in the country, there is a woman through whose
ily wrote more than seventy witty volumes, hobnobbed 16
hands pass all the favours and sometimes the injustices that
with kings and queens, and died a millionaire because of 17
he does. These women are all in touch with one another, and
shrewd business speculations. His early career, however, 18
compose a sort of commonwealth whose members are al-
was turbulent. In 1717 Voltaire was imprisoned for eleven 19
ways busy giving each other mutual help and support.
months in the Bastille in Paris for insulting the regent of 20
Montesquieu was exaggerating, but he echoed other crit- France. In 1726 a barb from his sharp tongue led a great 21
ics of the informal power women gained in an absolutist French nobleman to have him beaten and arrested. This 22
system, where royal mistresses and female courtiers could experience made a deep impression on Voltaire. All his 23
have more access to the king than government ministers. life he struggled against legal injustice and unequal treat- 24
Having gained fame by using wit as a weapon against
Apago PDF Enhancer ment before the law. Released from prison after prom- 25
cruelty and superstition, Montesquieu settled down on ising to leave the country, Voltaire lived in England for 26
his family estate to study history and politics. His inter- three years and came to share Montesquieu’s enthusiasm 27
est was partly personal, for, like many members of the for English institutions. 28
French robe nobility, he was disturbed by the growth in Returning to France and soon threatened again with 29
royal absolutism under Louis XIV. But Montesquieu was prison in Paris, Voltaire had the great fortune of meeting 30
also inspired by the example of the physical sciences, and Gabrielle-Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du 31
he set out to apply the critical method to the problem of Châtelet (1706–1749), an intellectually gifted woman 32
government in The Spirit of Laws (1748). The result was from the high aristocracy with a passion for science. In- 33
a complex comparative study of republics, monarchies, viting Voltaire to live in her country house at Cirey in 34
and despotisms—a great pioneering inquiry in the emerg- Lorraine and becoming his long-time companion (under 35
ing social sciences. the eyes of her tolerant husband), Madame du Châtelet 36
Showing that forms of government were shaped by studied physics and mathematics and published scientific 37
history, geography, and customs, Montesquieu focused articles and translations. 38
on the conditions that would promote liberty and pre- Perhaps the finest representative of a small number 39
vent tyranny. He argued that despotism could be avoided of elite Frenchwomen and their intellectual accomplish- 40
if there was a separation of powers, with political power ments during the Enlightenment, Madame du Châtelet 41
divided and shared by a variety of classes and legal estates suffered nonetheless because of her gender. Excluded on 42
holding unequal rights and privileges. A strong, inde- principle from the Royal Academy of Sciences, she de- 43
pendent upper class was especially important, according pended on private tutors for instruction and became 44
to Montesquieu, because in order to prevent the abuse of uncertain of her ability to make important scientific dis- 45
power “it is necessary that by the arrangement of things, coveries. Madame du Châtelet therefore concentrated on 46
power checks power.” Admiring greatly the English bal- spreading the ideas of others, and her translation with an 47
ance of power among the king, the houses of Parliament, accompanying commentary of Newton’s Principia into 48
and the independent courts, Montesquieu believed that French for the first (and only) time was her greatest 49
in France the thirteen high courts—the parlements—were work. But she, who had patiently explained Newton’s 50S
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1 Yet like almost all of the philosophes, Voltaire was a re-

2 former, not a revolutionary, in social and political matters.
3 He was eventually appointed royal historian in 1743, and
4 his Age of Louis XIV portrayed Louis as the dignified
5 leader of his age. Voltaire also began a long correspon-
6 dence with Frederick the Great and, after the death of his
7 beloved Emilie, accepted Frederick’s invitation to come
8 brighten up the Prussian court in Berlin. The two men
9 later quarreled, but Voltaire always admired Frederick as
10 a free thinker and an enlightened monarch.
11 Unlike Montesquieu, Voltaire pessimistically con-
12 cluded that the best one could hope for in the way of
13 government was a good monarch, since human beings
14 “are very rarely worthy to govern themselves.” Nor did
15 he believe in social and economic equality in human af-
16 fairs. The idea of making servants equal to their masters
17 was “absurd and impossible.” The only realizable equal-
18 ity, Voltaire thought, was that “by which the citizen only
19 depends on the laws which protect the freedom of the
20 feeble against the ambitions of the strong.”11
21 Voltaire’s philosophical and religious positions were
22 much more radical. In the tradition of Bayle, his volumi-
23 nous writings challenged, often indirectly, the Catholic
24 Church and Christian theology at almost every point.
25 Apago PDF Enhancer Though he was considered by many devout Christians to
26 Madame du Châtelet The marquise du Châtelet was fasci- be a shallow blasphemer, Voltaire’s religious views were
27 nated by the new world system of Isaac Newton. She helped ambiguous and quite typical of the complex attitudes
28 spread Newton’s ideas in France by translating his Principia toward religion held by Enlightenment thinkers. Voltaire
and by influencing Voltaire, her companion for fifteen years
29 until her death. (Giraudon/Art Resource, NY)
clearly believed in God, but his was a distant, deistic God,
30 the great Clockmaker who built an orderly universe and
31 then stepped aside and let it run. Above all, Voltaire and
32 most of the philosophes hated all forms of religious in-
33 complex mathematical proofs to Europe’s foremost tolerance, which they believed often led to fanaticism and
34 philosophe, had no doubt that women’s limited scientific savage, inhuman action. Simple piety and human kind-
35 contributions in the past were due to limited and un- ness—as embodied in Christ’s great commandments to
36 equal education. She once wrote that if she were a ruler, “love God and your neighbor as yourself ”—were reli-
37 “I would reform an abuse which cuts off, so to speak, half gion enough, as may be seen in Voltaire’s famous essay
38 the human race. I would make women participate in all on religion. (See the feature “Listening to the Past:
39 the rights of humankind, and above all in those of the Voltaire on Religion” on pages 618–619.)
40 intellect.”9 The ultimate strength of the French philosophes lay in
41 While living at Cirey, Voltaire wrote various works their number, dedication, and organization. The philo-
42 praising England and popularizing English scientific sophes felt keenly that they were engaged in a common
43 progress. Newton, he wrote, was history’s greatest man, undertaking that transcended individuals. Their greatest
44 for he had used his genius for the benefit of humanity. “It and most representative intellectual achievement was,
45 is,” wrote Voltaire, “the man who sways our minds by the quite fittingly, a group effort—the seventeen-volume En-
46 prevalence of reason and the native force of truth, not cyclopedia: The Rational Dictionary of the Sciences, the
47 they who reduce mankind to a state of slavery by force Arts, and the Crafts, edited by Denis Diderot (1713–1784)
48 and downright violence . . . that claims our reverence and and Jean le Rond d’Alembert (1717–1783). They were
49 admiration.”10 In the true style of the Enlightenment, a curious pair. Diderot began his career as a hack writer,
50S Voltaire mixed the glorification of science and reason with first attracting attention with a skeptical tract on reli-
51R an appeal for better individuals and institutions. gion that was quickly burned by the judges of Paris.
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D’Alembert was one of Europe’s leading scientists and Different areas followed different strands of Enlighten- 1
mathematicians, the orphaned and illegitimate son of cel- ment thinking. In England and Germany, scholars have 2
ebrated aristocrats. From different circles and with differ- described a more conservative Enlightenment that tried 3
ent interests, the two men set out to find coauthors who to integrate the findings of the scientific revolution with 4
would examine the rapidly expanding whole of human religious faith and practices. After the Act of Union with 5
knowledge. Even more fundamentally, they set out to England and Ireland in 1707, Scotland was freed from 6
teach people how to think critically and objectively about political crisis to experience a vigorous period of intel- 7
all matters. As Diderot said, he wanted the Encyclopedia lectual growth. The Scottish Enlightenment, centered in 8
to “change the general way of thinking.”12 Edinburgh, was marked by an emphasis on pragmatic and 9
The editors of the Encyclopedia had to conquer innu- scientific reasoning. Intellectual revival was stimulated by 10
merable obstacles. After the appearance in 1751 of the the creation of the first public educational system in Eu- 11
first volume, which dealt with such controversial subjects rope. The most important figure in Edinburgh was David 12
as atheism, the soul, and blind people (all words begin- Hume (1711–1776), whose carefully argued religious 13
ning with a in French), the government temporarily skepticism had a powerful impact at home and abroad. 14
banned publication. The pope later placed the work on Building on Locke’s teachings on learning, Hume ar- 15
the Catholic Church’s index of forbidden works and pro- gued that the human mind is really nothing but a bundle 16
nounced excommunication on all who read or bought it. of impressions. These impressions originate only in sense 17
In an attempt to appease the authorities, the timid pub- experiences and our habits of joining these experiences 18
lisher watered down some of the articles in the last ten together. Since our ideas ultimately reflect only our sense 19
volumes without the editors’ consent. Yet Diderot’s un- experiences, our reason cannot tell us anything about 20
wavering belief in the importance of his mission held the questions that cannot be verified by sense experience (in 21
encyclopedists together for fifteen years, and the enor- the form of controlled experiments or mathematics), such 22
mous work was completed in 1765. Hundreds of thou- as the origin of the universe or the existence of God. Para- 23
sands of articles by leading scientists, famous writers, doxically, Hume’s rationalistic inquiry ended up under- 24
skilled workers, and progressive priests treated every as-
Apago PDF Enhancer mining the Enlightenment’s faith in the power of reason. 25
pect of life and knowledge. 26
Not every article was daring or original, but the over- 27
all effect was little short of revolutionary. Science and
Urban Culture and the Public Sphere 28
the industrial arts were exalted, religion and immortality Enlightenment ideas did not float on air. A series of new 29
questioned. Intolerance, legal injustice, and out-of-date institutions and practices emerged in the late seventeenth 30
social institutions were openly criticized. More gener- and eighteenth centuries to facilitate the spread of En- 31
ally, the writers of the Encyclopedia showed that human lightenment ideas. First, the European production and 32
beings could use the process of reasoning to expand hu- consumption of books grew dramatically in the eigh- 33
man knowledge. The encyclopedists were convinced teenth century. In Germany the number of new titles 34
that greater knowledge would result in greater human appearing annually grew substantially, from roughly six 35
happiness, for knowledge was useful and made possible hundred new titles in 1700 to about eleven hundred in 36
economic, social, and political progress. The Encyclope- 1764 and about twenty-six hundred in 1780. France also 37
dia was widely read, especially in less-expensive reprint witnessed an explosive growth in book consumption. 38
editions published in Switzerland, and it was extremely The number of books in the hands of elite readers in- 39
influential in France and throughout western Europe as creased eightfold to tenfold between the 1690s and the 40
well. It summed up the new worldview of the Enlight- 1780s, when the private library of the typical noble con- 41
enment. tained more than three hundred volumes. 42
Moreover, the types of books people read changed 43
dramatically. The proportion of religious and devotional 44
The Enlightenment Outside of France books published in Paris declined precipitously, from 45
For all the importance of Paris as a center of Enlighten- one-half of the total in the 1690s to one-tenth of the to- 46
ment thought, historians now recognize the existence of tal in the 1780s. History and law held constant, while the 47
important strands of Enlightenment thought in other ar- proportion of published books treating the arts and sci- 48
eas of Europe. They have identified distinctive Enlight- ences surged. 49
enment movements in eighteenth-century Italy, Greece, Even these figures understate the shift in French taste 50S
the Balkans, Poland, Hungary, and Russia. because France’s unpredictable but pervasive censorship 51R
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27 Illustrating the Encyclopedia: “The Print Shop” Diderot wanted to present all valid knowledge—
28 that is, knowledge based on reason and the senses and not on tradition and authority. This plate, one
29 of 3,000 detailed illustrations accompanying the 70,000 essays in the Encyclopedia, shows (from left to
right) compositors setting type, arranging lines, and blocking down completed forms. Printed sheets
30 dry above. (Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library)
31
32
33
34 caused many books to be printed abroad and smuggled women used their sexual charms to gain power over weak
35 back into the country for “under-the-cloak” sale. Experts rulers and high officials, thereby corrupting the process
36 believe that perhaps the majority of French books proof government. These tracts included graphic accounts
37 duced between 1750 and 1789 came from publishing and images of sexual debauchery among aristocrats and
38 companies outside of France. These publishers, located even by the queen herself. Spurred by repeated royal di-
39 primarily in the Netherlands and Switzerland but also in rectives, the French police did their best to stamp out
40 England and a few small west German principalities, also this underground literature, but new slanders kept crop-
41 smuggled forbidden books in French and other lan- ping up, with corrosive effects on public confidence in
42 guages into the absolutist states of central, southern, and the monarchy.
43 eastern Europe. Reading more books on many more subjects, the edu-
44 The illegal book trade in France also featured an as- cated public in France and throughout Europe increas-
45 tonishing growth of scandalmongering denunciations of ingly approached reading in a new way. The result was
46 high political figures and frankly pornographic works. what some scholars have called a reading revolution.
47 These literary forms frequently came together in scathing The old style of reading in Europe had been centered on
48 pornographic accounts of the moral and sexual depravity sacred texts, full of authority, inspiring reverence and
49 of the French court, allegedly mired in luxury, perversion, teaching earthly duty and obedience to God. Reading
50S and adultery. Echoing Montesquieu, a favorite theme had been patriarchal and communal, with the father of
51R was the way that some beautiful but immoral aristocratic the family slowly reading the text aloud and the audience
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savoring each word. Now reading involved many texts, ers. (D’Alembert himself was the illegitimate son of a 1
which were constantly changing and commanded no well-known salon hostess, Madame de Tencin, who aban- 2
special respect. Reading became individual, silent, and doned him on the steps of a Parisian church.) Talented 3
rapid. The well-educated classes were reading insatiably, hostesses, or salonnières, brought the various French 4
skeptically, and carelessly. Subtle but profound, the read- elites together and mediated the public’s freewheeling ex- 5
ing revolution ushered in new ways of relating to the amination of Enlightenment thought. 6
written word. Elite women also exercised an unprecedented feminine 7
Conversation, discussion, and debate also played a crit- influence on artistic taste. Soft pastels, ornate interiors, 8
ical role in the Enlightenment. Paris set the example, and sentimental portraits, and starry-eyed lovers protected by 9
other French and European cities followed. In Paris a hovering cupids were all hallmarks of the style they fa- 10
number of talented, wealthy women presided over regu- vored. This style, known as rococo, was popular through- 11
lar social gatherings of the great and near-great in their out Europe in the eighteenth century. It has been argued 12
elegant private drawing rooms, or salons. There they that feminine influence in the drawing room went hand 13
encouraged a d’Alembert and a Fontenelle to exchange in hand with the emergence of polite society and the 14
witty, uncensored observations on literature, science, and general attempt to civilize a rough military nobility. Sim- 15
philosophy with great aristocrats, wealthy middle-class ilarly, some philosophes championed greater rights and 16
financiers, high-ranking officials, and noteworthy foreign- expanded education for women, claiming that the 17
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Selling Books, Promoting Ideas This appealing bookshop with its intriguing ads for the
latest works offers to put customers “Under the Protection of Minerva,” the Roman goddess of 49
wisdom. Large packets of books sit ready for shipment to foreign countries. Book consumption 50S
surged in the eighteenth century. (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon/Art Resource, NY) 51R
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Enlightenment Culture An actor performs the first reading of a new play by Voltaire
27 at the salon of Madame Geoffrin. Voltaire, then in exile, is represented by a bust statue.
28 (Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY)
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32 position and treatment of women were the best indica- their enterprise from collapse. Corresponding with the
33 tors of a society’s level of civilization and decency.13 To king of Sweden and Catherine the Great of Russia, Ma-
34 be sure, for these male philosophes greater rights for dame Geoffrin remained her own woman, a practicing
35 women did not mean equal rights, and the philosophes Christian who would not tolerate attacks on the church
36 were not particularly disturbed by the fact that elite in her house.
37 women remained legally subordinate to men in eco- The salon also provided an informal apprenticeship
38 nomic and political affairs. Elite women lacked many for younger women who aspired to lead salons of their
39 rights, but so did most men. own. One such woman was Julie de Lespinasse. Eventu-
40 One of the most famous salons was that of Madame ally forming her own highly informal salon and attracting
41 Geoffrin, the unofficial godmother of the Encyclopedia. the keenest minds in France and Europe, Lespinasse epit-
42 Having lost her parents at an early age, she was married omized the skills of the Enlightenment hostess. As one
43 at fifteen by her well-meaning grandmother to a rich philosophe wrote:
44 and boring businessman of forty-eight. After dutifully
45 raising her children, Madame Geoffrin broke out of her She could unite the different types, even the most antago-
46 gilded cage. With the aid of an aristocratic neighbor and nistic, sustaining the conversation by a well-aimed phrase,
47 in spite of her husband’s loud protests, she developed a animating and guiding it at will. . . . Politics, religion, phi-
48 twice-weekly salon that counted Fontenelle and Mon- losophy, news: nothing was excluded. Her circle met daily
49 tesquieu among its regular guests. Inheriting a large for- from five to nine. There one found men of all ranks in the
50S tune after her husband’s death, Madame Geoffrin gave State, the Church, and the Court, soldiers and foreigners,
51R the encyclopedists generous financial aid and helped save and the leading writers of the day.14
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As this passage suggests, the salons created a cultural Rousseau and to have enjoyed a game of chess and a 1
realm free from religious dogma and political censorship. philosophical discussion with the writer. Although they 2
There a diverse but educated public could debate issues were barred from salons and academies, ordinary people 3
and form its own ideas. Through their invitation lists, sa- were not immune to the new ideas in circulation. 4
lon hostesses brought together members of the intellec- 5
tual, economic, and social elites. In such an atmosphere, 6
the philosophes, the French nobility, and the prosperous
Late Enlightenment 7
middle classes intermingled and influenced one another. After about 1770 a number of thinkers and writers began 8
Thinking critically about almost any question became to attack the Enlightenment’s faith in reason, progress, 9
fashionable and flourished alongside hopes for human and moderation. The most famous of these was the Swiss 10
progress through greater knowledge and enlightened Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), a brilliant and dif- 11
public opinion. ficult thinker and an appealing but neurotic individual. 12
Membership at the salons was restricted to the well- Born into a poor family of watchmakers in Geneva, 13
born, the well-connected, and the exceptionally talented. Rousseau went to Paris and was greatly influenced by 14
A number of institutions emerged for those who aspired Diderot and Voltaire. Always extraordinarily sensitive 15
to follow, rather than lead, the Enlightenment. Lending and suspicious, he came to believe that his philosophe 16
libraries served an important function for people who friends and the women of the Parisian salons were plot- 17
could not afford to buy their own books. The coffee- ting against him. In the mid-1750s he broke with them 18
houses that first appeared in the late seventeenth century personally and intellectually, living thereafter as a lonely 19
became meccas of philosophical discussion. Then, as outsider with his uneducated common-law wife and go- 20
now, one could linger for hours to read or debate for the ing in his own highly original direction. 21
price of a cup of coffee. In addition to these institutions, Like other Enlightenment thinkers, Rousseau was pas- 22
book clubs, Masonic lodges, and journals all played roles sionately committed to individual freedom. Unlike them, 23
in the creation of a new public sphere that celebrated however, he attacked rationalism and civilization as de- 24
open debate informed by critical reason. The public
Apago PDF Enhancer stroying, rather than liberating, the individual. Warm, 25
sphere was an idealized space where members of society spontaneous feeling had to complement and correct cold 26
came together as individuals to discuss issues relevant to intellect. Moreover, the basic goodness of the individual 27
the society, economics, and politics of the day. and the unspoiled child had to be protected from the 28
What of the common people? Did they participate cruel refinements of civilization. Rousseau’s ideals greatly 29
in the Enlightenment? Enlightenment philosophes did influenced the early romantic movement (see pages 660– 30
not direct their message to peasants or urban laborers. 661), which rebelled against the culture of the Enlight- 31
Whether of middling or noble origin, intellectuals sought enment in the late eighteenth century. 32
patronage from the wealthy and powerful. They believed Reconfirming Montesquieu’s critique of women’s in- 33
that the masses had no time or talent for philosophical fluence in public affairs, Rousseau called for a rigid divi- 34
speculation and that elevating them would be a long, sion of gender roles. According to Rousseau, women and 35
slow, potentially dangerous process. Deluded by super- men were radically different beings. Destined by nature 36
stitions and driven by violent passions, they thought, the to assume a passive role in sexual relations, women 37
people were like little children in need of firm parental should also be passive in social life. A woman’s role was 38
guidance. French philosophe d’Alembert characteristi- to care for her children at home and to please her hus- 39
cally made a sharp distinction between “the truly en- band with good housekeeping, a modest demeanor, and 40
lightened public” and “the blind and noisy multitude.”15 a fresh, natural appearance. Women’s passion for fashion, 41
There is some evidence, however, that the people were attending salons, and pulling the strings of power was 42
not immune to the words of the philosophes. At a time unnatural and had a corrupting effect on both politics 43
of rising literacy, book prices were dropping in cities and and society. Rousseau thus rejected the sophisticated way 44
towns, and many philosophical ideas were popularized in of life of elite Parisian women. Against them, he reartic- 45
cheap pamphlets. Moreover, even illiterate people had ulated conventional stereotypes as a form of natural law, 46
access to written material, through the practice of public against which debate was impossible. These views had a 47
reading. The Parisian glass-worker Jacques-Louis Méné- strong impact on both men and women in the late eigh- 48
tra, whose education consisted of a few years of schooling teenth century, contributing to calls for privileged women 49
and his trade apprenticeship, claimed in his autobiogra- to abandon their stylish corsets and to breast-feed their 50S
phy to have cultivated a friendship with Jean-Jacques children. 51R
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1 Rousseau’s contribution to political theory in The Enlightenment devoted substantial attention to compar-
2 Social Contract (1762) was equally significant. His con- isons of European and non-European cultures, deriving
3 tribution was based on two fundamental concepts: the their understanding of people at home from differences
4 general will and popular sovereignty. According to Rous- with people abroad. The result was the formation of
5 seau, the general will is sacred and absolute, reflecting highly influential new understandings of racial differ-
6 the common interests of all the people, who have dis- ence. As with other strands of Enlightenment thought,
7 placed the monarch as the holder of sovereign power. the new scientific method, and its apparently neutral, ra-
8 The general will is not necessarily the will of the majority, tional thinking, provided intellectual legitimacy for their
9 however. At times the general will may be the authentic, findings.
10 long-term needs of the people as correctly interpreted by A primary catalyst for new ideas about race was the
11 a farseeing minority. Little noticed before the French urge to classify nature unleashed by the scientific revolu-
12 Revolution, Rousseau’s concept of the general will ap- tion’s insistence on careful empirical observation. In The
13 pealed greatly to democrats and nationalists after 1789. System of Nature (1735) Swedish botanist Carl von Linné
14 (The concept has since been used by many dictators who argued that nature was organized into a God-given hier-
15 have claimed that they, rather than some momentary ma- archy, which mankind must uncover and chart meticu-
16 jority of the voters, represent the general will.) Rousseau lously. As scientists developed more elaborate
17 was both one of the most influential voices of the En- taxonomies of plant and animal species, they also began
18 lightenment and, in his rejection of rationalism and social to classify humans into hierarchically ordered “races” and
19 discourse, a harbinger of reaction against Enlightenment to investigate the origins of race. The Comte de Buffon
20 ideas. argued that humans originated with one species that
21 then developed into distinct races due largely to climac-
Improve Your Grade
22 tic conditions. In A Natural History he describes exper-
Primary Source: Rousseau Espouses Popular
23 Sovereignty and the General Will
iments conducted on African bodies to determine the
24 cause of their “blackness,” which was assumed to be an
25 As the reading public developed, it joined forces with
Apago PDF Enhancer acquired variation from humans’ originally white skin.
26 the philosophes to call for the autonomy of the printed Using the word race to designate biologically distinct
27 word. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), a professor in East groups of humans, akin to distinct animal species, was
28 Prussia and the greatest German philosopher of his day, new. Previously, Europeans grouped other peoples into
29 posed the question of the age when he published a pam- “nations” based on their historical, political, and cultural
30 phlet in 1784 entitled What Is Enlightenment? Kant an- affiliations, rather than on supposedly innate physical dif-
31 swered, “Sapere Aude! [dare to know] Have courage to ferences. Unsurprisingly, when European thinkers drew
32 use your own understanding!—that is the motto of en- up a hierarchical classification of human species, their own
33 lightenment.” He argued that if serious thinkers were “race” was placed at the top. Europeans had long be-
34 granted the freedom to exercise their reason publicly in lieved they were culturally superior to “barbaric” peoples
35 print, enlightenment would almost surely follow. Kant in Africa and, since 1492, the New World. Now emerg-
36 was no revolutionary; he also insisted that in their private ing ideas about racial difference taught them they were
37 lives, individuals must obey all laws, no matter how un- biologically superior as well.
38 reasonable, and should be punished for “impertinent” Enlightenment thinkers such as David Hume and Im-
39 criticism. Kant thus tried to reconcile absolute monarchi- manuel Kant helped popularize these ideas. In Of Natural
40 cal authority with a critical public sphere. This balancing Characters (1748), Hume wrote:
41 act characterized experiments with “enlightened abso-
I am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all other
42 lutism” in the eighteenth century.
species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be
43
naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized
44
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Race and the Enlightenment nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any in-
dividual eminent amongst them, no arts, no sciences. . . .
46 In addition to criticizing their own societies and political
Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in
47 systems, Enlightenment thinkers wrote about society and
so many countries and ages if nature had not made an orig-
48 human nature outside their borders. In recent years, his-
inal distinction between these breeds of men.16
49 torians have found in the scientific revolution and the
50S Enlightenment a crucial turning point in European ideas The Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant taught and
51R about race. Many of the most important thinkers of the wrote as much about “anthropology” and “geography”
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The Enlightenment and Absolutism • 609
as he did about standard philosophical themes such as turning the art of good government into an exact sci- 1
logic, metaphysics, and moral philosophy. He shared and ence. It was necessary to educate and “enlighten” the 2
elaborated Hume’s views about race in On the Different monarch, who could then make good laws and promote 3
Races of Man (1775), claiming that there were four hu- human happiness. 4
man races, each of which had derived from an original The philosophes’ influence was heightened by the fact 5
race of “white brunette” people. According to Kant, the that many government officials were attracted to and in- 6
closest descendants of the original race were the white terested in philosophical ideas. They were among the 7
inhabitants of northern Germany. In deriving new physi- best-educated and best-informed members of society, 8
cal characteristics, the other races had degenerated both and their daily involvement in complex affairs of state 9
physically and culturally from this origin. made them naturally interested in ideas for improving or 10
These ideas did not go unchallenged. James Beattie re- reforming human society. Encouraged and instructed by 11
sponded directly to Hume’s claims of white superiority by these officials, some absolutist rulers of the later eigh- 12
pointing out that Europeans had started out as savage as teenth century tried to govern in an “enlightened” man- 13
nonwhites and that many non-European peoples in the ner. Yet the actual programs and accomplishments of 14
Americas, Asia, and Africa had achieved high levels of civ- these rulers varied greatly. It is necessary to examine the 15
ilization. Johann von Herder criticized Kant, arguing that evolution of monarchical absolutism at close range be- 16
humans could not be classified into races based on skin fore trying to judge the Enlightenment’s effect and the 17
color and that each culture was as intrinsically worthy as meaning of what historians have often called the enlight- 18
any other. These challenges to emerging scientific notions ened absolutism of the later eighteenth century. 19
of racial inequality, however, were in the minority. Many Enlightenment teachings inspired European rulers in 20
other Enlightenment voices agreeing with Kant and small as well as large states in the second half of the 21
Hume—Thomas Jefferson among them—may be found. eighteenth century. Absolutist princes and monarchs in 22
Scholars are only at the beginning of efforts to under- several west German and Italian states, as well as in Scan- 23
stand links between Enlightenment ideas about race and dinavia, Spain, and Portugal, proclaimed themselves more 24
its notions of equality, progress, and reason. There are
Apago PDF Enhancer enlightened. A few smaller states were actually the most 25
clear parallels, though, between the use of science to successful in making reforms, perhaps because their rulers 26
propagate racial hierarchies and its use to defend social were not overwhelmed by the size and complexity of their 27
inequalities between men and women. As Rousseau used realms. Denmark, for example, carried out extensive and 28
women’s “natural” passivity to argue for their passive role progressive land reform in the 1780s that practically abol- 29
in society, so a Hume and a Kant used non-Europeans’ ished serfdom and gave Danish peasants secure tenure on 30
“natural” inferiority to defend slavery and colonial dom- their farms. Yet by far the most influential of the new- 31
ination. The new powers of science and reason were thus style monarchs were in Prussia, Russia, and Austria, and 32
marshaled to imbue traditional stereotypes with the force they deserve primary attention. 33
of natural law. • What impact did this new way of thinking have on 34
political developments and monarchical absolutism? 35
36
The Enlightenment 37
and Absolutism Frederick the Great of Prussia 38
39
How did the Enlightenment influence political develop- Frederick II (r. 1740–1786), commonly known as Fred- 40
ments? To this important question there is no easy an- erick the Great, built masterfully on the work of his fa- 41
swer. Most Enlightenment thinkers outside of England ther, Frederick William I (see page 571). This was 42
and the Netherlands believed that political change could somewhat surprising, for, like many children with tyran- 43
best come from above—from the ruler—rather than nical parents, he rebelled against his family’s wishes in his 44
from below, especially in central and eastern Europe. early years. Rejecting the crude life of the barracks, Fred- 45
Royal absolutism was a fact of life, and the kings and erick embraced culture and literature, even writing po- 46
queens of Europe’s leading states clearly had no inten- etry and fine prose in French, a language his father 47
tion of giving up their great power. Therefore, the detested. After trying unsuccessfully to run away in 1730 48
philosophes and their sympathizers realistically con- at age eighteen, he was virtually imprisoned and com- 49
cluded that a benevolent absolutism offered the best op- pelled to watch as his companion in flight was beheaded 50S
portunities for improving society. Critical thinking was at his father’s command. Yet like many other rebellious 51R
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1 youths, Frederick eventually reconciled with his father, moted the advancement of knowledge, improving his
2 and by the time he came to the throne ten years later country’s schools and permitting scholars to publish their
3 Frederick was determined to use the splendid army that findings. Moreover, Frederick tried to improve the lives of
4 his father had left him. his subjects more directly. As he wrote his friend Voltaire,
5 Therefore, when the ruler of Austria, Charles VI, also “I must enlighten my people, cultivate their manners and
6 died in 1740 and his young and charismatic daughter morals, and make them as happy as human beings can be,
7 Maria Theresa inherited the Habsburg dominions, Fred- or as happy as the means at my disposal permit.”
8 erick suddenly and without warning invaded her rich, The legal system and the bureaucracy were Frederick’s
9 mainly German province of Silesia. This action defied primary tools. Prussia’s laws were simplified, torture of
10 solemn Prussian promises to respect the Pragmatic Sanc- prisoners was abolished, and judges decided cases quickly
11 tion, which guaranteed Maria Theresa’s succession. and impartially. Prussian officials became famous for their
12 Maria Theresa’s disunited army was no match for Pruss- hard work and honesty. After the Seven Years’ War ended
13 ian precision; in 1742, as other greedy powers were in 1763, Frederick’s government energetically promoted
14 falling on her lands in the general European War of the the reconstruction of agriculture and industry in his war-
15 Austrian Succession (1740–1748), she was forced to torn country. Frederick himself set a good example. He
16 cede almost all of Silesia to Prussia (see Map 17.2 on worked hard and lived modestly, claiming that he was
17 page 570). In one stroke Prussia had doubled its popula- “only the first servant of the state.” Thus Frederick justi-
18 tion to six million people. Now Prussia unquestionably fied monarchy in terms of practical results and said noth-
19 towered above all the other German states and stood as a ing of the divine right of kings.
20 European Great Power. Frederick’s dedication to high-minded government
21 Though successful in 1742, Frederick had to spend went only so far, however. He never tried to change Prus-
22 much of his reign fighting against great odds to save sia’s existing social structure. True, he condemned serf-
23 Prussia from total destruction. Maria Theresa was deter- dom in the abstract, but he accepted it in practice and did
24 mined to regain Silesia, and when the ongoing competi- not even free the serfs on his own estates. He accepted
25 tion between Britain and France for colonial empire
Apago PDF Enhancer and extended the privileges of the nobility, which he saw
26 brought another great conflict in 1756 (see page 635), as his primary ally in the defense and extension of his
27 Austria fashioned an aggressive alliance with France and realm. The Junker nobility remained the backbone of the
28 Russia. During the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), the army and the entire Prussian state.
29 aim of the alliance was to conquer Prussia and divide up Nor did Frederick listen to thinkers like Moses Men-
30 its territory. Frederick led his army brilliantly, striking re- delssohn (1729–1786), who urged that Jews be given
31 peatedly at vastly superior forces invading from all sides. freedom and civil rights. (See the feature “Individuals in
32 At times he believed all was lost, but he fought on with Society: Moses Mendelssohn and the Jewish Enlight-
33 stoic courage. In the end he was miraculously saved: Pe- enment.”) As in other German states, Jews in Prussia re-
34 ter III came to the Russian throne in 1762 and called off mained an oppressed group. The vast majority were
35 the attack against Frederick, whom he greatly admired. confined to tiny, overcrowded ghettos, were excluded by
36 In the early years of his reign Frederick II had kept his law from most business and professional activities, and
37 enthusiasm for Enlightenment culture strictly separated could be ordered out of the kingdom at a moment’s no-
38 from a brutal concept of international politics. He wrote: tice. A very few Jews in Prussia did manage to succeed
39 and to obtain the right of permanent settlement, usually
Of all States, from the smallest to the biggest, one can safely
40 by performing some special service for the state. But they
say that the fundamental rule of government is the principle of
41 were the exception, and Frederick firmly opposed any
extending their territories. . . . The passions of rulers have no
42 general emancipation for the Jews, as he did for the serfs.
other curb but the limits of their power. Those are the fixed
43
laws of European politics to which every politician submits.17
44
45 But the terrible struggle of the Seven Years’ War tempered
Catherine the Great of Russia
46 Frederick and brought him to consider how more hu- Catherine the Great of Russia (r. 1762–1796) was one of
47 mane policies for his subjects might also strengthen the the most remarkable rulers of her age, and the French
48 state. Thus Frederick went beyond a superficial commit- philosophes adored her. Catherine was a German
49 ment to Enlightenment culture for himself and his cir- princess from Anhalt-Zerbst, a totally insignificant prin-
50S cle. He tolerantly allowed his subjects to believe as they cipality sandwiched between Prussia and Saxony. Her fa-
51R wished in religious and philosophical matters. He pro- ther commanded a regiment of the Prussian army, but
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Individuals in 1
Society 2
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Moses Mendelssohn and the 5
Jewish Enlightenment 6
German Enlightenment 7
generally supported estab- 8
In 1743 a small, humpbacked Jewish boy with a stam- lished religion, in contrast 9
mer left his poor parents in Dessau in central Germany to the French Enlighten- 10
and walked eighty miles to Berlin, the capital of Freder- ment, which attacked it.
11
ick the Great’s Prussia. According to one story, when This was the most impor-
the boy reached the Rosenthaler Gate, the only one 12
tant difference in Enlight-
through which Jews could pass, he told the inquiring enment thinking between 13
watchman that his name was Moses and that he had the two countries. 14
Lavater (right) attempts to con- 15
come to Berlin “to learn.” The watchman laughed and Mendelssohn’s treatise vert Mendelssohn, in a painting
waved him through. “Go Moses, the sea has opened on the human soul capti- by Moritz Oppenheim of an
16
before you.”* Embracing the Enlightenment and seek- vated the educated Ger- imaginary encounter. 17
ing a revitalization of Jewish religious thought, Moses man public, which (Collection of the Judah L. Magnes 18
Mendelssohn did point his people in a new and un- marveled that a Jew could Museum, Berkeley) 19
charted direction. have written a philosophi- 20
Turning in Berlin to a learned rabbi he had previ- cal masterpiece. In the excitement, a Christian zealot 21
ously known in Dessau, the young Mendelssohn stud- named Lavater challenged Mendelssohn in a pamphlet
22
ied Jewish law and eked out a living copying Hebrew to accept Christianity or to demonstrate how the Chris-
manuscripts in a beautiful hand. But he was soon 23
tian faith was not “reasonable.” Replying politely but
fascinated by an intellectual world that had been closed passionately, the Jewish philosopher affirmed that all 24
25
Apago PDF Enhancer
to him in the Dessau ghetto. There, like most Jews
throughout central Europe, he had spoken Yiddish—
his studies had only strengthened him in the faith of his
fathers, although he certainly did not seek to convert 26
a mixture of German, Polish, and Hebrew. Now, work- anyone not born into Judaism. Rather, he urged tolera- 27
ing mainly on his own, he mastered German; learned tion in religious matters. He spoke up courageously for 28
Latin, Greek, French, and English; and studied mathe- his fellow Jews and decried the oppression they en- 29
matics and Enlightenment philosophy. Word of his dured, and he continued to do so for the rest of his life. 30
exceptional abilities spread in Berlin’s Jewish com- Orthodox Jew and German philosophe, Moses 31
munity (1,500 of the city’s 100,000 inhabitants). He Mendelssohn serenely combined two very different 32
began tutoring the children of a wealthy Jewish silk worlds. He built a bridge from the ghetto to the domi-
33
merchant, and he soon became the merchant’s clerk nant culture over which many Jews would pass, includ-
and later his partner. But his great passion remained 34
ing his novelist daughter Dorothea and his famous
the life of the mind and the spirit, which he avidly grandson, the composer Felix Mendelssohn. 35
pursued in his off hours. 36
Gentle and unassuming in his personal life, 37
Mendelssohn was a bold thinker. Reading eagerly in 38
Western philosophy since antiquity, he was, as a pious 1. How did Mendelssohn seek to influence Jewish 39
Jew, soon convinced that Enlightenment teachings religious thought in his time? 40
need not be opposed to Jewish thought and religion. 2. How do Mendelssohn’s ideas compare with those of
41
Indeed, he concluded that reason could complement the French Enlightenment?
42
and strengthen religion, although each would retain its *H. Kupferberg, The Mendelssohns: Three Generations of Genius 43
integrity as a separate sphere.† Developing this idea in (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972), p. 3. 44
his first great work, “On the Immortality of the Soul” †D. Sorkin, Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment
(1767), Mendelssohn used the neutral setting of a (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 8 ff.
45
philosophical dialogue between Socrates and his fol- 46
lowers in ancient Greece to argue that the human soul 47
lived forever. In refusing to bring religion and critical 48
thinking into conflict, he was strongly influenced by 49
contemporary German philosophers who argued simi- Improve Your Grade 50S
larly on behalf of Christianity. He reflected the way the Going Beyond Individuals in Society 51R
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27 Catherine the Great as Equestrian and Miniature of Count Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov
28 Catherine conspired with her lover Count Orlov to overthrow her husband Peter III and became
29 empress of Russia. Strongly influenced by the Enlightenment, she cultivated the French
philosophes and instituted moderate reforms, only to reverse them in the aftermath of Pugachev’s
30 rebellion. This equestrian portrait now hangs above her throne in the palace throne room.
31 (left: Musée des Beaux-Arts, Chartres/ The Bridgeman Art Library; right: © The State Hermitage Museum,
32 St. Petersburg)
33
34 her mother was related to the Romanovs of Russia, and As the old empress Elizabeth approached death, Cather-
35 that proved to be Catherine’s chance. ine plotted against her unpopular husband. She selected
36 Peter the Great had abolished the hereditary succes- as her new lover a dashing young officer named Grigory
37 sion of tsars so that he could name his successor and thus Orlov, who with his four officer brothers commanded
38 preserve his policies. This move opened a period of pal- considerable support among the soldiers stationed in
39 ace intrigue and a rapid turnover of rulers until Peter’s St. Petersburg. When Peter came to the throne in 1762,
40 youngest daughter, Elizabeth, came to the Russian throne his decision to withdraw Russian troops from the coali-
41 in 1741. A shrewd but crude woman, Elizabeth named tion against Prussia alienated the army. At the end of six
42 her nephew Peter heir to the throne and chose Catherine months Catherine and her conspirators deposed Peter III
43 to be his wife in 1744. It was a mismatch from the be- in a palace revolution, and the Orlov brothers murdered
44 ginning. The fifteen-year-old Catherine was intelligent him. The German princess became empress of Russia.
45 and attractive; her husband shared neither of these qual- Catherine had drunk deeply at the Enlightenment well.
46 ities. Ignored by her husband, Catherine carefully stud- Never questioning the common assumption that absolute
47 ied Russian, endlessly read writers such as Bayle and monarchy was the best form of government, she set out
48 Voltaire, and made friends at court. Soon she knew what to rule in an enlightened manner. She had three main
49 she wanted: “I did not care about Peter,” she wrote in goals. First, she worked hard to continue Peter the
50S her Memoirs, “but I did care about the crown.”18 Great’s effort to bring the culture of western Europe to
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backward Russia. To do so, she imported Western archi- attained its most exalted position, and serfdom entered
tects, sculptors, musicians, and intellectuals. She bought its most oppressive phase.
masterpieces of Western art in wholesale lots and patron- Catherine’s third goal was territorial expansion, and in
ized the philosophes. An enthusiastic letter writer, she this respect she was extremely successful. Her armies sub-
corresponded extensively with Voltaire and praised him jugated the last descendants of the Mongols, the Cri-
as the “champion of the human race.” When the French mean Tatars, and began the conquest of the Caucasus.
government banned the Encyclopedia, she offered to pub- Her greatest coup by far was the partition of Poland (see
lish it in St. Petersburg, and she sent money to Diderot Map 18.1). By 1700 Poland had become a weak and de-
when he needed it. With these and countless similar ac- centralized republic with an elected king (see page 567),
tions, Catherine won good press in the West for herself and Poland’s fate in the late eighteenth century demon-
and for her country. Moreover, this intellectual ruler, strated the dangers of failing to build a strong absolutist
who wrote plays and loved good talk, set the tone for the state. All important decisions continued to require the
entire Russian nobility. Peter the Great westernized Rus- unanimous agreement of all nobles elected to the Polish
sian armies, but it was Catherine who westernized the Diet, which meant that nothing could ever be done to
imagination of the Russian nobility. strengthen the state. When, between 1768 and 1772,
Catherine’s second goal was domestic reform, and she Catherine’s armies scored unprecedented victories against
began her reign with sincere and ambitious projects. Bet- the Turks and thereby threatened to disturb the balance
ter laws were a major concern. In 1767 she appointed a of power between Russia and Austria in eastern Europe,
special legislative commission to prepare a new law code. Frederick of Prussia obligingly came forward with a deal.
No new unified code was ever produced, but Catherine He proposed that Turkey be let off easily and that Prus-
did restrict the practice of torture and allowed limited re- sia, Austria, and Russia each compensate itself by taking a
ligious toleration. She also tried to improve education gigantic slice of Polish territory. Catherine jumped at the
and strengthen local government. The philosophes ap- chance. The first partition of Poland took place in 1772.
plauded these measures and hoped more would follow. Two more partitions, in 1793 and 1795, gave all three
Apago PDF Enhancer powers more Polish territory, and the ancient republic of
Improve Your Grade
Poland vanished from the map.
Primary Source: Catherine the Great’s Grand Instruc-
tion to the Legislative Commission
Expansion helped Catherine keep the nobility happy,
for it provided her with vast new lands to give to her
Such was not the case. In 1773 a common Cossack faithful servants. Until the end this remarkable woman—
soldier named Emelian Pugachev sparked a gigantic up- who always believed that, in spite of her domestic set-
rising of serfs, very much as Stenka Razin had done a backs, she was slowly civilizing Russia—kept her zest for
century earlier (see page 576). Proclaiming himself the life. Fascinated by a new twenty-two-year-old flame when
true tsar, Pugachev issued “decrees” abolishing serfdom, she was a grandmother in her sixties, she happily reported
taxes, and army service. Thousands joined his cause, her good fortune to a favorite former lover: “I have come
slaughtering landlords and officials over a vast area of back to life like a frozen fly; I am gay and well.”19
southwestern Russia. Pugachev’s untrained forces even-
tually proved no match for Catherine’s noble-led regular
army. Betrayed by his own company, Pugachev was cap-
The Austrian Habsburgs
tured and savagely executed. In Austria two talented rulers did manage to introduce
Pugachev’s rebellion was a decisive turning point in major reforms, although traditional power politics was
Catherine’s domestic policy. On coming to the throne, more important than Enlightenment teachings. One was
she had condemned serfdom in theory, but Pugachev’s Joseph II (r. 1780–1790), a fascinating individual. For an
rebellion put an end to any intentions she might have had earlier generation of historians, he was the “revolution-
about reforming the system. The peasants were clearly ary emperor,” a tragic hero whose lofty reforms were un-
dangerous, and her empire rested on the support of the done by the landowning nobility he dared to challenge.
nobility. After 1775 Catherine gave the nobles absolute More recent scholarship has revised this romantic inter-
control of their serfs. She extended serfdom into new ar- pretation and has stressed how Joseph II continued the
eas, such as Ukraine. In 1785 she formalized the nobil- state-building work of his mother, the empress Maria
ity’s privileged position, freeing nobles forever from taxes Theresa (1740–1780), a remarkable but old-fashioned
and state service. Under Catherine the Russian nobility absolutist.
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1 NORWAY SWEDEN Volga

Boundary of
2 LIVONIA Poland in 1772
3 Moscow Austria in 1795
Riga
4 1772 Prussia in 1795
5 Russia in 1795
a
Smolensk
6 Ottoman Empire
Se
in 1795
ic
7 t
a l Königsberg
1772
1772 Year territory
B Vilna RUSSIA seized
8 PRUSSIA
9
Dn
Danzig 0 100 200 Km.
ie
(Gdansk) er
p
1795
10 E lb 1772 1795 0 100 Mi. 200 Mi.
e
11 i s t ula
V
P O L A N D UKRAINE
12 BRANDENBURG Warsaw Kiev
Berlin O 1793
13 der
1795 Lublin
1793
14 SAXONY SILESIA
15 HOLY
Rhi
Dresden
e Cracow 1772
n
16 ROMAN
GALICIA Sea
1783–1792
17 EMPIRE BOHEMIA (from Ottoman Empire) of Azov
18
be MOLDAVIA
19 nu CRIMEA
FRANCE Da Vienna BESSARABIA
20 AUSTRIAN EMPIRE
21 SWISS HUNGARY
TYROL
22 CONFEDERATION Black Sea
23 Venice
WALLACHIA
CROATIA
24
D a n ub e
BOSNIA
26 SERBIA BULGARIA
27 OTTOMAN EMPIRE
28 MONTENEGRO Constantinople
29
Mapping the Past
30
31 MAP 18.1 The Partition of Poland and Russia’s Expansion, 1772–1795 During the six-
32 teenth century the Polish nobility confirmed its right to elect the kings of Poland. The parliament could
be blocked by the veto of a single member. In the seventeenth century warfare with Sweden and Rus-
33 sian Cossacks resulted in Poland’s loss of the Baltic areas and Ukraine. In 1772 war threatened be-
34 tween Russia and Austria over Russian gains from the Ottoman Empire. To satisfy desires for expansion
35 without fighting, Prussia’s Frederick the Great proposed that parts of Poland be divided among Aus-
36 tria, Prussia, and Russia. In 1793 and 1795 the three powers partitioned the remainder, and the an-
37 •
cient republic of Poland vanished from the map. 1 Why was Poland vulnerable to partition in the latter half
of the eighteenth century? What does it say about European politics at the time that a country could simply cease to
38
39 •
exist on the map? Could that happen today? 2 Of the three powers that divided the kingdom of Poland, which
benefited the most? How did the partition affect the geographical boundaries of each state, and what was the signifi-
40
41
•
cance? 3 What border with the former Poland remained unchanged? Why do you think this was the case?
42
43
44
45 Emerging from the long War of the Austrian Succession whole series of administrative reforms strengthened the
46 in 1748 with the serious loss of Silesia, Maria Theresa and central bureaucracy, smoothed out some provincial differ-
47 her closest ministers were determined to introduce re- ences, and revamped the tax system, taxing even the lands
48 forms that would make the state stronger and more effi- of nobles without special exemptions. Third, the govern-
49 cient. Three aspects of these reforms were most important. ment sought to improve the lot of the agricultural popula-
50S First, Maria Theresa introduced measures aimed at limit- tion, cautiously reducing the power of lords over their
51R ing the papacy’s political influence in her realm. Second, a hereditary serfs and their partially free peasant tenants.
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to re-establish order. Peasants once again 1

were required to do forced labor for their 2
lords. 3
4
Evaluating “Enlightened 5
6
Absolutism” 7
Despite differences, the leading eastern Eu- 8
ropean monarchs of the later eighteenth 9
century all claimed that they were acting on 10
the principles of the Enlightenment. The 11
philosophes generally agreed with this as- 12
sessment and cheered them on. Beginning 13
in the mid-nineteenth century historians 14
developed the idea of a common “enlight- 15
ened despotism” or “enlightened abso- 16
lutism,” and they canonized Frederick, 17
Catherine, and Joseph as its most outstand- 18
ing examples. More recent research has 19
raised doubts about this old interpretation 20
and has led to a fundamental revaluation. 21
There is general agreement that these ab- 22
solutists, especially Catherine and Freder- 23
ick, did encourage and spread the cultural 24
Apago PDF Enhancer values of the Enlightenment. Perhaps this 25
was their greatest achievement. Skeptical in 26
religion and intensely secular in basic orien- 27
Maria Theresa The empress and her husband pose with eleven of their
sixteen children at Schönbrunn palace in this family portrait by court painter tation, they unabashedly accepted the here 28
Martin Meytens (1695–1770). Joseph, the heir to the throne, stands at the and now and sought their happiness in the 29
center of the star pattern. Wealthy women often had very large families, in part enjoyment of it. At the same time, they 30
because they, unlike poor women, seldom nursed their babies. (Réunion des were proud of their intellectual accomplish- 31
Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY)
ments and good taste, and they supported 32
knowledge, education, and the arts. No 33
wonder the philosophes felt that these 34
Coregent with his mother from 1765 onward and a monarchs were kindred spirits. 35
strong supporter of change, Joseph II moved forward Historians also agree that the absolutists believed in 36
rapidly when he came to the throne in 1780. He con- change from above and tried to enact needed reforms. 37
trolled the established Catholic Church even more closely Yet the results of these efforts brought only very modest 38
in an attempt to ensure that it produced better citizens. improvements, and the life of the peasantry remained 39
He granted religious toleration and civic rights to Protes- very hard in the eighteenth century. Thus some histori- 40
tants and Jews—a radical innovation that impressed his ans have concluded that these monarchs were not really 41
contemporaries. In even more spectacular peasant re- sincere in their reform efforts. Others disagree, arguing 42
forms, Joseph abolished serfdom in 1781, and in 1789 that powerful nobilities blocked the absolutists’ genuine 43
he decreed that all peasant labor obligations be con- commitment to reform. (The old interpretation of 44
verted into cash payments. This measure was violently re- Joseph II as the tragic revolutionary emperor forms part 45
jected not only by the nobility but also by the peasants it of this argument.) 46
was intended to help since their primitive barter econ- The emerging answer to this controversy is that the 47
omy was woefully lacking in money. When a disillusioned later Eastern absolutists were indeed committed to re- 48
Joseph died prematurely at forty-nine, the entire Habs- form but that humanitarian objectives were of secondary 49
burg empire was in turmoil. His brother Leopold II importance. Above all, the absolutists wanted reforms 50S
(r. 1790–1792) canceled Joseph’s radical edicts in order that would strengthen the state and allow them to com- 51R
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1 pete militarily with their neighbors. Modern scholarship The primacy of state over individual interests also helps
2 has therefore stressed how Catherine, Frederick, and explain some puzzling variations in social policies. For
3 Joseph were in many ways simply continuing the state- example, Catherine the Great took measures that wors-
4 building of their predecessors, reorganizing armies and ened the peasants’ condition because she looked increas-
5 expanding bureaucracies to raise more taxes and troops. ingly to the nobility as her natural ally and sought to
6 The reason for this continuation was simple. The inter- strengthen it. Frederick the Great basically favored the
7 national political struggle was brutal, and the stakes were status quo, limiting only the counterproductive excesses
8 high. First Austria under Maria Theresa and then Prus- of his trusted nobility against its peasants. Joseph II be-
9 sia under Frederick the Great had to engage in bitter lieved that greater freedom for peasants was the means to
10 fighting to escape dismemberment, while decentralized strengthen his realm, and he acted accordingly. Each en-
11 Poland was coldly divided and eventually liquidated. lightened absolutist sought greater state power, but each
12 Yet in this drive for more state power, the later abso- believed that a different policy would attain it.
13 lutists were also innovators, and the idea of an era of en- The eastern European absolutists of the later eighteenth
14 lightened absolutism retains a certain validity. Sharing century combined old-fashioned state-building with the
15 the Enlightenment faith in critical thinking and believing culture and critical thinking of the Enlightenment. In
16 that knowledge meant power, these absolutists really doing so, they succeeded in expanding the role of the
17 were more enlightened than their predecessors because state in the life of society. They perfected bureaucratic
18 they put state-building reforms in a new, broader per- machines that were to prove surprisingly adaptive and ca-
19 spective. Above all, the later absolutists considered how pable of enduring into the twentieth century. Their fail-
20 more humane laws and practices could help their popu- ure to implement policies we would recognize as humane
21 lations become more productive and satisfied and thus and enlightened—such as abolishing serfdom—may re-
22 able to contribute more substantially to the welfare of the veal inherent limitations in Enlightenment thinking
23 state. It was from this perspective that they introduced about equality and social justice, rather than in their exe-
24 many of their most progressive reforms, tolerating reli- cution of an Enlightenment program. The fact that lead-
25 gious minorities, simplifying legal codes, and promoting
Apago PDF Enhancer ing philosophes supported rather than criticized Eastern
26 practical education. rulers’ policies suggests some of the blinders of the era.
27
28
29
30
31
32
34
35
36 • What was revolutionary in new attitudes toward the Western civilization and became a key element of Western
37 natural world? identity. During the eighteenth century scientific thought
38 • How did the new worldview affect the way people fostered new ideas about racial differences and provided
39 thought about society and human relations? justifications for belief in Western superiority.
40 • What impact did this new way of thinking have on Interpreting scientific findings and Newtonian laws in
41 political developments and monarchical absolutism? a manner that was both antitradition and antireligion,
42 Enlightenment philosophes extolled the superiority of
43 rational, critical thinking. This new method, they be-
44 lieved, promised not just increased knowledge but even
45 Decisive breakthroughs in astronomy and physics in the the discovery of the fundamental laws of human society.
46 seventeenth century demolished the imposing medieval Although they reached different conclusions when they
47 synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian theol- turned to social and political realities, they did stimulate
48 ogy. These developments had only limited practical con- absolute monarchs to apply reason to statecraft and the
49 sequences at the time, but the impact of new scientific search for useful reforms. Above all, the philosophes suc-
50S knowledge on intellectual life was enormous. The emer- ceeded in shaping an emerging public opinion and
51R gence of modern science was a distinctive characteristic of spreading their radically new worldview.
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H1 or EC-H Head
Summary • 617
The ideas of the Enlightenment were an inspiration for Muthu, Sankar. Enlightenment Against Empire. 2003. Exam- 1
monarchs, particularly absolutist rulers in central and ines Enlightenment figures’ opposition to colonialism. 2
eastern Europe who saw in them important tools for re- Outram, Dorinda. The Enlightenment, 2d ed. 2006. An out- 3
forming and rationalizing their governments. Their pri- standing and accessible introduction to Enlightenment de- 4
mary goal was to strengthen their states and increase the bates that emphasizes the Enlightenment’s social context 5
efficiency of their bureaucracies and armies. Enlightened and global reach. 6
absolutists believed that these reforms would ultimately Schiebinger, Londa. The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Ori- 7
improve the lot of ordinary people, but this was not gins of Modern Science. 1998. Discusses how the new sci- 8
their chief concern. With few exceptions, they did not ence excluded women. 9
question the institution of serfdom. The fact that lead- Shapin, Steven. The Scientific Revolution. 2001. A concise 10
ing philosophes supported rather than criticized Eastern and well-informed general introduction to the scientific 11
revolution. 12
rulers’ policies suggests some of the limitations of the era.
Sorkin, David. Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlight- 13
enment. 1996. A brilliant study of the Jewish philosopher 14
Key Terms and of the role of religion in the Enlightenment.
15
natural philosophy skepticism 16
Copernican tabula rasa Notes 17
18
hypothesis philosophes 1. H. Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science (New York: Macmil-
lan, 1951), p. viii. 19
experimental method separation of powers
2. Quoted in A. G. R. Smith, Science and Society in the Sixteenth and 20
law of inertia reading revolution Seventeenth Centuries (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 21
law of universal salons 1972), p. 97.
22
gravitation rococo 3. Quoted in Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science, p. 47.
23
empiricism public sphere 4. Ibid., pp. 115–116.
5. Ibid., p. 120. 24
Cartesian dualism general will
Apago PDF Enhancer 6. L. Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Mod- 25
scientific community racial difference ern Science (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), 26
Enlightenment enlightened p. 2.
27
rationalism absolutism 7. Jacqueline Broad, Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century
28
progress (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 17.
8. Quoted in P. Hazard, The European Mind, 1680–1715 (Cleveland: 29
Meridian Books, 1963), pp. 304–305. 30
Improve Your Grade Flashcards 9. Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? p. 64. 31
10. Quoted in L. M. Marsak, ed., The Enlightenment (New York: John
32
Wiley & Sons, 1972), p. 56.
Suggested Reading 11. Quoted in G. L. Mosse et al., eds., Europe in Review (Chicago: 33
Alexander, John T. Catherine the Great: Life and Legend. Rand McNally, 1964), p. 156. 34
1989. The best biography of the famous Russian tsarina. 12. Quoted in P. Gay, “The Unity of the Enlightenment,” History 3 35
(1960): 25. 36
Beales, Derek. Joseph II. 1987. A fine biography of the re- 13. See E. Fox-Genovese, “Women in the Enlightenment,” in Becom-
forming Habsburg ruler. 37
ing Visible: Women in European History, 2d ed., ed. R. Bridenthal,
Chartier, Roger. The Cultural Origins of the French Revolu- C. Koonz, and S. Stuard (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), esp. 38
tion. 1991. An imaginative analysis of the changing atti- pp. 252–259, 263–265. 39
tudes of the educated public. 14. Quoted in G. P. Gooch, Catherine the Great and Other Studies 40
(Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1966), p. 149. 41
Eze, E. Chukwudi, ed. Race and the Enlightenment: A 15. Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, Eloges lus dans les séances publiques de
Reader. 1997. A pioneering source on the origins of mod- 42
l’Académie française (Paris, 1779), p. ix, quoted in Mona Ozouf,
ern racial thinking in the Enlightenment. “‘Public Opinion’ at the End of the Old Regime,” The Journal of 43
Goodman, Dena. The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of Modern History 60, Supplement: Rethinking French Politics in 1788 44
the Enlightenment. 1994. An innovative study of the role of (September 1988), p. S9. 45
salons and salon hostesses in the rise of the Enlightenment. 16. Quoted in Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, ed., Race and the Enlighten- 46
ment: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), p. 33. This section draws
MacDonogh, Giles. Frederick the Great. 2001. An outstand- 47
heavily on this reader.
ing biography of the Prussian king. 17. Quoted in L. Krieger, Kings and Philosophers, 1689–1789 (New 48
Munck, Thomas. The Enlightenment: A Comparative History. York: W. W. Norton, 1970), p. 257. 49
2000. Compares developments in Enlightenment thought 18. Quoted in Gooch, Catherine the Great, p. 15. 50S
in different countries. 19. Ibid., p. 53. 51R
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1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Voltaire on Religion
11
12
13
14
15
16
V oltaire was the most renowned and probably
the most influential of the French philosophes. His
tender father and mother who have been occupied
with his happiness, he owes them as much love
17 biting satirical novel Candide (1759) is still widely and care as we owe to our parents. If someone in
18 assigned in college courses, and his witty yet serious the Milky Way sees a needy cripple, and if he can
Philosophical Dictionary remains a source of plea- aid him and does not do so, then he is guilty
19
sure and stimulation. The Dictionary consists of a toward all the globes.
20 series of essays on topics ranging from Adam to “Everywhere the heart has the same duties:
21 Zoroaster, from certainty to circumcision. The on the steps of the throne of God, if He has a
22 following passage is taken from the essay on religion. throne; and in the depths of the abyss, if there
23 Voltaire began writing the Philosophical is an abyss.”
24 Dictionary in 1752, at the age of fifty-eight, after I was deep in these ideas when one of those
25 arriving at the Prussian court in Berlin. Frederick
Apago PDF Enhancer genii who fill the spaces between the worlds
26 the Great applauded Voltaire’s efforts, but Voltaire came down to me. I recognized the same aerial
27 put the project aside after leaving Berlin, and the creature who had appeared to me on another
28 first of several revised editions was published occasion to teach me that the judgments of God
29 anonymously in 1764. It was an immediate and are different from our own, and how a good
controversial success. Snapped up by an action is preferable to a controversy.
30
“enlightened” public, it was denounced by The genie transported me into a desert all
31 religious leaders as a threat to the Christian covered with piles of bones. . . . He began with
32 community and was burned in Geneva and Paris. the first pile. “These,” he said, “are the twenty-
33 three thousand Jews who danced before a calf,
34 I meditated last night; I was absorbed in the together with the twenty-four thousand who were
35 contemplation of nature; I admired the killed while fornicating with Midianitish women.
36 immensity, the course, the harmony of those The number of those massacred for such errors
37 infinite globes which the vulgar do not know and offences amounts to nearly three hundred
38 how to admire. thousand.
39 I admired still more the intelligence which “In the other piles are the bones of the
40 directs these vast forces. I said to myself: “One Christians slaughtered by each other because
must be blind not to be dazzled by this spectacle; of metaphysical disputes. They are divided into
41
one must be stupid not to recognize its author; several heaps of four centuries each. One heap
42 one must be mad not to worship the Supreme would have mounted right to the sky; they had
43 Being. What tribute of worship should I render to be divided.”
44 Him? Should not this tribute be the same in the “What!” I cried, “brothers have treated their
45 whole of space, since it is the same Supreme brothers like this, and I have the misfortune to
46 Power which reigns equally in all space? be of this brotherhood!”
47 “Should not a thinking being who dwells on a “Here,” said the spirit, “are the twelve million
48 star in the Milky Way offer Him the same homage native Americans killed in their own land because
49 as a thinking being on this little globe of ours? they had not been baptized.”
50S Light is the same for the star Sirius as for us; “My God! . . . Why assemble here all these
51R moral philosophy must also be the same. If a abominable monuments to barbarism and
feeling, thinking animal on Sirius is born of a fanaticism?”
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An impish Voltaire, by the French sculptor

Houdon. (Courtesy of Board of Trustees of the
Victoria & Albert Museum)
“To instruct you. . . . Follow me now.” [The

genie takes Voltaire to the “heroes of humanity,
who tried to banish violence and plunder from the
world,” and tells Voltaire to question them.]
[At last] I saw a man with a gentle, simple face,
who seemed to me to be about thirty-five years
old. From afar he looked with compassion upon
those piles of whitened bones, through which I
had been led to reach the sage’s dwelling place.
I was astonished to find his feet swollen and
bleeding, his hands likewise, his side pierced, and “You did not then contribute in any way by
his ribs laid bare by the cut of the lash. “Good your teaching, either badly reported or badly
God!” I said to him, “is it possible for a just man, interpreted, to those frightful piles of bones
a sage, to be in this state? I have just seen one which I saw on my way to consult with you?”
who was treated in a very hateful way, but there “I have only looked with horror upon those
is no comparison between his torture and yours. who have made themselves guilty of all these
Wicked priests and wicked judges poisoned him; murders.”
is it by priests and judges that you were so . . . [Finally] I asked him to tell me in what true
cruelly assassinated?” religion consisted.
“Have I not already told you? Love God and
Apago PDF Enhancer
With great courtesy he answered, “Yes.”
“And who were these monsters?” your neighbor as yourself.”
“They were hypocrites.” “Is it necessary for me to take sides either for
“Ah! that says everything; I understand by that the Greek Orthodox Church or the Roman
one word that they would have condemned you Catholic?”
to the cruelest punishment. Had you then proved “When I was in the world I never made any
to them, as Socrates did, that the Moon was not difference between the Jew and the Samaritan.”
a goddess, and that Mercury was not a god?” “Well, if that is so, I take you for my only
“No, it was not a question of planets. My master.” Then he made a sign with his head that
countrymen did not even know what a planet filled me with peace. The vision disappeared, and
was; they were all arrant ignoramuses. Their I was left with a clear conscience.
superstitions were quite different from those of
the Greeks.”
“Then you wanted to teach them a new Questions for Analysis
religion?”
“Not at all; I told them simply: ‘Love God 1. Why did Voltaire believe in a Supreme Being?
with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself, Does this passage reflect the influence of Isaac
for that is the whole of mankind’s duty.’ Judge Newton’s scientific system? If so, how?
yourself if this precept is not as old as the
2. Was Voltaire trying to entertain, teach, or do
universe; judge yourself if I brought them a new
both? Was he effective? Why?
religion.” . . .
“But did you say nothing, do nothing that 3. If Voltaire was trying to convey serious ideas
could serve them as a pretext?” about religion and morality, what were those
“To the wicked everything serves as pretext.” ideas? What was he attacking?
“Did you not say once that you were come not
4. If a person today thought and wrote like
to bring peace, but a sword?”
Voltaire, would that person be called a
“It was a scribe’s error; I told them that I
defender or a destroyer of Christianity? Why?
brought peace and not a sword. I never wrote
anything; what I can’t have been changed without Source: F. M. Arouet de Voltaire, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 8,
evil intention.” trans. J. McKay (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1875), pp. 188–190.
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51R The East India Dock, London (detail), by Samuel Scott, a painting infused with the spirit of maritime
expansion. (© Board of Trustees of the Victoria & Albert Museum)
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c h a p t e r 1
2
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The Expansion 3
4
of Europe in 5
6
7
the Eighteenth 8
9
Century 10
11
chapter preview 12
13
Agriculture and the Land
• What were the causes and effects
of the agricultural revolution, and
T he world of absolutism and aristocracy, a combination of raw power
and elegant refinement, was a world apart from that of the common
people. For most people in the eighteenth century, life remained a strug-
14
15
16
17
what nations led the way in these gle with poverty and uncertainty, with the landlord and the tax collector.
18
developments? In 1700 peasants on the land and artisans in their shops lived little better
19
than had their ancestors in the Middle Ages. Only in science and
The Beginning of the 20
thought, and there only among intellectual elites and their followers, had
Population Explosion 21
Western society succeeded in going beyond the great achievements of
• Why did European population 22
the High Middle Ages, achievements that in turn owed much to Greece
rise dramatically in the eighteenth 23
and Rome.
century? 24
Everyday life was a struggle because European societies still could not
Cottage Industry and produce very much by modern standards. Ordinary men and women
26
Urban Guilds might work like their beasts in the fields, but there was seldom enough
27
• How and why did economic good food, warm clothing, and decent housing. Life went on; history
28
production intensify in the eighteenth went on. The wars of religion ravaged Germany in the seventeenth cen-
29
century, particularly in the tury; Russia rose to become a Great Power; the state of Poland disap-
30
peared; monarchs and nobles continually jockeyed for power and wealth.
countryside? 31
In 1700 the idea of progress, of substantial improvement in the lives of
32
Building the Global Economy great numbers of people, was still the dream of only a small elite in fash-
33
• How did colonial markets boost ionable salons.
34
Europe’s economic and social Yet the economic basis of European life was beginning to change. In
35
development, and what conflicts and the course of the eighteenth century the European economy emerged
36
adversity did world trade entail? from the long crisis of the seventeenth century, responded to challenges,
37
and began to expand once again. Population resumed its growth, while
38
colonial empires developed and colonial elites prospered. Some areas
39
were more fortunate than others. The rising Atlantic powers—Holland,
40
France, and above all England—and their colonies led the way. The
41
expansion of agriculture, industry, trade, and population marked the
42
beginning of a surge comparable to that of the eleventh- and twelfth-
43
century springtime of European civilization. But this time, broadly based
44
expansion was not cut short. This time the response to new challenges
45
led toward one of the most influential developments in human history,
46
the Industrial Revolution, considered in Chapter 22.
47
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49
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622 CHAPTER 19 • THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
1 three-year rotations were introduced, especially on more

2 Agriculture and the Land fertile lands. This system permitted a year of wheat or rye
3 to be followed by a year of oats or beans and only then by
4 At the end of the seventeenth century the economy of a year of fallow. Significant gains in agricultural produc-
5 Europe was agrarian. With the possible exception of Hol- tion resulted.
6 land, at least 80 percent of the people of all western Traditional village rights reinforced communal pat-
7 European countries drew their livelihoods from agricul- terns of farming. In addition to rotating field crops in a
8 ture. In eastern Europe the percentage was considerably uniform way, villages maintained open meadows for hay
9 higher. Men and women lavished their attention on the and natural pasture. These lands were common lands, set
10 land, plowing fields and sowing seed, reaping harvests aside primarily for draft horses and oxen, but open to the
11 and storing grain. Yet even in a rich agricultural region cows and pigs of the community as well. After the harvest
12 such as the Po Valley in northern Italy, every bushel of villagers also pastured their animals on the wheat or rye
13 wheat sown yielded on average only five or six bushels of stubble. In many places such pasturing followed a brief
14 grain at harvest during the seventeenth century. By mod- period, also established by tradition, for the gleaning of
15 ern standards output was distressingly low. grain. Poor women would go through the fields picking
16 In most regions of Europe in the sixteenth and seven- up the few single grains that had fallen to the ground in
17 teenth centuries, climatic conditions produced poor or the course of the harvest.
18 disastrous harvests every eight or nine years. Unbalanced In the age of absolutism and nobility, the state and
19 and inadequate food in famine years made people ex- landlords continued to levy heavy taxes and high rents,
20 tremely susceptible to illness. Eating material unfit for thereby stripping peasants of much of their meager earn-
21 human consumption, such as bark or grass, resulted in ings. The level of exploitation varied. Generally speaking,
22 intestinal ailments of many kinds. Influenza and smallpox the peasants of eastern Europe were worst off. As we saw
23 preyed on populations weakened by famine. In famine in Chapter 17, they were serfs bound to their lords in
24 years the number of deaths soared far above normal. A hereditary service. In much of eastern Europe, five or six
25 third of a village’s population might disappear in a year or
Apago PDF Enhancer days of unpaid work per week on the lord’s land were not
26 two. But new developments in agricultural technology uncommon. Well into the nineteenth century individual
27 and methods gradually brought an end to the ravages of Russian serfs and serf families were regularly sold with
28 hunger in western Europe. and without land.
29 • What were the causes and effects of the agricultural Social conditions were better in western Europe, where
30 revolution, and what nations led the way in these peasants were generally free from serfdom. In France,
31 developments? western Germany, England, and the Low Countries, they
32 owned land and could pass it on to their children. Yet
33 life in the village was unquestionably hard, and poverty
34 was the great reality for most people. The privileges of
35
The Open-Field System Europe’s ruling elites weighed heavily on the people of
36 These new developments drew on long roots. The great the land.
37 accomplishment of medieval agriculture was the open-
38 field system of village farming. That system divided the
39 land to be cultivated by the peasants of a given village
The Agricultural Revolution
40 into several large fields, which were in turn cut up into One way for European peasants to improve their diffi-
41 long, narrow strips. The fields were open, and the strips cult position was to take land from those who owned it
42 were not enclosed into small plots by fences or hedges. but did no labor. Yet the social and political conditions
43 Each family followed the same pattern of plowing, sow- that sustained the ruling elites were ancient and deeply
44 ing, and harvesting in accordance with tradition and the rooted, and powerful forces stood ready to crush pro-
45 village leaders. test. Only with the coming of the French Revolution
46 The ever-present problem was soil exhaustion. Wheat were European peasants, mainly in France, able to im-
47 planted year after year in a field will deplete the nitrogen prove their position by means of radical mass action.
48 in the soil. Since the supply of manure for fertilizer was Technological progress offered another possibility. If
49 limited, the only way for the land to recover was to lie fal- peasants (and their noble landlords) could replace the idle
50S low for a period of time. In the early Middle Ages a year fallow with crops, they could greatly increase the land
51R of fallow was alternated with a year of cropping; then under cultivation. So remarkable were the possibilities
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Agriculture and the Land • 623
and the results that historians have often spoken of the Chronology 1
progressive elimination of the fallow, which occurred 2
gradually throughout Europe from the mid-seventeenth ca 1650–1790 Growth of Atlantic economy 3
century on, as an agricultural revolution. This revolu- 4
tion, which took longer than historians used to believe, ca 1650–1850 Agricultural improvement and 5
was a great milestone in human development. revolution 6
Because grain crops exhaust the soil and make fallow- 1651–1663 British Navigation Acts 7
ing necessary, the secret to eliminating the fallow lies in 8
alternating grain with nitrogen-storing crops. The most 1652–1674 Anglo-Dutch wars; rise of British 9
mercantilism
important of these land-reviving crops are peas and beans, 10
root crops such as turnips and potatoes, and clovers and ca 1690–1780 Enlightenment 11
grasses. As the eighteenth century went on, the number 12
1700–1790 Height of Atlantic slave trade; expansion
of crops that were systematically rotated grew. New pat- 13
of rural industry in Europe
terns of organization allowed some farmers to develop in- 14
creasingly sophisticated patterns of crop rotation to suit 1701–1713 War of the Spanish Succession 15
different kinds of soils. For example, farmers in French 16
1701–1763 Mercantilist wars of empire
Flanders near Lille in the late eighteenth century used a 17
ten-year rotation, alternating a number of grain, root, and 1720–1722 Last of bubonic plague in Europe 18
hay crops in a given field on a ten-year schedule. Contin- 19
1720–1789 Growth of European population
ual experimentation led to more scientific farming. 20
Improvements in farming had multiple effects. The 1740–1748 War of the Austrian Succession 21
new crops made ideal feed for animals, and because peas- 22
1750–1790 Rise of economic liberalism
ants and larger farmers had more fodder, hay, and root 23
crops for the winter months, they could build up their 1756–1763 Seven Years’ War 24
herds of cattle and sheep. More animals meant more
1759 Fall of Quebec
meat and better diets. More animals also meant more 26
manure for fertilizer and therefore more grain for bread 1760–1815 Height of parliamentary enclosure in 27
and porridge. England 28
Advocates of the new crop rotations, who included an 29
1776 Smith, Wealth of Nations
emerging group of experimental scientists, some govern- 30
ment officials, and a few big landowners, believed that 1807 British slave trade abolished 31
new methods were scarcely possible within the tradi- 32
tional framework of open fields and common rights. A 33
farmer who wanted to experiment with new methods 34
would have to get all the landholders in a village to agree 35
to the plan. Advocates of improvement argued that inno- famine in harsh times. Thus when the small landholders 36
vating agriculturalists needed to enclose and consolidate and the village poor could effectively oppose the enclo- 37
their scattered holdings into compact, fenced-in fields in sure of the open fields and the common lands, they did 38
order to farm more effectively. In doing so, the innova- so. Moreover, in many countries they found allies among 39
tors also needed to enclose their individual shares of the the larger, predominately noble landowners who were 40
natural pasture, the common. According to proponents also wary of enclosure because it required large invest- 41
of this movement, known as enclosure, a revolution in ments and posed risks for them as well. 42
village life and organization was the necessary price of The old system of unenclosed open fields and the new 43
technical progress. system of continuous rotation coexisted in Europe for a 44
That price seemed too high to many poor rural people long time. Open fields could be found in much of France 45
who had small, inadequate holdings or very little land at and Germany in the early years of the nineteenth century 46
all. Traditional rights were precious to these poor peas- because peasants there had successfully opposed efforts 47
ants. They used commonly held pastureland to graze live- to introduce the new techniques in the late eighteenth 48
stock, and marshlands or moorlands outside the village as century. Until the end of the eighteenth century, the new 49
a source for firewood, berries, and other foraged goods system was extensively adopted only in the Low Coun- 50S
that could make the difference between survival and tries and England. 51R
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27 Hendrick Sorgh: Vegetable Market (1662) The wealth and well-being of the industrious,
capitalistic Dutch shine forth in this winsome market scene. The market woman’s baskets are filled
28 with delicious fresh produce that ordinary citizens can afford—eloquent testimony to the respon-
29 sive, enterprising character of Dutch agriculture. (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)
30
31
32
33
34 The Leadership of the Low Countries The pressure of population was connected with the sec-
35 ond cause: the growth of towns and cities. Stimulated by
36
and England commerce and overseas trade, Amsterdam grew from
37 The new methods of the agricultural revolution origi- thirty thousand to two hundred thousand inhabitants in
38 nated in the Low Countries. Seventeenth-century repub- its golden seventeenth century. The growing urban pop-
39 lican Holland, already the most advanced country in ulation provided Dutch peasants with markets for all they
40 Europe in many areas of human endeavor (see pages 549– could produce and allowed each region to specialize in
41 553), led the way. By the middle of the seventeenth cen- what it did best. Thus the Dutch could develop their po-
42 tury intensive farming was well established, and the in- tential, and the Low Countries became “the Mecca of
43 novations of enclosed fields, continuous rotation, heavy foreign agricultural experts who came . . . to see Flemish
44 manuring, and a wide variety of crops were all present. agriculture with their own eyes, to write about it and to
45 Agriculture was highly specialized and commercialized. propagate its methods in their home lands.”1
46 One reason for early Dutch leadership in farming was The English were the best students. Drainage and wa-
47 that the area was one of the most densely populated in ter control were one subject in which they received in-
48 Europe. In order to feed themselves and provide employ- struction. Large parts of seventeenth-century Holland
49 ment, the Dutch were forced at an early date to seek max- had once been sea and sea marsh, and the efforts of cen-
50S imum yields from their land and to increase the cultivated turies had made the Dutch the world’s leaders in the
51R area through the steady draining of marshes and swamps. skills of drainage. In the first half of the seventeenth cen-
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The Beginning of the Population Explosion • 625
tury Dutch experts made a great contribution to draining 1

the extensive marshes, or fens, of wet and rainy England. 2
The most famous of these Dutch engineers, Cornelius 3
Vermuyden, directed one large drainage project in York- 4
shire and another in Cambridgeshire. In the Cambridge 5
fens, Vermuyden and his Dutch workers eventually re- 6
claimed forty thousand acres, which were then farmed 7
intensively in the Dutch manner. Swampy wilderness was 8
converted into thousands of acres of some of the best 9
land in England. 10
Jethro Tull (1674–1741), part crank and part genius, 11
was an important English innovator. A true son of the 12
early Enlightenment, Tull adopted a critical attitude 13
toward accepted ideas about farming and tried to develop 14
better methods through empirical research. He was espe- 15
cially enthusiastic about using horses, rather than slower- 16
moving oxen, for plowing. He also advocated sowing 17
seed with drilling equipment rather than scattering it by 18
hand. Drilling distributed seed in an even manner and at 19
the proper depth. There were also improvements in live- 20
stock, inspired in part by the earlier successes of English 21
country gentlemen in breeding ever-faster horses for the 22
races and fox hunts that were their passions. Selective 23
breeding of ordinary livestock was a marked improve- 24
ment over the haphazard old pattern.
By the mid-eighteenth century English agriculture was 26
in the process of a long but radical transformation. The Enclosure in Streatley, Berkshire County, England This 27
map shows the results of enclosure in early-nineteenth-century
eventual result was that by 1870 English farmers were Streatley, a village ten miles west of Reading on the River 28
producing 300 percent more food than they had pro- Thames. The area marked in yellow was the enclosed territory, 29
duced in 1700, although the number of people working appropriated mostly by a few large landowners and the city of 30
the land had increased by only 14 percent. This great Reading. The legend provides a detailed list of land owner- 31
surge of agricultural production provided food for Eng- ship, including references to “old inclosures.” (Courtesy, Berk- 32
shire Record Office, Ref # Streatley (1817), MRI 256)
land’s rapidly growing urban population. 33
Growth in production was achieved in part by land 34
enclosures. About half the farmland in England was en- 35
closed through private initiatives prior to 1700; in the borers worked very long hours, usually following a dawn- 36
eighteenth century Parliament completed this work. to-dusk schedule six days a week all year long. Moreover, 37
From the 1760s through the Napoleonic wars of the landless laborers had lost that bit of independence and 38
early nineteenth century, a series of acts of Parliament en- self-respect that common rights had provided and were 39
closed most of the remaining common land. completely dependent on cash wages. In no other Euro- 40
By eliminating common rights and greatly reducing pean country had this proletarianization—this transfor- 41
the access of poor men and women to the land, the mation of large numbers of small peasant farmers into 42
eighteenth-century enclosure movement marked the landless rural wage earners—gone so far. And England’s 43
completion of two major historical developments in village poor found the cost of change heavy and unjust. 44
England—the rise of market-oriented estate agriculture 45
and the emergence of a landless rural proletariat. By 46
1815 a tiny minority of wealthy English (and Scottish) The Beginning of the 47
landowners held most of the land and pursued profits Population Explosion 48
aggressively, leasing their holdings through agents at 49
competitive prices to middle-size farmers, who relied on Another factor that affected the existing order of life and 50S
landless laborers for their workforce. These landless la- forced economic changes in the eighteenth century was 51R
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1 the beginning of the “population explosion.” Explosive

2 growth continued in Europe until the twentieth century, 10
3 by which time it was affecting nonwestern areas of the
4 globe. What caused the growth of population, and what 8
Population (in millions)

5 did the challenge of more mouths to feed and more hands
6 to employ do to the European economy? 6
7 • Why did European population rise dramatically in the
8 eighteenth century? 4
9
10 2
11
12
Limitations on Population Growth
1000 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500 1600 1700 1800
13 Many commonly held ideas about population in the past
14 are wrong. One such mistaken idea is the belief that
15 population was always growing too fast. On the contrary, FIGURE 19.1 The Growth of Population in England,
16 until 1700 the total population of Europe grew slowly 1000–1800 England is a good example of both the uneven
17 much of the time, and it followed an irregular cyclical increase of European population before 1700 and the third great
18 pattern (see Figure 19.1). This cyclical pattern had a surge of growth, which began in the eighteenth century. (Source:
E. A. Wrigley, Population and History. Copyright © 1969 by McGraw-
19 great influence on many aspects of social and economic Hill. Reprinted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies.)
20 life. The terrible ravages of the Black Death caused a
21 sharp drop in population and prices after 1350 and also
22 created a labor shortage throughout Europe. Some eco- Although population growth of even 1 percent per
23 nomic historians calculate that for those common people year seems fairly modest, it will produce a very large in-
24 in western Europe who managed to steer clear of warfare crease over a long period: in three hundred years it will
25 and of power struggles within the ruling class, the later
Apago PDF Enhancer result in sixteen times as many people. Such gigantic in-
26 Middle Ages was an era of exceptional well-being. creases simply did not occur in agrarian Europe. In cer-
27 But this well-being eroded in the course of the six- tain abnormal years and tragic periods—the Black Death
28 teenth century. The second great surge of population was only the most extreme example—many more people
29 growth (see Figure 19.1) outstripped the growth of ag- died than were born. Total population fell sharply, even
30 ricultural production after about 1500. There was less catastrophically. A number of years of modest growth
31 food per person, and food prices rose more rapidly than would then be necessary to make up for those who had
32 wages, a development intensified by the inflow of pre- died in an abnormal year. Such savage increases in deaths
33 cious metals from the Americas and a general, if uneven, occurred periodically in the seventeenth century on a
34 European price revolution. The result was a substantial local and regional scale, and these demographic crises
35 decline in living standards throughout Europe. By 1600 combined to check the growth of population until af-
36 the pressure of population on resources was severe in ter 1700.
37 much of Europe, and widespread poverty was an undeni- The grim reapers of demographic crisis were famine,
38 able reality. epidemic disease, and war. Famine, the inevitable result
39 For this reason, population growth slowed and stopped of low yields and periodic crop failures, was particularly
40 in seventeenth-century Europe. Births and deaths, fertil- murderous because it was accompanied by disease. With
41 ity and mortality, were in a crude but effective balance. a brutal one-two punch, famine stunned and weakened a
42 The population grew modestly in normal years at a rate population, and disease finished it off. War was another
43 of perhaps 0.5 to 1 percent, or enough to double the scourge, and its indirect effects were even more harmful
44 population in 70 to 140 years. This is, of course, a gen- than the organized killing. Soldiers and camp followers
45 eralization encompassing many different patterns. In ar- passed all manner of contagious diseases throughout the
46 eas such as Russia and colonial New England, where there countryside. Armies also requisitioned scarce food sup-
47 was a great deal of frontier to be settled, the annual rate plies and disrupted the agricultural cycle. The Thirty
48 of natural increase, not counting in-migration, might well Years’ War witnessed all possible combinations of dis-
49 have exceeded 1 percent. In a country such as France, tress. In the German states, the number of inhabitants
50S where the land had long been densely settled, the rate of declined by more than two-thirds in some large areas and
51R increase might have been less than 0.5 percent. by at least one-third almost everywhere else.
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The Beginning of the Population Explosion • 627
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The Plague at Marseilles in 1720 The last great wave of bubonic plague in Europe occurred at Marseilles
in 1720, when a merchant ship from Syria arrived at the Mediterranean port city with infected passengers. The
27
plague spread quickly, killing half the inhabitants of the city. A wall was erected to quarantine the city, but it 28
did not prevent the spread of disease to the surrounding region. Altogether, about a hundred thousand people 29
died before the epidemic ended in 1722. (Giraudon/Art Resource, NY) 30
31
32
33
34
The New Pattern of the As late as 1720 a ship from Syria and the Levant brought 35
the disease to Marseilles, killing up to one hundred thou- 36
Eighteenth Century sand in the city and surrounding region. By 1722 the 37
In the eighteenth century the population of Europe be- epidemic had passed, and that was the last time plague 38
gan to grow markedly. This increase in numbers occurred fell on western and central Europe. Exactly why plague 39
in all areas of Europe, western and eastern, northern and disappeared is unknown. Stricter measures of quarantine 40
southern, dynamic and stagnant. Growth was especially in Mediterranean ports and along the Austrian border 41
dramatic after about 1750 (see Figure 19.2). with Turkey helped by carefully isolating human carriers 42
What caused this population growth? In some areas of plague. Chance and plain good luck were probably 43
women had more babies than before because new oppor- just as important. 44
tunities for employment in rural industry allowed them Advances in medical knowledge did not contribute 45
to marry at an earlier age. But the basic cause for Europe much to reducing the death rate in the eighteenth cen- 46
as a whole was a decline in mortality—fewer deaths. tury. The most important advance in preventive medicine 47
The bubonic plague mysteriously disappeared. Follow- in this period was inoculation against smallpox, and this 48
ing the Black Death in the fourteenth century, plagues great improvement was long confined mainly to Eng- 49
had remained part of the European experience, striking land, probably doing little to reduce deaths throughout 50S
again and again with savage force, particularly in towns. Europe until the latter part of the century. However, 51R
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1 ing in western Europe. These advances in transporta-

2 36
Russia
tion, which were also among the more positive aspects of
3 strong absolutist states, lessened the impact of local crop
4 25 France failure and famine. Emergency supplies could be brought
5 in, and localized starvation became less frequent. Wars
6 20 became more gentlemanly and less destructive than in
7 19 the seventeenth century and spread fewer epidemics.
8 18 New foods, particularly the potato from South America,
17 Italy
9 were introduced. In short, population grew in the eigh-
10 16 teenth century primarily because years of abnormal death
11 15 rates were less catastrophic. Famines, epidemics, and wars
12 14 continued to occur, but their severity moderated.

13 13
14 12
15 11 Cottage Industry and
16 10
17 9 England Urban Guilds
18 8 The growth of population increased the number of rural
19 7 workers with little or no land, and this in turn con-
20 6 tributed to the development of industry in rural areas.
21 5
Ireland The poor in the countryside increasingly needed to sup-
22 4 plement their agricultural earnings with other types of
23 3 Bohemia work, and urban capitalists were eager to employ them,
24 2 Sweden
Silesia often at lower wages than urban workers were paid. Cot-
25 1 Apago PDF Enhancer
East Prussia tage industry, which consisted of manufacturing with
26 hand tools in peasant cottages and work sheds, grew
27 1700 1725 1750 1775 1800
markedly in the eighteenth century and became a crucial
28 feature of the European economy.
29 FIGURE 19.2 The Increase of Population in Europe in the To be sure, peasant communities had always made
30 Eighteenth Century France’s large population continued clothing, processed food, and constructed housing for
31 to support French political and intellectual leadership. Russia their own use. But medieval peasants did not produce
32 emerged as Europe’s most populous state because natural
increase was complemented by growth from territorial expan-
manufactured goods on a large scale for sale in a mar-
33 ket. By the eighteenth century, however, the pressures
sion.
34 of rural poverty and the need to employ landless prole-
35 tarians were overwhelming the efforts of urban artisans
36 to maintain their traditional monopoly over industrial
37 improvements in the water supply and sewerage, which production.
38 were frequently promoted by strong absolutist monarchies, Guilds continued to dominate production in towns
39 resulted in somewhat better public health and helped re- and cities, providing their masters with economic privi-
40 duce such diseases as typhoid and typhus in some urban leges as well as a fixed social identity. Those excluded from
41 areas of western Europe. Improvements in water supply guild membership—women, day laborers, Jews, and for-
42 and the drainage of swamps also reduced Europe’s large eigners—worked on the margins of the urban economy.
43 insect population. Flies and mosquitoes played a major Critics attacked the guilds in the second half of the eigh-
44 role in spreading diseases, especially those striking chil- teenth century as outmoded institutions that obstructed
45 dren and young adults. Thus early public health meas- technical progress and innovation. Until recently, most
46 ures helped the decline in mortality that began with the historians repeated that view. An ongoing re-assessment
47 disappearance of plague and continued into the early of guilds now emphasizes their ability to adapt to chang-
48 nineteenth century. ing economic circumstances.
49 Human beings also became more successful in their
• How and why did economic production intensify in the
50S efforts to safeguard the supply of food. The eighteenth
eighteenth century, particularly in the countryside?
51R century was a time of considerable canal and road build-
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Cottage Industry and Urban Guilds • 629
chant would provide raw wool to one group of workers 1

The Putting-Out System for spinning into thread. He would then pass the thread 2
Cottage industry was often organized through the to another group of workers to be bleached, to another 3
putting-out system. The two main participants in the for dying, and to another for weaving into cloth. The 4
putting-out system were the merchant capitalist and merchant paid outworkers by the piece and proceeded to 5
the rural worker. The merchant loaned, or “put out,” sell the finished product to regional, national, or interna- 6
raw materials to cottage workers who processed the raw tional markets. 7
materials in their own homes and returned the finished The putting-out system grew because it had competitive 8
products to the merchant. There were endless variations advantages. Underemployed labor was abundant, and 9
on this basic relationship. Sometimes rural workers poor peasants and landless laborers would work for low 10
bought their own raw materials and worked as indepen- wages. Since production in the countryside was unregu- 11
dent producers before they sold to the merchant. Some- lated, workers and merchants could change procedures 12
times whole families were involved in domestic industry; and experiment as they saw fit. Because they did not need 13
at other times the tasks were closely associated with one to meet rigid guild standards, cottage industry became ca- 14
gender. Sometimes several workers toiled together to pable of producing many kinds of goods. Textiles; all man- 15
perform a complicated process in a workshop outside the ner of knives, forks, and housewares; buttons and gloves; 16
home. The relative importance of earnings from the land and clocks could be produced quite satisfactorily in the 17
and from industry varied greatly for handicraft workers, countryside. Luxury goods for the rich, such as exquisite 18
although industrial wages usually became more impor- tapestries and fine porcelain, demanded special training, 19
tant for a given family with time. close supervision, and centralized workshops. Yet such 20
As industries grew in scale and complexity, production goods were as exceptional as those who used them. The 21
was often broken into many stages. For example, a mer- skills of rural industry were sufficient for everyday articles. 22
23
24
26
The Weaver’s Repose
This painting by Decker 27
Cornelis Gerritz (1594– 28
1637) captures the pleasure 29
of release from long hours of 30
toil in cottage industry. The 31
loom realistically dominates
the cramped living space and 32
the family’s modest posses- 33
sions. (Musées Royaux des 34
Beaux-Arts, Brussels. Copyright 35
A.C.I.)
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1 Edinburgh Persons per square mile

2 Linen
More than 100 a
Se
3 IRELAND
50 to 100
lti
c
Less than 50 Ba
4 DENMARK
5 Dublin Textile production
Wool
6 Wool
Metal production Danzig
la
7
V istu
Birmingham Hamburg
8 Norwich PRUSSIA
Wool THE E
9 ENGLAND NETHERLANDS POLAND
lb
e
Amsterdam
10 Linen Wool
Berlin
Warsaw
Bristol London O der
11 Wool HOLY ROMAN
Antwerp EMPIRE
12 Ghent
Linen Brussels Cologne Leipzig
13 Wool Breslau SILESIA
Lille Liège Woo
14
Cotton Frankfurt Wool
15 Rouen Wool
Linen Prague
Linen Cracow
ei
16
S
ne
Linen Wool Paris Nuremberg
in e
17 Linen Silk Rh
Da AUSTRIA
18 Strasbourg nub
e
Augsburg Vienna
19 Nantes
Loire
Wool
20 Cotton Buda
Pest
FRANCE
21 SWITZ. HUNGARY
22 D rava
23 ATLANTIC Lyon
OCEAN
24 Bordeaux Silk Milan D a nube
S ava
Turin
Ga
Grenoble Po Silk Venice

on
r
Wool
Rhône
26 ne
Wool
Genoa
Bologna
27 Toulouse Silk
Wool OTTOMAN
28 Marseille
Florence
EMPIRE
SPAIN
29 Leghorn
0 75 150 Km.
30 0 75 150 Mi.
31
32
Mapping the Past
33 MAP 19.1 Industry and Population in Eighteenth-Century Europe The growth of cottage
34 manufacturing in rural areas helped country people increase their income and contributed to popula-
tion growth. The putting-out system began in England, and much of the work was in the textile indus-
35
try. Cottage industry was also strong in the Low Countries––modern-day Belgium and
36
37
38
•
Holland. 1 What types of textiles were produced in Europe? How would you account for the distribution of each
•
type of cloth across Europe? 2 What was the relationship between population density and the growth of textile
production? Was this a fixed or variable relationship? What geographical characteristics seem to have played a role in
39
40 Why do you think this was the case? •
encouraging this industry? 3 Did metal production draw on different demographic and geographical conditions?
41
42 Improve Your Grade Interactive Map:
43 Population and Production in Eighteenth-Century Europe
44
45
46 Rural manufacturing did not spread across Europe at the putting-out system. Most continental countries, with
47 an even rate. It developed most successfully in England, the exception of Flanders and the Netherlands, devel-
48 particularly for the spinning and weaving of woolen oped rural industry more slowly. The latter part of the
49 cloth. By 1500 half of England’s textiles were being pro- eighteenth century witnessed a remarkable expansion of
50S duced in the countryside. By 1700 English industry was rural industry in certain densely populated regions of
51R generally more rural than urban and heavily reliant on continental Europe (see Map 19.1).
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ten about 1700, called “The Clothier’s Delight, or the 1

The Textile Industry Rich Men’s Joy and the Poor Men’s Sorrow,” has the 2
Until the nineteenth century, the industry that employed merchant boasting of the countless tricks he uses to “beat 3
the most people in Europe was textiles. The making of down wages”: 4
linen, woolen, and eventually cotton cloth was the typi- 5
We heapeth up riches and treasure great store
cal activity of cottage workers engaged in the putting-out 6
Which we get by griping and grinding the poor.
system. A look inside the cottage of the English weaver 7
And this is a way for to fill up our purse
illustrates a way of life as well as an economic system. 8
Although we do get it with many a curse.3
The rural worker lived in a small cottage with tiny win- 9
dows and little space. Indeed, the worker’s cottage was There were constant disputes over the weights of ma- 10
often a single room that served as workshop, kitchen, terials and the quality of finished work. Merchants ac- 11
and bedroom. There were only a few pieces of furniture, cused workers of stealing raw materials, and weavers 12
of which the weaver’s loom was by far the largest and complained that merchants delivered underweight bales. 13
most important. That loom had changed somewhat in Suspicion abounded. 14
the early eighteenth century when John Kay’s invention Conditions were particularly hard for female workers. 15
of the flying shuttle enabled the weaver to throw the While men could earn decent wages through long hours of 16
shuttle back and forth between the threads with one arduous labor, women’s wages were always terribly low. In 17
hand. Aside from that improvement, however, the loom the Yorkshire wool industry, a male wool comber earned a 18
was as it had been for much of history and as it would re- good wage of twelve shillings or more a week, while a spin- 19
main until the arrival of mechanized looms in the first ner could hope for only three-and-a-half shillings.4 A sin- 20
decades of the nineteenth century. gle or widowed spinner faced a desperate struggle with 21
Handloom weaving was a family enterprise. All mem- poverty. Any period of illness or unemployment could 22
bers of the family helped in the work, so that “every per- spell disaster for her and any dependent children. 23
son from seven to eighty (who retained their sight and There was another problem, at least from the mer- 24
who could move their hands) could earn their bread,”
Apago PDF Enhancer chant capitalist’s point of view. Rural labor was cheap, 25
as one eighteenth-century English observer put it.2 Op- scattered, and poorly organized. For these reasons it was 26
erating the loom was considered a man’s job, reserved hard to control. Moreover, the pace of work depended 27
for the male head of the family. Women and children on the agricultural calendar. In spring and late summer 28
worked at auxiliary tasks; they prepared the warp (verti- planting and haymaking occupied all hands in the rural 29
cal) threads and mounted them on the loom, wound village, leading to shortages in the supply of thread. Mer- 30
threads on bobbins for the weft (horizontal) threads, and chants, whose livelihood depended on their ability to 31
sometimes operated the warp frame while the father meet orders on time, bitterly resented their lack of con- 32
passed the shuttle. trol over rural labor. They accused workers—especially 33
There was always a serious imbalance in textile manu- female spinners—of laziness, intemperance, and im- 34
facture before mechanization: the work of four or five morality. If workers failed to produce enough thread, 35
spinners was needed to keep one weaver steadily em- they reasoned, it must be because their wages were too 36
ployed. Since the weaver’s family usually could not pro- high and they had little incentive to work. Merchants 37
duce enough thread, alternate sources of labor were thus insisted on maintaining the lowest possible wages to 38
needed. Merchants turned to the wives and daughters force the “idle” poor into productive labor. They also 39
of agricultural workers, who took on spinning work in successfully lobbied for, and obtained, new police powers 40
their spare time. Many widows and single women also over workers. Imprisonment and public whipping be- 41
became “spinsters,” so many in fact that the word became common punishments for pilfering small amounts 42
came a synonym for an unmarried woman. (In other of yarn or cloth. For poor workers, their right to hold on 43
parts of Europe, such as the Rhineland, spinning em- to the bits and pieces left over in the production process 44
ployed whole families and was not reserved for women.) was akin to the traditional peasant right of gleaning in 45
As the industry expanded and merchants covered ever common lands. 46
greater distances in search of workers, they sometimes 47
turned to local shopkeepers to manage the spinners in 48
their villages.
Urban Guilds 49
Relations between workers and employers were often The high point of the guild system in most of Europe 50S
marked by sharp conflict. An English popular song writ- occurred in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 51R
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26 Guild Procession in Seventeenth-Century Brussels Guilds played an important role in the civic
27 life of the early modern city. They collected taxes from their members, imposed quality standards
28 and order on the trades, and represented the interests of commerce and industry to the government.
29 In return, they claimed exclusive monopolies over their trades and the right to govern their own
affairs. Guilds marched in processions at important moments in the life of the city, proudly display-
30 ing their corporate insignia. (Victoria & Albert Museum, London/Art Resource, NY)
31
32
33
34 rather than in the High Middle Ages as previously be- were good Christians, had several years of work experi-
35 lieved. Guilds grew in number in cities and towns across ence, paid stiff membership fees, and completed a master-
36 Europe during this period. In Louis XIV’s France, for ex- piece. They also favored family connections. Masters’ sons
37 ample, finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert revived the enjoyed automatic access to their fathers’ guilds, while
38 urban guilds and used them to encourage high-quality outsiders were often barred from entering. In the 1720s
39 production and to collect taxes. The number of guilds in Parisian guild masters numbered only about thirty-five
40 the city of Paris grew from 60 in 1672 to 129 in 1691. thousand in a population of five hundred thousand. Most
41 Guild masters occupied the summit of the world of men and women worked in non-guild trades, as domes-
42 work. Each guild received a detailed set of privileges from tic servants, as manual laborers, and as vendors of food
43 the Crown, including exclusive rights to produce and sell and other small goods.
44 certain goods, access to restricted markets in raw materi- The guilds’ ability to enforce their rigid barriers varied
45 als, and the rights to train apprentices, hire workers, and a great deal across Europe. In England, national regula-
46 open shops. Any individual who violated these monopo- tions superseded guild regulations, sapping their impor-
47 lies could be prosecuted. Guilds also served social and tance. In France, the Crown developed an ambiguous
48 religious functions, providing a locus of sociability and attitude toward guilds, relying on them for taxes and en-
49 group identity to the middling classes of European cities. forcement of quality standards, yet allowing non-guild
50S To ensure there was enough work to go around, guilds production to flourish in the countryside after 1762, and
51R jealously restricted their membership to local men who even in some urban neighborhoods. The Faubourg Saint-
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Antoine, an eastern suburb of Paris, maintained freedom espoused the values of hand craftsmanship and limited 1
from guild privileges through an old legal loophole, act- competition, in contrast to the proletarianization and 2
ing as a haven for the “false-workers” bitterly denounced loss of skills they endured in mechanized production. 3
by masters. The German guilds were perhaps the most Nevertheless, by the middle of the nineteenth century 4
powerful in Europe, and the most conservative. Journey- economic deregulation was championed by most Euro- 5
men in German cities, with their masters’ support, vio- pean governments and elites. 6
lently protested the encroachment of non-guild workers. 7
Whereas French guilds were washed away by the Revolu- 8
tion’s attack on royal privilege, guilds persisted in parts of
The Industrious Revolution 9
Germany until the second half of the nineteenth century. One scholar has used the term industrious revolution 10
Critics of guilds in France derided them as outmoded to describe the social and economic changes taking place 11
and exclusionary institutions that obstructed technical in Europe in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth 12
innovation and progress. (See the feature “Listening to centuries.5 This occurred as households in northwestern 13
the Past: The Debate over the Guilds” on pages 650– Europe reduced leisure time, stepped up the pace of 14
651.) Many historians have repeated that charge. More work, and, most importantly, redirected the labor of 15
recent scholarship, however, has emphasized the flexibil- women and children away from the production of goods 16
ity and adaptability of the guild system and its vitality for household consumption and toward wage work. By 17
through the eighteenth century. Guild masters adopted working harder and increasing the number of wagework- 18
new technologies and found creative ways to circumvent ers, households could purchase more goods, even in a 19
impractical rules. For many merchants and artisans, eco- time of stagnant or falling real wages. 20
nomic regulation did not hinder commerce but instead The effect of these changes is still debated. While some 21
fostered the confidence necessary to stimulate it. In an scholars lament the encroachment of longer work hours 22
economy where buyers’ and sellers’ access to information and stricter discipline, others insist that poor families 23
was so limited, regulation helped each side trust in the made decisions based on their own self-interests. With 24
other’s good faith. Apago PDF Enhancer more finished goods becoming available at lower prices, 25
households sought cash income to participate in a nas- 26
Improve Your Grade
cent consumer economy. The role of women and girls 27
Primary Source: Turgot Abolishes the French Guilds
in this new economy is particularly controversial. When 28
Over the eighteenth century some guilds grew more women entered the labor market, they almost always 29
accessible to women. This was particularly the case in worked at menial, tedious jobs for very low wages. The 30
dressmaking; given the great increase in textile produc- fantastic rise of the British textile industry in the eigh- 31
tion, more hands were needed to fashion clothing for ur- teenth century was built on the exhausted fingers and 32
ban elites. In 1675 Colbert granted seamstresses a new blighted eyesight of untold numbers of female cottage 33
all-female guild in Paris, and soon seamstresses joined tai- workers. Yet when women earned their own wages, they 34
lors’ guilds in parts of France, England, and the Nether- also seem to have taken on a proportionately greater role 35
lands. In the late seventeenth century new vocational in household decision making. Most of their scant earn- 36
training programs were established for poor girls in many ings went for household necessities, items they could no 37
European cities, mostly in needlework. There is also evi- longer produce now that they worked full-time, but 38
dence that more women were hired as skilled workers by there were sometimes a few shillings left for a few ribbons 39
male guilds, often in defiance of official statutes. Like or a new pair of stockings. Women’s control over their 40
their rural counterparts, urban girls and women were en- surplus income thus helped spur the rapid growth of the 41
tering the paid labor market in greater numbers. When textile industries in which they labored so hard. 42
French guilds received new statutes in 1777, all were for- New sources and patterns of labor established im- 43
mally opened to women. The guilds’ final abolition in portant foundations for the Industrial Revolution of the 44
1791 makes it impossible to know how this experiment late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They created 45
in sexual equality would have fared. households in which all members worked for wages 46
While many artisans welcomed the economic liberal- rather than in a united family business and in which con- 47
ization that followed the Revolution, some continued to sumption relied on market-produced rather than home- 48
espouse the ideals of the guilds. Because they had al- made goods. It was not until the mid-nineteenth century, 49
ways been semi-clandestine, journeymen’s associations with rising industrial wages, that a new model emerged 50S
frequently survived into the nineteenth century. They in which the male “breadwinner” was expected to earn 51R
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18 The Linen Industry in
19 Ireland Many steps went into
20 making textiles. Here the women
are beating away the woody part of
21 the flax plant so that the man can comb
22 out the soft part. The combed fibers will
23 then be spun into thread and woven into
24 cloth by this family enterprise. The increased labor
25 of women and girls from the late seventeenth
26
Apago PDF Enhancer century helped produce an “industrious revolu-
tion.” (Victoria and Albert Museum London/Eileen
27 Tweedy/The Art Archive)
28
29
30 enough to support the whole family and women and chil- critical role in building a fairly unified Atlantic economy
31 dren were relegated back to the domestic sphere. With that provided remarkable opportunities for them and
32 77 percent of U.S. women between ages twenty-five and their colonists. They also conducted ruthless competi-
33 fifty-four in the workforce in the year 2000, today’s tion with France and the Netherlands for trade and terri-
34 world is experiencing a second industrious revolution in tory in Asia.
35 a similar climate of stagnant wages and increased demand • How did colonial markets boost Europe’s economic
36 for consumer goods. and social development, and what conflicts and adversity
37 did world trade entail?
38
39 Building the Global Economy
40
41 In addition to agricultural improvement, population
Mercantilism and Colonial Wars
42 pressure, and growing cottage industry, the expansion of Britain’s commercial leadership in the eighteenth century
43 Europe in the eighteenth century was characterized by had its origins in the mercantilism of the seventeenth
44 the growth of world trade. Spain and Portugal revital- century (see page 532). European mercantilism was a
45 ized their empires and began drawing more wealth from system of economic regulations aimed at increasing the
46 renewed development. Yet once again the countries of power of the state. As practiced by a leading advocate
47 northwestern Europe—the Netherlands, France, and such as Colbert under Louis XIV, mercantilism aimed
48 above all Great Britain—benefited most. Great Britain, particularly at creating a favorable balance of foreign
49 which was formed in 1707 by the union of England trade in order to increase a country’s stock of gold. A
50S and Scotland into a single kingdom, gradually became country’s gold holdings served as an all-important treas-
51R the leading maritime power. Thus the British played the ure chest that could be opened periodically to pay for
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Building the Global Economy • 635
war in a violent age. Early English mercantilists shared cede Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the Hudson Bay 1
these views. territory to Britain. Spain was compelled to give Britain 2
The result of the English desire to increase both mili- control of its West African slave trade—the so-called 3
tary power and private wealth was the mercantile system asiento—and to let Britain send one ship of merchandise 4
of the Navigation Acts. Oliver Cromwell established the into the Spanish colonies annually through Porto Bello 5
first of these laws in 1651, and the restored monarchy of on the Isthmus of Panama. 6
Charles II extended them in 1660 and 1663; these Nav- France was still a mighty competitor. The War of the 7
igation Acts were not seriously modified until 1786. The Austrian Succession (1740–1748), which started when 8
acts required that most goods imported from Europe Frederick the Great of Prussia seized Silesia from Aus- 9
into England and Scotland be carried on British-owned tria’s Maria Theresa (see page 610), gradually became a 10
ships with British crews or on ships of the country pro- world war that included Anglo-French conflicts in India 11
ducing the article. Moreover, these laws gave British and North America. The war ended with no change in 12
merchants and shipowners a virtual monopoly on trade the territorial situation in North America. 13
with British colonies. The colonists were required to ship This inconclusive standoff helped set the stage for 14
their products on British (or American) ships and to buy the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). In central Europe, 15
almost all European goods from Britain. It was believed Austria’s Maria Theresa sought to win back Silesia and 16
that these economic regulations would help British mer- crush Prussia, thereby re-establishing the Habsburgs’ 17
chants and workers as well as colonial plantation owners traditional leadership in German affairs. She almost suc- 18
and farmers; and the emerging British Empire would de- ceeded in her goals, but Prussia survived with its bound- 19
velop a shipping industry with a large number of experi- aries intact. 20
enced seamen who could serve when necessary in the Inconclusive in Europe, the Seven Years’ War was the 21
Royal Navy. decisive round in the Franco-British competition for colo- 22
The Navigation Acts were a form of economic warfare. nial empire. The fighting began in North America. The 23
Their initial target was the Dutch, who were far ahead population of New France was centered in Quebec and 24
of the English in shipping and foreign trade in the mid-
Apago PDF Enhancer along the St. Lawrence River, but French soldiers and 25
seventeenth century (see page 553). In conjunction with Canadian fur traders had also built forts and trading posts 26
three Anglo-Dutch wars between 1652 and 1674, the along the Great Lakes, through the Ohio country, and 27
Navigation Acts seriously damaged Dutch shipping and down the Mississippi to New Orleans (see Map 19.3). Al- 28
commerce. The British seized the thriving Dutch colony lied with many Native American tribes, the French built 29
of New Amsterdam in 1664 and renamed it “New York.” more forts in 1753 in what is now western Pennsylvania 30
By the late seventeenth century the Netherlands was to protect their claims. The following year a Virginia 31
falling behind England in shipping, trade, and colonies. force attacked a small group of French soldiers, and soon 32
Thereafter France stood clearly as England’s most se- the war to conquer Canada was on. 33
rious rival in the competition for overseas empire. Rich in Although the inhabitants of New France were greatly 34
natural resources, with a population three or four times outnumbered—Canada counted fifty-five thousand in- 35
that of England, and allied with Spain, continental Eu- habitants, as opposed to 1.2 million in the thirteen Eng- 36
rope’s leading military power was already building a lish colonies—French and Canadian forces under the 37
powerful fleet and a worldwide system of rigidly monop- experienced marquis de Montcalm fought well and scored 38
olized colonial trade. Thus from 1701 to 1763 Britain major victories until 1758. Then, led by their new chief 39
and France were locked in a series of wars to decide, in minister, William Pitt, whose grandfather had made a 40
part, which nation would become the leading maritime fortune in India, the British diverted men and money 41
power and claim the profits of Europe’s overseas expan- from the war in Europe, using superior sea power to de- 42
sion (see Map 19.2). stroy the French fleet and choke off French commerce 43
The first round was the War of the Spanish Succession around the world. In 1759 a combined British naval and 44
(see page 534), which started when Louis XIV accepted land force laid siege to Quebec for four long months, de- 45
the Spanish crown willed to his grandson. Besides upset- feating Montcalm’s army in a dramatic battle that sealed 46
ting the continental balance of power, a union of France the fate of France in North America. 47
and Spain threatened to encircle and destroy the British British victory on all colonial fronts was ratified in the 48
colonies in North America (see Map 19.2). Defeated by Treaty of Paris (1763). France lost its possessions on 49
a great coalition of states after twelve years of fighting, mainland North America. Canada and all French territory 50S
Louis XIV was forced in the Peace of Utrecht (1713) to east of the Mississippi River passed to Britain, and France 51R
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Great Britain
France
1 Portugal
2 Spain
3 Netherlands
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Hudson
12 Bay
13
LOUISIANA
14
15
pi
ip
MEXICO ss
ssi NEW FRANCE
16 Mi QUEBEC
17
18 NEWFOUNDLAND
(To Gr. Br., 1713) GREAT
19 NOVA SCOTIA
(ACADIA)
BRITAIN
Acapulco Tob Fur
20 FLORIDA acc (To Gr. Br., 1713) s
o
NETHERLANDS
21 Havana
Colonial produ
cts
Silver
22 ods
CUBA d go FRANCE
SAINT ct ure
23 DOMINGUE Ma
n ufa
(Fr.)
Sugar
24 JAMAICA SPAIN
HISPANIOLA PORTUGAL
25 Porto ASIENTO
(Spain; to
SANTO DOMINGO
Apago PDF Enhancer
Bello (Sp.)
26 Gr. Br., 1713)
ATLANTIC OCEAN
s
ood
27 GUADELOUPE CANARY IS.

ed g
(Fr.) (Spain)
28 MARTINIQUE
Manufactur
Gold
(Fr.)
NEW GRANADA
29
Silver
BARBADOS
(Gr. Br.)
30 DUTCH
31 GUIANA
FRENCH AFRICA
GUIANA CAPE VERDE IS.
32 Lima
Am
azo (Port.) Cape
Sugar
n Verde
33 PERU
34 trading sta
rts and
a n fo tio
35 Euro
pe n
s
36 Slaves
Silv
37
er
BRAZIL
38
39
40
ANGOLA
41 Buenos Aires
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49 MAP 19.2 The Atlantic Economy in 1701 The growth of trade encouraged both economic
50S development and military conflict in the Atlantic basin. Four continents were linked together
51R by the exchange of goods and slaves.
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1
2
3
4
5
AL
AL
AS
AS
6
KA
KA
Miquelon &
Hudson Hudson
St. Pierre Is. 7
(French)
Bay Bay 8
HUDSON'S BAY HUDSON'S BAY
9
COMPANY COMPANY
QUEBEC 10
Quebec Quebec 11
NEW
FRANCE 12
R
R
O
Proclamation
.
O
13
S.
TS
Line of 1763
MT
C
NM
K Y
14
K
AN
HIA
LOUISIANA
Y
THIRTEEN
HI
LOUISIANA THIRTEEN
15
AC
AC
COLONIES COLONIES
M T
L
M
AL
A
PP PP 16
T S
NEW A NEW A
ATLANTIC ATLANTIC
S .
MEXICO MEXICO
OCEAN OCEAN 17
.
TEXAS
TEXAS FLORIDA FLORIDA 18
Bahamas Bahamas
Gulf of Gulf of
19
PACIFIC Hispaniola PACIFIC Hispaniola 20
Mexico Mexico
OCEAN NEW Cuba OCEAN NEW Cuba
SPAIN SPAIN 21
1755 BELIZE
Caribbean
1763 BELIZE
Caribbean 22
Sea Sea
MOSQUITO MOSQUITO 23
British COAST British COAST
24
French French
Spanish 0 500 1000 Km. Spanish 0 500 1000 Km.
Russian Russian
26
0 500 1000 Mi. 0 500 1000 Mi.
27
28
MAP 19.3 European Claims in North America Before and After the Seven Years’ War 29
(1756–1763) France lost its vast territories in North America, though the British government
30
then prohibited colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains in 1763. The
British had raised taxes on themselves and the colonists to pay for the war, and they wanted to 31
avoid costly conflicts with Native Americans living in the newly conquered territory. One of the 32
few remaining French colonies in the Americas, Saint Domingue (on the island of Hispaniola) 33
was the most profitable plantation colony in the New World. 34
Improve Your Grade Interactive Map: 35
European Claims in North America Before and After the Seven Years’ War 36
37
38
39
40
ceded Louisiana to Spain as compensation for Spain’s The Remaking of a Great City” on pages 638–639.) 41
loss of Florida to Britain. France also gave up most of its Above all, the rapidly growing and increasingly wealthy 42
holdings in India, opening the way to British dominance agricultural populations of the mainland colonies pro- 43
on the subcontinent. By 1763 British naval power, built vided an expanding market for English manufactured 44
in large part on the rapid growth of the British shipping goods. This situation was extremely fortunate, for Eng- 45
industry after the passage of the Navigation Acts, had tri- land in the eighteenth century was gradually losing, or 46
umphed decisively: Britain had realized its goal of mo- only slowly expanding, its sales to many of its traditional 47
nopolizing a vast trading and colonial empire. European markets. 48
In the eighteenth century, stimulated by trade and em- As trade with Europe stagnated, protected colonial 49
pire building, London grew into the West’s largest and markets came to the rescue (see Figure 19.3). English ex- 50S
richest city. (See the feature “Images in Society: London: ports of manufactured goods to the Atlantic economy— 51R
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Images in Society
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6 London: The Remaking of a Great City
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T he imperial capital and intercontinental trade cen-
ter of London dominated Britain and astonished the
ment. Brick construction was made mandatory to
prevent fire, but only a few streets were straightened
visitor. Equal in population to Paris with four hundred or widened. Thus social classes remained packed to-
12 thousand inhabitants in 1650, the super city of the gether in the rebuilt city. The rich merchant family in
13 West grew to nine hundred thousand in 1801, while a first-class city residence (Image 2), built in the 1670s
14 second-place Paris had six hundred thousand. And as and still standing in 1939, shared a tiny courtyard and
15 London grew, its citizens created a new urban land- constantly rubbed shoulders with poor and middling
16 scape and style of living. people in everyday life.
17 Image 1 shows the “true profile” of London and As London rebuilt and kept growing, big noble
18 its built environment as viewed from the south before landowners followed two earlier examples and sought
19 the Great Fire of 1666, which raged for four days and to increase their incomes by setting up residential
20 destroyed about 80 percent of the old, predominately developments on their estates west of the city. A
21 wooden central city. With the River Thames flowing landowner would lay out a square with streets and
22 eastward toward the sea, one sees from left to right building lots, which he or she would lease to specula-
23 pre-Fire St. Paul’s Cathedral, London Bridge crowded tive builders who put up fine houses for sale or rent.
24 with houses, ships at the wharves, and the medieval Soho Square, first laid out in the 1670s and shown in
Tower of London. Clearly visible in the distance are Image 3 as it appeared in 1731, was fairly typical. The
26 the open fields of the large estates surrounding Lon- spacious square with its gated park is surrounded by
27 don, while beyond view on the left are the royal palace three-story row houses set on deep, narrow lots. Set
28 and adjacent government buildings. Also missing is in the country but close to the city, a square like Soho
29 the famous London smog, the combination of fog was a kind of elegant “village” with restrictive building
30 and smoke from coal-burning fireplaces that already codes that catered to aristocrats, officials, and success-
31 polluted the metropolis. How would you characterize ful professionals who were served by artisans and
32 pre-Fire London? shopkeepers living in alleys and side streets. Do you
33 Reconstruction proceeded quickly after the Great see a difference between the houses on the square and
34 Fire so that people could regain shelter and employ- on the street behind? How would you compare Soho
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50S Image 1 London Before the Great Fire (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Image 2 Merchant Family’s Residence (built Image 3 Soho Square, 1731 (Private Collection/The Stapleton Collection/
1670–1680) (English Heritage/NMR) The Bridgeman Art Library)
Apago PDF Enhancer
Square with the hills in the distance and with the old
London of Images 1 and 2? The classy, new area,
known as the West End, contrasted sharply with the
shoddy rentals and makeshift shacks of laborers and
sailors in the mushrooming East End, which artists
rarely painted. Thus residential segregation by
income level increased substantially in eighteenth-
century London.
As the suburban villages grew and gradually merged
together, the West End increasingly attracted the well-
to-do from all over England. Rural landowners and
provincial notables came for the social season from
October to May. Operating out of comfortable second
homes purchased or rented in the West End, they
played the national market for mortgages, marriages,
and recreation. Image 4, showing classy Bloomsbury
Square in 1787 and the original country mansion of
the enterprising noble developer, provides a glimpse Image 4 Bloomsbury Square, 1787 (HarperCollins Publishers)
into this well-born culture. How does Image 4 com-
plement Image 3? What message is the artist convey-
ing with the milkmaid and her cows? Some historians
believe that London’s West End was an important
social innovation. Reconsidering these images, do you Improve Your Grade
agree? Going Beyond Images in Society
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1 plantations, coffee, and slave trading during the second

2 half of the eighteenth century. By 1789 the population of
Value (in thousands of pounds sterling)
3 £8,487 Saint Domingue included five hundred thousand slaves

4 8,000
whose labor had allowed the colony to become the
5 world’s leading producer of coffee and sugar. It was the
6 £6,350 most profitable plantation colony in the New World and
7 6,000 the one that consumed the greatest number of slaves.6
8 £3,981 The wealth generated from colonial trade fostered the
£3,583 £3,784
9 4,000 confidence of the merchant classes in Paris, Bordeaux,
10 and other large cities, and merchants soon joined other
11 2,000 £1,571 elite groups clamoring for more political responsibility.
12 £475 £679
13
14 1699–1701 1722–1724 1752–1754 1772–1774
Land and Labor in British America
15 As Britain built its empire in North America, it secured
Total exports
16 an important outlet for surplus population, so that mi-
17 Total exports to the Atlantic economy; gration abroad limited poverty at home. The settlers also
North America, West Indies, Spanish America,
18 and West Africa benefited, for they enjoyed privileged access to virtually
19 free and unlimited land. The situation in the American
20 colonies contrasted sharply with that in the British Isles,
21 FIGURE 19.3 Exports of English Manufactured Goods,
where land was already highly concentrated in the hands
22 1700–1774 While trade between England and Europe stag- of the nobility and gentry in 1700. White settlers who
23 nated after 1700, English exports to Africa and the Americas came to the colonies as free men and women could ob-
24 boomed and greatly stimulated English economic develop- tain their own farms on easy terms, and those who came
25 ment. (Source: R. Davis, “English Foreign Trade, 1700–1774,” as indentured servants pledged to work seven years for
26
Economic History Review, 2d ser., 15 (1962): 302–303.) Apago PDF Enhancer
their passage or as convicts could do so as soon as they
27 had their personal freedom. Unlike the great majority of
28 European peasants, American farmers kept most of what
29 primarily the mainland colonies of North America and the they produced.
30 West Indian sugar islands, with an important assist from Cheap land and the tremendous demand for scarce
31 West Africa and Latin America—soared from £500,000 labor also fostered the growth of slavery in the British
32 to £4.0 million. Sales to other colonies—Ireland and In- colonies. The Spanish and the Portuguese had intro-
33 dia—also rose substantially in the eighteenth century. duced slavery into the Americas in the sixteenth century.
34 English exports also became more balanced and diver- Because Native Americans died in large numbers when
35 sified. To America and Africa went large quantities of enslaved, the Spanish and Portuguese began importing
36 metal items—axes to frontier settlers, firearms and chains most slaves from Africa. In the seventeenth century the
37 to slave owners. There were also clocks and coaches, but- Dutch aggressively followed their example and trans-
38 tons and saddles, china and furniture, musical instru- ported some two hundred thousand Africans to the
39 ments and scientific equipment, and a host of other Americas. There slaves worked on sugar plantations that
40 things. Foreign trade became the bread and butter of normally earned large profits for plantation owners and
41 some industries; for example, by 1750 half the nails made European traders.
42 in England were going to the colonies. Thus, the mer- As England adopted mercantilist policies after 1650,
43 cantilist system achieved remarkable success for England big investors established valuable sugar plantations in
44 in the eighteenth century, and by the 1770s England the Caribbean and brought slave laborers from Africa to
45 stood on the threshold of the epoch-making industrial work them. The small white farmers, who had settled the
46 changes that are described in Chapter 22. islands and grew tobacco, generally sold out and mi-
47 Although they lost many possessions to the English, grated to the mainland colonies. Black slaves then be-
48 the French still profited enormously from colonial trade. came the overwhelming majority of the population, as
49 The colonies of Saint Domingue (modern-day Haiti) and they were in other European colonies in the Caribbean.
50S Martinique and Guadeloupe (which remain French de- By 1700 the pattern of plantations based on slave ex-
51R partments today) provided immense fortunes in sugar ploitation had spread to the Virginia lowlands, and by
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A Slave Ship and Its Victims This 1827 lithograph of slaves in the hold of a ship bound for
Brazil depicts the “scene of horror almost inconceivable” that Equiano encountered in crossing
the Atlantic. Inhuman overcrowding of slaves resulted in shocking death rates. The man on the
right will be thrown overboard. (Houghton Library, Harvard University)
1730 the large plantations there were worked entirely by the mainland colonies multiplied ten times as immigrants
black slaves. The harsh exploitation of slave labor per- arrived and colonial couples raised large families. Rapid
mitted an astonishing tenfold increase in tobacco pro- population growth did not reduce the white settlers to
duction between 1700 and 1774 and created a wealthy poverty. On the contrary, agricultural development re-
planter class in Maryland and Virginia. In 1790, when sulted in fairly high standards of living, and on the eve of
the U.S. population was approaching 4 million, slaves ac- the American Revolution white men and women in the
counted for almost 20 percent of the total. mainland British colonies had one of the highest living
Slavery was uncommon in New England and the mid- standards in the world.7
dle colonies, and in the course of the eighteenth century
these areas began to export foodstuffs to the West Indies
to feed the slaves. The plantation owners, whether they
The Atlantic Slave Trade
grew tobacco in Virginia and Maryland or sugar in the Although the trade in African people was a worldwide
West Indies, had the exclusive privilege of supplying the phenomenon, the Atlantic slave trade became its most
British Isles with their products. Thus white colonists, significant portion. In the words of a leading historian,
too, had their place in the protective mercantile system of by 1700 “it was impossible to imagine the Atlantic sys-
the Navigation Acts. tem without slavery and the slave trade.”8
The abundance of almost free land resulted in a rapid The forced migration of millions of Africans—cruel,
increase in the colonial population. In a mere three- unjust, and tragic—remained a key element in the At-
quarters of a century after 1700, the white population of lantic system and western European economic expansion
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26 Slaves Harvesting Sugar Cane In this 1828 print a long line of hard-working slaves systematically har-
27 vests the ripe cane on the island of Antigua, while on the right more slaves load cut cane into wagons for
refining at the plantation’s central crushing mill. The manager on horseback may be ordering the overseer to
28 quicken the work pace, always brutal and unrelenting at harvest time. Slave labor made high-intensity capi-
29 talist production of sugar possible in the Americas. (John Carter Brown Library at Brown University)
30
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33 throughout the eighteenth century. Indeed, the brutal that in the years from 1761 to 1800 Africans and their
34 trade intensified dramatically after 1700 and especially af- descendants in Brazil, Spanish America, the Caribbean,
35 ter 1750. According to one authoritative estimate, Euro- and Britain’s mainland slave colonies accounted for more
36 pean traders purchased and shipped 6.13 million African than four-fifths of all the commodities produced in the
37 slaves across the Atlantic between 1701 and 1800—fully Americas for sale in the Atlantic economy.10 It was this
38 52 percent of the estimated total of 11.7 million Africans flood of ever-cheaper sugar, coffee, tobacco, rice, and (in
39 transported between 1450 and 1900, not including an the nineteenth century) cotton that generated hard cash
40 additional 10 to 15 percent who died in procurement in the Americas—cash that paid for manufactured goods
41 and transit.9 By the peak decade of the 1780s, shipments and services from Britain and Europe as well as for more
42 averaged about eighty thousand individuals per year in an slaves from Africa.
43 attempt to satisfy the constantly rising demand for labor Intensification of the slave trade resulted in fundamen-
44 power—and slave owners’ profits—in the Americas. tal changes in its organization. Before 1700 European
45 Taken to the Americas in chains, Africans made a deci- states waged costly wars with one another through mo-
46 sive contribution to the development of the Atlantic nopolist trading companies in the hope of controlling
47 economy. Above all, the labor of enslaved Africans made slave exports. European agents in fortified trading posts
48 possible large-scale production of valuable commodities tapped into traditional African networks for slaves, who
49 for sale in Europe, for Africans transported to the Amer- were mainly captives taken in battles between African
50S icas could not go off and farm for themselves as white states, plus some Africans punished with slavery by local
51R settlers did. Indeed, an important recent study concludes societies or secured through small-scale raiding. After
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1700, as Britain became the undisputed leader in the escaped blacks; unions between blacks and whites were
slave trade, European governments and ship captains cut not uncommon. In 1772 a high court ruling, though
back on fighting among themselves and concentrated on limited in scope, “clearly doomed the slave status in
commerce. They generally adopted the shore method of England.”11
trading, which was less expensive. Thus European ships After 1775 a much broader campaign to abolish slav-
sent boats ashore or invited African dealers to bring ery developed in Britain, and between 1788 and 1792,
traders and slaves out to their ships. This method allowed according to some recent scholarship, it grew into the
ships to move easily along the coast from market to mar- first peaceful mass political movement based on the mo-
ket and to depart more quickly for the Americas. bilization of public opinion in British history. British
Increasing demand resulted in rising prices for African women played a critical role in this mass movement, de-
slaves in the eighteenth century. Some African merchants nouncing the immorality of human bondage and stress-
and rulers who controlled exports profited, and some ing the cruel and sadistic treatment of female slaves and
Africans secured foreign products that they found ap- slave families. These attacks put the defenders of slav-
pealing because of price or quality. But generally such ery on the defensive. In 1807 Parliament abolished the
economic returns did not spread very far, and the nega- British slave trade, although slavery continued in British
tive consequences of the expanding slave trade predomi- colonies and the Americas for years.
nated. Wars between Africans to obtain salable captives
increased, and leaders purchased more arms and bought
relatively fewer textiles and consumer goods.
Revival in Colonial Latin America
The kingdom of Dahomey, which entered the slave When the last Spanish Habsburg, Charles II, died in
trade in the eighteenth century and made it a royal mo- 1700 (see page 534), Spain’s vast empire lay ready for
nopoly, built up its army, attacked far into the interior, dismemberment. Yet in one of those striking reversals
and profited greatly as a major supplier of slaves. More with which history is replete, Spain revived. The empire
common perhaps was the experience of the kingdom of held together and even prospered, while a European-
the Congo in central Africa, where the perpetual Por-
Apago PDF Enhancer oriented landowning aristocracy enhanced its position in
tuguese search for slaves undermined the monarchy, de- colonial society. Spain recovered in part because of better
stroyed political unity, and led to constant disorder. All leadership. Louis XIV’s grandson, who took the throne
along Africa’s western coast small-scale slave raiding also as Philip V (r. 1700–1746), brought new men and fresh
spread far into the interior. There kidnappers seized and ideas with him from France and rallied the Spanish
enslaved men and women like Olaudah Equiano and his people to his Bourbon dynasty in the long War of the
sister, whose tragic separation, exile, and exploitation Spanish Succession. When peace was restored, a series of
personified the full horror of the Atlantic slave trade. (See reforming ministers reasserted royal authority, overhaul-
the feature “Individuals in Society: Olaudah Equiano.”) ing state finances and strengthening defense.
Africans who committed crimes had traditionally paid Revitalization in Madrid had positive results in the
fines, but because of the urgent demand for slaves many colonies, which defended themselves from numerous
misdemeanors became punishable by sale to slave dealers. British attacks and even increased in size. Spain won
Finally, while the population of Europe (and Asia) grew Louisiana from France in 1763, and missionaries and
substantially in the eighteenth century, that of Africa ranchers extended Spanish influence all the way to north-
stagnated or possibly declined. ern California. Political success was matched by eco-
nomic improvement. After declining markedly in the
Improve Your Grade
seventeenth century, silver mining recovered greatly, and
Primary Source: An Eyewitness Describes the
in 1800 Spanish America accounted for half the world’s
Slave Trade in Guinea
silver production. Silver mining also stimulated food pro-
Until 1700, and perhaps even 1750, almost all Eu- duction for the mining camps and gave the Creoles—
ropeans considered the African slave trade a legitimate people of Spanish blood born in America—the means to
business. But shiploads of African slaves never landed purchase more and more European luxuries and manu-
in northwestern Europe, partly because cheap labor factured goods. A class of wealthy Creole merchants
abounded there. Blacks did arrive in Europe as personal arose to handle this flourishing trade, which often relied
slaves, but if a slave ran away, the courts and the poor of- on smuggled goods from Great Britain.
ten supported the slave, not the slave owner. Runaways Rivaling officials dispatched from Spain, Creole estate
merged into London’s growing population of free and owners controlled much of the land and strove to be-
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Apago PDF Enhancer
Forming the Mexican People A new genre of paintings, called “casta paintings” in English, appeared in eighteenth-
century New Spain (Mexico). These paintings, which focused on race and racial mixing, were usually painted as a
series of sixteen, each with a mother, a father, and a child representing a different racial category. This painting, by an
unknown eighteenth-century artist, shows the union of a Spanish man and a Native American woman that has pro-
duced a racially mixed mestizo child on the left, and a group that features a mestizo woman and a Spaniard with their
little daughter on the right. Casta paintings reflect contemporary fascination with the spectrum of racial difference
produced in the colonies. (Private Collection, Mexico)
come a genuine European aristocracy. Estate owners be- roughly 20 percent of the population was classified as
lieved that field work was the proper occupation of poor white and about 30 percent as mestizo. Pure-blooded
peasants, and the defenseless Native Americans suited Indians accounted for most of the remainder, but some
their needs. As the indigenous population recovered in black slaves were also found in every part of Spanish
numbers, slavery and forced labor gave way to wide- America. Great numbers of slaves worked the enormous
spread debt peonage from 1600 on. Under this system, sugar plantations of Portuguese Brazil, and about half
a planter or rancher would keep the estate’s Chris- the Brazilian population in the early nineteenth century
tianized, increasingly Hispanicized Indians in perpetual was of African origin. South America occupied an impor-
debt bondage by advancing food, shelter, and a little tant place in the expanding Atlantic economy.
money. Debt peonage was a form of serfdom.
The large middle group in Spanish colonies consisted
of racially mixed mestizos, the offspring of Spanish men
Trade and Empire in Asia
and Indian women. The most talented mestizos aspired As the Atlantic economy took shape, Europeans contin-
to join the Creoles, for enough wealth and power could ued to vie for dominance in the Asian trade. Between
classify one as white. Thus by the end of the colonial era 1500 and 1600 the Portuguese had become major play-
1019763_ch_19.qxp 9/17/07 3:11 PM Page 645
Individuals in 1
Society 2
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Olaudah Equiano 5
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T he slave trade was a mass migration involving mil- a business partner, but 7
8
lions of human beings. It was also the sum of individ- Equiano hated the limita-
ual lives spent partly or entirely in slavery. Although tions and dangers of black 9
most of those lives remain hidden to us, Olaudah freedom in the colonies— 10
Equiano (1745–1797) is an important exception. he was almost kidnapped 11
Equiano was born in Benin (modern Nigeria) of Ibo back into slavery while 12
ethnicity. His father, one of the village elders (or chief- loading a ship in Geor- 13
tains), presided over a large household that included gia—and could think only 14
“many slaves,” prisoners captured in local wars. All of England. Settling in
15
people, slave and free, shared in the cultivation of London, Equiano studied,
16
family lands. One day, when all the adults were in the worked as a hairdresser, Olaudah Equiano, in an engrav-
fields, two strange men and a woman broke into the and went to sea periodi- ing from his autobiography. 17
family compound, kidnapped the eleven-year-old boy cally as a merchant sea- (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian 18
and his sister, tied them up, and dragged them into the man. He developed his Institution/Art Resource, NY) 19
woods. Brother and sister were separated, and Olaudah ardent Christian faith and 20
was sold several times to various dealers before reach- became a leading member of London’s sizable black 21
ing the coast. As it took six months to walk there, his community. 22
home must have been far inland. Equiano loathed the brutal slavery and the vicious 23
The slave ship and the strange appearance of the exploitation that he saw in the West Indies and 24
white crew terrified the boy. Much worse was the long Britain’s mainland colonies. A complex and sophisti- 25
Apago PDF Enhancer
voyage from Benin to Barbados in the Caribbean, as cated man, he also respected the integrity of Robert
26
Equiano later recounted. “The stench of the [ship’s] King and admired British navigational and industrial
27
hold . . . became absolutely pestilential . . . [and] technologies. He encountered white oppressors and
brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many made white friends. He once described himself as 28
died. . . . The shrieks of the women and the groans of “almost an Englishman.” In the 1780s he joined with 29
the dying rendered the whole a scene of horror almost white and black activists in the antislavery campaign 30
inconceivable.” Placed on deck with the sick and dy- and wrote The Interesting Narrative of the Life of 31
ing, Equiano saw two and then three of his “enchained Olaudah Equiano Written by Himself, a well- 32
countrymen” escape somehow through the nettings documented autobiographical indictment of slavery. 33
and jump into the sea, “preferring death to such a life Above all, he urged Christians to live by the principles 34
of misery.”* they professed and to treat Africans equally as free 35
Equiano’s new owner, an officer in the Royal Navy, human beings and children of God. With the success 36
took him to England and saw that the lad received of his widely read book, he carried his message to
37
some education. Engaged in bloody action in Europe large audiences across Britain and Ireland and inspired
38
for almost four years as a captain’s boy in the Seven the growing movement to abolish slavery.
Years’ War, Equiano hoped that his loyal service and 39
Christian baptism would help secure his freedom. He 40
also knew that slavery was generally illegal in England. 41
But his master deceived him. Docking in London, he 1. What aspects of Olaudah Equiano’s life as a slave 42
and his accomplices forced a protesting and heartbro- were typical? What aspects were atypical? 43
ken Equiano onto a ship bound for the Caribbean. 2. Describe Equiano’s culture and personality. What 44
There he was sold to Robert King, a Quaker mer- aspects are most striking? Why?
45
chant from Philadelphia who dealt in sugar and rum. *Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of 46
Equiano developed his mathematical skills, worked Olaudah Equiano Written by Himself, ed. with an introduction 47
hard to please as a clerk in King’s warehouse, and by Robert J. Allison (Boston: Bedford Books, 1995), pp. 56–57. 48
became first mate on one of King’s ships. Allowed to Recent scholarship has re-examined Equiano’s life and thrown
some details of his identity into question. 49
trade on the side for his own profit, Equiano amassed
capital, repaid King his original purchase price, and 50S
received his deed of manumission at the age of twenty- Improve Your Grade 51R
one. King urged his talented former slave to stay on as Going Beyond Individuals in Society 52L
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1 ers in the Indian Ocean trading world, eliminating Venice steered directly for Indonesia and its wealth of spices.
2 as Europe’s chief supplier of spices and other Asian lux- The voyages were a rousing success. In 1599 a Dutch
3 ury goods. The Portuguese dominated but did not fun- fleet returned to Amsterdam carrying 600,000 pounds of
4 damentally alter the age-old pattern of Indian Ocean pepper and 250,000 pounds of cloves and nutmeg.
5 trade, which involved merchants from many areas as Those who had invested in the expedition received a 100
6 more or less autonomous players. This situation changed percent profit. In 1602 the Dutch East India Company
7 radically with the intervention of the Dutch and then was founded with the explicit intention of capturing the
8 the English. spice trade from the Portuguese. In addition to financial
9 In the 1590s Dutch fleets sailed from the Cape of assistance, the States General granted the company polit-
10 Good Hope and, avoiding Portuguese forts in India, ical sovereignty over the territories it acquired.
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The British in India (ca 1785) This Indian miniature shows the wife (center) of a British officer
48 attended by many Indian servants. A British merchant (left) awaits her attention. The picture reflects
49 the luxurious lifestyle of the British elite in India, many members of which returned home with colossal
50S fortunes. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
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In return for assisting Indonesian princes in local con- and India was lauded as the “jewel” in the British Empire 1
flicts and disputes with the Portuguese, the Dutch won in the nineteenth century. 2
broad commercial concessions. Gradually they gained 3
control of western access to the Indonesian archipel- 4
ago and eventually of the archipelago itself. In 1619 com-
Adam Smith and Economic Liberalism 5
pany forces seized the port of Jakarta in Java. Renamed Although mercantilist policies strengthened European 6
Batavia, the port became the center of Dutch opera- colonial empires in the eighteenth century, a strong reac- 7
tions in the Indian Ocean. Exchanging European manu- tion against mercantilism ultimately set in. Creole mer- 8
factured goods—armor, firearms, linens, and toys—the chants chafed at regulations imposed from Madrid. Small 9
Dutch soon captured a monopoly on the lucrative spice English merchants complained loudly about the injustice 10
trade. Within a few decades they had expelled the Por- of handing over exclusive trading rights to great com- 11
tuguese from Ceylon and other East Indian islands. Un- bines such as the East India Company. Wanting a bigger 12
like the Portuguese, the Dutch transformed the Indian position in overseas commerce, independent merchants 13
Ocean trading world, turning formerly autonomous busi- in many countries began campaigning against “monopo- 14
ness partners into dependents (see Map 16.3 on page lies” and calling for “free trade.” 15
552). The general idea of freedom of enterprise in foreign 16
The Dutch hold in Asia faltered in the eighteenth trade was developed by Adam Smith (1723–1790), a 17
century because of the company’s failure to diversify to professor of philosophy and a leading figure of the Scot- 18
meet changing consumption patterns. Spices continued tish Enlightenment. Smith, whose Inquiry into the Na- 19
to comprise much of its shipping, despite their declining ture and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) established 20
importance in the European diet. Fierce competition the basis for modern economics, was highly critical of 21
from its main rival, the English East India Company eighteenth-century mercantilism. Mercantilism, he said, 22
(est. 1600), also severely undercut Dutch trade. meant a combination of stifling government regulations 23
Britain initially struggled for a foothold in Asia. With and unfair privileges for state-approved monopolies and 24
the Dutch monopolizing the Indian Ocean, the British
Apago PDF Enhancer government favorites. Far preferable was free competi- 25
focused on India, where they were minor players tion, which would best protect consumers from price 26
throughout the seventeenth century. The English East gouging and give all citizens a fair and equal right to do 27
India Company relied on trade concessions from the what they did best. In keeping with his deep-seated fear 28
powerful Mughal emperor, who granted only piecemeal of political oppression and with the “system of natural 29
access to the subcontinent. Finally, in 1716 the Mughals liberty” that he advocated, Smith argued that govern- 30
conceded empire-wide trading privileges. To further their ment should limit itself to “only three duties”: it should 31
economic interests, East India Company agents increas- provide a defense against foreign invasion, maintain civil 32
ingly intervened in local affairs and made alliances or order with courts and police protection, and sponsor cer- 33
waged war against Indian princes. tain indispensable public works and institutions that 34
Britain’s great rival for influence in India was France. could never adequately profit private investors. 35
Warfare in Europe in the 1740s spread to British and Smith saw the pursuit of self-interest in a competitive 36
French forces in India, who supported opposing rulers in market as the source of an underlying and previously un- 37
local power struggles. Their rivalry was finally resolved by recognized harmony that he believed would result in 38
the Treaty of Paris that ended the Seven Years’ War in gradual progress. According to Smith: 39
1763. Among French losses in this war were all of its pos- 40
[Every individual generally] neither intends to promote the
sessions in India. 41
public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. . . .
With the elimination of the French, British ascendancy 42
He is in this case, as in many cases, led by an invisible hand
in India accelerated. In 1764 company forces defeated 43
to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is
the Mughal emperor, leaving him on the throne as a ruler 44
it always the worse for society that it was not part of it. I
in title only. Robert Clive, a company agent who had led 45
have never known much good done by those who affected to
its forces in battle, became the first British governor gen- 46
trade for the public good.12
eral of Bengal, in northeast India, with direct authority 47
over the province. By the early 1800s the British had In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Smith was 48
overcome vigorous Indian resistance to gain economic often seen as an advocate of unbridled capitalism, but his 49
and political dominance of much of the subcontinent, ideas were considerably more complex. In his own mind, 50S
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1 Smith spoke for truth, not for special interests. Unlike labor and called for government intervention to raise
2 many disgruntled merchant capitalists, he applauded the workers’ living standards.
3 modest rise in real wages of British workers in the eigh-
Improve Your Grade
4 teenth century and went on to say that “No society can
Primary Source: The Wealth of Nations: A Natural Law
5 surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater of Economy
6 part of the members are poor and miserable.” Quite real-
7 istically, Smith concluded that employers were “always Smith’s provocative work had a great international im-
8 and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uni- pact, going through eight editions in English and being
9 form combination, not to raise the wages of labour above translated into several languages within twenty years. It
10 their actual rate” and sometimes entered “into particular quickly emerged as the classic argument for economic
11 combinations to sink the wages even below this rate.”13 liberalism.
12 He also deplored the deadening effects of the division of
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24 • What were the causes and effects of the agricultural nerable to food shortages and free from the plague, the
25 revolution, and what nations led the way in these
Apago PDF Enhancer populations of all European countries grew significantly.
26 developments? During the eighteenth century the European population
27 • Why did European population rise dramatically in the recovered from the stagnation and losses of the previous
28 eighteenth century? century to reach unprecedented new levels.
29 Population growth encouraged the growth of wage
• How and why did economic production intensify in
30 the eighteenth century, particularly in the countryside? labor, cottage industry, and merchant capitalism. To es-
31 cape the constraints of urban guilds, merchants trans-
32 • How did colonial markets boost Europe’s economic ported production to the countryside. Peasant households
and social development, and what conflicts and
33 set up industrial production within their cottages, allo-
adversity did world trade entail?
34 cating family members’ labor during the slack seasons of
35 agriculture or, in some cases, abandoning farming alto-
36 gether for a new life of weaving or spinning. The spread
37 While the European educated elite was developing a new of cottage industry was one sign of an “industrious revo-
38 view of the world in the eighteenth century, Europe as a lution” that helped pave the path of the Industrial Revo-
39 whole was experiencing a gradual but far-reaching expan- lution of the late eighteenth century. Women’s labor was
40 sion. As agriculture began showing signs of modest im- crucial to the spread of cottage industry and the renewed
41 provement across the continent, first the Low Countries vitality of the urban trades.
42 and then England launched changes that gradually revo- The products of peasant industry were exported across
43 lutionized it. New crops and intensified crop rotation Europe and even across the world. During the eighteenth
44 created new food sources for both people and livestock. century Europeans continued their overseas expansion,
45 Enclosure of common land allowed landowners to reap fighting for empire and profit and, in particular, consoli-
46 the fruits of agricultural innovation at the cost of exclud- dating their hold on the Americas. A revived Spain and
47 ing poor peasants from their traditional access to the land. its Latin American colonies participated fully in this ex-
48 The gap between wealthy landowner and landless poor pansion. As in agriculture and cottage industry, however,
49 stretched wider in this period. England and its empire proved most successful. The Eng-
50S For reasons historians do not yet understand, the relish concentrated much of the growing Atlantic trade in
51R curring curse of bubonic plague disappeared. Less vul- their hands, a development that challenged and enriched
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English industry and intensified interest in new meth- Ormrod, David. The Rise of Commercial Empires: Eng- 1
ods of production and in an emerging economic liberal- land and the Netherlands in the Age of Mercantilism, 2
ism. Thus, by the 1770s England was approaching an 1650–1770. 2003. Examines the battle for commercial 3
economic breakthrough as fully significant as the great and maritime supremacy in the North Sea. 4
political upheaval destined to develop shortly in neigh- Overton, Mark. Agricultural Revolution in England. 1996. 5
boring France. Charts the path of agricultural progress in England. 6
7
Porter, Roy. London: A Social History. 1994. A sparkling 8
combination of fine scholarship and exciting popular 9
Key Terms history. 10
open-field system industrious Prak, Maarten, ed. Early Modern Capitalism: Economic 11
common lands revolution and Social Change in Europe, 1400–1800. 2001. Col- 12
agricultural mercantilism lected essays on economic and social developments in 13
revolution Navigation Acts early modern Europe. 14
crop rotation Treaty of Paris Rothschild, Emma. Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, 15
enclosure Atlantic slave trade Condorcet, and the Enlightenment. 2001. A fascinating re- 16
proletarianization Creoles consideration of Smith and early liberalism. 17
cottage industry debt peonage 18
putting-out system mestizos 19
guild system economic liberalism 20
Notes 21
22
Improve Your Grade Flashcards 1. B. H. Slicher van Bath, The Agrarian History of Western Europe, A.D.
500–1850 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1963), p. 240. 23
2. Quoted in I. Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolu- 24
Apago PDF Enhancer tion, 1750–1850 (New York: F. S. Crofts, 1930), p. 113. 25
Suggested Reading 3. Quoted in P. Mantoux, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth 26
Century (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), p. 75.
Allen, Robert, et al., eds. Living Standards in the Past: New 27
4. Richard J. Soderlund, “‘Intended as a Terror to the Idle and Prof-
Perspectives on Well-Being in Asia and Europe. 2004. Of- ligate’: Embezzlement and the Origins of Policing in the York- 28
fers rich comparative perspectives on demographic trends shire Worsted Industry, c. 1750–1777,” Journal of Social History 29
and living standards among common people. 31 (Spring 1998): 658. 30
5. Ibid. In addition, Jan de Vries, “The Industrial Revolution and the 31
De Vries, Jan, and Ad van der Woude. The First Modern Industrious Revolution,” The Journal of Economic History 54, 2
Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch 32
(June 1994): 249–270, discusses the second industrious revolu-
Economy, 1500–1815. 1997. Examines the early success tion of the second half of the twentieth century. 33
of the Dutch economy and the challenges it faced in the 6. Laurent Dubois and John D. Garrigus, Slave Revolution in the Car- 34
eighteenth century. ribean, 1789–1904 (New York: Palgrave, 2006), p. 8. 35
7. G. Taylor, “America’s Growth Before 1840,” Journal of Economic 36
Farr, James R. Artisans in Europe, 1300–1914. 2000. Pro- History 24 (December 1970): 427–444.
37
vides an overview of guilds and artisanal labor. 8. Seymour Drescher, “Free Labor vs. Slave Labor: The British and
Caribbean Cases,” in Terms of Labor: Slavery, Serfdom, and Free La- 38
Gullickson, Gary L. Spinners and Weavers of Auffay: Rural bor, ed. Stanley L. Engerman (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University 39
Industry and the Sexual Division of Labor in a French Vil- Press, 1999), pp. 52–53. 40
lage, 1750–1850. 1986. Examines women’s labor in cot- 9. P. E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in 41
Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 19.
tage industry in northern France. 42
10. J. Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study
Harms, Robert W. The Diligent: A Voyage Through the in International Trade and Economic Development (Cambridge: 43
Worlds of the Slave Trade. 2002. A deeply moving ac- Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 481–482. 44
count of a French slave ship and its victims. 11. Seymour Drescher, Capitalism and Antislavery: British Mobilization 45
in Comparative Perspective (London: Macmillan, 1986), p. 38. 46
Klein, Herbert S. The Atlantic Slave Trade. 1999. An ex- 12. Ibid., p. 265.
47
cellent short synthesis on slavery in the Atlantic world. 13. R. Heilbroner, ed., The Essential Adam Smith (New York: W. W. Nor-
ton, 1986), p. 196. 48
Liebersohn, Harry. The Traveler’s World: Europe to the 49
Pacific. 2006. Imaginatively recounts European explo- 50S
rations and imaginations of the Pacific. 51R
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The Debate over the Guilds
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G uilds, also known as trade corporations,
claimed that their rules guaranteed fair wages,
we wish to abolish these arbitrary institutions,
which do not allow the poor man to earn his
17 high-quality goods, and community values. However, living; which reject a sex whose weakness has given
18 both French philosophes and enlightened government it more needs and fewer resources, and which
officials increasingly disagreed. The first excerpt, seem, in condemning it to an inevitable misery, to
19
from a 1776 law abolishing French guilds by the support seduction and debauchery; which destroy
20 reform minister Jacques Turgot, is an important emulation and industry and nullify the talents of
21 example of the liberal critique in action. A those whose circumstances have excluded them
22 vociferous response from the guilds led to the law’s from membership of a corporation; which deprive
23 repeal only six months later. New guild regulations the State and the arts of all the knowledge
24 responded to some of the critiques, for example, by brought to them by foreigners; which retard the
25 allowing women to join all guilds. In 1791 French
Apago PDF Enhancer progress of these arts through the innumerable
26 revolutionaries definitively abolished the guild difficulties encountered by inventors with whom
27 system. The second excerpt, from a letter by a different corporations dispute the right to exploit
28 Prussian official, explains what it meant “to work their discoveries . . . which, by the huge expenses
29 free” and testifies to the growth of the putting-out artisans are obliged to sustain to obtain the right
system alongside the guilds in the German states. to work, by their various exactions and frequent
30
fines for alleged illegalities, by all kinds of
31 Edict Abolishing the Guilds in France expenditure, waste and interminable law suits,
32 resulting from the respective claims of all these
33 In nearly all the towns of our Kingdom the
practice of different arts and crafts is concentrated corporations on the extent of their exclusive
34 privileges, burden industry with an oppressive tax,
in the hands of a small number of masters, united
35 in a corporation, who alone have the exclusive which bears heavily on the people, and is without
36 right to manufacture and sell particular articles; benefit to the State; which finally, by the facility
37 so that those of our subjects who, through wish they provide for members of corporations to
38 or necessity intend to practise in these fields, must combine to force the poorest members to submit
39 have attained the mastership, to which they are to the laws of the rich, become an instrument of
40 admitted only after very long tests which are as privilege and encourage developments, the effect
difficult as they are useless, and after having of which is to raise above their natural level the
41
satisfied rules or manifold exactions, which absorb price of those goods which are most essential for
42 the people.
43 part of the funds they need to set up in business
44 or even to exist. . . .
God, in giving man needs, by making work Breakdown of the Guilds in Germany
45
necessary, has made the right to work a universal Following the repeated complaint of the woollen
46 prerogative, and this is the first, the most sacred and worsted weaver named Ast, calling himself
47 and the most indefeasible of all rights. a manufacturer of woollen materials, about the
48 We regard it as one of the first duties of our runaway apprentice Leder, Your Majesty
49 law, and one of the acts most worthy of our demanded on 10th and 21st inst. to be informed
50S charity, to free our subjects from all attacks against what the term “to work free” means. It is well
51R the inalienable right of mankind. Consequently, known that the [free] woollen and worsted
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A German brush maker and guild member shows

a customer his wares. (The Fotomas Index/The
Bridgeman Art Library)
weavers in Germany and abroad are without a

guild, that is to say, do not belong to a company
which is governed by certain rules or privileges,
but follow their trade as woollen and worsted
weavers without regulation. For in an organized
trade with its own Charter within which it has
to operate and which has an assessor appointed
whose task it is to see that it is observed, no
apprentice may be taken on, unless he first proves
by his birth certificate or patent of legitimacy that
he was born in wedlock, or legitimized by royal
patent. Further, according to the rules of
apprenticeship, no apprentice may be given his
freedom until his years of apprenticeship are
ended according to the registry, and his master
declares before the assembled trade when his
indenture as journeyman is made out that he has
an adequate knowledge of his craft. Similarly, no members of their guilds, whereby the number of
one can achieve the rights of mastership without unorganized ones has been much reduced, except
having completed two years as journeyman as laid for the large manufacturers and their workers,
Apago PDF Enhancer
down, and produced the appropriate masterpiece. who are largely still unorganized.
All these regulations are omitted in the case Such outsiders as have risen to the level of
of free weavers. For there are really no masters, manufacturers, by which it is meant that they man
journeymen and apprentices among them; but if several, perhaps many, looms with unorganized
a weaver is able and has resources to set up looms, workers, have never been granted this concession,
he sets on workers, usually lads or those who but have, as the term goes, “worked free”; and
have some knowledge of the trade, who may call since they cannot become masters and therefore
themselves apprentices or journeymen, but are are not allowed to use the term of master, have
not recognized and esteemed as such by those termed themselves woollen manufacturers, in
within the guild, since the employer has not order to distinguish themselves from the other
produced a masterpiece, the journeymen and excluded, but minor, weavers.
apprentices have no indentures or birth
certificates, they have no privileges, no assessor,
and thus live without a regulation. Such a woollen
or worsted weaver will then be called a “free Questions for Analysis
worker.” . . .
If such woollen weavers, who have mostly 1. How did Turgot justify the abolition of
been attracted into the country by the large French guilds? Do you think his reasons are
manufacturers, want to set up here on their own, valid? How might the guilds respond?
although they have not been properly brought 2. How were woolen weavers and their employers
up within their company, and cannot be accepted organized in Prussia?
as masters, they can receive permission, for
themselves only, “to work free.” Many of the 3. Do guilds—and modern-day unions—help or
weavers working “free” have felt the hurt workers? Defend your position.
disadvantages of exclusion from their guild, so Source: S. Pollard and C. Holmes, eds., Documents of
that some years ago, after some long-drawn-out European Economic History, vol. 1: The Process of
disputes between the organized and unorganized Industrialization, 1750–1870 (New York: St. Martin’s
weavers, they were granted the concession, on Press, 1968), pp. 53, 55–56. Copyright © S. Pollard and
certain prescribed conditions, to be accepted as C. Holmes. Reprinted with permission of Palgrave.
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A quack doctor uses a snake and a dog to sell a miraculous cure-all in an Italian village market, in a
51R
painting (detail) by Michele Graneri (1736–1778). (Dagli Orti/Private Collection/The Art Archive)
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c h a p t e r 1
2
20
The Changing Life 3
4
of the People 5
6
7
8
9
10
11
chapter preview 12
13
Marriage and the Family
• What changes occurred in marriage
and the family in the course of the
T he discussion of agriculture and industry in the last chapter showed
the common people at work, straining to make ends meet within
the larger context of population growth, gradual economic expansion,
14
15
16
17
eighteenth century? and ferocious political competition. The world of work was embedded in
18
Children and Education a rich complex of family organization, community practices, everyday ex-
19
periences, and collective attitudes.
• What was life like for children, In recent years, historians have intensively studied all these aspects of
20
and how did attitudes toward 21
popular life. The challenge has been formidable because regional varia-
childhood evolve? 22
tions abounded and the common people left few written records. Yet
23
Food, Medicine, and New imaginative research has resulted in major findings and much greater
24
Consumption Habits knowledge. It is now possible to follow the common people into their
25
• How did new patterns of Apago PDF Enhancer
homes, workshops, churches, and taverns and to ask, “What were the
26
consumption and changing medical everyday experiences of ordinary people?”
27
care affect people’s lives? 28
Religion and Popular Culture 29
• What were the patterns of popular
Marriage and the Family 30
31
religion and culture, and how did The basic unit of social organization is the family. It is within the struc-
32
they interact with the worldview of ture of the family that human beings love, mate, and reproduce. It is pri-
33
the educated public and the marily the family that teaches the child, imparting values and customs
34
Enlightenment? that condition an individual’s behavior for a lifetime. The family is also an
35
institution woven into the web of history. It evolves and changes, assum-
36
ing different forms in different times and places.
37
• What changes occurred in marriage and the family in the course of the 38
eighteenth century? 39
40
41
Late Marriage and Nuclear Families 42
43
In the previous chapter, we noted the common misconception that pop-
44
ulations of the past always grew quickly. Another popular error is that be-
45
fore the modern era people married at a young age and settled in large
46
multigenerational households. In recent years historians have used previ-
47
48
49
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654 CHAPTER 20 • THE CHANGING LIFE OF THE PEOPLE
1 ously neglected parish registers of births, deaths, and mar-

2 riages to uncover details of European family life before
3 the nineteenth century. It is now clear that the extended,
4 three-generation family was a rarity in western and cen-
5 tral Europe by 1700. Indeed, the extended family may
6 never have been common in Europe, although it is hard
7 to know about the early Middle Ages because very few
8 records survive. When young European couples married,
9 they normally established their own households and lived
10 apart from their parents. If a three-generation household
11 came into existence, it was usually because a widowed
12 parent moved into the home of a married child.
13 Moreover, most people did not marry young in the
14 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The average per-
15 son who was neither rich nor aristocratic married surpris-
16 ingly late, many years after reaching adulthood and many
17 more after beginning to work. In one well-studied, ap-
18 parently typical English village in the seventeenth and
19 eighteenth centuries, both men and women married for
20 the first time at an average age of twenty-seven or older.
21 A similar pattern existed in eighteenth-century France,
22 where women married around age twenty-five and men
23 around age twenty-seven. A substantial portion of men
24 and women never married at all.
25 The custom of late marriage combined with a nuclear-
Apago PDF Enhancer
26 family household distinguished European society from
27 other areas of the world. It seems likely that the aggres-
28 sive dynamism that has characterized European society Boucher: The Pretty Cook Increased migration to urban
areas in the eighteenth century contributed to a loosening of
29 derived in large part from this marriage pattern. Late traditional morals and soaring illegitimacy rates. Young
30 marriage joined a mature man and a mature woman— women who worked as servants or shop girls could not be
31 two adults who had already accumulated social and eco- supervised as closely as those who lived at home. The themes
32 nomic capital and could transmit self-reliance and skills of seduction, fallen virtue, and familial conflict were popular in
33 to the next generation. eighteenth-century art, such as this painting by François
Boucher (1703–1770), master of the rococo. (Réunion des
34 Why was marriage delayed? The main reason was that Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY)
35 couples normally did not marry until they could support
36 themselves economically. Peasants often needed to wait
37 until the father’s death to inherit land and marry. In the
38 towns, men and women worked to accumulate enough
39 savings to start a small business and establish a house- cials. The officials believed that freedom to marry for the
40 hold. Most youths began apprenticeships in their mid- lower classes would mean more landless paupers, more
41 teens; given average marriage ages, we may deduce that abandoned children, and more money for welfare. Vil-
42 it took about ten more years of work to earn enough for lage elders often agreed. Thus prudence, law, and custom
43 marriage. combined to postpone the march to the altar. This pat-
44 Ten years was a long time for sexually mature young tern helped society maintain some kind of balance be-
45 people to wait. Laws and community controls sought to tween the number of people and the available economic
46 temper impetuous love and physical attraction. In some resources.
47 areas couples needed the legal permission or tacit ap-
48 proval of the local lord or landowner in order to marry.
49 Austria and Germany had legal restrictions on marriage,
Work Away from Home
50S and well into the nineteenth century poor couples had Many young people worked within their families until
51R particular difficulty securing the approval of local offi- they could start their own households. Boys plowed and
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Marriage and the Family • 655
wove; girls spun and tended the cows. Many others left Chronology 1
home to work elsewhere. In the towns a lad would begin 2
apprenticeship around age fifteen and finish in his late 1717 Elementary school attendance mandatory 3
teens or early twenties. During that time he would not be in Prussia 4
permitted to marry. In most trades he earned little and 5
worked hard, but if he was lucky, he might eventually be 1720–1780 Government-run foundling homes 6
established
admitted to a guild and establish his economic indepen- 7
dence. Many poor families could not afford apprentice- 1740–1780 Reign of Maria Theresa in Austria 8
ship, leaving their sons without the skills and status of 9
1740–1786 Reign of Frederick the Great in Prussia
guild journeymen. These youths drifted from one tough 10
job to another: hired hand for a small farmer, wage la- 1750–1790 Wesley preaches revival in England 11
borer on a new road, carrier of water in a nearby town. 12
1750–1850 Illegitimacy explosion
They were always subject to economic fluctuations, and 13
unemployment was a constant threat. 1757 Madame du Coudray, Manual on the Art 14
Many girls also left their families to work in adolescence. of Childbirth 15
The range of opportunities open to them was more lim- 16
1762 Rousseau advocates more attentive child care
ited, however. Apprenticeship was available in some cities, 17
in Emile
usually with mistresses in traditionally female occupations 18
like seamstresses, linen drapers, or midwives. With the 1763 Louis XV orders Jesuits out of France 19
growth in production of finished goods for the emerging 20
1775–1783 American Revolution
consumer economy during the eighteenth century, de- 21
mand rose for skilled female labor. Even male guildsmen 1789–1799 French Revolution 22
hired girls and women, despite guild restrictions. 23
1796 Jenner performs first smallpox vaccination
Service in another family’s household was by far the 24
1799–1815 Napoleonic era
most common job for girls, and even middle-class fami- 25
Apago PDF Enhancer
lies often sent their daughters into service. The legions 26
of young servant girls worked hard but had little inde- 27
pendence. Sometimes the employer paid the girl’s wages 28
directly to her parents. Constantly under the eye of her 29
mistress, the servant girl had many tasks—cleaning, shop- petty thievery were often the harsh consequences of un- 30
ping, cooking, caring for the baby. Often the work was wanted pregnancy. “What are we?” exclaimed a bitter 31
endless, for there were few laws to limit exploitation. Parisian prostitute. “Most of us are unfortunate women, 32
Court records are full of servant girls’ complaints of phys- without origins, without education, servants and maids 33
ical mistreatment by their mistresses. There were many for the most part.”3 34
like the fifteen-year-old English girl in the early eigh- Prostitutes encountered increasingly harsh and repres- 35
teenth century who told the judge that her mistress had sive laws in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, 36
not only called her “very opprobrious names, as Bitch, as officials across Europe began to close licensed brothels 37
Whore and the like,” but also “beat her without provo- and declare prostitution illegal. Despite this repression, 38
cation and beyond measure.”1 prostitution flourished in European cities and towns in 39
Male apprentices told similar tales of verbal and phys- the eighteenth century. Most prostitutes were working 40
ical abuse at their masters’ hands. Boys were far less vul- women who turned to the sex trade when confronted 41
nerable, though, to the sexual harassment and assault with unemployment or seasonal shortages of work. Such 42
that threatened female servants. In theory, domestic ser- women did not become social pariahs, but retained ties 43
vice offered a young girl protection and security in a with the communities of laboring poor to which they 44
new family. But in practice she was often the easy prey of belonged. If caught by the police, however, they were 45
a lecherous master or his sons or friends. Indeed, “the liable to imprisonment or banishment. Venereal disease 46
evidence suggests that in all European countries, from was also a constant threat. Farther up the social scale were 47
Britain to Russia, the upper classes felt perfectly free to courtesans whose wealthy protectors provided apartments, 48
exploit sexually girls who were at their mercy.”2 If the girl servants, beautiful clothing, and cash allowances. After a 49
became pregnant, she could be quickly fired and thrown brilliant, but brief, career, such a woman could descend 50S
out in disgrace to make her own way. Prostitution and once more to streetwalking. 51R
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1 rituals, the young men of the village would typically gang

2
Premarital Sex and Community Controls up on the person they wanted to punish and force him
3 Did the plight of some former servant girls mean that late or her to sit astride a donkey facing backward and hold-
4 marriage in preindustrial Europe went hand in hand with ing up the donkey’s tail. They would parade the overly
5 premarital sex and many illegitimate children? For most brutal spouse-beating husband (or wife), or the couple
6 of western and central Europe until at least 1750, the an- whose adultery had been discovered, all around the vil-
7 swer is no. English parish registers seldom listed more lage, loudly proclaiming the offender’s misdeeds with
8 than one illegitimate child out of every twenty children scorn and ridicule. The donkey ride and other colorful
9 baptized. Some French parishes in the seventeenth cen- humiliations ranging from rotten vegetables splattered
10 tury had extraordinarily low rates of illegitimacy, with less on the doorstep to obscene and insulting midnight sere-
11 than 1 percent of the babies born out of wedlock. Illegit- nades were common punishments throughout much of
12 imate babies were apparently a rarity, at least as far as the Europe. They epitomized the community’s far-reaching
13 official church records are concerned. effort to police personal behavior and maintain commu-
14 Many unmarried couples satisfied their sexual desires nity standards.
15 with fondling and petting. Others went further and en- Community controls did not extend to family plan-
16 gaged in premarital intercourse. In one well-studied Eng- ning, however. Once a man and a woman married, they
17 lish village, 33 percent of all first children were conceived generally had several children. Birth control within mar-
18 before the couple was married, and many were born riage was not unknown in western and central Europe
19 within three months of the marriage ceremony. In the before the nineteenth century, but it was primitive and
20 mid-eighteenth century 20 percent of the women in the quite undependable. The most common method was
21 French village of Auffay in Normandy were pregnant coitus interruptus—withdrawal by the male before ejacu-
22 when they got married, although only 2 percent of all lation. The French, who were apparently early leaders
23 babies in the village were born to unwed mothers. No in contraception, were using this method extensively to
24 doubt many of these French and English couples were al- limit family size by the end of the eighteenth century.
25 ready betrothed, or at least “going steady,” before they
Apago PDF Enhancer Mechanical and other means of contraception were also
26 entered into intimate relationships, and pregnancy sim- used in the eighteenth century, but mainly by certain sec-
27 ply set the marriage date once and for all. tors of the urban population. The “fast set” of London
28 The combination of very low rates of illegitimate birth used the “sheath” regularly, although primarily to pro-
29 with large numbers of pregnant brides reflects the tect against venereal disease, not against pregnancy. Pros-
30 powerful community controls of the traditional village, titutes used various contraceptive techniques to prevent
31 particularly the open-field village, with its pattern of co- pregnancy, and such information was available in large
32 operation and common action. That spirit of common towns if a person really sought it.
33 action was rapidly mobilized by the prospect of an unwed
34 (and therefore poor) mother with an illegitimate child, a
35 condition inevitably viewed as a grave threat to the eco- New Patterns of Marriage
36 nomic, social, and moral stability of the closely knit com-
37 munity. Irate parents, anxious village elders, indignant
and Illegitimacy
38 priests, and stern landlords all combined to pressure In the second half of the eighteenth century, the pattern
39 young people who wavered about marriage in the face of of late marriage and few births out of wedlock began to
40 unexpected pregnancies. In the countryside these con- break down. The number of illegitimate births soared
41 trols meant that premarital sex was not entered into between about 1750 and 1850 as much of Europe ex-
42 lightly and that it was generally limited to those contem- perienced an illegitimacy explosion. In Frankfurt, Ger-
43 plating marriage. many, for example, illegitimate births rose steadily from
44 The concerns of the village and the family weighed about 2 percent of all births in the early 1700s to a peak
45 heavily on most aspects of a couple’s life both before of about 25 percent around 1850. In Bordeaux, France,
46 and after marriage. Whereas uninvolved individuals to- 36 percent of all babies were being born out of wedlock
47 day are inclined to stay out of the domestic disputes and by 1840. Small towns and villages experienced less star-
48 marital scandals of their neighbors, the people in peasant tling climbs, but between 1750 and 1850 increases from
49 communities gave such affairs loud and unfavorable pub- a range of 1 to 3 percent initially to 10 to 20 percent
50S licity either at the time of the event or during the Carni- were commonplace. Fewer young people were abstaining
51R val season (see page 675). Relying on degrading public from premarital intercourse, and, more important, fewer
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Marriage and the Family • 657
David Allan: The Penny

Wedding (1795) The
spirited merrymaking of a
peasant wedding was a popu-
lar theme of European artists.
In rural Scotland “penny
weddings” like this one were
common: guests provided
cash gifts; any money left after
paying for the wedding went
to the newlyweds to help
them get started. Dancing,
feasting, and drinking charac-
terized these community
parties, which led the Presby-
terian church to oppose them
and hasten their decline.
(National Galleries of Scotland)
Apago PDF Enhancer

young men were marrying the women they got preg-
nesslike as peasant marriages that were often dictated by
nant. Thus a profound sexual and cultural transformation the needs of the couples’ families. After 1750, however,
took place. courtship became more extensive and freer as cottage in-
Historians are still debating the meaning of this trans- dustry grew. It was easier to yield to the attraction of the
formation, but two interrelated ideas dominate most opposite sex and fall in love. Members of the older gen-
interpretations. First, the growth of cottage industry cre- eration were often highly critical of the lack of responsi-
ated new opportunities for earning a living, opportu- bility they saw in the union of “people with only two
nities not tied to the land. Cottage industry tended to spinning wheels and not even a bed.” But such scolding
develop in areas where the land was poor in quality and did not stop cottage workers from marrying for love
divided into small, inadequate holdings. As cottage in- rather than for economic considerations as they blazed a
dustry took hold in such areas, population grew rapidly path that factory workers would follow in the nineteenth
because young people attained greater independence and century.
did not have to wait to inherit a farm in order to get mar- Second, the needs of a growing population sent many
ried. A scrap of ground for a garden and a cottage for young villagers to towns and cities in search of employ-
the loom and spinning wheel could be quite enough for ment. Mobility in turn encouraged new sexual and mari-
a modest living. A contemporary observer of an area of tal relationships that were less subject to village tradition
rapidly growing cottage industry in Switzerland at the and more likely to produce illegitimate births. Most
end of the eighteenth century described these changes: young women in urban areas found work only as servants
or textile workers. Poorly paid, insecure, and with little
The increased and sure income offered by the combination of
possibility of truly independent lives, they looked to mar-
cottage manufacture with farming hastened and multiplied
riage and family life as an escape from the vulnerabilities
marriages and encouraged the division of landholdings,
of the single life.
while enhancing their value; it also promoted the expansion
Promises of marriage from a man of the working girl’s
and embellishment of houses and villages.4
own class often led to sex, which was viewed as part of
Cottage workers married not only at an earlier age but serious courtship. In one medium-size French city in
also for different reasons. Nothing could be so busi- 1787–1788, the great majority of unwed mothers stated
1019763_Ch_20.qxp 9/17/07 3:13 PM Page 658
1 that sexual intimacy had followed promises of marriage. feeding decreases the likelihood of pregnancy for the av-
2 Their sisters in rural Normandy reported again and again erage woman by delaying the resumption of ovulation.
3 that they had been “seduced in anticipation of mar- By nursing their babies, women limited their fertility and
4 riage.”5 Many soldiers, day laborers, and male servants spaced their children from two to three years apart. If
5 were no doubt sincere in their proposals. But their lives a newborn baby died, nursing stopped, and a new life
6 were also insecure, and many hesitated to take on the could be created. Nursing also saved lives: the breast-fed
7 burden of a wife and child. infant received precious immunity-producing substances
8 Thus it became increasingly difficult for a woman to with its mother’s milk and was more likely to survive than
9 convert pregnancy into marriage, and in a growing num- when it was given other food.
10 ber of cases the intended marriage did not take place. Women of the aristocracy and upper middle class sel-
11 The romantic, yet practical dreams and aspirations of dom nursed their own children. The upper-class woman
12 many young people were frustrated by low wages, in- felt that breast-feeding was crude and undignified. In-
13 equality, and changing economic and social conditions. stead, she hired a live-in wet nurse to suckle her child
14 Old patterns of marriage and family were breaking down. (which usually meant sending the nurse’s own infant away
15 Only in the late nineteenth century would more stable to be nursed). Urban mothers of more modest means
16 patterns reappear. also relied on wet nurses because they were needed for
17 full-time work. Unable to afford live-in wet nurses, they
18 often turned to the cheaper services of women in the
19 Children and Education countryside. Rural wet-nursing was a widespread busi-
20 ness in the eighteenth century, conducted within the
21 In the traditional framework of agrarian Europe, women framework of the putting-out system. The traffic was in
22 married late but then began bearing children rapidly. If a babies rather than in yarn or cloth, and two or three years
23 woman married before she was thirty, and if both she and often passed before the wet-nurse worker in the country-
24 her husband lived to fifty, she would most likely give side finished her task. The wet nurse generally had little
25 birth to six or more children. The newborn child entered
Apago PDF Enhancer contact with the family that hired her, and she was ex-
26 a dangerous world. Newborns were vulnerable to infec- pected to privilege the newcomer at the expense of her
27 tious diseases of the chest and stomach, and many babies own nursing child.
28 died of dehydration brought about by bad bouts of ordi- Wet-nursing was particularly common in northern
29 nary diarrhea. Of those who survived infancy, many more France. Whereas the trend was toward more maternal
30 died in childhood. Even in rich families little could be nursing in other parts of Europe, wet-nursing grew sub-
31 done for an ailing child. Childbirth could also be danger- stantially in Paris and other northern cities over the eigh-
32 ous. Women who bore six children faced a cumulative teenth century. Toward the end of the century roughly
33 risk of dying in childbirth of 5 to 10 percent, a thousand twenty thousand babies were born in Paris each year. Al-
34 times as great as the risk in Europe today.6 most half were placed with rural wet nurses through a
35 Schools and formal education played only a modest government-supervised distribution network; 20 to 25
36 role in the lives of ordinary children, and many boys and percent were placed with Parisian nurses personally se-
37 many more girls never learned to read. Nevertheless, ba- lected by their parents; and another 20 to 25 percent
38 sic literacy was growing among the popular classes, whose were abandoned to foundling hospitals, which would
39 reading habits have been intensively studied in recent send them to wet nurses in the countryside. The remain-
40 years. Attempting to peer into the collective attitudes of der (perhaps 10 percent) were nursed at home by their
41 the common people and compare them with those of the mothers or live-in nurses.7
42 book-hungry cultivated public, historians have produced Reliance on wet nurses contributed to high levels of
43 some fascinating insights. infant mortality. A study of parish registers in northern
44 • What was life like for children, and how did attitudes France during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth
45 toward childhood evolve? centuries reveals that 35 percent of babies died before
46 their first birthdays, and another 20 percent before age
47 ten.8 In England, where more mothers nursed, only some
48 30 percent of children did not reach their tenth birth-
49
Child Care and Nursing days. Frenchwomen also gave birth to more children
50S In the countryside, women of the lower classes generally since nursing tends to slow down the return of fertility
51R breast-fed their infants for two years or more. Breast- after childbirth.
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Children and Education • 659
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3
4
5
6
7
8
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10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
26
27
28
Arrival of the Wet Nurses Wet-nursing was big business in eighteenth-century France, particularly 29
in Paris and the north. Here, rural wet nurses bring their charges back to the city to be reunited with 30
their families after around two years of care. These children were lucky survivors of a system that pro-
duced high mortality rates. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY) 31
32
33
34
35
Why did Frenchwomen send their babies to wet-nurse, In the second half of the eighteenth century critics 36
given these high mortality rates? Historians have offered mounted a harsh attack against wet-nursing. Upper-class 37
several explanations, including parental indifference to women responded positively to the new mindset, but 38
the babies’ survival. The likeliest explanation appears to poor urban women continued to rely on wet nurses until 39
be a combination of cultural, socioeconomic, and biolog- the late-nineteenth-century introduction of sterilized 40
ical factors. Wet-nursing was a centuries-old tradition in cows’ milk and artificial nipples. 41
France, so families were merely following well-established 42
patterns. Moreover, in this period migration to the cities, 43
high prices, and stagnant wages pushed more women
Foundlings and Infanticide 44
into the workforce, often into jobs outside the home The young woman who could not provide for a child had 45
where it was impossible to nurse their babies. A third fac- few choices, especially if she had no prospect of marriage. 46
tor was that few alternatives existed to breast milk. In an Abortions were illegal, dangerous, and apparently rare. 47
era before germ theory and sterilization, artificial feeding In desperation, some women, particularly in the country- 48
methods were known to be dangerous to the newborn. side, hid unwanted pregnancies, delivered in secret, and 49
By turning to wet nurses, mothers who could not nurse smothered their newborn infants. If discovered, infanti- 50S
sought the safest affordable alternative. cide was punishable by death. 51R
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1 Women in cities had more choices to dispose of babies rates. With a reasonable expectation that a child might
2 they could not keep. Foundling homes first took hold in die, some scholars believe, parents maintained an attitude
3 Italy, Spain, and France, spreading to northern and cen- of indifference, if not downright negligence.
4 tral Europe after 1700. In eighteenth-century England,
Improve Your Grade
5 for example, the government acted on a petition calling
Primary Source: Births and Deaths in an English
6 for a foundling hospital “to prevent the frequent mur- Gentry Family
7 ders of poor, miserable infants at birth” and “to suppress
8 the inhuman custom of exposing newborn children to Certainly, contemporaries were well aware of the dan-
9 perish in the streets.” As new homes were established and gers of childhood and of the high mortality rates. The
10 old ones expanded in the eighteenth century, the num- great eighteenth-century English historian Edward Gib-
11 ber of foundlings being cared for surged. By the end of bon (1737–1794) wrote, with some exaggeration, that
12 the century European foundling hospitals were admit- “the death of a new born child before that of its parents
13 ting annually about one hundred thousand abandoned may seem unnatural but it is a strictly probable event,
14 children, nearly all of them infants. In the early nine- since of any given number the greater part are extin-
15 teenth century the foundling home in St. Petersburg had guished before the ninth year, before they possess the
16 twenty-five thousand children in its care and was receiv- faculties of the mind and the body.” Gibbon’s father
17 ing five thousand new babies a year. Still, demand always named all his boys Edward after himself, hoping that at
18 exceeded the supply of places. least one of them would survive to carry his name. His
19 Across Europe, foundling homes emerged as a favorite prudence was not misplaced. Edward the future historian
20 charity of the rich and powerful. At their best eighteenth- and eldest survived. Five brothers and sisters who fol-
21 century foundling homes were a good example of Chris- lowed him all died in infancy.
22 tian charity and social concern in an age of great poverty Emotional prudence could lead to emotional distance.
23 and inequality. Yet the foundling home was no panacea. The French essayist, Michel de Montaigne, who lost five
24 By the 1770s, one-third of all babies born in Paris were of his six daughters in infancy, wrote, “I cannot abide
25 being immediately abandoned to foundling homes by
Apago PDF Enhancer that passion for caressing new-born children, which have
26 their mothers. Moreover, fully one-third of all those neither mental activities nor recognisable bodily shape
27 foundlings were abandoned by married couples, a pow- by which to make themselves loveable and I have never
28 erful commentary on the standard of living among the willingly suffered them to be fed in my presence.”11
29 working poor, for whom an additional mouth to feed In contrast to this harsh picture, however, historians
30 often meant tragedy. The tremendous increase in found- have drawn ample evidence from diaries, letters, and fam-
31 lings resulted not only from a growth in unwanted ille- ily portraits that many parents did cherish their children
32 gitimate children, but also from the growing tendency of and suffered greatly when they died. The English poet
33 desperately poor parents to abandon children to found- Ben Jonson wrote movingly of the death of his six-year-
34 ling homes.9 old son Benjamin, which occurred during a London
35 Great numbers of babies entered foundling homes, plague outbreak in 1603:
36 but few left. Even in the best of these homes, 50 percent
On My First Son
37 of the babies normally died within a year. In the worst,
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
38 fully 90 percent did not survive.10 They succumbed to
My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.
39 long journeys over rough roads, intentional and unin-
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
40 tentional neglect by their wet nurses, and customary
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
41 childhood illnesses. So great were the losses that some
42 contemporaries called the foundling hospitals “legalized In a society characterized by violence and brutality, dis-
43 infanticide.” cipline of children was often severe. The novelist Daniel
44 Defoe (1659–1731), who was always delighted when he
45 saw young children working hard in cottage industry,
46
Attitudes Toward Children coined the axiom “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” He
47 What were the typical circumstances of children’s lives? meant it. So did Susannah Wesley (1669–1742), mother
48 The topic of parental attitudes toward children in the of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. According to
49 early modern period remains controversial. Some scholars her, the first task of a parent toward her children was “to
50S have claimed that parents did not risk forming emotional conquer the will, and bring them to an obedient tem-
51R attachments to young children because of high mortality per.” She reported that her babies were “taught to fear
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Children and Education • 661
Cultivating the Joy of 1

Discovery This English 2
painting by Joseph Wright 3
of Derby (1734–1797)
reflects new attitudes 4
toward child development 5
and education, which 6
advocated greater freedom 7
and direct experience. The 8
children rapturously watch
a planetarium, which illus- 9
trates the movements and 10
positions of the planets in 11
the solar system. Wise 12
teachers stand by, letting 13
the children learn at their
own pace. (Derby Museum 14
& Art Gallery/The Bridgeman 15
Art Library) 16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
the rod, and to cry softly; by which means they escaped
ing to what he perceived as the vanity and frivolity of
the abundance of correction they might otherwise have
upper-class Parisian women, Rousseau insisted girls’ edu- 26
had, and that most odious noise of the crying of children cation focus on their future domestic responsibilities. For 27
was rarely heard in the house.”12 Rousseau, women’s “nature” destined them solely for a 28
The Enlightenment produced an enthusiastic new dis- life of marriage and child rearing. The ideas of Rousseau 29
course about childhood and child rearing. Starting around and other reformers were enthusiastically adopted by elite 30
1760, critics called for greater tenderness toward children women, who did not adopt universal nursing but did at 31
and proposed imaginative new teaching methods. In ad- least begin to supervise their wet nurses more carefully. 32
dition to supporting foundling homes and urging women For all his influence, Rousseau also reveals the occa- 33
to nurse their babies, these new voices ridiculed the prac- sional hypocrisy of Enlightenment thinkers. With regard 34
tice of swaddling babies and using rigid whale-boned to the child-rearing techniques he believed would create 35
corsets to form children’s bodies properly by “straighten- a better society, Rousseau had extremely high expecta- 36
ing them out.” Instead of dressing children in miniature tions; when it came to the five children he fathered with 37
versions of adult clothing, critics called for simpler and his common-law wife, however, he abandoned them all 38
more comfortable clothing to allow freedom of move- in foundling hospitals despite their mother’s protests. 39
ment. These voices belonged to the overall Enlighten- None are known to have survived. For Rousseau, the 40
ment celebration of nature and the natural laws that idea of creating a natural man was more important than 41
should guide human behavior. For Enlightenment crit- was raising real children. 42
ics, the best hopes for creating a new society, untram- 43
meled by the prejudices of the past, lay in a radical 44
revision of child-rearing techniques.
Schools and Popular Literature 45
One of the century’s most influential works on child The availability of formal education outside the home in- 46
rearing was Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, which fer- creased during the eighteenth century. The aristocracy 47
vently advocated breast-feeding and natural dress. Rous- and the rich led the way in the sixteenth century with 48
seau argued that boys’ education should include plenty special colleges, often run by Jesuits. Schools charged 49
of fresh air and exercise and that they should be taught specifically with elementary education of the children of 50S
practical craft skills in addition to book learning. React- the common people usually did not appear until the 51R
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1 Prussia led the way in the development of universal ed-

2 ucation, inspired by the Protestant idea that every be-
3 Percentage of bridegrooms able liever should be able to read the Bible and by the new
to sign their names on the
4 marriage register, 1786–1790 idea of a population capable of effectively serving the
5 state. As early as 1717 Prussia made attendance at ele-
6 mentary schools compulsory, and more Protestant Ger-
7 man states, such as Saxony and Württemberg, followed
8 Paris in the eighteenth century. Religious motives were also
9 extremely important elsewhere. From the middle of the
10 seventeenth century, Presbyterian Scotland was con-
11 vinced that the path to salvation lay in careful study of
12 the Scriptures, and it established an effective network
13 80–100 of parish schools for rich and poor alike. The Church of
14 50–79 England and the dissenting congregations established
20–49
15 “charity schools” to instruct poor children, and in 1682
0–19
16 France began setting up Christian schools to teach the
Unknown
17 catechism and prayers as well as reading and writing.
18 France did less well than the Habsburg state, the only
19 Catholic land to promote elementary education enthu-
20 siastically in the eighteenth century. Some elementary
21 0 100 200 Km.
education was becoming a reality, and schools were of
22 growing significance in the life of the child.
0 100 200 Mi.
23 The result of these efforts was a remarkable growth in
24 Mapping the Past basic literacy between 1600 and 1800. Whereas in 1600
25 Apago PDF Enhancer only one male in six was barely literate in France and Scot-
MAP 20.1 Literacy in France on the Eve of the
26 French Revolution Literacy rates increased but still land, and one in four in England, by 1800 almost nine
27 varied widely between and within states in eighteenth- out of ten Scottish males, two out of three French males
28
29
•
century Europe. 1 What trends in French literacy rates does this
map reveal? Which regions seem to be ahead? How would you
(see Map 20.1), and more than half of English males were
literate. In all three countries, the bulk of the jump oc-
30
31
•
account for the regional variations? 2 The map is based on the
percentage of bridegrooms able to sign their names at marriage.
Who is missing from the map? How do you think literacy rates may
curred in the eighteenth century. Women were also in-
creasingly literate, although they lagged behind men.
32
33 •
have varied for people not covered by this source? 3 Note the
areas marked “unknown.” Why do you think historians do not know
the literacy rates for those areas? What alternate methods might
The growth in literacy promoted a growth in reading,
and historians have carefully examined what the com-
34 mon people read in an attempt to discern what they were
they use to find this information?
35 thinking. While the Bible remained the overwhelming fa-
36 vorite, especially in Protestant countries, short pamphlets
37 seventeenth century. Such schools specialized in teaching known as chapbooks were the staple of popular litera-
38 seven- to twelve-year-old boys and girls basic literacy, re- ture. Printed on the cheapest paper available, many chap-
39 ligion, and perhaps some arithmetic for the boys and books dealt with religious subjects. They featured Bible
40 needlework for the girls. stories, prayers, devotions, and the lives of saints and ex-
41 The religious struggle unleashed by the Protestant emplary Christians. Promising happiness after death, de-
42 and Catholic Reformations promoted popular literacy votional literature was also intensely practical. It gave the
43 between 1500 and 1800. Both Protestant and Catholic believer moral teachings and a confidence in God that
44 reformers encouraged reading as a means of instilling helped in daily living.
45 their teachings more effectively. Thus literacy was often Entertaining, often humorous stories formed a second
46 highest in border areas, such as eastern France, that were element of popular literature. Fairy tales, medieval ro-
47 open to outside influences and to competition for believ- mances, true crime stories, and fantastic adventures were
48 ers from different churches. The growth of popular edu- some of the delights that filled the peddler’s pack as he
49 cation quickened in the eighteenth century, but there approached a village. These tales presented a world of
50S was no revolutionary acceleration, and many common danger and magic, of supernatural powers, fairy god-
51R people received no formal education. mothers, and evil trolls. The significance of these enter-
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1019763_Ch_20.qxp 9/17/07 3:13 PM Page 663
Food, Medicine, and New Consumption Habits • 663
an almanac.”13 In this way, elites still shared some ele- 1

ments of a common culture with the masses. 2
While it is safe to say that the vast majority of ordinary 3
people—particularly peasants in isolated villages—did 4
not read the great works of the Enlightenment, that does 5
not mean they were immune to its ideas. Urban working 6
people were exposed to new ideas through the rumor 7
and gossip that spread across city streets, workshops, mar- 8
kets, cafés, taverns, and public gardens. They also had 9
access to cheap broadsides, pamphlets, and newspapers 10
that helped translate Enlightenment critiques into ordi- 11
nary language. Servants, who usually came from rural ar- 12
eas and traveled home periodically, were well placed to 13
receive ideas from educated employers and disseminate 14
them to the village. 15
Certainly some ordinary people did assimilate Enlight- 16
enment ideals. Thomas Paine, author of some of the 17
most influential texts of the American Revolution, was an 18
English corsetmaker’s son who left school at age twelve 19
and carried on his father’s trade before emigrating to the 20
colonies. His 1776 pamphlet Common Sense attacked the 21
weight of custom and the evils of government against 22
the natural society of men. This text, which sold six hun- 23
dred thousand copies, is vivid proof of working people’s 24
Raoux: Young Woman Reading a Letter Literacy rates 25
Apago PDF Enhancer
for men and women rose substantially during the eighteenth
ability to receive Enlightenment ideas; Paine’s stirring
mastery of them was unique, but his access to them was 26
century. The novel also emerged as a new literary genre in this
period. With its focus on emotions, love, and family melo- surely not. 27
drama, the novel was seen as a particularly feminine genre, and 28
it allowed women writers more access to publication. Writing 29
and reading letters were also associated with women. Some
contemporaries worried that women’s growing access to read-
Food Medicine and New 30
ing and writing would excite their imagination and desires, Consumption Habits 31
leading to moral dissolution. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art 32
Resource, NY) One of the most important developments in European 33
society in the eighteenth century was the emergence of a 34
fledgling consumer culture. Much of the expansion took 35
place in the upper and upper-middle classes, but a boom 36
taining stories for the peasant reader is debated. Many in cheap reproductions of luxury items also permitted 37
scholars see them reflecting a desire for pure escapism people of modest means to purchase more objects. From 38
and a temporary flight from harsh everyday reality. Oth- food to ribbons and from coal stoves to umbrellas, the 39
ers see the tales reflecting ancient folk wisdom and coun- material worlds of city dwellers grew richer and more di- 40
seling prudence in a world full of danger and injustice, verse. These developments created new expectations for 41
where wolves dress up like grandmothers and eat Little comfort and hygiene in daily life. Medical practitioners 42
Red Riding Hoods. greatly increased in number, although their techniques 43
Finally, some popular literature was highly practical, did not differ much from those of previous generations. 44
dealing with rural crafts, household repairs, useful plants, The possibility of picking and choosing among a new 45
and similar matters. Much lore was stored in almanacs, variety of consumer goods and provisioners encouraged 46
where calendars listing secular, religious, and astrologi- the development of new notions of individuality and self- 47
cal events were mixed with agricultural schedules, arcane expression. A shop girl could stand out from her peers 48
facts, and jokes. The almanac was universal, was not con- by her choice of a striped jacket, a colored parasol, or 49
troversial, and was highly appreciated even by many in simply a new ribbon for her hair. New attitudes about 50S
the comfortable classes. “Anyone who could would read privacy and intimate life also emerged. Whereas families 51R
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1 previously shared common living spaces, in the eigh- The diet of small traders and master craftsmen—the
2 teenth century they erected new partitions within their people of the towns and cities—was less monotonous
3 homes to create private nooks. Alongside an upturn in than that of the peasantry. The markets, stocked by mar-
4 economic production, this “consumer revolution,” as it ket gardens on the outskirts, provided a substantial vari-
5 has been called, dramatically changed European life in ety of meats, vegetables, and fruits, although bread and
6 the eighteenth century. As in other developments, Eng- beans still formed the bulk of such families’ diets.
7 land led the way. The diet of the rich was traditionally quite different
8 • How did new patterns of consumption and changing from that of the poor. The upper classes were rapacious
9 medical care affect people’s lives? carnivores, and a truly elegant dinner consisted of an
10 abundance of rich meat and fish dishes, laced with pi-
11 quant sauces and complemented with sweets, cheeses,
12 and nuts of all kinds. During such dinners, it was com-
13
Diets and Nutrition mon to spend five or more hours at table. There was also
14 At the beginning of the eighteenth century, ordinary an enormous amount of overdrinking. The English squire,
15 men and women depended on grain as fully as they had for example, who loved to hunt with his hounds loved to
16 in the past. Bread was quite literally the staff of life. Peas- drink with a similar passion. Sometimes he ended the
17 ants in the Beauvais region of France ate two pounds of evening under the table in a drunken stupor, but very of-
18 bread a day, washing it down with water, wine, or beer. ten he did not. Wine and meat were consumed together
19 Their dark bread was made from roughly ground wheat in long hours of sustained excess, permitting the gentle-
20 and rye—the standard flour of the common people. The man and his guests to drink enormous quantities without
21 poor also ate grains in soup and gruel. Even peasants nor- getting stupefyingly drunk. Gout was a common afflic-
22 mally needed to buy some grain for food, and, in full tion of the rich. No wonder they were often caricatured
23 accord with landless laborers and urban workers, they as dragging their flabby limbs and bulging bellies to the
24 believed in the moral economy and the idea of the just table to stuff their swollen cheeks and poison their livers.
25 price. That is, they believed that prices should be “fair,”
Apago PDF Enhancer There were also regional dietary differences in 1700.
26 protecting both consumers and producers, and that just Generally speaking, northern, Atlantic Europe ate bet-
27 prices should be imposed by government decree if neces- ter than southern, Mediterranean Europe. The poor of
28 sary. When prices rose above this level, they often took England and the Netherlands probably ate best of all.
29 action (see page 525). Contemporaries on both sides of the Channel often con-
30 The rural poor also ate a fair quantity of vegetables. trasted the English citizen’s consumption of meat with
31 Peas and beans were probably the most common; grown the French peasant’s greater dependence on bread and
32 as field crops in much of Europe since the Middle Ages, vegetables.
33 they were eaten fresh in late spring and summer. Dried, Patterns of food consumption changed markedly as
34 they became the basic ingredients in the soups and stews the century progressed. There was a general growth of
35 of the long winter months. In most regions other veg- market gardening, and a greater variety of vegetables ap-
36 etables appeared in season on the tables of the poor, pri- peared in towns and cities. This was particularly the case
37 marily cabbages, carrots, and wild greens. Fruit was in the Low Countries and England, which pioneered
38 uncommon and limited to the summer months. Milk was new methods of farming. Introduced into Europe from
39 used primarily to make cheese and butter, which peasants the Americas—along with corn, squash, tomatoes, and
40 sold in the market to earn cash for taxes and land rents. many other useful plants—the humble potato provided
41 The common people of Europe loved meat and eggs an excellent new food source. Containing a good supply
42 but seldom ate their fill. Indeed, the poor ate less meat of carbohydrates, calories, and vitamins A and C, the po-
43 in 1700 than in 1500 because their general standard of tato offset the lack of vitamins from green vegetables in
44 living had declined as the population surged in the six- the poor person’s diet, and it provided a much higher
45 teenth century (see page 626) and meat became more caloric yield than grain for a given piece of land. After ini-
46 expensive. Moreover, harsh game laws in most European tial resistance, the potato became an important dietary
47 countries deprived the poor of the right to hunt and eat supplement in much of Europe by the end of the century.
48 game such as rabbits, deer, and partridges. Only nobles In the course of the eighteenth century the large towns
49 and large landowners could legally kill game. Few laws and cities of maritime Europe also began to receive semi-
50S were more bitterly resented—or more frequently bro- tropical fruits, such as oranges and lemons, from Portu-
51R ken—by ordinary people than those governing hunting. gal and the West Indies, but they remained expensive.
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Royal Interest in the Potato Frederick the Great of Prussia, shown here supervising cultivation of the 23
potato, used his influence and position to promote the new food on his estates and throughout Prussia. 24
Peasants could grow potatoes with the simplest hand tools, but it was backbreaking labor, as this painting 25
Apago PDF Enhancer
by R. Warthmüller suggests. (Private Collection, Hamburg/akg-images)
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The most remarkable dietary change in the eighteenth cure those necessities shifted definitively, linking them 30
century was in the consumption of sugar and tea. No into a globalized capitalism far beyond their ability to 31
other commodities grew so quickly in consumption. Pre- shape or control. 32
viously expensive and rare luxury items, they became 33
dietary staples for people of all social classes. This was 34
possible because of the steady drop in prices created by
Toward a Consumer Society 35
the expansion of colonial production and slave labor. Along with foodstuffs, all manner of other goods in- 36
Other colonial goods also became important items of creased in variety and number in the eighteenth century. 37
daily consumption in this period, including coffee, to- This proliferation led to a growth in consumption and 38
bacco, and chocolate. Part of the motivation for con- new attitudes toward consumer goods so wide-ranging 39
suming these products was a desire to emulate the habits that some historians have referred to an eighteenth- 40
of “respectable” people. The accelerating pace of work century “consumer revolution.” The result of this revo- 41
in the eighteenth century also seems to have created new lution was the birth of a new type of society, in which 42
needs for stimulants among working people. (See the people had greater access to finished goods and derived 43
feature “Listening to the Past: A Day in the Life of Paris” their self-identity as much from their consuming prac- 44
on pages 678–679.) Whereas the gentry took tea as a tices as from their working lives and place in the produc- 45
leisurely and genteel ritual, the lower classes usually tion process. The full emergence of a consumer society 46
drank tea at work. With the widespread adoption of did not take place until much later, but its roots lie in 47
these products (which turned out to be mildly to ex- the developments of the eighteenth century. 48
tremely addictive), working people in Europe became in- Increased demand for consumer goods was not merely 49
creasingly dependent on faraway colonial economies. an innate response to increased supply. Eighteenth- 50S
Their understanding of daily necessities and how to pro- century merchants cleverly pioneered new techniques 51R
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20 The Fashion Merchant’s Shop Shopping in fancy boutiques became a favorite leisure pastime of the rich in
21 the eighteenth century. Whereas shops had previously been dark, cramped spaces, now they were filled with
light from large plate-glass windows, staffed by finely dressed attendants, and equipped with chairs and large
22 mirrors for a comfortable shopping experience. Fashion merchants (or milliners) sold hats, shawls, parasols,
23 and an infinite variety of accessories and decorations. (Courtesy, University of Illinois Library)
24
25 Apago PDF1784Enhancer
26 to incite demand: they initiated marketing campaigns, Mrs. Fanny Cradock described encountering her
27 opened fancy boutiques with large windows, and adver- milkman during an evening stroll “dressed in a fashion-
28 tised the patronage of royal princes and princesses. By di- able suit, with an embroidered waistcoat, silk knee-
29 versifying their product lines and greatly accelerating breeches and lace cuffs.”15
30 the turnover of styles, they seized the reins of fashion Mrs. Cradock’s milkman notwithstanding, this was
31 from the courtiers who had earlier controlled it. Instead primarily a female phenomenon. Parisian women signif-
32 of setting new styles, duchesses and marquises now icantly out-consumed men, acquiring larger and more
33 bowed to the dictates of fashion merchants. Fashion also expensive wardrobes than those of their husbands, broth-
34 extended beyond court circles to touch many more items ers, and fathers. This was true across the social spec-
35 and social groups. trum; in ribbons, shoes, gloves, and lace, French working
36 Clothing was one of the chief indicators of nascent women reaped in the consumer revolution what they had
37 consumerism. The wiles of entrepreneurs made fashion- sown in the industrious revolution (see pages 633–634).
38 able clothing seem more desirable, while legions of There were also new gender distinctions in dress. Previ-
39 women entering the textile and needle trades made it ously, noblemen vied with noblewomen in the magnifi-
40 ever cheaper. As a result, eighteenth-century western Eu- cence and ostentation of their dress; by the end of the
41 rope witnessed a dramatic rise in the consumption of eighteenth century men had renounced brilliant colors
42 clothing, particularly in large cities. One historian has and voluptuous fabrics to don early versions of the plain
43 documented an enormous growth in the size and value dark suit that remains standard male formalwear in the
44 of Parisians’ wardrobes from 1700 to 1789, as well as a West. This was one more aspect of the increasingly rigid
45 new level of diversity in garments and accessories, col- opposition drawn between appropriate male and female
46 ors, and fabrics. Colonial economies played an important behavior.
47 role, supplying new materials, such as cotton and veg- Changes in outward appearances were reflected in in-
48 etable dyes, at low cost. Cheaper copies of elite styles ner spaces. Historians have used the probate inventories
49 made it possible for working people to aspire to follow drawn up by notaries after people’s death to peer into
50S fashion for the first time.14 Elite onlookers were bemused ordinary people’s homes. In 1700 the cramped home
51R by the sight of lower-class people in fashionable dress. In of a modest family consisted of a few rooms, each of
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which had multiple functions. The same room was used apothecaries (or pharmacists), physicians, surgeons, and 1
for sleeping, receiving friends, and producing artisanal midwives. Both men and women were prominent in the 2
goods. In the eighteenth century rents rose sharply, mak- healing arts, as had been the case since the Middle Ages. 3
ing it impossible to gain more space, but families began But by 1700 the range of medical activities open to 4
attributing specific functions to specific rooms. They also women was severely restricted because women were gen- 5
began to erect inner barriers within the home to provide erally denied admission to medical colleges and lacked 6
small niches in which individuals could seek privacy. the diplomas necessary to practice. In the course of the 7
New levels of comfort and convenience accompanied eighteenth century, the position of women as midwives 8
this trend toward more individualized ways of life. In 1700 and healers further eroded. 9
a meal might be served in a common dish, with each per- Faith healers remained active. They and their patients 10
son dipping his or her spoon into the pot. By the end of believed that demons and evil spirits caused disease by 11
the eighteenth century even humble households con- lodging in people and that the proper treatment was to 12
tained a much greater variety of cutlery and dishes, making exorcise, or drive out, the offending devil. This demonic 13
it possible for each person to eat from his or her own plate. view of disease was strongest in the countryside, where 14
More books and prints, which also proliferated at lower popular belief placed great faith in the healing power of 15
prices, decorated the walls. Improvements in glass-making religious relics, prayer, and the laying on of hands. 16
provided more transparent glass, which allowed daylight In the larger towns and cities, apothecaries sold a vast 17
to penetrate into gloomy rooms. Cold and smoky hearths number of herbs, drugs, and patent medicines for every 18
were increasingly replaced by more efficient and cleaner conceivable “temperament and distemper.” Their pre- 19
coal stoves, which also eliminated the backache of cooking scriptions were incredibly complex—a hundred or more 20
over an open fire. Rooms were warmer, better lit, more drugs might be included in a single prescription—and 21
comfortable, and more personalized. often very expensive. Some of the drugs and herbs un- 22
The scope of the new consumer economy should not doubtedly worked. For example, strong laxatives were 23
be exaggerated. These developments were concentrated given to the rich for their constipated bowels, and regu- 24
in large cities in northwestern Europe and North Amer-
Apago PDF Enhancer lar purging of the bowels was considered essential for 25
ica. Even in these centers the elite benefited the most good health and the treatment of illness. Like all varieties 26
from new modes of life. This was not yet the society of of medical practitioners, apothecaries advertised their 27
mass consumption that emerged toward the end of the wares, their high-class customers, and their miraculous 28
nineteenth century with the full expansion of the Indus- cures in newspapers and commercial circulars. Medicine, 29
trial Revolution. The eighteenth century did, however, like food and fashionable clothing, thus joined the era’s 30
lay the foundations for one of the most distinctive fea- new commercial culture. 31
tures of modern Western life: societies based on the con- Physicians, who were invariably men, were apprenticed 32
sumption of goods and services obtained through the in their teens to practicing physicians for several years 33
market in which individuals form their identities and self- of on-the-job training. This training was then rounded 34
worth through the goods they consume. out with hospital work or some university courses. Be- 35
cause such prolonged training was expensive, physicians 36
came mainly from prosperous families, and they usually 37
concentrated on urban patients from similar social back- 38
Medical Practitioners grounds. They had little contact with urban workers and 39
With these advances in daily life, how did the care of sick- less with peasants. 40
ness, pain, and disease evolve? Medical science continued Physicians in the eighteenth century were increasingly 41
to struggle in vain against these scourges. Yet the En- willing to experiment with new methods, but time- 42
lightenment’s growing focus on discovering the laws of honored practices lay heavily on them. Like apothecaries, 43
nature and on human problems did give rise to a great they laid great stress on purging, and bloodletting was 44
deal of research and experimentation. The century also still considered a medical cure-all. It was the way “bad 45
saw a remarkable rise in the number of medical prac- blood,” the cause of illness, was removed and the balance 46
titioners. Therefore, when significant breakthroughs in of humors necessary for good health was restored. 47
knowledge came in the middle and late nineteenth cen- Surgeons, in contrast to physicians, made considerable 48
tury, they could be rapidly evaluated and diffused. medical and social progress in the eighteenth century. 49
Care of the sick in the eighteenth century was the Long considered to be ordinary male artisans compara- 50S
domain of several competing groups: faith healers, ble to butchers and barbers, surgeons began studying 51R
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1 An Eighteenth-Century Pharmacy In
2 this lively painting a woman consults an
3 apothecary (in the elegant red suit) while
his assistants assemble drugs for new pre-
4 scriptions. By 1700 apothecaries had
5 emerged as a separate group of state-
6 licensed medical professionals. They drew
7 on published lists and books describing
8 the properties and dosages of their con-
coctions, but there were many different
9 “recipes” and trade secrets. (Civico Museo
10 Bibliograco Musicale, Bologna, Italy/
11 The Bridgeman Art Library)
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27 anatomy seriously and improved their art. With endless treated female problems, such as irregular menstrual cy-
28 opportunities to practice, army surgeons on gory battle- cles, breast-feeding difficulties, infertility, and venereal
29 fields led the way. They learned that a soldier with an disease, and ministered to small children.
30 extensive wound, such as a shattered leg or arm, could The midwife orchestrated labor and birth in a woman’s
31 perhaps be saved if the surgeon could obtain a flat surface world, where friends and relatives offered the pregnant
32 above the wound that could be cauterized with fire. Thus woman assistance and encouragement in the familiar sur-
33 if a soldier (or a civilian) had a broken limb and the bone roundings of her own home. Excluded by tradition and
34 stuck out, the surgeon amputated so that the remaining modesty, the male surgeon (and the husband) rarely en-
35 stump could be cauterized and the likelihood of death tered this world, because most births, then as now, were
36 reduced. normal and spontaneous. Following the invention of
37 The eighteenth-century surgeon (and patient) labored the forceps, which might have helped in exceptionally
38 in the face of incredible difficulties. Almost all operations difficult births, surgeon-physicians used their monopoly
39 were performed without painkillers, for the anesthesias of over this and other instruments to seek lucrative new
40 the day were hard to control and were believed too dan- business. Attacking midwives as ignorant and dangerous,
41 gerous for general use. Many patients died from the they persuaded growing numbers of wealthy women of
42 agony and shock of such operations. Surgery was also the superiority of their services and sought to undermine
43 performed in utterly unsanitary conditions, for there was faith in midwives.
44 no knowledge of bacteriology and the nature of infec- Recent research suggests that women practitioners
45 tion. The simplest wound treated by a surgeon could fes- successfully defended much but not all of their practice
46 ter and lead to death. in the eighteenth century. In France one enterprising
47 Midwives continued to deliver the overwhelming Parisian midwife secured royal financing for her campaign
48 majority of babies throughout the eighteenth century. to teach better birthing techniques to village midwives,
49 Trained initially by another woman practitioner—and which reinforced the position of women practitioners.
50S regulated by a guild in many cities—the midwife pri- (See the feature “Individuals in Society: Madame du
51R marily assisted in labor and delivering babies. She also Coudray, the Nation’s Midwife.”) In northern Italy state
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Individuals in 1
Society 2
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Madame du Coudray, the 5
Nation’s Midwife 6
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ernment authorized
In 1751 a highly esteemed Parisian midwife left the Madame du Coudray to
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capital for a market town in central France. Having carry her instruction
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accepted an invitation to instruct local women in the “throughout the realm”
and promised financial 11
skills of childbirth, Madame Angelique Marguerite Le
Boursier du Coudray soon demonstrated a marvelous support. Her reception 12
ability to teach students and win their respect. The was not always warm, for 13
thirty-six-year-old midwife found her mission: she she was a self-assured and 14
would become the nation’s midwife. demanding woman who 15
Plate from Madame du Coudray’s
For eight years Madame du Coudray taught young could anger old midwives, manual, illustrating “another 16
women from the impoverished villages of Auvergne. male surgeons, and skepti- incorrect method of delivery.” 17
In doing so, she entered into the world of unschooled cal officials. But aided by (Rare Books Division, Countway [Fran- 18
midwives who typically were solid matrons with sev- servants, a niece, and her cis A.] Library of Medicine) 19
eral children who relied on traditional birthing prac- husband, this inspired and 20
tices and folk superstitions. Trained in Paris through indefatigable woman took
21
a rigorous three-year apprenticeship and imbued with her course from town to town until her retirement in
1784. Typically her students were young peasant 22
an Enlightenment faith in the power of knowledge, du
Coudray had little sympathy for these village midwives. women on tiny stipends who came into town from 23
Many peasant mothers told her about their difficult surrounding villages for two to three months of in- 24
Apago PDF Enhancer
deliveries and their many uterine “infirmities,” which struction. Classes met mornings and afternoons six 25
they attributed to “the ignorance of the women to days a week, with ample time to practice on the man- 26
whom they had recourse, or to that of some inexperi- nequin. After a recuperative break, Madame du 27
enced village [male] surgeons.”* Du Coudray agreed. Coudray and her entourage moved on. 28
Botched deliveries by incompetents resulted in horrible Teaching thousands of fledgling midwives, Madame 29
deformities and unnecessary deaths. du Coudray may well have contributed to the decline 30
Determined to raise standards, Madame du in infant mortality and to the increase in population 31
Coudray saw that her unlettered pupils learned occurring in France in the eighteenth century—an in-
32
through the senses, not through books. Thus she crease she and her royal supporters fervently desired.
Certainly she spread better knowledge about childbirth 33
made, possibly for the first time in history, a life-size
obstetrical model—a “machine”—out of fabric and from the educated elite to the common people. 34
stuffing for use in her classes. “I had . . . the students 35
maneuver in front of me on a machine . . . which repre- Questions for Analysis 36
sented the pelvis of a woman, the womb, its opening, 37
its ligaments, the conduit called the vagina, the blad- 1. How do you account for Madame du Coudray’s 38
der, and rectum intestine. I added an [artificial] child remarkable success? 39
of natural size, whose joints were flexible enough to 2. Does Madame du Coudray’s career reflect tensions
40
be able to be put in different positions.” Now du between educated elites and the common people?
If so, how? 41
Coudray could demonstrate the problems of childbirth, 42
and each student could practice on the model in the *Quotes are from Nina Gelbart, The King’s Midwife: A History 43
“lab session.” and Mystery of Madame du Coudray (Berkeley: University of 44
As her reputation grew, Madame du Coudray California Press, 1998), pp. 60–61. This definitive biography is
sought to reach a national audience. In 1757 she pub- excellent. 45
lished the first of several editions of her Manual on the 46
Art of Childbirth. Handsomely and effectively illus- 47
trated (see the image above), the Manual incorporated 48
her hands-on teaching method and served as a text and Improve Your Grade 49
reference for students and graduates. In 1759 the gov- Going Beyond Individuals in Society 50S
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1 and church pressures led to major changes in midwife a smallpox victim and was instrumental in spreading the
2 training and certification, but women remained domi- practice in England after her return in 1722. But inoc-
3 nant in the birthing trade. It appears that midwives gen- ulation was risky and was widely condemned because
4 erally lost no more babies than did male doctors, who about one person in fifty died from it. In addition, people
5 were still summoned to treat non-elite women only when who had been inoculated were infectious and often spread
6 life-threatening situations required surgery. the disease.
7 Experimentation and the intensified search for solu- Subsequent success in reducing the risks of inocula-
8 tions to human problems led to some real advances in tion and in finding cheaper methods led to something
9 medicine after 1750. The eighteenth century’s greatest approaching mass inoculation in England in the 1760s.
10 medical triumph was the conquest of smallpox. With the On the continent, the well-to-do were also inoculated,
11 progressive decline of bubonic plague, smallpox became beginning with royal families and then spreading to the
12 the most terrible of the infectious diseases, and it is esti- middle classes. By the later years of the century small-
13 mated that 60 million Europeans died of it in the eigh- pox inoculation was playing some part in the decline of
14 teenth century. Fully 80 percent of the population was the death rate and the general increase in European
15 stricken at some point in life. population.
16 The first step in the conquest of this killer in Eu- The final breakthrough against smallpox came at the
17 rope came in the early eighteenth century. An English end of the century. Edward Jenner (1749–1823), a tal-
18 aristocrat whose beauty had been marred by the pox, ented country doctor, noted that there was a long-
19 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, learned about the long- standing belief in the English countryside that dairy
20 established practice of smallpox inoculation in the Mus- maids who had contracted cowpox did not get smallpox.
21 lim lands of western Asia while her husband was serving Cowpox produces sores that resemble those of smallpox
22 as British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. She had on the cow’s udder and on the hands of the milker, but
23 her own son successfully inoculated with the pus from the disease is mild and is not contagious.
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50S of recovery. A priest by the window administers last rites, while in the center a surgeon coolly saws
51R off the leg of a man who has received no anesthesia. (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg)
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Religion and Popular Culture • 671
For eighteen years Jenner practiced a kind of Baconian gations gossiped and swapped stories after services, and
science, carefully collecting data on protection against neighbors came together in church for baptisms, mar-
smallpox by cowpox. Finally, in 1796 he performed his riages, funerals, and special events. Thus the parish church
first vaccination on a young boy using matter taken from was woven into the very fabric of community life.
a milkmaid with cowpox. After performing more success- Moreover, the local church had important administra-
ful vaccinations, Jenner published his findings in 1798. tive tasks. Priests and parsons were truly the bookkeepers
The new method of treatment spread rapidly, and small- of agrarian Europe, and it is because parish registers were
pox soon declined to the point of disappearance in Eu- so complete that historians have learned so much about
rope and then throughout the world. Jenner eventually population and family life. Parishes also normally distrib-
received prizes totaling £30,000 from the British gov- uted charity to the destitute, looked after orphans, and
ernment for his great discovery, a fitting recompense for provided whatever primary education was available for
a man who helped lay the foundation for the science of the common people.
immunology. The many tasks of the local church were usually the
responsibility of a resident priest or pastor, a full-time
professional working with assistants and lay volunteers.
Religion and Popular Culture All clerics—whether Roman Catholic, Protestant, Greek
Orthodox, or Russian Orthodox—also shared the fate
Though the critical spirit of the Enlightenment made of middlemen in a complicated institutional system.
great inroads in the eighteenth century, the majority of Charged most often with ministering to poor peasants,
ordinary men and women, especially those in rural areas, the priest or parson was the last link in a powerful
remained committed Christians. Religious faith prom- church-state hierarchy that was everywhere determined
ised salvation and eternal life, and it gave comfort and to control religion down to the grassroots. However, the
courage in the face of sorrow and death. Religion also regulatory framework of belief, which went back at least
remained strong because it was usually embedded in lo- to the fourth century when Christianity became the offi-
cal traditions, everyday social experience, and popular
Apago PDF Enhancer cial religion of the Roman Empire, had undergone im-
culture. portant changes since 1500. The Protestant Reformation
Yet the popular religion of village Europe was every- had burst forth as a culmination of medieval religiosity
where enmeshed in a larger world of church hierarchies and a desire to purify Christian belief. Martin Luther, the
and state power. These powerful outside forces sought to most influential of the early reformers, preached that all
regulate religious life at the local level. Their efforts cre- men and women were saved from their sins and God’s
ated tensions that helped set the scene for a vigorous damnation only by personal faith in Jesus Christ. The
religious revival in Germany and England. Similar ten- individual could reach God directly, without need of
sions arose in Catholic countries, where powerful elites priestly intermediaries.
criticized and attacked popular religious practices that As the Reformation gathered force, with peasant up-
their increasingly rationalistic minds deemed foolish and heaval and doctrinal competition, German princes and
superstitious. monarchs in northern Europe put themselves at the head
• What were the patterns of popular religion and culture, of official churches in their territories. Protestant author-
and how did they interact with the worldview of the ities, with generous assistance from state-certified the-
educated public and the Enlightenment? ologians like Luther, then proceeded to regulate their
“territorial churches” strictly, selecting personnel and
imposing detailed rules. They joined with Catholics to
crush the Anabaptists, who, with their belief in freedom
The Institutional Church of conscience and separation of church and state, had be-
As in the Middle Ages, the local parish church remained come the real revolutionaries. Thus the Reformation, ini-
the basic religious unit all across Europe. Still largely co- tially so radical in its rejection of Rome and its stress on
inciding with the agricultural village, the parish fulfilled individual religious experience, eventually resulted in a
many needs. The parish church was the focal point of bureaucratization of the church and local religious life in
religious devotion, which went far beyond sermons and Protestant Europe.
Holy Communion. It organized colorful processions and The Reformation era also increased the practical power
pilgrimages to local shrines. Even in Protestant countries, of Catholic rulers over “their” churches, but it was only
where such activities were severely restricted, congre- in the eighteenth century that some Catholic monarchs
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1 began to impose striking reforms. These reforms, which stained-glass windows were smashed and walls and mu-
2 had counterparts in Orthodox Russia, had a very rals whitewashed. Processions and pilgrimages, saints and
3 “Protestant” aspect. They increased state control over shrines—all such practices were eliminated because they
4 the Catholic Church, making it less subject to papal in- had no Scriptural basis. Such revolutionary changes often
5 fluence. Spain, a deeply Catholic country with devout troubled ordinary churchgoers, but by the late seven-
6 rulers, took firm control of ecclesiastical appointments. teenth century the vast reforms of the Reformation were
7 Papal proclamations could not even be read in Spanish complete and routinized in most Protestant churches.
8 churches without prior approval from the government. Indeed, many official Protestant churches had settled
9 Spain also asserted state control over the Spanish Inqui- into a smug complacency. In the Reformation heartland,
10 sition, which pursued heresy as an independent agency one concerned German minister wrote that the Lutheran
11 under Rome’s direction and went far toward creating a church “had become paralyzed in forms of dead doctri-
12 “national” Catholic Church, as France had done earlier. nal conformity” and badly needed a return to its original
13 A more striking indication of state power and papal inspiration.16 His voice was one of many that prepared
14 weakness was the fate of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits. and then guided a powerful Protestant revival that suc-
15 The well-educated Jesuits were extraordinary teachers, ceeded because it answered the intense but increasingly
16 missionaries, and agents of the papacy. In many Catholic unsatisfied needs of common people.
17 countries, they exercised tremendous political influence, The Protestant revival began in Germany. It was known
18 since individual members held high government posi- as Pietism, and three aspects helped explain its power-
19 tions and Jesuit colleges formed the minds of Europe’s ful appeal. First, Pietism called for a warm, emotional re-
20 Catholic nobility. Yet by playing politics so effectively, ligion that everyone could experience. Enthusiasm—in
21 the Jesuits eventually elicited a broad coalition of ene- prayer, in worship, in preaching, in life itself—was the key
22 mies. Bitter controversies led Louis XV to order the Je- concept. “Just as a drunkard becomes full of wine, so
23 suits out of France in 1763 and to confiscate their must the congregation become filled with spirit,” de-
24 property. France and Spain then pressured Rome to dis- clared one exuberant writer. Another said simply, “The
25 solve the Jesuits completely. In 1773 a reluctant pope
Apago PDF Enhancer heart must burn.”17
26 caved in, although the order was revived after the French Second, Pietism reasserted the earlier radical stress on
27 Revolution. the priesthood of all believers, thereby reducing the gulf
28 Some Catholic rulers also believed that the clergy in between official clergy and Lutheran laity. Bible reading
29 monasteries and convents should make a more practical and study were enthusiastically extended to all classes,
30 contribution to social and religious life. Austria, a leader and this provided a powerful spur for popular education
31 in controlling the church (see page 615) and promoting as well as individual religious development (see page
32 primary education, showed how far the process could 662). Finally, Pietists believed in the practical power of
33 go. Maria Theresa began by sharply restricting entry into Christian rebirth in everyday affairs. Reborn Christians
34 “unproductive” orders. In his Edict on Idle Institutions, were expected to lead good, moral lives and to come
35 her successor Joseph II abolished contemplative orders, from all social classes.
36 henceforth permitting only orders that were engaged in Pietism had a major impact on John Wesley (1703–
37 teaching, nursing, or other practical work. The state also 1791), who served as the catalyst for popular religious
38 expropriated the dissolved monasteries and used their revival in England. Wesley came from a long line of min-
39 wealth for charitable purposes and higher salaries for or- isters, and when he went to Oxford University to prepare
40 dinary priests. These measures recalled the radical transfor the clergy, he mapped a fanatically earnest “scheme
41 formation of the Protestant Reformation. of religion.” Like some students during final exams, he
42 organized every waking moment. After becoming a
43 teaching fellow at Oxford, Wesley organized a Holy Club
44
Protestant Revival for similarly minded students, who were soon known
45 In their attempt to recapture the vital core of the Chris- contemptuously as Methodists because they were so
46 tian religion, Protestant reformers had rigorously sup- methodical in their devotion. Yet like the young Luther,
47 pressed medieval practices they considered nonessential Wesley remained intensely troubled about his own sal-
48 or erroneous. For example, they had taken seriously the vation even after his ordination as an Anglican priest in
49 commandment “Thou shalt not make any graven image” 1728.
50S (Exodus 20:4), and their radical reforms had reordered Wesley’s anxieties related to grave problems of the
51R church interiors. Relics and crucifixes were removed, and faith in England. The government shamelessly used the
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Hogarth’s Satirical View of the Church 1

William Hogarth (1697–1764) was one of the 2
foremost satirical artists of his day. This image 3
mocks a London Methodist meeting, where the
congregation swoons in enthusiasm over the 4
preacher’s sermon. The woman in the foreground 5
giving birth to rabbits refers to a hoax perpetrated 6
in 1726 by a servant named Mary Tofts; the credu- 7
lousness of those who believed Tofts is likened to 8
that of the Methodist congregation. (HIP/Art Re-
source, NY) 9
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trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an
19
assurance was given me that he had taken away
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my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of
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sin and death.18
22
Wesley’s emotional experience resolved his in- 23
tellectual doubts. Moreover, he was convinced 24
Apago PDF Enhancer that any person, no matter how poor or unedu- 25
cated, might have a similarly heartfelt conver- 26
sion and gain the same blessed assurance. 27
Wesley took the good news to the people, 28
traveling some 225,000 miles by horseback and 29
preaching more than forty thousand sermons in fifty 30
Church of England to provide favorites with high-paying
years. Since existing churches were often overcrowded 31
jobs. Building of churches practically stopped while the
and the church-state establishment was hostile, Wesley 32
population grew, and in many parishes there was a short-
preached in open fields. People came in large numbers. 33
age of pews. Services and sermons had settled into an
Of critical importance was Wesley’s rejection of Calvinist 34
uninspiring routine. The separation of religion from local
predestination—the doctrine of salvation granted to only 35
customs and social life was symbolized by church doors
a select few. Instead, he preached that all men and 36
that were customarily locked on weekdays. Moreover,
women who earnestly sought salvation might be saved. It 37
Enlightenment skepticism was making inroads among
was a message of hope and joy, of free will and universal 38
the educated classes, and deism was becoming popular.
salvation. 39
Some bishops and church leaders seemed to believe that
40
doctrines such as the Virgin Birth were little more than Improve Your Grade
41
elegant superstitions. Primary Source: Wesley Lays Down the Ground Rules
for Methodism
42
Spiritual counseling from a sympathetic Pietist minis-
43
ter from Germany prepared Wesley for a mystical, emo-
Wesley’s ministry won converts, formed Methodist 44
tional “conversion” in 1738. He described this critical
cells, and eventually resulted in a new denomination. 45
turning point in his Journal:
And as Wesley had been inspired by the Pietist revival in 46
In the evening I went to a [Christian] society in Aldersgate Germany, so evangelicals in the Church of England and 47
Street where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle the old dissenting groups now followed Wesley’s exam- 48
to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was de- ple, giving impetus to an even broader awakening among 49
scribing the change which God works in the heart through the lower classes. In Protestant countries, religion re- 50S
faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did mained a vital force in the lives of the people. 51R
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25 Procession of Nuns at Port-Royal des Champs The convent of Port-Royal, located
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twenty miles southwest of Paris, was a center of Jansenist activity throughout the seventeenth
century. Angered by the nuns’ defiance, Louis XIV ordered them forcibly relocated in 1709.
27 To generate support, the artist Magdelaine Horthemels painted a series of images depicting
28 the pious and placid religious life at the convent. The convent was nonetheless destroyed by
29 Louis’s forces in 1710. This image is one of many copies of Horthemels’ work made by
30 Jansenists in the eighteenth century. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY)
31
32
33 each parish had its own saints’ days, processions, and pil-
34
Catholic Piety grimages. Led by its priest, a congregation might march
35 Religion also flourished in Catholic Europe around 1700, around the village or across the countryside to a local
36 but there were important differences from Protestant shrine. Before each procession or feast day, the priest ex-
37 practice. First, the visual contrast was striking; baroque plained its religious significance to kindle group piety.
38 art had lavished rich and emotionally exhilarating figures But processions were also folklore and tradition, an es-
39 and images on Catholic churches, just as Protestants had cape from work, and a form of recreation. A holiday at-
40 removed theirs. People in Catholic Europe also remained mosphere sometimes reigned on longer processions,
41 intensely religious. More than 95 percent of the popula- with drinking and dancing and couples disappearing into
42 tion probably attended church for Easter Communion, the woods.
43 the climax of the Catholic year. Catholicism did have its own version of the Pietist re-
44 The tremendous popular strength of religion in Cath- vivals that shook Protestant Europe. Jansenism has been
45 olic countries reflected religion’s integral role in commu- described by one historian as the “illegitimate off-spring
46 nity life and popular culture. Thus, although Catholics of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-
47 reluctantly confessed their sins to priests, they enthusias- Reformation.”19 It originated with the Flemish theolo-
48 tically joined together in religious festivals to celebrate gian Cornelius Jansen (1585–1638), who called for a
49 the passage of the liturgical year. In addition to the great return to the austere early Christianity of Saint Augus-
50S processional days—such as Palm Sunday, the joyful re- tine. In contrast to the worldly Jesuits, Jansen empha-
51R enactment of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem— sized the heavy weight of original sin and accepted the
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doctrine of predestination. Although outlawed by papal in Catholic and Mediterranean Europe. Carnival pre- 1
and royal edicts as Calvinist heresy, Jansenism attracted ceded Lent—the forty days of fasting and penitence be- 2
Catholic followers eager for religious renewal, particu- fore Easter—and for a few exceptional days in February 3
larly in France. Many members of elite French society, es- or March, a wild release of drinking, masquerading, and 4
pecially judicial nobles and some parish priests, became dancing reigned. Moreover, a combination of plays, pro- 5
known for their Jansenist piety and spiritual devotion. cessions, and rowdy spectacles turned the established 6
Such stern religious values encouraged the judiciary’s in- order upside down. Peasants dressed up as nobles and 7
creasing opposition to the monarchy in the second half men as women, and rich masters waited on their servants 8
of the eighteenth century. Among the poor, a different at the table. This annual holiday gave people a much- 9
strain of Jansenism took hold. Prayer meetings brought appreciated chance to release their pent-up frustrations 10
men and women together in ecstatic worship, and some and aggressions before life returned to the usual pattern 11
participants fell into convulsions and spoke in tongues. of hierarchy and hard work. 12
Jansenism was an urban phenomenon. In the country- Despite the spread of literacy, the culture of the com- 13
side, many peasants in Catholic countries held religious mon people was largely oral rather than written. In the 14
beliefs that were marginal to the Christian faith alto- cold, dark winter months, families gathered around the 15
gether, often of obscure or even pagan origin. On the fireplace to talk, sing, tell stories, do craftwork, and keep 16
Feast of Saint Anthony, for example, priests were ex- warm. In some parts of Europe, women would gather to- 17
pected to bless salt and bread for farm animals to protect gether in groups in someone’s cottage to chat, sew, spin, 18
them from disease. One saint’s relics could help cure a and laugh. Sometimes a few young men would be invited 19
child of fear, and there were healing springs for many ail- so that the daughters (and mothers) could size up poten- 20
ments. The ordinary person combined strong Christian tial suitors in a supervised atmosphere. A favorite recre- 21
faith with a wealth of time-honored superstitions. ation of men was drinking and talking with buddies in 22
Inspired initially by the fervor of the Catholic Counter- public places, and it was a sorry village that had no tavern. 23
Reformation and then to some extent by the critical In addition to old favorites such as beer and wine, the 24
rationalism of the Enlightenment, parish priests and
Apago PDF Enhancer common people turned with gusto toward cheap and po- 25
Catholic hierarchies sought increasingly to “purify” pop- tent hard liquor, which fell in price because of improved 26
ular religious practice. Thus one parish priest in France techniques for distilling grain in the eighteenth century. 27
lashed out at his parishioners, claiming that they were Towns and cities offered a wide range of amusements. 28
“more superstitious than devout . . . and sometimes ap- Many of these had to be paid for because the eighteenth 29
pear as baptized idolators.”20 French priests particularly century saw a sharp increase in the commercialization 30
denounced the “various remnants of paganism” found of leisure-time activities. Urban fairs featured prepared 31
in popular bonfire ceremonies during Lent, in which foods, acrobats, freak shows, open-air performances, op- 32
young men, “yelling and screaming like madmen,” tried tical illusions, and the like. Such entertainments attracted 33
to jump over the bonfires in order to help the crops grow a variety of social classes. So did the growing number 34
and protect themselves from illness. One priest saw raof commercial, profit-oriented spectator sports. These 35
tional Christians regressing into pagan animals—“the tri- ranged from traveling circuses and horse races to box- 36
umph of Hell and the shame of Christianity.”21 ing matches and bullfights. Modern sports heroes, such 37
In contrast with Protestant reformers, many Catholic as brain-bashing heavyweight champions and haughty 38
priests and hierarchies preferred a compromise between matadors, made their appearance on the historical scene. 39
theological purity and the people’s piety. Thus the sever- Blood sports, such as bullbaiting and cockfighting, 40
ity of the attack on popular Catholicism varied widely by remained popular with the masses. In bullbaiting the 41
country and region. Where authorities pursued purifica- bull, usually staked on a chain in the courtyard of an inn, 42
tion vigorously, as in Austria under Joseph II, pious peas- was attacked by ferocious dogs for the amusement of the 43
ants saw only an incomprehensible attack on the true innkeeper’s clients. Eventually the maimed and tortured 44
faith and drew back in anger. animal was slaughtered by a butcher and sold as meat. 45
In cockfighting two roosters, carefully trained by their 46
owners and armed with razor-sharp steel spurs, slashed 47
Leisure and Recreation and clawed each other in a small ring until the victor 48
The combination of religious celebration and popular rec- won—and the loser died. An added attraction of cock- 49
reation seen in festivals and processions was most strik- fighting was that the screaming spectators could bet on 50S
ingly displayed at Carnival, a time of reveling and excess the lightning-fast combat and its uncertain outcome. 51R
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1 Cockfighting in England This

2 engraving by William Hogarth (see also
3 the illustration on page 673) satirizes
the popular taste for blood sports,
4 which Hogarth despised and
5 lampooned in his famous Four Stages of
6 Cruelty. The central figure in the wildly
7 excited gathering is a blind nobleman
8 who actually existed and seldom missed
a fight. Note the steel spurs on the
9 birds’ legs. (Courtesy of the Trustees of the
10 British Museum)
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In trying to place the vibrant popular culture of the
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Apago PDFinsuperstition,
common people in broad perspective, historians have
taverns, blood sports, and the like, now tended to see
Enhancer 22
sin, disorder, and vulgarity. The resulting
27 stressed the growing criticism levied against it by the attack on popular culture, which had its more distant ori-
28 educated elites in the second half of the eighteenth cen- gins in the Protestant clergy’s efforts to eliminate frivol-
29 tury. These elites, which had previously shared the pop- ity and superstition, was intensified as an educated public
30 ular enthusiasm for religious festivals, Carnival, drinking embraced the critical worldview of the Enlightenment.
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42 • What changes occurred in marriage and the family in In the current generation, imaginative research has
43 the course of the eighteenth century? greatly increased our understanding of ordinary life and
44 • What was life like for children, and how did attitudes social patterns of the past. In the eighteenth century the
45 toward childhood evolve? life of the people remained primarily rural and oriented
46 • How did new patterns of consumption and changing toward the local community. Tradition, routine, and
47 medical care affect people’s lives? well-established codes of behavior framed much of the
48 everyday experience. Thus just as the three-field agricul-
49
• What were the patterns of popular religion and tural cycle and its pattern of communal rights had deter-
culture, and how did they interact with the worldview
50S mined traditional patterns of grain production, so did
of the educated public and the Enlightenment?
51R community values in the countryside strongly encourage
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a late marriage age and a low rate of illegitimate births. 1

Yet powerful forces also worked for change. Many came Key Terms 2
from outside and above, from the aggressive capitalists, community controls smallpox 3
educated elites, and government officials discussed in the illegitimacy inoculation 4
last two chapters. Closely knit villages began to lose con- explosion Jesuits 5
trol over families and marital practices, as could be seen wet-nursing Pietism 6
in the earlier marriages of cottage workers and in the be- infanticide Methodists 7
ginning of the explosion in illegitimate births. just price Jansenism 8
Infancy and childhood were highly vulnerable stages of consumer society Carnival 9
life. In some parts of Europe fewer than half of all chil- purging blood sports 10
dren reached the age of ten. Infant mortality was high in 11
areas, like France, in which wet-nursing was commonly 12
practiced. Treatment of children could be harsh in an Improve Your Grade Flashcards 13
early modern society that was characterized by much 14
higher levels of violence and brutality than are Western 15
societies today. The second half of the eighteenth cen- Suggested Reading 16
tury witnessed a new concern with methods of child rais- Brewer, John, and Roy Porter, eds. Consumption and the 17
ing inspired by Enlightenment efforts to reform human World of Goods. 1993. Pioneering essays from leading 18
society. Schools for middling and poor children spread scholars on the consumer revolution of eighteenth- 19
across Europe, leading to a growth in literacy rates. century Europe. 20
The urban populace benefited from the surge in agri- 21
cultural and industrial production. People found a Bridenthal, Renate, Susan Mosher Stuard, and Merry 22
greater variety of food products at the market, including Wiesner, eds. Becoming Visible: Women in European His- 23
new stimulants produced in the colonies that soon be- tory, 3d ed. 1998. A valuable starting point for the his- 24
tory of women and gender. 25
Apago PDF Enhancer
came staples of elite and popular consumption. Within
Burke, Peter. Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe.
homes, standards of comfort and hygiene increased, and 26
the emerging consumer society offered new possibilities 1978. A classic introduction to everyday life, mentalities, 27
for self-expression and individuality. Medical techniques and leisure pursuits. 28
continued to follow traditional patterns, but the number Carrell, Jennifer. The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale 29
of practitioners grew, and great strides were made against of Battling Smallpox. 2003. A lively popular account of 30
smallpox. the spread of inoculation. 31
In the background of these changes, patterns of recre- 32
ation and leisure, from churchgoing and religious festi- Gelbart, Nina. The King’s Midwife: A History and Mystery 33
vals to sewing and drinking in groups within an oral of Madame Du Coudray. 2002. A vivid and accessible 34
culture, reflected and reinforced community ties and val- biography of the most famous midwife of eighteenth- 35
ues. Many long-standing ideas and beliefs, ranging from century France. 36
obscure religious customs to support for fair prices, re- Hartman, Mary S. The Household and the Making of His- 37
mained strong forces and sustained continuity in popular tory. 2004. A bold study of the economic and social 38
life. A wave of religious revival counteracted the secular ramifications of the European pattern of early marriage. 39
tendencies of the Enlightenment, ensuring that religion Kertzer, David I., and Marzio Barbagli, eds. Family Life 40
continued to have a strong hold over the popular classes. in Early Modern Times, 1500–1789. 2001. A rich collec- 41
The next great wave of change would be inaugurated by tion of essays on the history of the family, women, and 42
revolution in politics. children in early modern Europe. 43
44
Mintz, Sidney W. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar 45
in Modern History. 1985. A fascinating exploration of 46
the shifting cultural significance of sugar and its trans- 47
formation from elite luxury good to everyday staple. 48
49
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A Day in the Life of Paris
11 An hour later the Law comes into action; a
12 black cloud of legal practitioners and hangers-on
descend upon the Châtelet,* and the other
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16
L ouis-Sébastien Mercier (1740–1814) was the
best chronicler of everyday life in eighteenth-century
courts; a procession of wigs and gowns and brief-
bags, with plaintiffs and defendants at their heels.
Midday is the stockbrokers’ hour, and the
idlers’; the former hurry off to the Exchange, the
17 Paris. His masterpiece was the Tableau de Paris
latter to the Palais-Royal.† The Saint-Honoré‡
18 (1781–1788), a multivolume work composed of 1,049
quarter, where all the financiers live, is at its
chapters that covered subjects ranging from convents
19 busiest now, its streets are crowded with the
to cafés, bankruptcy to booksellers, the latest
20 customers and clients of the great.
fashions to royal laws. As this excerpt demonstrates,
21 At two o’clock those who have invitations to
he aimed to convey the infinite diversity of people,
22 dine set out, dressed in their best, powdered,
places, and things he saw around him, and in so
23 adjusted, and walking on tiptoe not to soil their
doing he left future generations a precious record of
stockings. All the cabs are engaged, not one is
24 the changing dynamics of Parisian society in the
to be found on the rank; there is a good deal of
25 second half of the eighteenth century.
Apago PDF Enhancer competition for these vehicles, and you may see
26 Mercier’s family belonged to the respectable
two would-be passengers jumping into a cab
27 artisan classes. This middling position ideally suited
together from different sides, and furiously
28 Mercier for observing the extremes of wealth and
disputing which was first; on which the cabman
29 poverty around him. Although these volumes contain
whips up and drives them both off to the
many wonderful glimpses of daily life, they should
30 Commissary of Police, who takes the burden
not be taken for an objective account. Mercier
31 of decision off his shoulders.
brought his own moral and political sensibilities,
32 Three o’clock and the streets are not so full;
influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to the task.
33 everyone is at dinner; there is a momentary calm,
34 soon to be broken, for at five fifteen the din is as
though the gates of hell were opened, the streets
35 Chapter 39: How the Day Goes are impassable with traffic going all ways at once,
36 It is curious to see how, amid what seems towards the playhouses or the public gardens.
37 perpetual life and movement, certain hours keep Cafés are at their busiest.
38 their own characteristics, whether of bustle or of Towards seven the din dies down, everywhere
39 leisure. Every round of the clock-hand sets and all at once. You can hear the cab-horses’
40 another scene in motion, each different from the hoofs pawing the stones as they wait—in vain. It
41 last, though all about equal in length. is as though the whole town were gagged and
42 Seven o’clock in the morning sees all the bound, suddenly, by an invisible hand. This is the
43 gardeners, mounted on their nags and with their most dangerous time of the whole day for thieves
44 baskets empty, heading back out of town again. No and such, especially towards autumn when the
carriages are about, and not a presentable soul, days begin to draw in; for the watch is not yet
45
except a few neat clerks hurrying to their offices. about, and violence takes its opportunity.
46 Nine o’clock sets all the barbers in motion,
47 covered from head to foot with flour—hence their *The main criminal court of Paris.
†
48 The garden surrounded by arcades with shops and cafés
soubriquet of “whitings”—wig in one hand, tongs
constructed by the Duke of Orléans.
49 in the other. Waiters from the lemonade-shops are ‡
The neighborhood around the rue Saint-Honoré, between
50S busy with trays of coffee and rolls, breakfast for the Palais-Royal and the Place Vendôme; a fashionable
51R those who live in furnished rooms. . . . quarter for the wealthy.
52L
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A page from Mercier’s original manuscript.
(Bibliothèque nationale de France)
Night falls; and, while scene-shifters set to work shifted and sorted in
at the play-houses, swarms of other workmen, high-piled baskets; you
carpenters, masons and the like, make their way may see eggs, pyramids
towards the poorer quarters. They leave white of eggs, moved here and
footprints from the plaster on their shoes, a trail there, up steps and
that any eye can follow. They are off home, and to down, in and out of the
bed, at the hour which finds elegant ladies sitting throngs, miraculous; not
down to their dressing-tables to prepare for the one is ever broken. . . .
business of the night. This impenetrable din
At nine this begins; they all set off for the play. contrasts oddly with the
Houses tremble as the coaches rattle by, but soon sleeping streets, for at
the noise ceases; all the fine ladies are making that hour none but
their evening visits, short ones, before supper. thieves and poets are
Now the prostitutes begin their night parade, awake.
breasts uncovered, heads tossing, colour high on Twice a week, at six, those distributors of the staff of life,
their cheeks, and eyes as bold as their hands. the bakers of Gonesse,** bring in an enormous quantity of
These creatures, careless of the light from shop- loaves to the town, and may take none back through the
windows and street lamps, follow and accost you, barriers. And at this same hour workmen take up their tools,
trailing through the mud in their silk stockings and trudge off to their day’s labour. Coffee with milk is,
and low shoes, with words and gestures well unbelievably, the favoured drink among these stalwarts
matched for obscenity. . . . nowadays.
By eleven, renewed silence. People are at At street-corners, where the pale light from a street lamp
supper, private people, that is; for the cafés begin falls, the coffee women stand, carrying their tin urns on their
at this hour to turn out their patrons, and to send backs; they sell their coffee in earthenware cups, two sous a
the various idlers and workless and poets back to cup, one penny, and not too well sugared at that; but our
Apago PDF Enhancer
their garrets for the night. A few prostitutes still workmen find it very much to their taste. . . .
linger, but they have to use more circumspection, So coffee-drinking has become a habit, and one so deep-
for the watch is about, patrolling the streets, and rooted that the working classes will start the day on nothing
this is the hour when they “gather em in”; that else. It is not costly, and has more flavour to it, and more
is the traditional expression. nourishment too, than anything else they can afford to drink;
A quarter after midnight, a few carriages make so they consume immense quantities, and say that if a man
their way home, taking the non–card players back can only have coffee for breakfast it will keep him going till
to bed. These lend the town a sort of transitory nightfall. They take only two meals in the twenty-four hours;
life; the tradesman wakes out of his first sleep at that at midday and the evening snack of supper, what they call
the sound of them, and turns to his wife, by no the persillade.
means unwilling. More than one young Parisian
must owe his existence to this sudden passing
rattle of wheels. Thunder sends up the birth-rate Questions for Analysis
here too, as it does everywhere else.
At one in the morning six thousand peasants 1. What different social groups does Mercier describe in
arrive, bringing the town’s provision of vegetables Paris? On what basis does he categorize people?
and fruits and flowers, and make straight for the
Halles;§ their beasts have come eighteen leagues 2. What is Mercier’s attitude toward the poor and the rich?
perhaps, and are weary. As for the market itself, it Does he approve or disapprove of Parisian society as he
never sleeps. Morpheus never shakes his poppy- describes it?
seed there. Perpetual noise, perpetual motion, the 3. How does the division of the day in 1780s Paris compare
curtain never rings down on the enormous stage; to your lifestyle today?
first come the fishmongers, and after these the **A suburb of Paris, famous for the excellent bread baked there.
egg-dealers, and after these the retail buyers; for
the Halles keep all the other markets of Paris Source: Panorama of Paris: Selections from “Le Tableau de Paris,” Louis-
going; they are the warehouses whence these Sébastien Mercier, based on the translation by Helen Simpson, edited and
draw their supplies. The food of the whole city is with a new preface and translations by Jeremy D. Popkin. Copyright ©
1999 The Pennsylvania State University. Reprinted by permission of Penn
§The city’s central wholesale food market. State Press.
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1 Ramsey, Matthew. Professional and Popular Medicine in 8. Robert Woods, “Did Montaigne Love His Children? Demography
2 France, 1770–1830: The Social World of Medical Practice. and the Hypothesis of Parental Indifference,” Journal of Interdisci-
plinary History 33, 3 (2003): 426.
3 1988. A good introduction to the medical profession. 9. P. Viazzo, “Mortality, Fertility, and Family,” in The History of the
4 Sussman, George D. Selling Mother’s Milk: The Wet- European Family, vol. 1, ed. D. Kertzer and M. Barbagli (New
5 Nursing Business in France, 1715–1914. 1982. An en- Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 176–178.
6 grossing account of the large-scale organization of
10. Alysa Levene, “The Estimation of Mortality at the London Found-
7 ling Hospital, 1741–99,” Population Studies 59, 1 (2005): 87–97.
wet-nursing in eighteenth-century France. 11. Cited in Woods, “Did Montaigne Love His Children?,” p. 421.
8 12. Ibid., pp. 13, 16.
9 Wrightson, Keith. Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in
13. E. Kennedy, A Cultural History of the French Revolution (New
10 Early Modern Britain. 2000. Examines the economics of Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 47.
11 everyday life. 14. Daniel Roche, The Culture of Clothing: Dress and Fashion in the
12 Ancien Regime. Translated by Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996).
13 15. Quoted in Cissie Fairchilds, “The Production and Marketing of
14 Populuxe Goods in Eighteenth-Century Paris,” in Consumption
15 Notes and the World of Goods, ed. John Brewer and Roy Porter (London:
16 1. Quoted in J. M. Beattie, “The Criminality of Women in Eighteenth- Routledge, 1993), p. 228.
Century England,” Journal of Social History 8 (Summer 1975): 86. 16. Quoted in K. Pinson, Pietism as a Factor in the Rise of German Na-
17
2. W. L. Langer, “Infanticide: A Historical Survey,” History of Child- tionalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934), p. 13.
18 hood Quarterly 1 (Winter 1974): 357. 17. Ibid., pp. 43–44.
19 3. Quoted in R. Cobb, The Police and the People: French Popular 18. Quoted in S. Andrews, Methodism and Society (London: Longmans,
20 Protest, 1789–1820 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 238. Green, 1970), p. 327.
21 4. Quoted in D. S. Landes, ed., The Rise of Capitalism (New York: 19. Dale Van Kley, “The Rejuvenation and Rejection of Jansenism
Macmillan, 1966), pp. 56–57. in History and Historiography,” French Historical Studies 29 (Fall
22
5. G. Gullickson, Spinners and Weavers of Auffay: Rural Industry and 2006): 649–684.
23 the Sexual Division of Labor in a French Village, 1750–1850 (Cam- 20. Quoted in I. Woloch, Eighteenth-Century Europe: Tradition and
24 bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 186. See also L. A. Progress, 1715–1789 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), p. 292.
Tilly, J. W. Scott, and M. Cohen, “Women’s Work and European 21. Quoted in T. Tackett, Priest and Parish in Eighteenth-Century France
26 Fertility Patterns,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 6 (Winter (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 214.
1976): 447–476. 22. Woloch, Eighteenth-Century Europe, pp. 220–221; see also pp. 214–
27
6. Pier Paolo Viazzo, “Mortality, Fertility, and Family,” in Family Life 220 for this section.
28 in Early Modern Times, 1500–1789, ed. David I. Kertzer and Marzio
29 Barbagli (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), p. 180.
30 7. George Sussman, Selling Mothers’ Milk: The Wet-Nursing Business
31 in France, 1715–1914 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982),
p. 22.
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In this painting by the female artist Nanine Vallain, the figure of Liberty bears a copy of the Declaration of
the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in one hand and a pike to defend them in the other. The painting
hung in the Jacobin club until its fall from power. (Musée de la Revolution Française, Vizille/The
Bridgeman Art Library)
c h a p t e r
21
The Revolution
in Politics,
1775–1815
chapter preview
Background to Revolution
• What social, political, and economic
factors formed the background to the
T he last years of the eighteenth century were a time of great upheaval.
A series of revolutions and revolutionary wars challenged the old or-
der of monarchs and aristocrats. The ideas of freedom and equality, ideas
French Revolution? that have not stopped shaping the world since that era, flourished and
Revolution in Metropole and spread. The revolutionary era began in North America in 1775. Then in
Colony, 1789–1791 1789 France, the most influential country in Europe, became the leading
revolutionary nation. It established first a constitutional monarchy, then a
• What were the immediate events radical republic, and finally a new empire under Napoleon. Inspired by
that sparked the Revolution, and how
both the ideals of the Revolution and internal colonial conditions, the
did they result in the formation of a slaves of Saint-Domingue rose up in 1791. Their rebellion led to the cre-
constitutional monarchy in France? ation of the new independent nation of Haiti in 1805.
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How did the ideals and events of the The armies of France violently exported revolution beyond the na-
early Revolution raise new aspirations tion’s borders in an effort to establish new governments throughout
in the colonies? much of Europe. The world of modern domestic and international poli-
World War and Republican tics was born.
France, 1791–1799
• How and why did the Revolution
take a radical turn at home and in the Background to Revolution
colonies? Since July 1789 the origins of the French Revolution have been one
The Napoleonic Era, 1799–1815 of the most debated topics in history. Historians long explained the
• Why did Napoleon Bonaparte Revolution as a clash between the rising bourgeoisie and the entrenched
assume control of France, and what nobility in which the former asserted its right to political power com-
factors led to his downfall? How did mensurate with its new economic strength. It is now apparent that such
the new republic of Haiti gain a simplistic explanation cannot account for the complexity of an event
that spanned several decades and involved millions of people and numer-
independence from France?
ous nations. In uncovering the path to revolution, numerous interrelated
factors must be taken into account. These include deep social changes in
France, a long-term political crisis that eroded monarchical legitimacy,
the impact of new political ideas derived from the Enlightenment, the
emergence of a “public sphere” in which such opinions were formed and
shared, and, perhaps most importantly, a financial crisis created by France’s
participation in expensive overseas wars.
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683
684 CHAPTER 21 • THE REVOLUTION IN POLITICS, 1775–1815
While these developments built a thirst for fundamen-

tal political reform, there was nothing inevitable in the
unfolding of the Revolution. As in many historical
events, chance played a significant role in leading the
French to revolution and in the course of events after its
outbreak. Examining the background of institutions,
events, and ideas helps explain how the fascinating and
complex phenomenon known as the French Revolution
came into being.
• What social, political, and economic factors formed the
background to the French Revolution?
Legal Orders and Social Change

As in the Middle Ages, France’s 25 million inhabitants
were still legally divided into three orders, or estates—
the clergy, the nobility, and everyone else. As the nation’s
first estate, the clergy numbered about one hundred
thousand and had important privileges. It owned about
10 percent of the land and paid only a “voluntary gift,”
rather than regular taxes, to the government every five
years. Moreover, the church levied a tax (the tithe) on
landowners, which averaged somewhat less than 10
percent. Apago PDF Enhancer
The second estate consisted of some four hundred
thousand nobles, the descendants of “those who fought”
in the Middle Ages. Nobles owned about 25 percent of
the land in France outright, and they too were lightly
taxed. Moreover, nobles continued to enjoy certain
manorial rights, or privileges of lordship, that dated
back to medieval times. These included exclusive rights
The Three Estates In this political cartoon from 1789 a
to hunt and fish, village monopolies on baking bread and peasant of the third estate struggles under the crushing bur-
pressing grapes for wine, fees for justice, and a host of den of a happy clergyman and a plumed nobleman. The cap-
other “useful privileges.” In addition, nobles had “hon- tion—“Let’s hope this game ends soon”—sets forth a
orific privileges” such as the right to precedence on pub- program of reform that any peasant could understand. (Réu-
lic occasions and the right to wear swords. These rights nion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY)
conspicuously proclaimed the nobility’s legal superiority
and exalted social position.
Everyone else was a commoner, legally a member of In discussing the origins of the French Revolution, his-
the third estate. A few commoners—prosperous mer- torians long focused on growing tensions between the
chants, lawyers, and officials—were well educated and nobility and the comfortable members of the third estate,
rich, and they might even have purchased manorial rights the bourgeoisie or upper middle class. Increasing in size,
as a way of obtaining profit and social honor. The vast wealth, culture, and self-confidence, this rising bour-
majority of the third estate consisted of peasants and geoisie became progressively exasperated by archaic “feu-
agricultural workers in the countryside and urban arti- dal” laws restraining the economy and by the pretensions
sans and unskilled day laborers. Thus the third estate was of a reactionary nobility that was closing ranks against
a conglomeration of very different social groups united middle-class aspirations. As a result, the French bour-
only by their shared legal status as distinct from the no- geoisie eventually rose up to lead the entire third estate in
bility and clergy. a great social revolution that destroyed feudal privileges
Background to Revolution • 685
and established a capitalist order based on individualism Chronology

and a market economy.
In recent years, a flood of new research has challenged 1773 Boston Tea Party
these accepted views. Above all, revisionist historians
have questioned the existence of growing social conflict 1775 Paine, Common Sense
between a progressive capitalistic bourgeoisie and a reac- 1775–1783 American Revolution
tionary feudal nobility in eighteenth-century France. In-
stead, they see both bourgeoisie and nobility as highly 1786–1789 Financial crisis in France
fragmented, riddled with internal rivalries. The ancient 1789 Feudalism abolished in France; ratification of
sword nobility, for example, was profoundly separated U.S. Constitution; storming of the Bastille
from the newer robe nobility by differences in wealth,
education, and worldview. Differences within the bour- 1789–1799 French Revolution
geoisie—between wealthy financiers and local lawyers, 1790 Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
for example—were no less profound. Rather than stand-
ing as unified blocs against each other, nobility and bour- 1791 Slave insurrection in Saint-Domingue
geoisie formed two parallel social ladders increasingly 1792 Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of
linked together at the top by wealth, marriage, and En- Woman
lightenment culture.
1793 Execution of Louis XVI
Revisionist historians stress three developments in par-
ticular. First, the nobility remained a fluid and relatively 1793–1794 Economic controls to help poor in
open order. Throughout the eighteenth century substan- France; Robespierre’s Reign of Terror
tial numbers of successful commoners continued to seek
1794 Robespierre deposed and executed
and obtain noble status through government service and
purchase of expensive positions conferring nobility. Sec- 1794–1799 Thermidorian reaction
ond, key sections of the nobility were no less liberal than
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1799–1815 Napoleonic era
the middle class, and until revolution actually began,
both groups generally supported the judicial opposition 1805 Haitian republic declares independence
to the government led by the Parlement of Paris. Third,
1812 Napoleon invades Russia
the nobility and the bourgeoisie were not really at odds
in the economic sphere. Investment in land and govern- 1814–1815 Napoleon defeated and exiled
ment service were the preferred activities of both groups,
and the ideal of the merchant capitalist was to gain
enough wealth to retire from trade, purchase an estate,
and live nobly as a large landowner. At the same time,
wealthy nobles often acted as aggressive capitalists, in-
vesting especially in mining, metallurgy, and foreign
The Crisis of Political Legitimacy
trade. Overlaying these social changes was a century-long polit-
Revisionists have clearly shaken the belief that the ical and fiscal struggle between the monarchy and its op-
bourgeoisie and the nobility were inevitably locked in ponents that was primarily enacted in the law courts.
growing conflict before the Revolution. But in stressing When Louis XIV finally died in 1715 and was succeeded
the similarities between the two groups, especially at the by his five-year-old great-grandson, Louis XV (r. 1715–
top, revisionists have also reinforced the view that the 1774), the Sun King’s elaborate system of absolutist rule
Old Regime had ceased to correspond with social reality was challenged. Favored by the duke of Orléans (1674–
by the 1780s. Legally, society was still based on rigid or- 1723), who governed as regent until 1723, a number of
ders inherited from the Middle Ages. In reality, France institutions retrieved powers they had lost under Louis
had already moved far toward being a society based on XIV. Instead of assuming personal rule, the regent rein-
wealth and education in which an emerging elite that in- stated councils of state to aid in decision making.
cluded both aristocratic and bourgeois notables was frus- Most important, in 1715 the duke restored to the high
trated by a bureaucratic monarchy that continued to courts of France—the parlements—the ancient right to
claim the right to absolute power. evaluate royal decrees publicly in writing before they
were registered and given the force of law. The restora- philosophes applauded these measures: the sovereign was
tion of this right, which had been suspended under Louis using his power to introduce badly needed reforms that
XIV, was a fateful step. The magistrates of the parlements had been blocked by a self-serving aristocratic elite. Most
were leaders of the robe nobility. In 1604 Henry IV had philosophes, and public opinion as a whole, sided with
created the paulette (see page 528) on royal offices as a the old parlements, however, and there was widespread
way to raise desperately needed revenue. The unintended criticism of “royal despotism.”
consequence of this act was to transform royal offices, in- Learned dissent was accompanied by scandalous libels.
cluding judicial positions, into a form of private property Known as Louis le bien-aimé (beloved Louis) in his
passed down from father to son. By allowing a well- youth, the king found his people turning against him for
entrenched and highly articulate branch of the nobility to moral as well as political reasons. Kings had always main-
evaluate the king’s decrees before they became law, the tained mistresses who were invariably chosen from the
duke of Orléans sanctioned a counterweight to absolute court nobility. Louis XV broke that pattern with Madame
power. de Pompadour, daughter of a disgraced bourgeois finan-
These implications became clear when the heavy ex- cier. As favorite from 1745 to 1750, Pompadour exer-
penses of the War of the Austrian Succession plunged cised tremendous influence over literature, art, and the
France into financial crisis. In 1748 Louis XV appointed decorative arts, using her patronage to support Voltaire
a finance minister who decreed a 5 percent income tax on and promote the rococo style. Even after their love affair
every individual regardless of social status. Exemption ended, Pompadour wielded considerable influence over
from most taxation had long been a hallowed privilege of the king, helping bring about the alliance with Austria
the nobility, and other important groups—the clergy, the that resulted in the Seven Years’ War. Pompadour’s low
large towns, and some wealthy bourgeoisie—had also birth and hidden political influence generated a stream of
gained special tax advantages over time. The result was a resentful pamphleteering.
vigorous protest from many sides led by the influential After Pompadour, the king appeared to sink ever lower
Parlement of Paris. The monarchy retreated; the new tax in licentiousness; his last favorite, Madame du Barry, was
was dropped. Apago PDF Enhancer derided as a common streetwalker, and the king was
Following the disastrously expensive Seven Years’ War accused of maintaining a brothel of teenage girls at Ver-
(see pages 635–637), the conflict re-emerged. The gov- sailles to serve his lusts. The illegal stream of scandal-
ernment tried to maintain emergency taxes after the war mongering became a torrent. Lurid and pornographic
ended; the Parlement of Paris protested and even chal- depictions of the court ate away at the foundations of
lenged the basis of royal authority, claiming that the royal authority, especially among the common people in
king’s power had to be limited to protect liberty. Once turbulent Paris. The king was being stripped of the sa-
again the government caved in and withdrew the taxes. cred aura of God’s anointed on earth and was being rein-
The judicial opposition then asserted that the king could vented in the popular imagination as a degenerate.
not levy taxes without the consent of the Parlement of Despite this progressive desacralization of the monar-
Paris, which was acting as the representative of the entire chy, its power was still great enough to ride over the op-
nation. position, and Louis XV would probably have prevailed if
After years of attempting to compromise with the par- he had lived to a ripe old age, but he died in 1774. The
lements, Louis XV roused himself for a determined de- new king, Louis XVI (r. 1774–1792), was a shy twenty-
fense of his absolutist inheritance. “The magistrates,” he year-old with good intentions. Taking the throne, he is
angrily told the Parlement of Paris in a famous face-to- reported to have said, “What I should like most is to be
face confrontation, “are my officers. . . . In my person loved.”2 The eager-to-please monarch yielded in the face
only does the sovereign power rest.”1 In 1768 Louis ap- of vehement opposition from France’s educated elite.
pointed a tough career official named René de Maupeou He dismissed chancellor Maupeou and repudiated the
as chancellor and ordered him to crush the judicial oppo- strong-willed minister’s work. Louis also waffled on the
sition. economy, dismissing controller-general Turgot when his
Maupeou abolished the existing parlements and exiled attempts to liberalize the economy drew fire. A weakened
the vociferous members of the Parlement of Paris to the but unreformed monarchy now faced a judicial opposi-
provinces. He created a new and docile parlement of tion that claimed to speak for the entire French nation.
royal officials, known as the Maupeou parlements, and Increasingly locked in stalemate, the country was drifting
he began once again to tax the privileged groups. A few toward renewed financial crisis and political upheaval.
Background to Revolution • 687
The Impact of the American Revolution

Coinciding with the first years of Louis XVI’s reign, the
American Revolution had an enormous impact on France
both in practical and ideological terms. French expenses
to support the colonists bankrupted the Crown, while
the ideals of liberty and equality provided heady inspira-
tion for political reform.
Like the French Revolution, the American Revolution
had its immediate origins in struggles over increased
taxes. The high cost of the Seven Years’ War—fought
with little financial contribution from the colonies—
doubled the British national debt. When the government
tried to recoup some of the losses in increased taxes on
the colonies in 1765, the colonists reacted with anger.
The key questions were political rather than economic.
To what extent could the home government assert its
power while limiting the authority of colonial legisla-
tures and their elected representatives? Accordingly, who
should represent the colonies, and who had the right to
make laws for Americans? The British government
replied that Americans were represented in Parliament,
albeit indirectly (like most British people themselves),
and that the absolute supremacy of Parliament through-
out the empire could not be questioned. Many Ameri-
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cans felt otherwise. Toward Revolution in Boston The Boston Tea Party was
only one of many angry confrontations between British offi-
In 1773 the dispute over taxes and representation
cials and Boston patriots. On January 27, 1774, an angry
flared up again after the British government awarded a crowd seized a British customs collector and tarred and feath-
monopoly on Chinese tea to the East India Company, ered him. This French engraving of 1784 commemorates the
suddenly excluding colonial merchants from a lucrative defiant and provocative action. (The Granger Collection, New
business. In response, Boston men disguised as Indians York)
held a rowdy “tea party” and threw the company’s tea
into the harbor. This led to extreme measures. The so-
called Coercive Acts closed the port of Boston, curtailed remained loyal to the Crown; large numbers of these
local elections, and greatly expanded the royal governor’s Loyalists emigrated to the northern colonies of Canada.
power. County conventions in Massachusetts protested On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress
vehemently and urged that the acts be “rejected as the at- adopted the Declaration of Independence. Written by
tempts of a wicked administration to enslave America.” Thomas Jefferson, it boldly listed the tyrannical acts
Other colonial assemblies joined in the denunciations. In committed by George III (r. 1760–1820) and confi-
September 1774 the First Continental Congress met in dently proclaimed the natural rights of mankind and the
Philadelphia, where the more radical members argued sovereignty of the American states. Sometimes called
successfully against concessions to the Crown. Compro- the world’s greatest political editorial, the Declaration of
mise was also rejected by the British Parliament, and in Independence in effect universalized the traditional
April 1775 fighting began at Lexington and Concord. rights of English people and made them the rights of all
The fighting spread, and the colonists moved slowly mankind. It stated that “all men are created equal. . . .
but inevitably toward open rebellion and a declaration of They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalien-
independence. The uncompromising attitude of the able rights. . . . Among these are life, liberty, and the
British government and its use of German mercenaries pursuit of happiness.”
dissolved long-standing loyalties to the home country On the international scene, the French wanted re-
and rivalries among the separate colonies. Some colonists venge for the humiliating defeats of the Seven Years’ War.
They sympathized with the rebels and supplied guns and strengthened in its opposition by widespread popular
gunpowder from the beginning. By 1777 French volun- support. When renewed efforts to reform the tax system
teers were arriving in Virginia, and a dashing young no- met a similar fate in 1776, the government was forced to
bleman, the marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834), quickly finance all of its enormous expenditures during the
became one of George Washington’s most trusted gener- American war with borrowed money. As a result, the na-
als. In 1778 the French government offered a formal al- tional debt and the annual budget deficit soared.
liance to the American ambassador in Paris, Benjamin By the 1780s, fully 50 percent of France’s annual
Franklin, and in 1779 and 1780 the Spanish and Dutch budget went for interest payments on the debt. Another
declared war on Britain. Catherine the Great of Russia 25 percent went to maintain the military, while 6 percent
helped organize the League of Armed Neutrality in order was absorbed by the king and his court at Versailles. Less
to protect neutral shipping rights, which Britain refused than 20 percent of the entire national budget was avail-
to recognize. able for the productive functions of the state, such as
Thus by 1780 Great Britain was engaged in an impe- transportation and general administration. This was an
rial war against most of Europe as well as against the thir- impossible financial situation.
teen colonies. In these circumstances, and in the face of One way out would have been for the government to
severe reverses, a new British government decided to cut declare partial bankruptcy, forcing its creditors to accept
its losses and offered peace on extremely generous terms. greatly reduced payments on the debt. The Spanish
By the Treaty of Paris of 1783, Britain recognized the in- monarchy had regularly repudiated large portions of its
dependence of the thirteen colonies and ceded all its debt in earlier times, and France had done likewise after
territory between the Allegheny Mountains and the Mis- an attempt to establish a national bank ended in finan-
sissippi River to the Americans. Out of the bitter rivalries cial disaster in 1720. Yet by the 1780s the French debt
of the Old World, the Americans snatched dominion was being held by an army of aristocratic and bourgeois
over a vast territory. creditors, and the French monarchy, though absolute in
Europeans who dreamed of a new era were fascinated theory, had become too weak for such a drastic and un-
by the political lessons of the American Revolution. The
Apago PDF Enhancer popular action.
Americans had begun with a revolutionary defense Nor could the king and his ministers print money and
against tyrannical oppression, and they had been victori- create inflation to cover their deficits. Unlike England
ous. They had then shown how rational beings could and Holland, which had far larger national debts relative
assemble together to exercise sovereignty and write a to their populations, France had no central bank, no pa-
permanent constitution—a new social contract. All this per currency, and no means of creating credit. French
gave greater reality to the concepts of individual liberty money was good gold coin. Therefore, when a depressed
and representative government and reinforced one of the economy and public distrust made it increasingly difficult
primary ideas of the Enlightenment: that a better world for the government to obtain new gold loans in 1786, it
was possible. had no alternative but to try to increase taxes. Since
No country felt the consequences of the American France’s tax system was unfair and out-of-date, increased
Revolution more directly than France. Hundreds of revenues were possible only through fundamental re-
French officers served in America and were inspired by form. Such reforms, which would affect all groups in
the experience, the marquis de Lafayette chief among France’s complex and fragmented society, opened a Pan-
them. French intellectuals and publicists engaged in pas- dora’s box of social and political demands.
sionate analysis of the new federal Constitution as well as The Revolution was looming by 1787, though no one
the constitutions of the various states of the new United could have realized what was to follow. Spurred by a de-
States. Perhaps more importantly, the expenses of suppressed economy and falling tax receipts, Louis XVI’s
porting the revolutionary forces provided the last nail in minister of finance revived old proposals to impose a gen-
the coffin for the French treasury. eral tax on all landed property as well as to form pro-
vincial assemblies to help administer the tax, and he
convinced the king to call an Assembly of Notables to
Financial Crisis gain support for the idea. The notables, who were mainly
The French Revolution thus had its immediate origins in important noblemen and high-ranking clergy, opposed
the financial difficulties of the government. The efforts of the new tax. In exchange for their support, they de-
Louis XV’s ministers to raise taxes had been thwarted by manded that control over all government spending be
the high courts, led by the Parlement of Paris, which was given to the provincial assemblies. When the government
Revolution in Metropole and Colony, 1789–1791 • 689
refused, the notables responded that such sweeping tax the eve of revolution. The local assemblies of the clergy
changes required the approval of the Estates General, the showed considerable dissatisfaction with the church
representative body of all three estates, which had not hierarchy. The nobles were politically divided. A conser-
met since 1614. vative majority was drawn from the poorer and more nu-
Facing imminent bankruptcy, the king tried to reassert merous provincial nobility, but fully one-third of the
his authority. He dismissed the notables and established nobility’s representatives were liberals committed to ma-
new taxes by decree. In stirring language, the judges of jor changes.
the Parlement of Paris promptly declared the royal initia- As for the third estate, there was great popular partici-
tive null and void. When the king tried to exile the pation in the elections. Almost all male commoners
judges, a tremendous wave of protest swept the country. twenty-five years of age and older had the right to vote.
Frightened investors also refused to advance more loans However, most of the representatives selected by the
to the state. Finally, in July 1788, Louis XVI bowed to third estate were well-educated, prosperous members of
public opinion and called for a spring session of the Es- the middle class. Most were not businessmen but rather
tates General. lawyers and government officials. Social status and pres-
tige were matters of particular concern to this economic
elite. No delegates from the great mass of laboring
poor—the peasants and urban artisans—were elected.
Revolution in Metropole and The petitions for change coming from the three estates
Colony – showed a surprising degree of consensus. There was gen-
eral agreement that royal absolutism should give way to a
Although inspired by the ideals of the American Revolu- constitutional monarchy in which laws and taxes would
tion, the French Revolution did not mirror the American require the consent of the Estates General in regular
example. It was more radical and more complex, more meetings. All agreed that individual liberties would have
influential and more controversial, more loved and more to be guaranteed by law and that economic regulations
hated. For Europeans and most of the rest of the world,
Apago PDF Enhancer should be loosened. The striking similarities in the griev-
it was the great revolution of the eighteenth century, the ance petitions of the clergy, nobility, and third estate re-
revolution that opened the modern era in politics. In flected a shared commitment to a basic reform platform
turn, the slave insurrection in Saint-Domingue—which among the educated elite.
ultimately resulted in the second independent republic of
Improve Your Grade
the Americas—inspired liberation movements across the
Primary Source: The Third Estate Speaks: The Cahier
world. de Doleances of the Carcassonne
• What were the immediate events that sparked the
Revolution, and how did they result in the formation of a Yet an increasingly bitter quarrel undermined this con-
constitutional monarchy in France? How did the ideals and sensus during the intense electoral campaign: how would
events of the early Revolution raise new aspirations in the the Estates General vote, and precisely who would lead in
colonies? the political reorganization that was generally desired?
The Estates General of 1614 had sat as three separate
houses. Each house held one vote, despite the enormous
numerical discrepancies between the estates in the gen-
The Formation of the National Assembly eral population. Given the close ties between them, the
Once Louis had agreed to hold the Estates General, fol- nobility and clergy would control all decisions. As soon
lowing precedent, he set elections for the three orders. as the estates were called, the aristocratic Parlement of
As at previous meetings of the Estates General, local as- Paris, mainly out of respect for tradition but partly out of
semblies were to prepare a list of grievances for their rep- a desire to enhance the nobility’s political position, ruled
resentatives to bring to the next electoral level. This that the Estates General should once again sit separately.
request, as traditional as it was, set off a flood of debate, The ruling was quickly denounced by some intellectuals,
criticism, and demands throughout France. All across the who demanded instead a single assembly dominated by
country, clergy, nobles, and commoners came together in the third estate to ensure fundamental reforms. In his fa-
their respective orders to draft petitions for change and mous 1789 pamphlet What Is the Third Estate? the abbé
to elect delegates to the Estates General. These docu- Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès argued that the nobility was a
ments reveal the main complaints French subjects had on tiny, overprivileged minority and that the neglected third
estate constituted the true strength of the French nation. Harvest failure and high bread prices unleashed a clas-
When the government agreed that the third estate sic economic depression of the preindustrial age. With
should have as many delegates as the clergy and the no- food so expensive and with so much uncertainty, the de-
bility combined but then rendered this act meaningless mand for manufactured goods collapsed. Thousands of
by upholding voting by separate order, reform-minded artisans and small traders were thrown out of work. By
critics saw fresh evidence of an aristocratic conspiracy. the end of 1789 almost half of the French people would
In May 1789 the twelve hundred delegates of the be in need of relief. One person in eight was a pauper liv-
three estates paraded in medieval pageantry through the ing in extreme want. In Paris perhaps 150,000 of the
streets of Versailles to an opening session resplendent city’s 600,000 people were without work in July 1789.
with feudal magnificence. The estates were almost imme- Against this background of poverty and ongoing polit-
diately deadlocked. Delegates of the third estate refused ical crisis, the people of Paris entered decisively onto the
to transact any business until the king ordered the clergy revolutionary stage. They believed in a general, though
and nobility to sit with them in a single body. Finally, af- ill-defined, way that the economic distress had human
ter a six-week war of nerves, a few parish priests began causes. They believed that they should have steady work
to go over to the third estate, which on June 17 voted and enough bread at fair prices to survive. Specifically,
to call itself the National Assembly. On June 20 the del- they feared that the dismissal of the king’s moderate fi-
egates of the third estate, excluded from their hall be- nance minister would put them at the mercy of aristo-
cause of “repairs,” moved to a large indoor tennis court. cratic landowners and grain speculators. Rumors that the
There they swore the famous Oath of the Tennis Court, king’s troops would sack the city began to fill the air. An-
pledging not to disband until they had written a new gry crowds formed, and passionate voices urged action.
constitution. On July 13 the people began to seize arms for the de-
The king’s response was ambivalent. On June 23 he fense of the city as the king’s armies moved toward Paris,
made a conciliatory speech urging reforms to a joint ses- and on July 14 several hundred people marched to the
sion, and four days later he ordered the three estates to Bastille to search for weapons and gunpowder.
meet together. At the same time, the vacillating and inde-
Apago PDF Enhancer A medieval fortress with walls ten feet thick and eight
cisive monarch apparently followed the advice of relatives great towers each one hundred feet high, the Bastille had
and court nobles who urged him to dissolve the Estates long been used as a royal prison. It was guarded by eighty
General by force. The king called an army of eighteen retired soldiers and thirty Swiss mercenaries. The gover-
thousand troops toward Versailles, and on July 11 he dis- nor of the fortress-prison refused to hand over the pow-
missed his finance minister and his other more liberal der, panicked, and ordered his men to resist, killing
ministers. As Louis XVI belatedly reasserted his “divine ninety-eight people attempting to enter. Cannon were
right” to rule, middle-class delegates and their allies from brought to batter the main gate, and fighting continued
the liberal nobility resigned themselves to being dis- until the prison surrendered. The governor of the prison
banded at bayonet point. One third-estate delegate reas- was later hacked to death, and his head was stuck on a
sured a worried colleague, “You won’t hang—you’ll only pike and paraded through the streets. The next day a
have to go back home.”3 committee of citizens appointed the marquis de Lafayette
commander of the city’s armed forces. Paris was lost to
the king, who was forced to recall the finance minister
The Revolt of the Poor and and disperse his troops. The popular uprising had broken
the power monopoly of the royal army and thereby saved
the Oppressed the National Assembly.
While delegates of the third estate pressed for political
Improve Your Grade
rights, economic hardship gripped the common people.
Primary Source: The Taking of the Bastille and Its
Grain was the basis of the diet of ordinary people in the Aftermath: An English Perspective
eighteenth century, and in 1788 the harvest had been ex-
tremely poor. The price of bread began to soar. In Paris, As the delegates resumed their inconclusive debates at
where bread was regularly subsidized by the government in Versailles, the countryside sent them a radical and unmis-
an attempt to prevent popular unrest, the price rose to 4 takable message. Throughout France peasants began to
sous. The poor could scarcely afford to pay 2 sous per rise in insurrection against their lords, ransacking manor
pound, for even at that price a laborer with a wife and three houses and burning feudal documents that recorded
children had to spend half his wages on the family’s bread. their obligations. In some areas peasants reinstated tradi-
tional village practices, undoing recent enclosures and re- pages long, was disseminated throughout France and
occupying old common lands. They seized forests, and Europe and around the world.
taxes went unpaid. Fear of vagabonds and outlaws—
Improve Your Grade
called the Great Fear by contemporaries—seized the
Primary Source: The Declaration of the Rights of Man
countryside and fanned the flames of rebellion. The and of the Citizen
long-suffering peasants were doing their best to free
themselves from manorial rights and exploitation. Moving beyond general principles to draft a constitu-
Faced with chaos, yet afraid to call on the king to re- tion proved difficult. The questions of how much power
store order, some liberal nobles and middle-class dele- the king should retain and whether he could perma-
gates at Versailles responded to peasant demands with a nently veto legislation led to another deadlock. Once
surprise maneuver on the night of August 4, 1789. The again the decisive answer came from the poor—in this in-
duke of Aiguillon, also notably one of France’s greatest stance, the poor women of Paris.
noble landowners, declared that Women customarily bought the food and managed the
poor family’s slender resources. In Paris great numbers of
in several provinces the whole people forms a kind of league
women also worked for wages, making garments and lux-
for the destruction of the manor houses, the ravaging of the
ury items destined for an aristocratic and international
lands, and especially for the seizure of the archives where
clientele. Immediately after the fall of the Bastille, many
the title deeds to feudal properties are kept. It seeks to throw
of France’s great court nobles began to leave Versailles
off at last a yoke that has for many centuries weighted it
for foreign lands, so that a plummeting demand for lux-
down.4
uries intensified the general economic crisis. Interna-
He urged equality in taxation and the elimination of feu- tional markets also declined. The church was no longer
dal dues. In the end, all the old noble privileges—peasant able to give its traditional grants of food and money to
serfdom where it still existed, exclusive hunting rights, the poor. Increasing unemployment and hunger put
fees for justice, village monopolies, the right to make tremendous pressure on household managers, and the
peasants work on the roads, and a host of other dues—
Apago PDF Enhancer result was another popular explosion.
were abolished. Thus the French peasantry, which al- On October 5 some seven thousand desperate women
ready owned about 30 percent of all the land, achieved marched the twelve miles from Paris to Versailles to de-
an unprecedented victory in the early days of revolution- mand action. A middle-class deputy looking out from the
ary upheaval. Henceforth, French peasants would seek Assembly saw “multitudes arriving from Paris including
mainly to protect and consolidate their triumph. As the fishwives and bullies from the market, and these people
Great Fear subsided in the countryside, they became a wanted nothing but bread.” This great crowd invaded
force for order and stability. the Assembly, “armed with scythes, sticks and pikes.”
One tough old woman defiantly shouted into the debate,
“Who’s that talking down there? Make the chatterbox
A Limited Monarchy shut up. That’s not the point: the point is that we want
The National Assembly moved forward. On August 27, bread.”5 Hers was the genuine voice of the people, essen-
1789, it issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and tial to any understanding of the French Revolution.
of the Citizen, which stated, “Men are born and remain The women invaded the royal apartments, slaughtered
free and equal in rights.” The declaration also maintained some of the royal bodyguards, and furiously searched for
that mankind’s natural rights are “liberty, property, secu- the queen, Marie Antoinette, who was widely despised
rity, and resistance to oppression” and that “every man is for her frivolous and supposedly immoral behavior. “We
presumed innocent until he is proven guilty.” As for law, are going to cut off her head, tear out her heart, fry her
“it is an expression of the general will; all citizens have liver, and that won’t be the end of it,” they shouted,
the right to concur personally or through their represen- surging through the palace in a frenzy. It seems likely
tatives in its formation. . . . Free expression of thoughts that only the intervention of Lafayette and the National
and opinions is one of the most precious rights of Guard saved the royal family. But the only way to calm
mankind: every citizen may therefore speak, write, and the disorder was for the king to live in Paris, as the crowd
publish freely.” In short, this clarion call of the liberal demanded.
revolutionary ideal guaranteed equality before the law, The next day the royal family left for Paris in the midst
representative government for a sovereign people, and of a strange procession. The heads of two aristocrats,
individual freedom. This revolutionary credo, only two stuck on pikes, led the way. They were followed by the
The Women of Paris March to Versailles On October 5, 1789, a large group of Parisian market women
marched to Versailles to protest the price of bread. For the people of Paris, the king was the baker of last resort,
Apago PDF Enhancer
responsible for feeding his people during times of scarcity. The crowd forced the royal family to return with
them and to live in Paris, rather than remain isolated from their subjects at court. (Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)
remaining members of the royal bodyguard, unarmed reasons. First, the great majority of comfortable, well-
and mocked by fierce men holding sabers and pikes. A educated males in the National Assembly believed that
mixed and victorious multitude surrounded the carriage women should be limited to child rearing and domestic
of the captured royal family, hurling crude insults at the duties and should leave politics and most public activities
queen. There was drinking and eating among the women, to men, as Rousseau had advocated in his influential writ-
who had emerged as a major element in the Parisian rev- ings (see page 607). Second, the delegates to the Na-
olutionary crowd.6 tional Assembly were convinced that political life in
The National Assembly followed the king to Paris, and absolutist France had been profoundly corrupt and that a
the next two years, until September 1791, saw the con- prime example of this corruption was the way that some
solidation of the liberal revolution. Under middle-class talented but immoral aristocratic women had used their
leadership, the National Assembly abolished the French sexual charms to manipulate weak rulers and their minis-
nobility as a legal order and pushed forward with the cre- ters. Thus delegates argued that excluding women from
ation of a constitutional monarchy, which Louis XVI re- politics would help create the civic virtue that had been
luctantly agreed to accept in July 1790. In the final missing: pure, home-focused wives would raise the high-
constitution, the king remained the head of state, but all minded sons needed to govern the nation.
lawmaking power was placed in the hands of the National The National Assembly replaced the complicated
Assembly, elected by the economic upper half of French patchwork of historic provinces with eighty-three depart-
males. ments of approximately equal size. The jumble of
New laws broadened women’s rights to seek divorce, weights and measures that varied from province to
to inherit property, and to obtain financial support for il- province was reformed, leading to the introduction of
legitimate children from fathers. But women were not al- the metric system in 1793. Monopolies, guilds, and
lowed to vote or hold political office for at least two workers’ associations were prohibited, and barriers to
trade within France were abolished in the name of eco- proximately forty thousand. Because the brutal condi-
nomic liberty. Thus the National Assembly applied the tions created very high death rates among slaves, traders
critical spirit of the Enlightenment in a thorough reform brought a constant stream of new arrivals from Africa. In
of France’s laws and institutions. 1789 up to two-thirds of slaves in Saint-Domingue had
The Assembly also imposed a radical reorganization on been born in Africa, most in the west-central region of
the country’s religious life. It granted religious freedom the continent. Many were veterans of wars in Africa.
to the small minority of French Jews and Protestants. Of The free population was divided by color and by
greater impact, it then nationalized the Catholic wealth. The European population included French colo-
Church’s property and abolished monasteries as useless nial officials, wealthy planters and merchants, and poor
relics of a distant past. The government used all former immigrants. A sizable population of free people of
church property as collateral to guarantee a new paper African and mixed African European descent also existed,
currency, the assignats, and then sold the property in an who referred to themselves as “free coloreds” or free
attempt to put the state’s finances on a solid footing. Al- people of color. They varied from modest artisans, to
though the church’s land was sold in large blocks, peas- plantation managers and clerks, to wealthy established
ants eventually purchased much when it was subdivided. planters who owned slaves themselves. Failing to achieve
These purchases strengthened their attachment to the their dreams of a colonial fortune, poor whites bitterly
new revolutionary order in the countryside. resented the privileges of the others, especially the free-
The religious reorganization of France brought the colored elite. The white elite harbored its own grudges
new government into conflict with the Catholic Church against France’s monopoly on colonial trade and the
and many sincere Christians, especially in the country- royal government’s attempts in the 1780s to impose leg-
side. Imbued with the rationalism and skepticism of the islation requiring humane treatment of slaves.
eighteenth-century philosophes, many delegates dis- The 1685 Code noir (Black Code) that set the parame-
trusted popular piety and “superstitious religion.” Thus ters of slavery had granted free people of color the same
they established a national church, with priests chosen legal status as whites: they could own property, live
by voters. The National Assembly then forced the
Apago PDF Enhancer where they wished, and pursue any education or career
Catholic clergy to take a loyalty oath to the new govern- they desired. From the 1760s on, however, colonial ad-
ment. The pope formally condemned this attempt to ministrators began rescinding these rights, and by the
subjugate the church, and only half the priests of France time of the Revolution, myriad aspects of free coloreds’
swore the oath. The result was a deep religious divide lives—from the professions they could practice, to the
within the country and the clergy. The attempt to remake names they could adopt, to the clothes they could
the Catholic Church, like the Assembly’s abolition of wear—were ruled by discriminatory laws. White planters
guilds and workers associations, sharpened the conflict eagerly welcomed these laws, convinced that the best de-
between the educated classes and the common people fense of slavery was a rigid color line.
that had been emerging in the eighteenth century. This The political and intellectual turmoil of the 1780s,
policy toward the church was the revolutionary govern- with its growing rhetoric of liberty, equality, and frater-
ment’s first important failure. nity, raised new challenges and possibilities for each of
these groups. For slaves, news of abolitionist movements
Revolutionary Aspirations in in France, and the royal government’s own attempts to
rein in the worst abuses of slavery, led to hopes that the
Saint-Domingue mother country might grant them freedom. Free people
The French Revolution radically transformed not only of color found in such rhetoric the principles on which
the territorial nation of France but its overseas colonies as to base a defense of their legal and political rights. They
well. On the eve of the Revolution, Saint-Domingue— looked to political reforms in Paris as a means of gaining
the most profitable of all Caribbean colonies—was even political enfranchisement and reasserting equal status
more rife with social tensions than France itself. In addi- with whites. The white elite, not surprisingly, saw matters
tion to distinctions between noble and commoner or rich very differently. Infuriated by talk of abolition and deter-
and poor, Saint-Domingue harbored divisions between mined to protect their way of life, they looked to rev-
free and unfree and a racial spectrum that included black, olutionary ideals of representative government for the
mixed race, and white people. chance to gain control of their own affairs, as had the
The colony’s slave population was at least five hundred American colonists before them. The meeting of the Es-
thousand, in comparison to a white population of ap- tates General and the Declaration of the Rights of Man
and of the Citizen raised these conflicting colonial aspira-

tions to new levels.
Foreign Reactions and the
The National Assembly, however, frustrated the hopes Beginning of War
of all these groups. Cowed by colonial representatives The outbreak and progress of revolution in France pro-
who claimed that support for free coloreds would result in duced great excitement and a sharp division of opinion
slave insurrection and independence, the Assembly rein Europe and the United States. Liberals and radicals
fused to extend French constitutional safeguards to the saw a mighty triumph of liberty over despotism. In Great
colonies. Instead, it ruled that each colony would draft its Britain especially, they hoped that the French example
own constitution, with free rein over decisions on slavery would lead to a fundamental reordering of Parliament,
and the enfranchisement of free people of color. After which was in the hands of the aristocracy and a few
dealing this blow to the aspirations of slaves and free col- wealthy merchants. After the French Revolution began,
oreds, the committee also reaffirmed French monopolies conservative leaders such as Edmund Burke (1729–
over colonial trade, thereby angering planters as well. 1797) were deeply troubled by the aroused spirit of re-
In July 1790 Vincent Ogé, a free man of color, reform. In 1790 Burke published Reflections on the Revolu-
turned to Saint-Domingue from Paris determined to re- tion in France, one of the great defenses of European
dress these issues. He raised an army of several hundred, conservatism. He defended inherited privileges in gen-
occupied the town of Grande-Rivière, and sent letters to eral and those of the English monarchy and aristocracy.
the new Provincial Assembly of Saint-Domingue de- He glorified the unrepresentative Parliament and pre-
manding political rights for all free citizens, a statute al- dicted that thoroughgoing reform like that occurring in
ready passed in France. After initial victories, his army France would lead only to chaos and tyranny. Burke’s
was defeated, and Ogé himself was tortured and exe- work sparked much debate.
cuted. In an attempt to forge compromise, in May 1791 One passionate rebuttal came from a young writer in
the National Assembly granted political rights to free London, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797). Born into
people of color born to two free parents who possessed the middle class, Wollstonecraft was schooled in adversity
sufficient property. When news of this legislation arrived
Apago PDF Enhancer by a mean-spirited father who beat his wife and squan-
in Saint-Domingue, the white elite was furious and the dered his inherited fortune. Determined to be indepen-
colonial governor refused to enact it. Violence now dent in a society that expected women of her class to
erupted between groups of whites and free coloreds in become obedient wives, she struggled for years to earn
parts of the colony. The liberal revolution had failed to her living as a governess and a teacher—practically the
satisfy the contradictory ambitions in the colonies. only acceptable careers for single, educated women—
before attaining success as a translator and author. In-
censed by Burke’s book, Wollstonecraft immediately
World War and Republican wrote a blistering, widely read attack, A Vindication of the
France – Rights of Man (1790).
Then she made a daring intellectual leap, developing
When Louis XVI accepted the final version of the Na- for the first time the logical implications of natural-law
tional Assembly’s constitution in September 1791, a philosophy in her masterpiece, A Vindication of the Rights
young and still obscure provincial lawyer and delegate of Woman (1792). To fulfill the still-unrealized potential
named Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) con- of the French Revolution and to eliminate the sexual in-
cluded, “The Revolution is over.” Robespierre was both equality she had felt so keenly, she demanded that
right and wrong. He was right in the sense that the most
constructive and lasting reforms were in place. Nothing the Rights of Women be respected . . . [and] JUSTICE for
substantial in the way of liberty and fundamental reform one-half of the human race. . . . It is time to effect a revolu-
would be gained in the next generation. He was wrong tion in female manners, time to restore to them their lost dig-
in the sense that a much more radical stage lay ahead. nity, and make them, as part of the human species, labor, by
New heroes and new ideologies were to emerge in revo- reforming themselves, to reform the world.
lutionary wars and international conflict in which Robes-
pierre himself would play a central role. Setting high standards for women—“I wish to per-
suade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of
• How and why did the Revolution take a radical turn at mind and body”—Wollstonecraft broke with those who
home and in the colonies? had a low opinion of women’s intellectual potential. She
World War and Republican France, 1791–1799 • 695
advocated rigorous coeducation, which would make did Burke and his supporters. In June 1791, Louis XVI
women better wives and mothers, good citizens, and and Marie Antoinette were arrested and returned to Paris
economically independent. Women could manage busi- after trying unsuccessfully to slip out of France. The
nesses and enter politics if only men would give them the shock of this arrest led the monarchs of Austria and Prus-
chance. Men themselves would benefit from women’s sia to issue the Declaration of Pillnitz in August 1791.
rights, for Wollstonecraft believed that “the two sexes This carefully worded statement declared their willing-
mutually corrupt and improve each other.”7 Woll- ness to intervene in France in certain circumstances and
stonecraft’s analysis testified to the power of the Revolu- was expected to have a sobering effect on revolutionary
tion to excite and inspire outside of France. Paralleling France without causing war.
ideas put forth independently in France by Olympe de But the crowned heads of Europe misjudged the revo-
Gouges (1748–1793), a self-taught writer and woman of lutionary spirit in France. When the National Assembly
the people (see the feature “Listening to the Past: Revo- disbanded, it sought popular support by decreeing that
lution and Women’s Rights” on pages 714–715), Woll- none of its members would be eligible for election to the
stonecraft’s work marked the birth of the modern wom- new Legislative Assembly. This meant that when the new
en’s movement for equal rights, and it was ultimately representative body convened in October 1791, it had a
very influential. different character. The great majority of the legislators
were still prosperous, well-educated middle-class men,
Improve Your Grade but they were younger and less cautious than their pred-
Primary Source: A Feminist Analysis of Natural Law ecessors. Many of the deputies belonged to a political
and the Rights of Women club called the Jacobin club, after the name of the former
monastery in which they held their meetings. Such clubs
The kings and nobles of continental Europe, who had had proliferated in Parisian neighborhoods since the be-
at first welcomed the revolution in France as weakening a ginning of the Revolution, drawing men and women to
competing power, began to feel no less threatened than debate the burning political questions of the day.
Apago PDF Enhancer
The Capture of Louis XVI, June
1791 This painting commemo-
rates a dramatic turning point in
the French Revolution, the mid-
night arrest of Louis XVI and the
royal family as they tried to flee
France in disguise and reach
counter-revolutionaries in the
Austrian Netherlands. Recog-
nized and stopped at Varennes,
just forty miles from the border,
the king still nearly succeeded,
telling municipal officers that
dangerous mobs controlled Paris
and securing promises of safe
passage. But within hours the
local leaders reversed themselves,
and by morning Louis XVI was
headed back to Paris. (Bibliothèque
nationale de France)
The new representatives to the Assembly were passion- September 1792 the new, popularly elected National
ately committed to the Revolution and distrustful of Convention proclaimed France a republic.
monarchy after Louis’s attempted flight. They increasingly The republic sought to create a new popular culture,
lumped “useless aristocrats” and “despotic monarchs” to- fashioning compelling symbols that broke with the past
gether, and they whipped themselves into a patriotic fury and glorified the new order. It adopted a brand-new rev-
with bombastic oratory. If the courts of Europe were at- olutionary calendar, which eliminated saints’ days and re-
tempting to incite a war of kings against France, then “we named the days and the months after the seasons of the
will incite a war of people against kings. . . . Ten million year. The republic energetically promoted broad, open-
Frenchmen, kindled by the fire of liberty, armed with the air, democratic festivals. These spectacles brought the
sword, with reason, with eloquence would be able to entire population together and sought to redirect the
change the face of the world and make the tyrants tremble people’s traditional enthusiasm for Catholic religious cel-
on their thrones.”8 Only Robespierre and a very few oth- ebrations to secular holidays instilling republican virtue
ers argued that people would not welcome liberation at and a love of nation. These spectacles were less successful
the point of a gun. Such warnings were brushed aside. in villages than in cities, where popular interest in politics
France would “rise to the full height of her mission,” as was greater and Catholicism was weaker.
one deputy urged. In April 1792 France declared war on All the members of the National Convention were re-
Francis II, the Habsburg monarch. publicans, and at the beginning almost all belonged to
France’s crusade against tyranny went poorly at first. the Jacobin club of Paris. But the Jacobins themselves
Prussia joined Austria in the Austrian Netherlands were increasingly divided into two bitterly competitive
(present-day Belgium), and French forces broke and fled groups—the Girondists, named after a department in
at their first encounter with armies of this First Coalition. southwestern France that was home to several of their
The road to Paris lay open, and it is possible that only leaders, and the Mountain, led by Robespierre and an-
conflict between the Eastern monarchs over the division other young lawyer, Georges Jacques Danton. The
of Poland saved France from defeat. Mountain was so called because its members sat on the
Military reversals and patriotic fervor led the Legislative
Apago PDF Enhancer uppermost benches on the left side of the assembly hall.
Assembly to declare the country in danger. Volunteer A majority of the indecisive Convention members, seated
armies from the provinces streamed through Paris, frater- in the “Plain” below, floated back and forth between the
nizing with the people and singing patriotic songs like the rival factions.
stirring “Marseillaise,” later the French national anthem. This division emerged clearly after the National Con-
In this supercharged wartime atmosphere, rumors of trea- vention overwhelmingly convicted Louis XVI of treason.
son by the king and queen spread in Paris. On August 10, The Girondists accepted his guilt but did not wish to put
1792, a revolutionary crowd attacked the royal palace at the king to death. By a narrow majority, the Mountain
the Tuileries, capturing it after heavy fighting with the carried the day, and Louis was executed on January 21,
Swiss Guards. The king and his family fled for their lives 1793, on the newly invented guillotine. One of his last
to the nearby Legislative Assembly, which suspended the statements was “I am innocent and shall die without fear.
king from all his functions, imprisoned him, and called for I would that my death might bring happiness to the
a new National Convention to be elected by universal French, and ward off the dangers which I foresee.”9
male suffrage. Monarchy in France was on its deathbed, Both the Girondists and the Mountain were determined
mortally wounded by war and popular upheaval. to continue the “war against tyranny.” The Prussians had
been stopped at the Battle of Valmy on September 20,
1792, one day before the republic was proclaimed. French
The Second Revolution armies then invaded Savoy and captured Nice, moved into
The fall of the monarchy marked a rapid radicalization the German Rhineland, and by November 1792 were oc-
of the Revolution, a phase that historians often call the cupying the entire Austrian Netherlands. Everywhere they
second revolution. Louis’s imprisonment was followed went French armies of occupation chased the princes,
by the September Massacres. Wild stories that impris- “abolished feudalism,” and found support among some
oned counter-revolutionary aristocrats and priests were peasants and middle-class people.
plotting with the allied invaders seized the city. As a re- But the French armies also lived off the land, requisi-
sult, angry crowds invaded the prisons of Paris and tioning food and supplies and plundering local treasures.
slaughtered half the men and women they found. In late The liberators looked increasingly like foreign invaders.
International tensions mounted. In February 1793 the Robespierre and others from the Mountain joined the
National Convention, at war with Austria and Prussia, recently formed Committee of Public Safety, to which
declared war on Britain, Holland, and Spain as well. Re- the Convention had given dictatorial power to deal with
publican France was now at war with almost all of the national emergency. These developments in Paris
Europe, a great war that would last almost without triggered revolt in leading provincial cities, such as Lyons
interruption until 1815. and Marseilles, where moderates denounced Paris and
As the forces of the First Coalition drove the French demanded a decentralized government. The peasant re-
from the Austrian Netherlands, peasants in western volt spread, and the republic’s armies were driven back
France revolted against being drafted into the army. They on all fronts. By July 1793 only the areas around Paris
were supported and encouraged in their resistance by de- and on the eastern frontier were firmly held by the cen-
vout Catholics, royalists, and foreign agents. In Paris the tral government. Defeat seemed imminent.
National Convention was locked in a life-and-death po-
litical struggle between the Girondists and the Moun-
tain. Both groups were sincere republicans, hating
Total War and the Terror
privilege and wanting to temper economic liberalism A year later, in July 1794, the Austrian Netherlands and
with social concern. Yet personal hatreds ran deep. The the Rhineland were once again in the hands of conquer-
Girondists feared a bloody dictatorship by the Mountain, ing French armies, and the First Coalition was falling
and the Mountain was no less convinced that the more apart. This remarkable change of fortune was due to the
moderate Girondists would turn to conservatives and revolutionary government’s success in harnessing, for
even royalists in order to retain power. perhaps the first time in history, the explosive forces of a
With the middle-class delegates so bitterly divided, the planned economy, revolutionary terror, and modern na-
laboring poor of Paris emerged as the decisive political tionalism in a total war effort.
factor. The laboring men and women of Paris always con- Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety ad-
stituted—along with the peasantry in the summer of vanced with implacable resolution on several fronts in
1789—the elemental force that drove the Revolution
Apago PDF Enhancer 1793 and 1794. First, they collaborated with the fiercely
forward. It was the artisans, day laborers, market women, patriotic and democratic sans-culottes, who retained the
and garment workers who had stormed the Bastille, common people’s traditional faith in fair prices and a
marched on Versailles, driven the king from the Tuileries, moral economic order and who distrusted most wealthy
and carried out the September Massacres. The laboring capitalists and all aristocrats. Thus Robespierre and his
poor and the petty traders were often known as the sans- coworkers established, as best they could, a planned
culottes, “without breeches,” because sans-culottes men economy with egalitarian social overtones. Rather than
wore trousers instead of the knee breeches of the aristoc- let supply and demand determine prices, the government
racy and the solid middle class. The immediate interests set maximum allowable prices for key products. Though
of the sans-culottes were mainly economic, and in spring the state was too weak to enforce all its price regulations,
1793 rapid inflation, unemployment, and food shortages it did fix the price of bread in Paris at levels the poor
were again weighing heavily on poor families. could afford. Rationing was introduced, and bakers were
Moreover, by spring 1793 the sans-culottes had be- permitted to make only the “bread of equality”—a brown
come keenly interested in politics. Encouraged by the so- bread made of a mixture of all available flours. White
called angry men, such as the passionate young ex-priest bread and pastries were outlawed as luxuries. The poor of
and journalist Jacques Roux, sans-culottes men and Paris may not have eaten well, but at least they ate.
women were demanding radical political action to guar- They also worked, mainly to produce arms and muni-
antee them their daily bread. At first the Mountain joined tions for the war effort. The government told craftsmen
the Girondists in rejecting these demands. But in the face what to produce, nationalized many small workshops,
of military defeat, peasant revolt, and hatred of the and requisitioned raw materials and grain. Sometimes
Girondists, the Mountain and especially Robespierre be- planning and control did not go beyond orders to meet
came more sympathetic. The Mountain joined with sans- the latest emergency. But failures to control and coordi-
culottes activists in the city government to engineer a nate were failures of means and not of desire. The second
popular uprising that forced the Convention to arrest revolution and the ascendancy of the sans-culottes had
thirty-one Girondist deputies for treason on June 2. All produced an embryonic emergency socialism, which
power passed to the Mountain. thoroughly frightened Europe’s propertied classes and
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Contrasting Visions of the Sans-Culottes The woman on the left, with her playful cat and calm simplicity,
suggests how the French sans-culottes saw themselves as democrats and virtuous citizens. The ferocious sans-
culotte harpy on the right, a creation of wartime England’s vivid counter-revolutionary imagination, screams for
more blood, more death: “I am the Goddess of Liberty! Long live the guillotine!” (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
had great influence on the subsequent development of time, however, the Reign of Terror represented a fright-
socialist ideology. ening perversion of the generous ideals of 1789, strength-
Second, while radical economic measures supplied the ening the belief that France had foolishly replaced a weak
poor with bread and the armies with weapons, the Reign king with a bloody dictatorship.
of Terror (1793–1794) used revolutionary terror to so- The third and perhaps most decisive element in the
lidify the home front. Special revolutionary courts re- French republic’s victory over the First Coalition was its
sponsible only to Robespierre’s Committee of Public ability to draw on the explosive power of patriotic dedi-
Safety tried rebels and “enemies of the nation” for polit- cation to a national state and a national mission. An es-
ical crimes. Drawing on popular support centered in the sential part of modern nationalism, this commitment
local Jacobin clubs, these local courts ignored normal le- was something new in history. With a common language
gal procedures and judged severely. Some forty thousand and a common tradition newly reinforced by the ideas of
French men and women were executed or died in prison. popular sovereignty and democracy, large numbers of
Another three hundred thousand suspects were arrested. French people were stirred by a common loyalty. They
Robespierre’s Reign of Terror is one of the most con- developed an intense emotional commitment to the de-
troversial phases of the French Revolution. Most histori- fense of the nation, and they imagined the nation as a
ans now believe that the Reign of Terror was not directed great loving family that included all right-thinking patri-
against any single class. Rather, it was a political weapon ots. In such circumstances war was no longer the gentle-
directed impartially against all who might oppose the manly game of the eighteenth century, but rather total
revolutionary government. For many Europeans of the war, a life-and-death struggle between good and evil.
The French Revolution
May 5, 1789 Estates General convene at Versailles.

June 17, 1789 Third estate declares itself the National Assembly.
June 20, 1789 Oath of the Tennis Court is sworn.
July 14, 1789 Storming of the Bastille occurs.
July–August 1789 Great Fear ravages the countryside.
August 4, 1789 National Assembly abolishes feudal privileges.
August 27, 1789 National Assembly issues Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
October 5, 1789 Women march on Versailles and force royal family to return to Paris.
November 1789 National Assembly confiscates church lands.
July 1790 Civil Constitution of the Clergy establishes a national church.
Louis XVI reluctantly agrees to accept a constitutional monarchy.
June 1791 Royal family is arrested while attempting to flee France.
August 1791 Austria and Prussia issue the Declaration of Pillnitz.
Slave insurrections break out in Saint-Domingue.
April 1792 France declares war on Austria.
Legislative Assembly enfranchises free people of color.
August 1792 Parisian mob attacks the palace and takes Louis XVI prisoner.
September 1792
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September Massacres occur.
National Convention declares France a republic and abolishes monarchy.
January 1793 Louis XVI is executed.
February 1793 France declares war on Britain, Holland, and Spain.
Revolts take place in some provincial cities.
March 1793 Bitter struggle occurs in the National Convention between Girondists and the Mountain.
April–June 1793 Robespierre and the Mountain organize the Committee of Public Safety and arrest Girondist
leaders.
September 1793 Price controls are instituted to aid the sans-culottes and mobilize the war effort.
British troops invade Saint-Domingue.
1793–1794 Reign of Terror darkens Paris and the provinces.
February 1794 National Convention abolishes slavery in all French territories.
Spring 1794 French armies are victorious on all fronts.
July 1794 Robespierre is executed.
Thermidorian reaction begins.
1795–1799 The Directory rules.
1795 Economic controls are abolished, and suppression of the sans-culottes begins.
Toussaint L’Ouverture named brigadier general.
1797 Napoleon defeats Austrian armies in Italy and returns triumphant to Paris.
1798 Austria, Great Britain, and Russia form the Second Coalition against France.
1799 Napoleon overthrows the Directory and seizes power.
Everyone had to participate in the national effort. Ac- public were led by young, impetuous generals. These
cording to a famous decree of August 23, 1793: generals often had risen from the ranks, and they person-
ified the opportunities the Revolution offered gifted sons
The young men shall go to battle and the married men shall
of the people. Following orders from Paris to attack re-
forge arms. The women shall make tents and clothes, and
lentlessly, French generals used mass assaults at bayonet
shall serve in the hospitals; children shall tear rags into lint.
point to overwhelm the enemy. “No maneuvering, noth-
The old men will be guided to the public places of the cities
ing elaborate,” declared the fearless General Hoche.
to kindle the courage of the young warriors and to preach
“Just cold steel, passion and patriotism.”11 By spring
the unity of the Republic and the hatred of kings.
1794 French armies were victorious on all fronts. The re-
The all-out mobilization of French resources under public was saved.
the Terror combined with the fervor of modern nation-
alism to create an awesome fighting machine. After Au-
gust 1793 all unmarried young men were subject to the
Revolution in Saint-Domingue
draft, and by January 1794 the French had about eight The second stage of revolution in Saint-Domingue also
hundred thousand soldiers on active duty in fourteen resulted from decisive action from below. In August
armies. A force of this size was unprecedented in the his- 1791 slaves, previously fettered witnesses to the con-
tory of European warfare, and recent research concludes frontation between whites and free coloreds, took events
that the French armed forces outnumbered their enemies into their own hands. Groups of slaves held a series of
almost four to one.10 Well trained, well equipped, and nighttime meetings to plan a mass insurrection. These
constantly indoctrinated, the enormous armies of the re- meetings reportedly included religious ceremonies in
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Slave Revolt on Saint-Domingue Starting in August 1791 the slaves of Saint-Domingue

rose in revolt. (Giraudon/Art Resource, NY)
0 250 500 Km. AT L A N T I C O C E A N

FLORIDA French forces commanded
0 250 500 Mi. Tortue by Victor Emmanuel Leclerc,
February 1802
Port- Vincent Ogé
de-Paix executed,
THE
Tro
February 1791
BAHAMAS Môle Saint Nicolas
i
Gros
sR
Le Cap
iè Morne
iv
CUBA re
s Fort
Grande Dauphin
PUERTO Rivière
SAINT-
DOMINGUE
---SANTO
DOMINGO
RICO
Vallière
Toussaint L'Ouverture
captured and sent to Gonaïves
JAMAICA prison in France, 1802
Santo Domingo invaded
Petite by forces of
Rivière Toussaint L'Ouverture,1801
Golfe de la
Gonâve Saint
Ri
ve
Marc rA
rt
Caribbean ib
on
ite
Sea
British invade, 1794
Gonâve Arcahaye
Mirebalais
Jérémie
SANTO
Port-au- DOMINGO
Prince
Léogane
Petit Grand Goâve

Tiburon Goâve
Aquin
Les Jacmel
Cayes
0 15 30 Km.
Controlled by André Rigaud
First phase of slave insurrection
Vache
August 22–26, 1791
Apago PDF Enhancer 0 15 30 Mi.
MAP 21.1 The Haitian Revolution Neighbored by the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo, Saint-
Domingue was the most profitable European colony in the Caribbean. In 1770 the French transferred the
capital from Le Cap to Port-au-Prince, which became capital of the newly independent Haiti in 1804. Slave
revolts erupted in the north, near Le Cap, in 1791.
which participants made ritual offerings and swore a sa- next month slaves attacked and destroyed hundreds of
cred oath of secrecy and revenge. The rituals belonged to sugar and coffee plantations.
the religious practices, later known as “voodoo,” that On April 4, 1792, as war loomed with the European
slaves had created on Saint-Domingue plantations from a states, the National Assembly issued a new decree enfran-
combination of Catholicism and African cults. French chising all free blacks and free people of color, but not
soldiers later reported that religious incantations and slaves. The loyalty of free men of color, the Paris govern-
African songs accompanied rebel slaves into combat. ment reasoned, was crucial to defeating the slave rebel-
African culture thus played an important role in the lion and stabilizing the colony.
Saint-Domingue revolution, alongside Enlightenment Warfare in Europe soon spread to Saint-Domingue (see
ideals of freedom and equality. Map 21.1), adding another complicating factor to its racial
Revolts began on a few plantations on the night of Au- and political conflicts. Since the beginning of the slave in-
gust 22; within a few days the uprising had swept much surrection, the Spanish in neighboring Santo Domingo
of the northern plain, creating a slave army estimated at had supported rebel slaves, and in early 1793 they began
around 2,000 individuals. By August 27 it was “10,000 to bring slave leaders and their soldiers into the Spanish
strong, divided into 3 armies, of whom 700 or 800 are army. Toussaint L’Ouverture, a freed slave who had joined
on horseback, and tolerably well-armed.”12 During the the slave revolt, was named a Spanish officer. The British
navy also blockaded the colony, and invading British soft on the wealthy and who were led by the radical social
troops captured French territory on the island. For the democrat Jacques Hébert. Two weeks later, Robespierre
Spanish and British, revolutionary chaos provided a tempt- sent many of his long-standing collaborators, including
ing opportunity to capture a profitable colony. the famous orator Danton, up the steps to the guillotine.
Desperate for forces to oppose France’s enemies, the A strange assortment of radicals and moderates in the
commissioners sent by the newly elected National Con- Convention, knowing that they might be next, organized
vention turned to slaves. They began by promising free- a conspiracy. They howled down Robespierre when he
dom to those who fought for France. By October 1793 tried to speak to the National Convention on 9 Thermi-
they had abolished slavery throughout the colony. On dor (July 27, 1794). The next day it was Robespierre’s
February 4, 1794, the Convention ratified the abolition turn to be shaved by the revolutionary razor.
of slavery and extended it to all French territories, in- As Robespierre’s closest supporters followed their
cluding the Caribbean colonies of Martinique and leader to the guillotine, France unexpectedly experienced
Guadeloupe. The new constitution of 1795 reaffirmed a thorough reaction to the despotism of the Reign of
abolition and the principle that the same laws would ap- Terror. In a general way, this Thermidorian reaction re-
ply in the colonies as in metropolitan France. In just four called the early days of the Revolution. The respectable
years insurgent slaves had ended centuries of bondage in middle-class lawyers and professionals who had led the
the French Caribbean and won full political rights. liberal revolution of 1789 reasserted their authority,
For the future, the problem loomed of how these drawing support from their own class, the provincial
rights would be applied. The most immediate question,
however, was whether France would be able to retain the
colony, which was still under attack by Spanish and
British forces. The tide began to turn when Toussaint
L’Ouverture switched sides, bringing his military and
political skills, along with four thousand well-trained sol-
diers, to support the French war effort. Apago PDF Enhancer
By 1796 the French had gradually regained control of
the colony, and L’Ouverture had emerged as the key
leader of the combined slave and free colored forces. In
May 1796 he was named commander of the western
province of Saint-Domingue (see Map 21.1). The in-
creasingly conservative nature of the French government
during the Thermidorian reaction, however, threatened
to undo the gains made by former slaves and free people
of color. As exiled planters gained a stronger voice in
French policymaking, L’Ouverture and other local lead-
ers grew ever more wary of what the future might hold.
Improve Your Grade
Primary Source: A Black Revolutionary Leader in Haiti:
Toussaint L’Ouverture
The Thermidorian Reaction and the

Directory, 1794–1799
The success of the French armies led Robespierre and the
Committee of Public Safety to relax the emergency eco- The Execution of Robespierre The guillotine was painted
nomic controls, but they extended the political Reign of red and was completely wooden except for the heavy iron
blade. Large crowds witnessed the executions in a majestic
Terror. In March 1794, to the horror of many sans- public square in central Paris, then known as the Place de la
culottes, Robespierre’s Terror wiped out many of the an- Revolution and now called the Place de la Concorde (Har-
gry men who had been criticizing Robespierre for being mony Square). (Snark/Art Resource, NY)
The Napoleonic Era, 1799–1815 • 703
cities, and the better-off peasants. The National Conven- and began to govern dictatorially. Two years later
tion abolished many economic controls, let prices rise Napoleon Bonaparte ended the Directory in a coup
sharply, and severely restricted the local political organi- d’état and substituted a strong dictatorship for a weak
zations in which the sans-culottes had their strength. one. The effort to establish stable representative govern-
The collapse of economic controls, coupled with run- ment had failed.
away inflation, hit the working poor very hard. The sans-
culottes accepted private property, but they believed
passionately in small business, decent wages, and eco- The Napoleonic Era –
nomic justice. Increasingly disorganized after Robes-
pierre purged radical leaders, the common people of For almost fifteen years, from 1799 to 1814, France was
Paris finally revolted against the emerging new order in in the hands of a keen-minded military dictator of excep-
early 1795. The Convention quickly used the army to tional ability. One of history’s most fascinating leaders,
suppress these insurrections and made no concessions to Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) realized the need to
the poor. In the face of all these reversals, the revolution- put an end to civil strife in France in order to create unity
ary fervor of the laboring poor in Paris finally subsided. and consolidate his rule. And he did. But Napoleon saw
Excluded and disillusioned, the urban poor would have himself as a man of destiny, and the glory of war and the
little interest in and influence on politics until 1830. dream of universal empire proved irresistible. For years
In villages and small towns there arose a great cry for he spiraled from victory to victory, but in the end he was
peace and a turning toward religion, especially from destroyed by a mighty coalition united in fear of his rest-
women, who had seldom experienced the political radi- less ambition.
calization of sans-culottes women in the big cities. In- • Why did Napoleon Bonaparte assume control of France,
stead, these women had tenaciously defended their and what factors led to his downfall? How did the new
culture and religious beliefs against the often heavy- republic of Haiti gain independence from France?
handed attacks of antireligious revolutionary officials af-
ter 1789. As the government began to retreat on the
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religious question from 1796 to 1801, the women of ru-
ral France brought back the Catholic Church and the
Napoleon’s Rule of France
open worship of God. In 1799 when he seized power, young General Napoleon
As for the middle-class members of the National Con- Bonaparte was a national hero. Born in Corsica into an
vention, in 1795 they wrote yet another constitution that impoverished noble family in 1769, Napoleon left home
they believed would guarantee their economic position and became a lieutenant in the French artillery in 1785.
and political supremacy. As in previous elections, the After a brief and unsuccessful adventure fighting for Cor-
mass of the population voted only for electors, whose sican independence in 1789, he returned to France as a
number was cut back to men of substantial means. Elec- French patriot and a dedicated revolutionary. Rising rap-
tors then elected the members of a reorganized legisla- idly in the new army, Napoleon was placed in command
tive assembly as well as key officials throughout France. of French forces in Italy and won brilliant victories there
The new assembly also chose a five-man executive—the in 1796 and 1797. His next campaign, in Egypt, was a
Directory. failure, but Napoleon returned to France before the fi-
The Directory continued to support French military asco was generally known, and his reputation remained
expansion abroad. War was no longer so much a crusade intact.
as a means to meet ever-present, ever-unsolved economic Napoleon soon learned that some prominent members
problems. Large, victorious French armies reduced un- of the legislature were plotting against the Directory.
employment at home and were able to live off the terri- The dissatisfaction of these plotters stemmed not so
tories they conquered and plundered. much from the fact that the Directory was a dictatorship
The unprincipled action of the Directory reinforced as from the fact that it was a weak dictatorship. Ten years
widespread disgust with war and starvation. This general of upheaval and uncertainty had made firm rule much
dissatisfaction revealed itself clearly in the national elec- more appealing than liberty and popular politics to these
tions of 1797, which returned a large number of conser- disillusioned revolutionaries. The abbé Sieyès personified
vative and even monarchist deputies who favored peace this evolution in thinking. In 1789 he had written that
at almost any price. The members of the Directory, fear- the nobility was grossly overprivileged and that the entire
ing for their skins, used the army to nullify the elections people should rule the French nation. Now Sieyès’s
The Napoleonic Era
November 1799 Napoleon overthrows the Directory.

December 1799 French voters overwhelmingly approve Napoleon’s new constitution.
1800 Napoleon founds the Bank of France.
1801 France defeats Austria and acquires Italian and German territories in the Treaty of
Lunéville.
Napoleon signs the Concordat with the pope.
1802 France signs the Treaty of Amiens with Britain.
French forces arrive in Saint-Domingue.
April 1803 Toussaint L’Ouverture dies in France.
January 1804 Jean Jacques Dessalines declares Haitian independence.
March 1804 Napoleonic Code comes into force.
December 1804 Napoleon crowns himself emperor.
May 1805 First Haitian constitution promulgated.
October 1805 Britain defeats the French and Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar.
December 1805 Napoleon defeats Austria and Russia at the Battle of Austerlitz.
1807 Napoleon redraws the map of Europe in the treaties of Tilsit.
1810 The Grand Empire is at its height.
June 1812
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Napoleon invades Russia with 600,000 men.
Fall–Winter 1812 Napoleon makes a disastrous retreat from Russia.
March 1814 Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Britain sign the Treaty of Chaumont, pledging alliance to
defeat Napoleon.
April 1814 Napoleon abdicates and is exiled to Elba.
February–June 1815 Napoleon escapes from Elba and rules France until he is defeated at the Battle of Waterloo.
motto was “Confidence from below, authority from and end civil strife. He did so by working out unwritten
above.” agreements with powerful groups in France whereby the
Like the other members of his group, Sieyès wanted a groups received favors in return for loyal service.
strong military ruler. The flamboyant thirty-year-old Napoleon’s bargain with the solid middle class was codi-
Napoleon was ideal. Thus the conspirators and Napoleon fied in the famous Civil Code of 1804, which reasserted
organized a takeover. On November 9, 1799, they two of the fundamental principles of the liberal and es-
ousted the Directors, and the following day soldiers dis- sentially moderate revolution of 1789: equality of all
banded the legislature at bayonet point. Napoleon was male citizens before the law and absolute security of
named first consul of the republic, and a new constitu- wealth and private property. Napoleon and the leading
tion consolidating his position was overwhelmingly ap- bankers of Paris established the privately owned Bank of
proved in a plebiscite in December 1799. Republican France, which loyally served the interests of both the
appearances were maintained, but Napoleon was already state and the financial oligarchy. Napoleon’s defense of
the real ruler of France. the new economic order also appealed successfully to
The essence of Napoleon’s domestic policy was to use peasants, who had gained both land and status from the
his great and highly personal powers to maintain order revolutionary changes. Thus Napoleon reconfirmed the
gains of the peasantry and reassured the solid middle not make contracts or even have bank accounts in their
class, which had lost a large number of its revolutionary own names. Indeed, Napoleon and his advisers aimed at
illusions in the face of social upheaval. re-establishing a family monarchy, where the power of
At the same time Napoleon accepted and strengthened the husband and father was as absolute over the wife and
the position of the French bureaucracy. Building on the the children as that of Napoleon was over his subjects.
solid foundations that revolutionary governments had Free speech and freedom of the press were continually
inherited from the Old Regime, he perfected a thor- violated. By 1811 only four newspapers were left, and
oughly centralized state. As recent scholarship shows, they were little more than organs of government propa-
Napoleon consolidated his rule by recruiting disillu- ganda. The occasional elections were a farce. Later laws
sioned revolutionaries for the network of ministers, pre- prescribed harsh penalties for political offenses. These
fects, and centrally appointed mayors that depended on changes in the law were part of the creation of a police
him and came to serve him well. Only former revolution- state in France. Since Napoleon was usually busy making
aries who leaned too far to the left or to the right were war, this task was largely left to Joseph Fouché, an un-
pushed to the sidelines.13 Nor were members of the old scrupulous opportunist who had earned a reputation
nobility slighted. In 1800 and again in 1802 Napoleon for brutality during the Reign of Terror. As minister of
granted amnesty to one hundred thousand émigrés on police, Fouché organized a ruthlessly efficient spy sys-
the condition that they return to France and take a loy- tem that kept thousands of citizens under continual po-
alty oath. Members of this returning elite soon ably occu- lice surveillance. People suspected of subversive activities
pied many high posts in the expanding centralized state. were arbitrarily detained, placed under house arrest, or
Only one thousand die-hard monarchists were exempted consigned to insane asylums. After 1810 political sus-
and remained abroad. Napoleon also created a new im- pects were held in state prisons, as they had been during
perial nobility in order to reward his most talented gen- the Terror. There were about twenty-five hundred such
erals and officials. political prisoners in 1814.
Napoleon’s skill in gaining support from important
and potentially hostile groups is illustrated by his treat-
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Napoleon’s Expansion in Europe
ment of the Catholic Church in France. In 1800 the
French clergy was still divided into two groups: those Napoleon was above all a military man, and a great one.
who had taken an oath of allegiance to the revolutionary After coming to power in 1799 he sent peace feelers to
government and those in exile or hiding who had refused Austria and Great Britain, the two remaining members of
to do so. Personally uninterested in religion, Napoleon the Second Coalition that had been formed against
wanted to heal the religious division so that a united France in 1798. When these overtures were rejected,
Catholic Church could serve as a bulwark of order and French armies led by Napoleon decisively defeated the
social peace in France. After arduous negotiations, Austrians. In the Treaty of Lunéville (1801) Austria ac-
Napoleon and Pope Pius VII (1800–1823) signed the cepted the loss of almost all its Italian possessions, and
Concordat of 1801. The pope gained the precious right German territory on the west bank of the Rhine was in-
for French Catholics to practice their religion freely, but corporated into France. Once more, as in 1797, the
Napoleon gained political power: his government now British were alone, and war-weary, like the French.
nominated bishops, paid the clergy, and exerted great in- Still seeking to consolidate his regime domestically,
fluence over the church in France. Napoleon concluded the Treaty of Amiens with Great
The domestic reforms of Napoleon’s early years were Britain in 1802. France remained in control of Holland,
his greatest achievement. Much of his legal and adminis- the Austrian Netherlands, the west bank of the Rhine,
trative reorganization has survived in France to this day. and most of the Italian peninsula. The Treaty of Amiens
More generally, Napoleon’s domestic initiatives gave the was clearly a diplomatic triumph for Napoleon, and peace
great majority of French people a welcome sense of sta- with honor and profit increased his popularity at home.
bility and national unity. In 1802 Napoleon was secure but unsatisfied. Ever a
Order and unity had a price: Napoleon’s authoritarian romantic gambler as well as a brilliant administrator, he
rule. Women, who had often participated in revolution- could not contain his power drive. Aggressively redraw-
ary politics without having legal equality, lost many of ing the map of Germany so as to weaken Austria and en-
the gains they had made in the 1790s. Under the law of courage the secondary states of southwestern Germany
the new Napoleonic Code, women were dependents to side with France, Napoleon tried to restrict British
of either their fathers or their husbands, and they could trade with all of Europe. After deciding to renew war
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The Coronation of Napoleon, 1804 (detail) In this grandiose painting by Jacques-Louis David,
Napoleon prepares to crown his wife, Josephine, in an elaborate ceremony in Notre Dame Cathedral.
Napoleon, the ultimate upstart, also crowned himself. Pope Pius VII, seated glumly behind the em-
peror, is reduced to being a spectator. (Louvre/Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY)
with Britain in May 1803, Napoleon concentrated his Napoleon was a threat to their interests and to the Euro-
armies in the French ports on the Channel in the fall and pean balance of power. Yet the Austrians and the Rus-
began making preparations to invade England. Great sians were no match for Napoleon, who scored a brilliant
Britain remained dominant on the seas, and when victory over them at the Battle of Austerlitz in December
Napoleon tried to bring his Mediterranean fleet around 1805. Alexander I decided to pull back, and Austria ac-
Gibraltar to northern France, a combined French and cepted large territorial losses in return for peace as the
Spanish fleet was virtually annihilated by Lord Nelson at Third Coalition collapsed.
the Battle of Trafalgar on October 21, 1805. Invasion of Napoleon then proceeded to reorganize the German
England was henceforth impossible. Renewed fighting states to his liking. In 1806 he abolished many of the tiny
had its advantages, however, for the first consul used the German states as well as the ancient Holy Roman Empire
wartime atmosphere to have himself proclaimed emperor and established by decree the German Confederation of
in late 1804. the Rhine, a union of fifteen German states minus Aus-
Austria, Russia, and Sweden joined with Britain to tria, Prussia, and Saxony. Naming himself “protector” of
form the Third Coalition against France shortly before the confederation, Napoleon firmly controlled western
the Battle of Trafalgar. Actions such as Napoleon’s as- Germany.
sumption of the Italian crown had convinced both Napoleon’s intervention in German affairs alarmed the
Alexander I of Russia and Francis II of Austria that Prussians, who mobilized their armies after more than a
decade of peace with France. Napoleon attacked and in the colony. When the colonial assembly of Saint-
won two more brilliant victories in October 1806 at Jena Domingue, under L’Ouverture’s direction, drafted its
and Auerstädt, where the Prussians were outnumbered own constitution—which reaffirmed the abolition of slav-
two to one. The war with Prussia, now joined by Russia, ery and granted L’Ouverture governorship for life—
continued into the following spring, and after Napoleon’s Napoleon viewed it as a seditious act. He ordered his
larger armies won another victory, Alexander I of Russia brother-in-law General Charles-Victor-Emmanuel Leclerc
wanted peace. to lead an expedition to the island to crush the new
For several days in June 1807 the young tsar and the regime. Napoleon placed a high premium on bringing the
French emperor negotiated face to face on a raft an- colony to heel, writing to Leclerc: “Once the blacks have
chored in the middle of the Niemen River. All the while, been disarmed and the principal generals sent to France,
the helpless Frederick William III of Prussia rode back you will have done more for the commerce and civiliza-
and forth on the shore anxiously awaiting the results. As tion of Europe than we have done in our most brilliant
the German poet Heinrich Heine said later, Napoleon campaigns.” An officer sent to serve in the colony had a
had but to whistle and Prussia would have ceased to ex- more cynical interpretation, writing that he was being
ist. In the subsequent treaties of Tilsit, Prussia lost half of sent to “fight with the Negroes for their own sugar.”14
its population, while Russia accepted Napoleon’s reor- In 1802 Leclerc landed in Saint-Domingue. Although
ganization of western and central Europe and promised Toussaint L’Ouverture cooperated with the French and
to enforce Napoleon’s economic blockade against British turned his army over to them, Leclerc had him arrested
goods. and deported to France, along with his family, where
he died in 1803. After arresting L’Ouverture, Leclerc
moved to defuse the threat posed by former slaves by tak-
The War of Haitian Independence ing away their arms. This effort aroused armed resistance
In the midst of these victories, Napoleon was forced to on the plantations and led to the defection of the rem-
accept defeat overseas. With Toussaint L’Ouverture act- nants of L’Ouverture’s army. Jean Jacques Dessalines
ing increasingly as an independent ruler of the western
Apago PDF Enhancer united the resistance under his command and led them
province of Saint-Domingue, another general, André to a crushing victory over the French forces. Of the fifty-
Rigaud, set up his own government in the southern eight thousand French soldiers, fifty thousand were
peninsula, which had long been more isolated from lost in combat and to disease. On January 1, 1804,
France than the rest of the colony. Both leaders main- Dessalines formally declared the independence of Saint-
tained policies, initially established by the French, of re- Domingue and the creation of the new sovereign nation
quiring former slaves to continue to work on their of Haiti, the name used by the pre-Columbian inhabi-
plantations. They believed that reconstructing the plan- tants of the island. (The remaining French Caribbean
tation economy was crucial to maintaining their military colonies—Guadeloupe, Martinique, and French Guiana—
and political victories, and they harshly suppressed resis- remained part of France. Slavery was re-established and
tance from former slaves. remained in force until 1848.)
Tensions mounted, however, between L’Ouverture Haiti, the second independent state in the Americas
and Rigaud. While L’Ouverture was a freed slave of and the first in Latin America, was thus born from the
African descent, Rigaud belonged to the free colored first successful large-scale slave revolt in history. Fearing
elite. This elite resented the growing power of former the spread of slave rebellion to the United States, Presi-
slaves like L’Ouverture, who in turn accused them of dent Thomas Jefferson refused to recognize Haiti. Both
adopting the racism of white settlers. Civil war broke out the American and the French Revolutions thus exposed
between the two sides in 1799, when L’Ouverture’s their limits by acting to protect economic interests at the
forces, led by his lieutenant Jean Jacques Dessalines, in- expense of revolutionary ideals of freedom and equality.
vaded the south. Victory over Rigaud gave Toussaint Yet, Haitian independence had fundamental repercus-
control of the entire colony. (See the feature “Individuals sions for world history. As one recent historian of the
in Society: Toussaint L’Ouverture.”) Haitian revolution commented:
This victory was soon challenged by Napoleon’s ar-
rival in power. Napoleon intended to reinvigorate the The slave insurrection of Saint-Domingue led to the expan-
Caribbean plantation economy as a basis for expanding sion of citizenship beyond racial barriers despite the mas-
French power. His new constitution of 1799 opened sive political and economic investment in the slave system at
the way for a re-establishment of slavery much feared the time. If we live in a world in which democracy is meant
to exclude no one, it is in no small part because of the ac- Grand Empire was at its height, Britain still remained at
tions of those slaves in Saint-Domingue who insisted that war with France, helping the guerrillas in Spain and Por-
human rights were theirs too.15 tugal. The continental system, organized to exclude
British goods from the continent and force that “nation
of shopkeepers” to its knees, was a failure. Instead, it was
The Grand Empire and Its End France that suffered from Britain’s counter-blockade,
which created hard times for French artisans and the
Napoleon resigned himself to the loss of Saint-Domingue, middle class. Perhaps looking for a scapegoat, Napoleon
but he still maintained imperial ambitions in Europe. In- turned on Alexander I of Russia, who in 1811 openly re-
creasingly, he saw himself as the emperor of Europe and pudiated Napoleon’s war of prohibitions against British
not just of France. The so-called Grand Empire he built goods.
had three parts. The core, or first part, was an ever- Napoleon’s invasion of Russia began in June 1812
expanding France, which by 1810 included Belgium, Hol- with a force that eventually numbered 600,000, probably
land, parts of northern Italy, and much German territory the largest force yet assembled in a single army. Only
on the east bank of the Rhine. Beyond French borders one-third of this Great Army was French, however; na-
Napoleon established the second part: a number of de- tionals of all the satellites and allies were drafted into the
pendent satellite kingdoms, on the thrones of which he operation. Originally planning to winter in the Russian
placed (and replaced) the members of his large family. The city of Smolensk if Alexander did not sue for peace,
third part comprised the independent but allied states of Napoleon reached Smolensk and recklessly pressed on
Austria, Prussia, and Russia. After 1806 both satellites and toward Moscow. The great Battle of Borodino that fol-
allies were expected to support Napoleon’s continental lowed was a draw, and the Russians retreated in good or-
system and to cease trade with Britain. der. Alexander ordered the evacuation of Moscow, which
The impact of the Grand Empire on the peoples of Eu- then burned in part, and he refused to negotiate. Finally,
rope was considerable. In the areas incorporated into after five weeks in the abandoned city, Napoleon ordered
France and in the satellites (see Map 21.2), Napoleon in- a retreat. That retreat was one of the greatest military dis-
Apago PDF Enhancer
troduced many French laws, abolishing feudal dues and asters in history. The Russian army, the Russian winter,
serfdom where French revolutionary armies had not al- and starvation cut Napoleon’s army to pieces. When the
ready done so. Some of the peasants and middle class frozen remnants staggered into Poland and Prussia in
benefited from these reforms. Yet Napoleon had to put December, 370,000 men had died and another 200,000
the prosperity and special interests of France first in order had been taken prisoner.16
to safeguard his power base. Levying heavy taxes in Leaving his troops to their fate, Napoleon raced to
money and men for his armies, he came to be regarded Paris to raise yet another army. Possibly he might still
more as a conquering tyrant than as an enlightened liber- have saved his throne if he had been willing to accept a
ator. Thus French rule sparked patriotic upheavals and France reduced to its historical size—the proposal of-
encouraged the growth of reactive nationalism, for indi- fered by Austria’s foreign minister, Prince Klemens von
viduals in different lands learned to identify emotionally Metternich. But Napoleon refused. Austria and Prussia
with their own embattled national families as the French deserted Napoleon and joined Russia and Great Britain
had done earlier. in the Treaty of Chaumont in March 1814, by which the
four powers pledged allegiance to defeat the French em-
Improve Your Grade
Interactive Map: Napoleonic Europe, 1810
peror. All across Europe patriots called for a “war of
liberation” against Napoleon’s oppression, and the well-
The first great revolt occurred in Spain. In 1808 a disciplined regular armies of Napoleon’s enemies closed
coalition of Catholics, monarchists, and patriots rebelled in for the kill. Less than a month later, on April 4, 1814,
against Napoleon’s attempts to make Spain a French a defeated Napoleon abdicated his throne. After this
satellite with a Bonaparte as its king. French armies occu- unconditional abdication, the victorious allies granted
pied Madrid, but the foes of Napoleon fled to the hills Napoleon the island of Elba off the coast of Italy as his
and waged uncompromising guerrilla warfare. Spain was own tiny state. Napoleon was even allowed to keep his
a clear warning: resistance to French imperialism was imperial title, and France was required to pay him a yearly
growing. income of 2 million francs.
Yet Napoleon pushed on, determined to hold his com- The allies also agreed to the restoration of the Bour-
plex and far-flung empire together. In 1810, when the bon dynasty, in part because demonstrations led by a few
Individuals in
Society
Toussaint L’Ouverture
L ittle is known of the early life of the brilliant mili- With control of
tary and political leader Toussaint L’Ouverture. He was Saint-Domingue in his
born in 1743 on a plantation outside Le Cap owned by hands, L’Ouverture was
the Count de Bréda. According to tradition, Toussaint confronted with the chal-
was the eldest son of a captured African prince from lenge of building a post-
modern-day Benin. Toussaint Bréda, as he was then emancipation society, the
called, occupied a privileged position among slaves. first of its kind. The task
Instead of performing backbreaking labor in the fields, was made even more diffi-
he served his master as a coachman and livestock cult by the chaos wreaked
keeper. He also learned to read and write French and by war, the destruction of
some Latin, but he was always more comfortable with plantations, and bitter Equestrian portrait of
the Creole dialect. social and racial tensions. Toussaint L’Ouverture.
During the 1770s the plantation manager emanci- For L’Ouverture the most (Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art
pated Toussaint, who subsequently leased his own pressing concern was to Resource, NY)
small coffee plantation, worked by slaves. He married re-establish the plantation
Suzanne Simone, who already had one son, and the economy. Without revenue to pay his army, the gains
couple had another son during their marriage. of the rebellion could be lost. He therefore encouraged
Toussaint L’Ouverture entered history in 1791 when white planters to return and reclaim their property. He
he joined the slave uprisings that swept Saint- also adopted harsh policies toward former slaves, forc-
Domingue. (At some point he took on the cryptic nom ing them back to their plantations and restricting their
Apago PDF Enhancer
de guerre “l’ouverture” meaning “the opening.”) Tous- ability to acquire land. When they resisted, he sent
saint rose to prominence among rebel slaves allied with troops across the island to enforce submission.
Spain and by early 1794 controlled his own army. In In 1801 L’Ouverture convened a colonial assembly
1794 he defected to the French side and led his troops to draft a new constitution that reaffirmed his dracon-
to a series of victories against the Spanish. In 1795 the ian labor policies. The constitution named L’Ouverture
National Convention promoted L’Ouverture to governor for life, leaving Saint-Domingue as a colony
brigadier general. in name alone. When news of the constitution arrived
Over the next three years L’Ouverture successively in France, an angry Napoleon dispatched General
eliminated rivals for authority on the island. First he Leclerc to re-establish French control. In June 1802
freed himself of the French commissioners sent to gov- Leclerc’s forces arrested L’Ouverture and took him to
ern the colony. With a firm grip on power in the north- France. He was jailed at Fort de Joux in the Jura
ern province, Toussaint defeated General André Rigaud Mountains near the Swiss border, where he died of
in 1800 to gain control in the south. His army then pneumonia on April 7, 1803. It was left to his lieu-
marched on the capital of Spanish Santo Domingo on tenant, Jean Jacques Dessalines, to win independence
the eastern half of the island, meeting little resistance. for the new Haitian nation.
The entire island of Hispaniola was now under his
command. Questions for Analysis
As one historian has described him, L’Ouverture
was a “small, wiry man, very black, with mobile, pene- 1. Toussaint L’Ouverture was both slave and slave
trating eyes; he greatly impressed most who met him, owner. How did each experience shape his life and
even those who thought him ugly. He had lost his up- actions?
per set of front teeth in battle and his ears were de- 2. Despite their differences, what did Toussaint
formed by wearing heavy gold earrings, but his L’Ouverture and Napoleon Bonaparte have in
presence was commanding and suggested enormous common? Why did they share a common fate?
self-control.”* A devout Catholic who led a frugal and * David Patrick Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies (Blooming-
ascetic life, L’Ouverture impressed others with his enor- ton: Indiana University Press, 2002), p. 22.
mous physical energy, intellectual acumen, and air of
mystery. Improve Your Grade
709
710
St. Petersburg
0 200 400 Km.
Stockholm
0 200 400 Mi.
KINGDOM
OF NORWAY KINGDOM Moscow
ATLANTIC
ea
AND OF Borodino 1812
cS
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lti
DENMARK SWEDEN Smolensk
Ba
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North Sea Copenhagen
Königsberg Friedland 1807
RUSSIAN EMPIRE
GREAT BRITAIN
Danzig
Lübeck S SIA Neman
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PR
Hamburg
Bremen
El
Berlin GRAND DUCHY
be
Rhine Kiev
London WESTPHALIA OF WARSAW
Br
us
SAXONY
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French Empire se
ls Auerstädt 1806
Dependent states Waterloo Jena 1806
1815
Allied with Napoleon Amiens CONFEDERATION
At war with Napoleon Paris OF THE RHINE Austerlitz 1805
Wagram 1804
Major battles WÜRTTEMBERG
Lunéville Pressburg
BADEN Vienna
BAVARIA Pest
Zurich Buda
FRANCE
SWITZERLAND AUSTRIAN EMPIRE
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SPAIN Naples
Sardinia KINGDOM
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Me d ite rranean Sea Palermo IONIAN IS. Athens

(Gr. Br.)
Trafalgar KINGDOM OF
1805 GIBRALTAR (Gr. Br.)
SICILY
MALTA (Gr. Br.)

dedicated French monarchists in-

dicated some support among the
French people for that course of
action. The new monarch, Louis
XVIII (r. 1814–1824), tried to
consolidate that support by issu-
ing the Constitutional Charter,
which accepted many of France’s
revolutionary changes and guar-
anteed civil liberties. Indeed, the
charter gave France a constitu-
tional monarchy roughly similar
to that established in 1791, al-
though far fewer people had the
right to vote for representatives
to the resurrected Chamber of
Deputies. Moreover, in an at-
tempt to strengthen popular sup-
port for Louis XVIII’s new
government, France was treated
leniently by the allies, which
agreed to meet in Vienna to work
out a general peace settlement.
Yet Louis XVIII—old, ugly,
Apago PDF Enhancer and crippled by gout—totally
The War in Spain This unforgettable etching by the Span- lacked the glory and magic of
ish painter Francisco Goya (1746–1828) comes from his Napoleon. Hearing of political unrest in France and
famous collection “The Disasters of the War.” A French firing diplomatic tensions in Vienna, Napoleon staged a daring
squad executes captured Spanish rebels almost as soon as they escape from Elba in February 1815. Landing in France,
are captured, an everyday event in a war of atrocities on both
sides. Do you think these rebels are “terrorists” or “freedom
he issued appeals for support and marched on Paris with
fighters”? (Foto Marburg/Art Resource, NY) a small band of followers. French officers and soldiers
who had fought so long for their emperor responded to
the call. Louis XVIII fled, and once more Napoleon took
command. But Napoleon’s gamble was a desperate long
Mapping the Past shot, for the allies were united against him. At the end of
MAP 21.2 Napoleonic Europe in 1810 Only Great Britain
a frantic period known as the Hundred Days, they
remained at war with Napoleon at the height of the Grand crushed his forces at Waterloo on June 18, 1815, and im-
Empire. Many British goods were smuggled through prisoned him on the rocky island of St. Helena, far off
Helgoland, a tiny but strategic British possession off the Ger- the western coast of Africa. Louis XVIII returned again
man coast. Compare this map with Map 16.2, which shows and recommenced his reign. The allies now dealt more
•
the division of Europe in 1715. 1 How had the balance of power
shifted in Europe from 1715 to 1810? What changed, and what re-
harshly with the apparently incorrigible French. As for
•
mained the same? 2 Why did Napoleon succeed in achieving vast
•
territorial gains where Louis XIV did not? 3 In comparing Map 16.2
with this map, what was the impact of Napoleon’s wars on Germany and
Napoleon, he took revenge by writing his memoirs, skill-
fully nurturing the myth that he had been Europe’s rev-
olutionary liberator, a romantic hero whose lofty work
the Italian peninsula? What significance do you think this had for these had been undone by oppressive reactionaries. An era had
regions in the nineteenth century?
ended.
Improve Your Grade Interactive

Map: Napoleonic Europe, 1810
• What social, political, and economic factors formed the National Assembly had eliminated Old Regime priv-
the background to the French Revolution?
ileges and had established a constitutional monarchy.
• What were the immediate events that sparked the Talk in France of liberty, equality, and fraternity raised
Revolution, and how did they result in the formation new and contradictory aspirations in the colony of Saint-
of a constitutional monarchy in France? How did the Domingue. White planters lobbied for increased colonial
ideals and events of the early Revolution raise new autonomy; free people of color sought the return of legal
aspirations in the colonies? equality; slaves of African birth or descent took direct ac-
• How and why did the Revolution take a radical turn tion on revolutionary ideals by rising in rebellion against
at home and in the colonies? their masters.
• Why did Napoleon Bonaparte assume control of With the execution of the royal couple and the decla-
France, and what factors led to his downfall? How did ration of terror as the order of the day, the French Revo-
the new republic of Haiti gain independence from lution took an increasingly radical turn from the end of
France? 1792. Popular fears of counter-revolutionary conspiracy
combined with the outbreak of war against a mighty al-
liance of European monarchs convinced many that the
The French Revolution was forged by multiple and com- Revolution was vulnerable and must be defended against
plex factors. Whereas an earlier generation of historians its multiple enemies. In a spiraling cycle of accusations
was convinced that the origins of the Revolution lay in
Apago PDF Enhancer and executions, the Jacobins eliminated political oppo-
class struggle between the entrenched nobility and the nents and then factions within its own party. The Di-
rising bourgeoisie, it is now clear that many other factors rectory government that took power after the fall of
were involved. Certainly, French society had undergone Robespierre restored political equilibrium at the cost
significant transformations during the eighteenth cen- of the radical platform of social equality he had pursued.
tury, which dissolved many economic and social differ- Wearied by the weaknesses of the Directory, a group
ences among elites without removing the legal distinction of conspirators gave Napoleon Bonaparte control of
between them. These changes were accompanied by po- France. His brilliant reputation as a military leader and
litical struggles between the monarchy and its officers, his charisma and determination made him seem ideal to
particularly in the high law courts. Emerging public lead France to victory over its enemies. As is so often the
opinion focused on the shortcomings of monarchical case in history, Napoleon’s relentless ambitions ulti-
rule, and a rising torrent of political theory, cheap pam- mately led to his downfall. His story is paralleled by that
phlets, gossip, and innuendo offered scathing and even of Toussaint L’Ouverture, another soldier who emerged
pornographic depictions of the king and his court. With to the political limelight from the chaos of revolution
their sacred royal aura severely tarnished, Louis XV and only to endure exile and defeat.
his successor Louis XVI found themselves unable to re- As complex as its origins are the legacies of the French
spond to the financial crises generated by French involve- Revolution. These include liberalism, assertive national-
ment in the Seven Years’ War and the American ism, radical democratic republicanism, embryonic
Revolution. Louis XVI’s half-hearted efforts to redress socialism, self-conscious conservatism, abolitionism, de-
the situation were quickly overwhelmed by elite and pop- colonization, and movements for racial and sexual equal-
ular demands for fundamental reform. ity. The Revolution also left a rich and turbulent history
Forced to call a meeting of the Estates General for the of electoral competition, legislative assemblies, and even
first time in almost two centuries, Louis XVI fell back on mass politics. Thus the French Revolution and conflict-
the traditional formula of one vote for each of the three ing interpretations of its significance presented a whole
orders of society. Debate over the composition of the as- range of political options and alternative visions of the fu-
sembly called forth a bold new paradigm: that the Third ture. For this reason, it was truly the revolution in mod-
Estate in itself constituted the French nation. By 1791 ern European politics.
Landes, John B. Visualizing the Nation: Gender, Represen-

Key Terms tation, and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France.
estates Jacobin club 2001. Analyzes images of gender and the body in revo-
manorial rights second revolution lutionary politics.
Maupeou parlements Girondists Schechter, Ronald. Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of
desacralization the Mountain Jews in France, 1715–1815. 2003. An illuminating study
sovereignty sans-culottes of Jews and attitudes toward them in France from En-
Assembly of Notables planned economy lightenment to emancipation.
Estates General Reign of Terror
Sutherland, Donald. France, 1789–1815. 1986. An over-
National Assembly nationalism
view of the French Revolution that emphasizes its many
Great Fear abolition of slavery
opponents, as well as its supporters.
constitutional Thermidorian
monarchy reaction Tackett, Timothy. When the King Took Flight. 2003. An
free people of color Grand Empire exciting re-creation of the royal family’s doomed effort
to escape from Paris.
Notes
Suggested Reading 1. Quoted in R. R. Palmer, The Age of Democratic Revolution, vol. 1
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959), pp. 95–96.
Bell, David A. The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing 2. Quoted in G. Wright, France in Modern Times, 4th ed. (New York:
Nationalism, 1680–1800. 2001. Traces early French na- W. W. Norton, 1987), p. 34.
tionalism through its revolutionary culmination. 3. G. Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution (New York: Vin-
tage Books, 1947), p. 81.
Blanning, T. C. W. The French Revolutionary Wars
Apago PDF Enhancer 4. P. H. Beik, ed., The French Revolution (New York: Walker, 1970),
(1787–1802). 1996. A masterful account of the revolu- p. 89.
tionary wars that also places the French Revolution in 5. G. Pernoud and S. Flaisser, eds., The French Revolution (Green-
wich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1960), p. 61.
its European context.
6. O. Hufton, Women and the Limits of Citizenship in the French Revo-
Broers, Michael. Europe Under Napoleon. 2002. Probes lution (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), pp. 3–22.
Napoleon’s impact on the territories he conquered. 7. Quotations from Wollstonecraft are drawn from E. W. Sunstein,
A Different Face: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft (New York: Harper
Connelly, Owen. The French Revolution and Napoleonic & Row, 1975), pp. 208, 211; and H. R. James, Mary Woll-
Era. 1991. An excellent introduction to the French stonecraft: A Sketch (London: Oxford University Press, 1932),
Revolution and Napoleon. pp. 60, 62, 69.
8. Quoted in L. Gershoy, The Era of the French Revolution, 1789–1799
Desan, Suzanne. The Family on Trial in Revolutionary (New York: Van Nostrand, 1957), p. 150.
France. 2004. Studies the effects of revolutionary law 9. Pernoud and Flaisser, The French Revolution, pp. 193–194.
on the family, including the legalization of divorce. 10. T. Blanning, The French Revolutionary Wars, 1787–1802 (London:
Arnold, 1996), pp. 116–128.
Dubois, Laurent. Avengers of the New World: The Story of 11. Quoted ibid., p. 123.
the Haitian Revolution. 2004. An excellent and highly 12. Quoted in Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of
readable account of the revolution that transformed the the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
2004), p. 97.
French colony of Saint-Domingue into the indepen-
13. I. Woloch, Napoleon and His Collaborators: The Making of a Dicta-
dent state of Haiti. torship (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), pp. 36–65.
Englund, Steven. Napoleon: A Political Life. 2004. A 14. Quoted in Dubois, Avengers of the New World, pp. 255–256.
15. Ibid., p. 3.
good biography of the French emperor.
16. D. Sutherland, France, 1789–1815: Revolution and Counterrevolu-
Hunt, Lynn. Politics, Culture and Class in the French Rev- tion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 420.
olution, 2d ed. 2004. A pioneering examination of the
French Revolution as a cultural phenomenon that gen-
erated new festivals, clothing, and songs and even a new
calendar.
Revolution and Women’s Rights
DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF
T he 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and

of the Citizen was a revolutionary call for legal equality,
WOMAN AND THE FEMALE CITIZEN
For the National Assembly to decree in its last
sessions, or in those of the next legislature:
representative government, and individual freedom. But
Preamble
the new rights were strictly limited to men; Napoleon
tightened further the subordination of French women. Mothers, daughters, sisters and representatives
Among those who saw the contradiction in granting of the nation demand to be constituted into a
supposedly universal rights to only half the national assembly. Believing that ignorance,
population was Marie Gouze (1748–1793), known to omission, or scorn for the rights of woman are the
history as Olympe de Gouges. The daughter of a only causes of public misfortunes and of the
provincial butcher and peddler, she pursued a corruption of governments, [the women] have
literary career in Paris after the death of her resolved to set forth in a solemn declaration
Apago PDF Enhancer
husband. Between 1790 and 1793 she wrote more the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of
than two dozen political pamphlets under her new woman. . . .
name. De Gouges’s great work was her “Declaration . . . the sex that is as superior in beauty as it is
of the Rights of Woman” (1791). Excerpted here, de in courage during the sufferings of maternity
Gouges’s manifesto went beyond the 1789 Rights of recognizes and declares in the presence and under
Man. It called on males to end their oppression of the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following
women and to give women equal rights. A radical on Rights of Woman and of Female Citizens:
women’s issues, de Gouges sympathized with the I. Woman is born free and lives equal to man in
monarchy and criticized Robespierre in print. her rights. Social distinctions can be based only on
Convicted of sedition, she was guillotined in the common utility.
November 1793. II. The purpose of any political association
is the conservation of the natural and
. . . Man, are you capable of being just? . . . Tell imprescriptible rights of woman and man; these
me, what gives you sovereign empire to oppress rights are liberty, property, security, and especially
my sex? Your strength? Your talents? Observe the resistance to oppression.
Creator in his wisdom . . . and give me, if you III. The principle of all sovereignty rests
dare, an example of this tyrannical empire. Go essentially with the nation, which is nothing but
back to animals, consult the elements, study the union of woman and man. . . .
plants . . . and distinguish, if you can, the sexes in IV. Liberty and justice consist of restoring all
the administration of nature. Everywhere you will that belongs to others; thus, the only limits on
find them mingled; everywhere they cooperate the exercise of the natural rights of woman are
in harmonious togetherness in this immortal perpetual male tyranny; these limits are to be
masterpiece. reformed by the laws of nature and reason.
Man alone has raised his exceptional V. Laws of nature and reason proscribe all acts
circumstances to a principle. . . . [H]e wants harmful to society. . . .
to command as a despot a sex which is in full VI. The law must be the expression of the
possession of its intellectual faculties; he pretends general will; all female and male citizens must
to enjoy the Revolution and to claim his rights to contribute either personally or through their
equality in order to say nothing more about it. representatives to its formation; it must be the
714
same for all: male and female citizens, being equal
in the eyes of the law, must be equally admitted to
all honors, positions, and public employment
according to their capacity and without other
distinctions besides those of their virtues and
talents.
VII. No woman is an exception; she is accused,
arrested, and detained in cases determined by law.
Women, like men, obey this rigorous law.
VIII. The law must establish only those
penalties that are strictly and obviously
necessary. . . .
IX. Once any woman is declared guilty,
complete rigor is [to be] exercised by the law.
X. No one is to be disquieted for his very basic
opinions; woman has the right to mount the
scaffold; she must equally have the right to mount
the rostrum, provided that her demonstrations do Olympe de Gouges in 1784; aquatint by
not disturb the legally established public order. Madame Aubry (1748–1793). (Musée de la
XI. The free communication of thoughts and Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Paris,
opinions is one of the most precious rights of France/The Bridgeman Art Library)
woman, since that liberty assures the recognition
of children by their fathers. Any female citizen
thus may say freely, I am the mother of a child
blind? What advantage have you received from
which belongs to you, without being forced by a
the Revolution? A more pronounced scorn, a
barbarous prejudice to hide the truth. . . .
more marked disdain. . . . [If men persist in
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XIII. For the support of the public force and
contradicting their revolutionary principles,]
the expenses of administration, the contributions
courageously oppose the force of reason to the
of woman and man are equal; she shares all the
empty pretensions of superiority . . . and you will
duties . . . and all the painful tasks; therefore, she
soon see these haughty men, not groveling at
must have the same share in the distribution of
your feet as servile adorers, but proud to share
positions, employment, offices, honors, and
with you the treasure of the Supreme Being.
jobs. . . .
Regardless of what barriers confront you; it is in
XIV. Female and male citizens have the right
your power to free yourselves; you have only to
to verify, either by themselves or through their
want to. . . .
representatives, the necessity of the public
contribution. This can only apply to women if
they are granted an equal share, not only of
wealth, but also of public administration. . . . Questions for Analysis
XV. The collectivity of women, joined for tax
purposes to the aggregate of men, has the right to 1. On what basis did de Gouges argue for gender
demand an accounting of his administration from equality? Did she believe in natural law?
any public agent. 2. What consequences did “scorn for the rights
XVI. No society has a constitution without the of woman” have for France, according to de
guarantee of rights and the separation of powers; Gouges?
the constitution is null if the majority of
individuals comprising the nation have not 3. Did de Gouges stress political rights at the
cooperated in drafting it. expense of social and economic rights? If so,
XVII. Property belongs to both sexes whether why?
united or separate; for each it is an inviolable and
Source: Olympe de Gouges, “Declaration of the Rights of
sacred right. . . . Woman,” in Darline G. Levy, Harriet B. Applewhite, and
Postscript Mary D. Johnson, eds., Women in Revolutionary Paris,
1789–1795 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979),
Women, wake up. . . . Discover your rights. . . . pp. 87–96. Copyright © 1979 by the Board of Trustees,
Oh, women, women! When will you cease to be University of Illinois. Used with permission.
715
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A colorful timetable poster lists the trains from London to Folkstone, the English Channel’s gateway port to the
European continent, and proudly proclaims the speed of the journey. (Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library)
c h a p t e r
22
The Revolution
in Energy and
Industry,
ca 1780–1860
chapter preview
The Industrial Revolution in

Britain
• What were the origins of the
W hile the revolution in France was opening a new political era, an-
other revolution was beginning to transform economic and so-
cial life. This was the Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain
Industrial Revolution in Britain, and around the 1780s and started to influence continental Europe after
how did it develop between 1780 and 1815. Because the Industrial Revolution was less dramatic than the
1850? French Revolution, some historians see industrial development as basi-
cally moderate and evolutionary. But from a longer perspective, it was
Industrialization in Continental
rapid and brought about numerous radical changes. Quite possibly only
Europe
the development of agriculture during Neolithic times had a comparable
• How after 1815 did continental impact and significance.
countries respond to the challenge of The Industrial Revolution profoundly modified much of human expe-
industrialization? Apago PDF Enhancer
rience. It changed patterns of work, transformed the social class structure
Relations Between Capital and and the way people thought about class, and eventually even altered the
Labor international balance of political power. The Industrial Revolution also
• How did the Industrial Revolution helped ordinary people gain a higher standard of living as the widespread
affect social classes, the standard of poverty of the preindustrial world was gradually reduced.
living, and patterns of work? What Unfortunately, the improvement in the European standard of living
was quite limited until about 1850 for at least two reasons. First, even in
measures were taken to improve the
Britain, only a few key industries experienced a technological revolution.
conditions of workers?
Many more industries continued to use old methods, especially on the
continent, and this held down the increase in total production. Second,
the increase in total population, which began in the eighteenth century
(see pages 625–628), continued all across Europe as the era of the In-
dustrial Revolution unfolded. As a result, the rapid growth in population
threatened to eat up the growth in production and to leave most indi-
viduals poorer than ever. As a consequence, rapid population growth
provided a somber background for European industrialization and made
the wrenching transformation all the more difficult.
717
718 CHAPTER 22 • T H E R E V O L U T I O N I N E N E R G Y A N D I N D U S T R Y, C A 1 7 8 0 – 1 8 6 0
Coal producing areas
The Industrial Revolution Major areas of metal goods

production, ca 1750
in Britain SCOTLAND Major areas of woolen cloth
production, ca 1750
Canals built between
The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain, that l l
1760 and 1800

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wealthiest and the dominant part of the country. It
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Eighteenth-Century Origins
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agreed that the industrial changes that did occur grew out anne l
English Ch
of a long process of development. First, the expanding
Atlantic economy of the eighteenth century served mer-
cantilist Britain remarkably well. The colonial empire that MAP 22.1 Cottage Industry and Transportation
Britain aggressively built, augmented by a strong position in Eighteenth-Century England England had an
in Latin America and in the African slave trade, provided unusually good system of navigable rivers. From about
1770 to 1800 a canal-building boom linked these rivers
a growing market for British manufactured goods. So did together and greatly improved inland transportation.
the domestic market. In an age when it was much cheaper
to ship goods by water than by land, no part of England Improve Your Grade
was more than twenty miles from navigable water. Be- Interactive Map: Cottage Industry and Transporta-
ginning in the 1770s, a canal-building boom greatly en- tion in Eighteenth-Century England
hanced this natural advantage (see Map 22.1). Rivers and
canals provided easy movement of England’s and Wales’s
enormous deposits of iron and coal, resources that would buy bread. It could spend more on, for example, manu-
be critical raw materials in Europe’s early industrial age. factured goods—leather shoes or a razor for the man, a
Nor were there any tariffs within the country to hinder bonnet or a shawl for the woman, toy soldiers for the
trade, as there were in France before 1789 and in politi- son, and a doll for the daughter. Thus demand for goods
cally fragmented Germany. within the country complemented the demand from the
Second, agriculture played a central role in bringing colonies.
about the Industrial Revolution in Britain. English farm- Third, Britain had other assets that helped give rise to
ers in particular were second only to the Dutch in pro- industrial leadership. Unlike eighteenth-century France,
ductivity in 1700, and they were continually adopting Britain had an effective central bank and well-developed
new methods of farming as the century went on. The credit markets. The monarchy and the aristocratic oli-
result, especially before 1760, was a period of bountiful garchy, which had jointly ruled the country since 1688,
crops and low food prices. The ordinary English family provided stable and predictable government. At the same
did not have to spend almost everything it earned just to time, the government let the domestic economy operate
The Industrial Revolution in Britain • 719
with few controls, encouraging personal initiative, tech- Chronology

nical change, and a free market. Finally, Britain had long
had a large class of hired agricultural laborers, rural pro- ca 1765 Hargreaves invents spinning jenny
letarians whose numbers were further increased by the
second great round of enclosures in the late eighteenth 1769 Watt creates modern steam engine
century. These rural wage earners were relatively mobile— 1775–1783 American Revolution
compared to village-bound peasants in France and west-
ern Germany, for example—and along with cottage 1780s–1850 Industrial Revolution
workers they formed a potential industrial labor force for 1780–1851 Population boom in England
capitalist entrepreneurs.
All these factors combined to initiate the Industrial 1789–1799 French Revolution
Revolution, a term first coined by awed contemporaries 1798 Malthus, Essay on the Principle of Population
in the 1830s to describe the burst of major inventions
and technical changes they had witnessed in certain in- 1799 Combination Acts passed
dustries. This technical revolution went hand in hand 1810 Strike of Manchester cotton spinners
with an impressive quickening in the annual rate of in-
dustrial growth in Britain. Whereas industry had grown 1824 Combination Acts repealed
at only 0.7 percent between 1700 and 1760 (before the 1830s Industrial banks in Belgium
Industrial Revolution), it grew at the much higher rate
of 3 percent between 1801 and 1831 (when industrial 1830 Stephenson’s Rocket; first important railroad
transformation was in full swing).1 The decisive quick- 1833 Factory Act
ening of growth probably came in the 1780s, after the
American War of Independence and just before the 1841 List, National System of Political Economy
French Revolution. 1842 Mines Act
Therefore, the great economic and political revolu-
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1844 Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in
tions that shaped the modern world occurred almost si-
multaneously, though they began in different countries. England
The Industrial Revolution was, however, a longer process 1851 Great Exhibition held at Crystal Palace
than the political upheavals. It was not complete in
Britain until 1850 at the earliest, and it had no real im-
pact on continental countries until after 1815.
A constant shortage of thread in the textile industry
focused attention on ways of improving spinning. Many
The First Factories a tinkering worker knew that a better spinning wheel
The pressure to produce more goods for a growing mar- promised rich rewards. It proved hard to spin the tradi-
ket was directly related to the first decisive breakthrough tional raw materials—wool and flax—with improved ma-
of the Industrial Revolution—the creation of the world’s chines, but cotton was different. Cotton textiles had first
first large factories in the British cotton textile industry. been imported into Britain from India by the East India
Technological innovations in the manufacture of cotton Company, and by 1760 there was a tiny domestic indus-
cloth led to a new system of production and social rela- try in northern England. After many experiments over a
tionships. Since no other industry experienced such a generation, a gifted carpenter and jack-of-all-trades, James
rapid or complete transformation before 1830, these Hargreaves, invented his cotton-spinning jenny about
trailblazing developments deserve special consideration. 1765. At almost the same moment, a barber-turned-
Although the putting-out system of merchant capital- manufacturer named Richard Arkwright invented (or
ism (see page 629) was expanding all across Europe in possibly pirated) another kind of spinning machine, the
the eighteenth century, this pattern of rural industry was water frame. These breakthroughs produced an explo-
most fully developed in Britain. There, under the pression in the infant cotton textile industry in the 1780s,
sure of growing demand, the system’s limitations began when it was increasing the value of its output at an un-
to outweigh its advantages for the first time. This was es- precedented rate of about 13 percent each year. By 1790
pecially true in the British textile industry after about the new machines were producing ten times as much cot-
1760. ton yarn as had been made in 1770.
Woman Working a
Hargreaves’s Spinning Jenny
The loose cotton strands on the
slanted bobbins passed up to the
sliding carriage and then on to the
spindles in back for fine spinning.
The worker, almost always a
woman, regulated the sliding
carriage with one hand, and with
the other she turned the crank on
the wheel to supply power. By
1783 one woman could spin by
hand a hundred threads at a time
on an improved model. (Mary
Evans Picture Library)
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Cotton goods became much cheaper, and they were
Improve Your Grade
bought and treasured by all classes. In the past, only the
Primary Source: Manchester Becomes a Thriving
Industrial City
wealthy could afford the comfort and cleanliness of un-
derwear, which was called body linen because it was
Hargreaves’s spinning jenny was simple and inexpen- made from expensive linen cloth. Now millions of poor
sive. In early models, from six to twenty-four spindles people, who had earlier worn nothing underneath their
were mounted on a sliding carriage, and each spindle coarse, filthy outer garments, could afford to wear cotton
spun a fine, slender thread. The woman moved the car- slips and underpants as well as cotton dresses and shirts.
riage back and forth with one hand and turned a wheel to Families using cotton in cottage industry were freed
supply power with the other. Now it was the male weaver from their constant search for adequate yarn from scat-
who could not keep up with the vastly more efficient fe- tered, part-time spinners, since all the thread needed
male spinner. could be spun in the cottage on the jenny or obtained
Arkwright’s water frame employed a different prin- from a nearby factory. The wages of weavers, now hard-
ciple. It quickly acquired a capacity of several hundred pressed to keep up with the spinners, rose markedly until
spindles and demanded much more power—waterpower. about 1792. Weavers were among the best-paid workers
The water frame thus required large specialized mills, in England. They were known to walk proudly through
factories that employed as many as one thousand workers the streets with 5-pound notes stuck in their hatbands,
from the very beginning. The water frame could spin only and they dressed like the middle class. As a result, large
coarse, strong thread, which was then put out for respin- numbers of agricultural laborers became hand-loom
ning on hand-powered cottage jennies. Around 1790 an weavers, while mechanics and capitalists sought to invent
alternative technique invented by Samuel Crompton also a power loom to save on labor costs. This Edmund
began to require more power than the human arm could Cartwright achieved in 1785. But the power looms of the
supply. After that time, all cotton spinning was gradually factories worked poorly at first, and hand-loom weavers
concentrated in factories. continued to receive good wages until at least 1800.
The first consequences of these revolutionary develop- Working conditions in the early factories were less satis-
ments were more beneficial than is generally believed. factory than those of cottage weavers and spinners, and
people were reluctant to work in them. Therefore, factory society continued to rely for energy mainly on plants, and
owners often turned to young children who had been human beings and animals continued to perform most
abandoned by their parents and put in the care of local work. This dependence meant that Western civilization
parishes. Parish officers often “apprenticed” such unfortu- remained poor in energy and power.
nate foundlings to factory owners. The parish thus saved Lack of power lay at the heart of the poverty that af-
money, and the factory owners gained workers over whom flicted the large majority of people. The man behind the
they exercised almost the authority of slave owners. plow and the woman at the spinning wheel could employ
Apprenticed as young as five or six years of age, boy only horsepower and human muscle in their labor. No
and girl workers were forced by law to labor for their matter how hard they worked, they could not produce
“masters” for as many as fourteen years. Housed, fed, very much.
and locked up nightly in factory dormitories, the young The shortage of energy had become particularly severe
workers received little or no pay. Hours were appalling— in Britain by the eighteenth century. Because of the growth
commonly thirteen or fourteen hours a day, six days a of population, most of the great forests of medieval Britain
week. Harsh physical punishment maintained brutal dis- had long ago been replaced by fields of grain and hay.
cipline. To be sure, poor children typically worked long Wood was in ever-shorter supply, yet it remained tremen-
hours and frequently outside the home for brutal mas- dously important. It served as the primary source of heat
ters. But the wholesale coercion of orphans as factory for all homes and industries and as a basic raw material.
apprentices constituted exploitation on a truly unprece- Processed wood (charcoal) was the fuel that was mixed
dented scale. This exploitation ultimately piqued the with iron ore in the blast furnace to produce pig iron. The
conscience of reformers and reinforced more humanitar- iron industry’s appetite for wood was enormous, and by
ian attitudes toward children and their labor in the early 1740 the British iron industry was stagnating. Vast forests
nineteenth century. enabled Russia to become the world’s leading producer of
The creation of the world’s first modern factories in iron, much of which was exported to Britain. But Russia’s
the British cotton textile industry in the 1770s and 1780s, potential for growth was limited, too, and in a few decades
which grew out of the putting-out system of cottage pro-
Apago PDF Enhancer Russia would reach the barrier of inadequate energy that
duction, was a major historical development. Both sym- was already holding England back.
bolically and substantially, the big new cotton mills marked
the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Britain. By
1831 the largely mechanized cotton textile industry tow-
The Steam Engine Breakthrough
ered above all others, accounting for fully 22 percent of As this early energy crisis grew worse, Britain looked
the country’s entire industrial production. toward its abundant and widely scattered reserves of coal
as an alternative to its vanishing wood. Coal was first used
in Britain in the late Middle Ages as a source of heat. By
The Problem of Energy 1640 most homes in London were heated with it, and it
The growth of the cotton textile industry might have also provided heat for making beer, glass, soap, and other
been stunted or cut short, however, if water from rivers products. Coal was not used, however, to produce me-
and streams had remained the primary source of power chanical energy or to power machinery. It was there that
for the new factories. But this did not occur. Instead, an coal’s potential was enormous, as a simple example shows.
epoch-making solution was found to the age-old prob- A hard-working miner can dig out 500 pounds of coal
lem of energy and power. This solution permitted con- a day using hand tools. Even an extremely inefficient
tinued rapid development in cotton textiles, the gradual converter, which transforms only 1 percent of the heat
generalization of the factory system, and the triumph of energy in coal into mechanical energy, will produce 27
the Industrial Revolution in Britain. horsepower-hours of work from that 500 pounds of coal.
Human beings have long used their toolmaking abili- The miner, by contrast, produces only about 1 horsepower-
ties to construct machines that convert one form of en- hour in the course of a day. Early steam engines were pow-
ergy into another for their own benefit. In the medieval erful but still inefficient converters of energy.
period, people began to develop water mills to grind their As more coal was produced, mines were dug deeper
grain and windmills to pump water and drain swamps. and deeper and were constantly filling with water. Me-
More efficient use of water and wind in the sixteenth and chanical pumps, usually powered by animals walking in
seventeenth centuries enabled human beings to accom- circles at the surface, had to be installed. At one mine,
plish more; intercontinental sailing ships were a prime fully five hundred horses were used in pumping. Such
example. Nevertheless, even into the eighteenth century, power was expensive and bothersome. In an attempt to
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Manchester, England, 1851 The development of the steam engine enabled industry to concen-
trate in towns and cities. Manchester mushroomed from a town of 20,000 in 1750 into “Cotton-
opolis,” cotton city, with 400,000 inhabitants in 1850. In this painting the artist contrasts the
smoky city and its awesome power with the idealized beauty of the suburbs, where the new rich
settled and built their mansions. (The Royal Collection, © 2007 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II)
overcome these disadvantages, Thomas Savery in 1698 invention, patented in 1769, greatly increased the effi-
and Thomas Newcomen in 1705 invented the first prim- ciency of the steam engine.
itive steam engines. Both engines were extremely inef- To invent something in a laboratory is one thing; to
ficient. Both burned coal to produce steam, which was make it a practical success is quite another. Watt needed
then used to operate a pump. However, by the early skilled workers, precision parts, and capital, and the rela-
1770s, many of the Savery engines and hundreds of the tively advanced nature of the British economy proved es-
Newcomen engines were operating successfully, though sential. A partnership with a wealthy English toymaker
inefficiently, in English and Scottish mines. provided risk capital and a manufacturing plant. In the
In the early 1760s, a gifted young Scot named James craft tradition of locksmiths, tinsmiths, and millwrights,
Watt (1736–1819) was drawn to a critical study of the Watt found skilled mechanics who could install, regulate,
steam engine. Watt was employed at the time by the Uni- and repair his sophisticated engines. From ingenious
versity of Glasgow as a skilled craftsman making scientific manufacturers such as the cannonmaker John Wilkinson,
instruments. The Scottish universities were pioneers in Watt was gradually able to purchase precision parts. This
practical technical education, and in 1763 Watt was support allowed him to create an effective vacuum and
called on to repair a Newcomen engine being used in a regulate a complex engine. In more than twenty years of
physics course. After a series of observations, Watt saw constant effort, Watt made many further improvements.
that the Newcomen engine’s waste of energy could be By the late 1780s, the steam engine had become a prac-
reduced by adding a separate condenser. This splendid tical and commercial success in Britain.
The steam engine of Watt and his followers was the In- which allowed pig iron to be refined in turn with coke.
dustrial Revolution’s most fundamental advance in tech- Strong, skilled ironworkers—the puddlers—“cooked”
nology. For the first time in history, humanity had, at molten pig iron in a great vat, raking off globs of refined
least for a few generations, almost unlimited power at its iron for further processing. Cort also developed heavy-
disposal. For the first time, inventors and engineers could duty, steam-powered rolling mills, which were capable of
devise and implement all kinds of power equipment to spewing out finished iron in every shape and form.
aid people in their work. For the first time, abundance The economic consequence of these technical innova-
was at least a possibility for ordinary men and women. tions was a great boom in the British iron industry. In
The steam engine was quickly put to use in several in- 1740 annual British iron production was only 17,000
dustries in Britain. It drained mines and made possible tons. With the spread of coke smelting and the first im-
the production of ever more coal to feed steam engines pact of Cort’s inventions, production reached 68,000
elsewhere. The steam-power plant began to replace wa- tons in 1788, 125,000 tons in 1796, and 260,000 tons
terpower in the cotton-spinning mills during the 1780s, in 1806. In 1844 Britain produced 3 million tons of
contributing greatly to that industry’s phenomenal rise. iron. This was a truly amazing expansion. Once scarce and
Steam also took the place of waterpower in flour mills, expensive, iron became the cheap, basic, indispensable
in the malt mills used in breweries, in the flint mills sup- building block of the economy.
plying the china industry, and in the mills exported by
Britain to the West Indies to crush sugar cane.
Steam power promoted important breakthroughs in
The Coming of the Railroads
other industries. The British iron industry was radically The second half of the eighteenth century saw extensive
transformed. The use of powerful, steam-driven bellows construction of hard and relatively smooth roads, partic-
in blast furnaces helped ironmakers switch over rapidly ularly in France before the Revolution. Yet it was passen-
from limited charcoal to unlimited coke (which is made ger traffic that benefited most from this construction.
from coal) in the smelting of pig iron after 1770. In the Overland shipment of freight, relying solely on horse-
1780s, Henry Cort developed the puddling furnace,
Apago PDF Enhancer power, was still quite limited and frightfully expensive;
James Nasmyth’s Mighty Steam

Hammer Nasmyth’s invention
was the forerunner of the modern
pile driver, and its successful intro-
duction in 1832 epitomized the
rapid development of steam power
technology in Britain. In this paint-
ing by the inventor himself, work-
ers manipulate a massive iron shaft
being hammered into shape at
Nasmyth’s foundry near Manches-
ter. (Science & Society Picture Library,
London)
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The Saltash Bridge Railroad construction presented innumerable challenges, such as the
building of bridges to span rivers and gorges. Civil engineers responded with impressive feats, and
their profession bounded ahead. This painting portrays the inauguration of I. K. Brunel’s Saltash
Bridge, where the railroad crosses the Tamar River into Cornwall in southwest England. The high
spans allow large ships to pass underneath. (Elton Collection, Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust)
shippers used rivers and canals for heavy freight whenever Stephenson built an effective locomotive. In 1830 his
possible. It was logical, therefore, that inventors would Rocket sped down the track of the just-completed Liver-
try to use steam power. pool and Manchester Railway at sixteen miles per hour.
As early as 1800, an American ran a “steamer on This was the world’s first important railroad, fittingly
wheels” through city streets. Other experiments followed. steaming in the heart of industrial England. The line
In the 1820s, English engineers created steam cars capable from Liverpool to Manchester was a financial as well as a
of carrying fourteen passengers at ten miles an hour—as technical success, and many private companies were quickly
fast as the mail coach. But the noisy, heavy steam auto- organized to build more rail lines. Within twenty years,
mobiles frightened passing horses and damaged them- they had completed the main trunk lines of Great Britain.
selves as well as the roads with their vibrations. For the Other countries were quick to follow.
rest of the century, horses continued to reign on high- The significance of the railroad was tremendous. The
ways and city streets. railroad dramatically reduced the cost and uncertainty of
The coal industry had long been using plank roads and shipping freight overland. This advance had many eco-
rails to move coal wagons within mines and at the sur- nomic consequences. Previously, markets had tended to be
face. Rails reduced friction and allowed a horse or a hu- small and local; as the barrier of high transportation costs
man being to pull a heavier load. Thus once a rail capable was lowered, markets became larger and even nationwide.
of supporting a heavy locomotive was developed in Larger markets encouraged larger factories with more so-
1816, all sorts of experiments with steam engines on rails phisticated machinery in a growing number of industries.
went forward. In 1825 after ten years of work, George Such factories could make goods more cheaply and gradu-
ally subjected most cottage workers and many urban arti- Towns with over 20,000
sans to severe competitive pressures. people are shown
In all countries, the construction of railroads created a

50 400 2.4
strong demand for unskilled labor and contributed to the SCOTLAND Thousand Million
Cities with over 100,000
growth of a class of urban workers. Hard work on con- people are labeled
struction gangs was done in the open air with animals and Exposed coalfields
hand tools. Many landless farm laborers and poor peasants, Industrial areas
long accustomed to leaving their villages for temporary Principal railroads
employment, went to build railroads. By the time the work
0 50 Km
was finished, life back home in the village often seemed
dull and unappealing, and many men drifted to towns in 0 50 Mi
search of work. By the time they sent for their wives and
Cotton and woolen textiles Bradford North
Leeds
sweethearts to join them, they had become urban workers. Machinery
Iron
Irish Sea Sea
The railroad changed the outlook and values of the en- Liverpool Sheffield
tire society. The last and culminating invention of the In- Manchester
Iron
Hardware
dustrial Revolution, the railroad dramatically revealed
the power and increased the speed of the new age. Rac-
Birmingham
ing down a track at sixteen miles per hour or, by 1850, at
WALES Iron
a phenomenal fifty miles per hour was a new and awe- Machinery
Pottery
some experience. As a French economist put it after a Iron
London
ride on the Liverpool and Manchester in 1833, “There
Bristol
are certain impressions that one cannot put into words!”
Machinery
Some great painters, notably Joseph M. W. Turner Consumer goods
(1775–1851) and Claude Monet (1840–1926), suc-

ceeded in expressing this sense of power and awe. So did
Apago PDF Enhancer Tin and copper
mining
anne l
the massive new train stations, the cathedrals of the in- English Ch
dustrial age. Leading railway engineers such as Isambard
Kingdom Brunel and Thomas Brassey, whose tunnels
pierced mountains and whose bridges spanned valleys, MAP 22.2 The Industrial Revolution in England,
became public idols—the astronauts of their day. Every- ca 1850 Industry concentrated in the rapidly growing
cities of the north and the Midlands, where rich coal
day speech absorbed the images of railroading. After you and iron deposits were in close proximity.
got up a “full head of steam,” you “highballed” along.
And if you didn’t “go off the track,” you might “toot Improve Your Grade
Interactive Map: Industrialization in England,
your own whistle.” The railroad fired the imagination.
ca 1850
Industry and Population As the British economy significantly increased its pro-
In 1851 London was the site of a famous industrial fair. duction of manufactured goods, the gross national prod-
This Great Exhibition was held in the newly built Crystal uct (GNP) rose roughly fourfold at constant prices
Palace, an architectural masterpiece made entirely of between 1780 and 1851. In other words, the British
glass and iron, both of which were now cheap and abun- people as a whole increased their wealth and their na-
dant. For the millions who visited, one fact stood out: tional income dramatically. At the same time, the popula-
the little island of Britain was the “workshop of the tion of Britain boomed, growing from about 9 million in
world.” It alone produced two-thirds of the world’s coal 1780 to almost 21 million in 1851. Thus growing num-
and more than one-half of its iron and cotton cloth. bers consumed much of the increase in total production.
More generally, it has been carefully estimated that in According to one important study, average consumption
1860 Britain produced a truly remarkable 20 percent of per person increased by only 75 percent between 1780
the entire world’s output of industrial goods, whereas it and 1851, as the growth in the total population ate up a
had produced only about 2 percent of the world total in large part of the fourfold increase in GNP in those years.3
1750.2 Experiencing revolutionary industrial change, Although the question is still debated, many economic
Britain became the first industrial nation (see Map 22.2). historians now believe that rapid population growth in
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The Crystal Palace The Great Exhibition of 1851 attracted more than six million visitors, many
of whom journeyed to London on the newly built railroads. Countries and companies from all
over the world displayed their products and juries awarded prizes in the strikingly modern Crystal
Palace, an architectural marvel built using the cheap iron and glass of the industrial age. In this
illustration visitors stroll through the domed hall and peruse the 1500 exhibits. (Courtesy of the
Trustees of the British Museum)
Great Britain was not harmful because it facilitated in-

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dustrial expansion. More people meant a more mobile
Primary Source: Malthus Predicts Gloomy Prospects
labor force, with a wealth of young workers in need of
for the Human Condition
employment and ready to go where the jobs were. Con-
temporaries were much less optimistic. In his famous and Wealthy English stockbroker and leading economist
influential Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), David Ricardo (1772–1823) coldly spelled out the pes-
Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) argued that population simistic implications of Malthus’s thought. Ricardo’s de-
would always tend to grow faster than the food supply. In pressing iron law of wages posited that because of the
Malthus’s opinion, the only hope of warding off such pressure of population growth, wages would always sink
“positive checks” to population growth as war, famine, to subsistence level. That is, wages would be just high
and disease was “prudential restraint.” That is, young enough to keep workers from starving. With Malthus and
men and women had to limit the growth of population Ricardo setting the tone, economics was soon dubbed
by the old tried-and-true means of marrying late in life. “the dismal science.”
But Malthus was not optimistic about this possibility. Malthus, Ricardo, and their many followers were proved
The powerful attraction of the sexes would cause most wrong—in the long run. However, until the 1820s, or
people to marry early and have many children. even the 1840s, contemporary observers might reasonably
Industrialization in Continental Europe • 727
have concluded that the economy and the total population year. Therefore, all the numbers in Table 22.1 are ex-
were racing neck and neck, with the outcome very much in pressed in terms of a single index number of 100, which
doubt. The closeness of the race added to the difficulties equals the per capita level of industrial goods in Great
inherent in the journey toward industrial civilization. Britain (and Ireland) in 1900. Every number in the table
There was another problem as well. Perhaps workers, is thus a percentage of the 1900 level in Britain and is di-
farmers, and ordinary people did not get their rightful rectly comparable with other numbers. The countries are
share of the new wealth. Perhaps only the rich got richer, listed in roughly the order that they began to use large-
while the poor got poorer or made no progress. We will scale, power-driven technology.
turn to this great issue after looking at the process of in- What does this overview of European industrialization
dustrialization in continental countries. tell us? First, and very significantly, one sees in the first col-
umn that in 1750 all countries were fairly close together
and that Britain was only slightly ahead of its archenemy,
Industrialization in France. Second, the column headed 1800 shows that
Britain had opened up a noticeable lead over all continen-
Continental Europe tal countries by 1800, and that gap progressively widened
The new technologies developed in the British Industrial as the British Industrial Revolution accelerated to 1830
Revolution were adopted rather slowly by businesses in and reached full maturity by 1860. The British level of per
continental Europe. Yet by the end of the nineteenth capita industrialization was twice the French level in 1830,
century, several European countries as well as the United for example, and more than three times the French level in
States had also industrialized their economies to a con- 1860. All other large countries (except the United States)
siderable but variable degree. This meant that the proc- had fallen even further behind Britain than France had at
ess of Western industrialization proceeded gradually, both dates.
with uneven jerks and national (and regional) variations. Third, variations in the timing and in the extent of in-
Scholars are still struggling to explain these variations, dustrialization in the continental powers and the United
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especially since good answers may offer valuable lessons States are also apparent. Belgium, independent in 1831
in our own time for poor countries seeking to improve and rich in iron and coal, led in adopting Britain’s new
their material condition through industrialization and technology, and it experienced a truly revolutionary surge
economic development. The latest findings on the West- between 1830 and 1860. France developed factory pro-
ern experience are encouraging. They suggest that there duction more gradually, and most historians now detect no
were alternative paths to the industrial world in the nine- burst in French mechanization and no acceleration in the
teenth century and that, today as then, there was no need growth of overall industrial output that may accurately be
to follow a rigid, predetermined British model. called revolutionary. They stress instead France’s relatively
good pattern of early industrial growth, which was unjustly
• How after 1815 did continental countries respond to the
tarnished by the spectacular rise of Germany and the
challenge of industrialization?
United States after 1860. In general, eastern and southern
Europe began the process of modern industrialization later
than northwestern and central Europe. Nevertheless, these
National Variations regions made real progress in the late nineteenth century,
European industrialization, like most economic develop- as growth after 1880 in Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Russia
ments, requires some statistical analysis as part of the ef- suggests.
fort to understand it. Comparative data on industrial Finally, the late but substantial industrialization in east-
production in different countries over time help give us ern and southern Europe meant that all European states
an overview of what happened. One set of data, the work (as well as the United States, Canada, and Japan) managed
of a Swiss scholar, compares the level of industrialization to raise per capita industrial levels in the nineteenth cen-
on a per capita basis in several countries from 1750 to tury. These continent-wide increases stood in stark contrast
1913. These data are far from perfect because there are to the large and tragic decreases that occurred at the same
gaps in the underlying records. But they reflect basic time in many non-Western countries, most notably in
trends and are presented in Table 22.1 for closer study. China and India, as Table 22.1 clearly shows. European
As the heading of Table 22.1 makes clear, this is a per countries industrialized to a greater or lesser extent even as
capita comparison of levels of industrialization—a com- most of the non-Western world de-industrialized. Thus dif-
parison of how much industrial product was produced, ferential rates of wealth- and power-creating industrial de-
on average, for each person in a given country in a given velopment, which heightened disparities within Europe,
Table 22.1 Per Capita Levels of Industrialization, 1750–1913
1750 1800 1830 1860 1880 1900 1913
Great Britain 10 16 25 64 87 100 115

Belgium 9 10 14 28 43 56 88
United States 4 9 14 21 38 69 126
France 9 9 12 20 28 39 59
Germany 8 8 9 15 25 52 85
Austria-Hungary 7 7 8 11 15 23 32
Italy 8 8 8 10 12 17 26
Russia 6 6 7 8 10 15 20
China 8 6 6 4 4 3 3
India 7 6 6 3 2 1 2
Note: All entries are based on an index value of 100, equal to the per capita level of industrialization in Great Britain in
1900. Data for Great Britain are actually for the United Kingdom, thereby including Ireland with England, Wales, and
Scotland.
Source: P. Bairoch, “International Industrialization Levels from 1750 to 1980,” Journal of European Economic History 11
(Spring 1982): 294. Reprinted with permission.
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also greatly magnified existing inequalities between Eu- upheavals that began with the French Revolution had
rope and the rest of the world. We shall return to this another effect: they disrupted trade, created runaway
momentous change in world economic relationships in inflation, and fostered social anxiety. War severed nor-
Chapter 26. mal communications between Britain and the conti-
nent, severely handicapping continental efforts to use new
British machinery and technology. Moreover, the years
The Challenge of Industrialization from 1789 to 1815 were, even for the privileged French
The different patterns of industrial development suggest economy receiving special favors from Napoleon, a time
that the process of industrialization was far from auto- of “national catastrophe”—in the graphic words of a fa-
matic. Indeed, building modern industry was an awe- mous French scholar.4 Thus France and the rest of Eu-
some challenge. To be sure, throughout Europe the rope were further behind Britain in 1815 than in 1789.
eighteenth century was an era of agricultural improve- This widening gap made it more difficult, if not im-
ment, population increase, expanding foreign trade, and possible, for other countries to follow the British pattern
growing cottage industry. Thus when the pace of British in energy and industry after peace was restored in 1815.
industry began to accelerate in the 1780s, continental Above all, in the newly mechanized industries, British
businesses began to adopt the new methods as they goods were being produced very economically, and these
proved their profitability. British industry enjoyed clear goods had come to dominate world markets completely
superiority, but at first the continent was close behind. while the continental states were absorbed in war be-
By 1815, however, the situation was quite different. In tween 1792 and 1815. In addition, British technology
spite of wartime difficulties, British industry maintained had become so advanced and complicated that very few
the momentum of the 1780s and continued to grow and engineers or skilled technicians outside England under-
improve between 1789 and 1815. On the continent, the stood it. Moreover, the technology of steam power had
grown much more expensive. It involved large invest- After 1815, however, when continental countries be-
ments in the iron and coal industries and, after 1830, re- gan to face up to the British challenge, they had at
quired the existence of railroads, which were very costly. least three important advantages. First, most continental
Continental business people had great difficulty finding countries had a rich tradition of putting-out enterprise,
the large sums of money the new methods demanded, merchant capitalists, and skilled urban artisans. Such a
and there was a shortage of laborers accustomed to tradition gave continental firms the ability to adapt and
working in factories. All these disadvantages slowed the survive in the face of new market conditions. Second,
spread of modern industry (see Map 22.3). continental capitalists did not need to develop their own
Railroads completed, ca 1850

DENMARK
Major exposed coal deposits
Emerging industrial areas
Scattered ironworks
0 75 150 Km.
Hamburg E lb A
e V is
0 75 150 Mi. NETHERLANDS tu l a
I
Amsterdam Berlin S Warsaw
RUHR
S O d er
ENGLAND
P R U Cotton
Essen
Cotton Cotton Linen POLAND
Brussels Cologne Breslau
Roubaix Liège GERMAN SILESIA
Rh
Lille
CONFEDERATION
Dieppe
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BELGIUM
in e
Frankfurt Prague
Rouen Linen
Cotton
Paris
E
Wool
IR
Linen
Se
Da
ine
nu b e
P
Orléans
M
e Vienna
Nantes L o ir Wool Munich E
Mulhouse Pest
FRANCE N
IA
Zurich Buda
R
Le Creusot SWITZERLAND ST
AU
Lyons Sa v D ra
a va
Bordeaux Milan Trieste
KINGDOM Silk
Grenoble
OF Po Venice
Ga
Rhône
SARDINIA PARMA
ro
nn
A
e
EN
Genoa
OD
Toulouse Avignon
OTTOMAN
M
Silk EMPIRE
TUSCANY
Marseilles PAPAL
SPAIN STATES
Mapping the Past

MAP 22.3 Continental Industrialization, ca 1850 Although continental countries were begin-
ning to make progress by 1850, they still lagged far behind Britain. For example, continental railroad
building was still in an early stage, whereas the British rail system was essentially complete (review
Map 22.2, page 725). Coal played a critical role in nineteenth-century industrialization both as a
power source for steam engines and as a raw material for making iron and steel. 1 Locate the major
exposed (that is, known) coal deposits in 1850. Which countries and areas appear rich in coal resources, and which •
•
appear poor? Is there a difference between northern and southern Europe? 2 What is the relationship between
known coal deposits and emerging industrial areas?
advanced technology. Instead, they could simply “bor- Harkort’s basic idea was simple, but it was enormously
row” the new methods developed in Great Britain, as difficult to carry out. Lacking skilled laborers to do the
well as engineers and some of the financial resources job, Harkort turned to England for experienced, though
these countries lacked. European countries such as expensive, mechanics. Getting materials also posed a
France and Russia also had a third asset that many non- great problem. He had to import the thick iron boilers
Western areas lacked in the nineteenth century. They had that he needed from England at great cost. In spite of all
strong independent governments, which did not fall un- these problems, Harkort built and sold engines, winning
der foreign political control. These governments could fame and praise. His ambitious efforts over sixteen years
fashion economic policies to serve their own interests, as also resulted in large financial losses for himself and his
they proceeded to do. They would eventually use the partners, and in 1832 he was forced out of his company
power of the state to promote industry and catch up with by his financial backers, who cut back operations to re-
Britain. duce losses. His career illustrates both the great efforts of
a few important business leaders to duplicate the British
achievement and the difficulty of the task.
Agents of Industrialization Entrepreneurs like Harkort were obviously exceptional.
The British realized the great value of their technical dis- Most continental businesses adopted factory technology
coveries and tried to keep their secrets to themselves. Un- slowly, and handicraft methods lived on. Indeed, conti-
til 1825 it was illegal for artisans and skilled mechanics to nental industrialization usually brought substantial but
leave Britain; until 1843 the export of textile machinery uneven expansion of handicraft industry in both rural and
and other equipment was forbidden. Many talented, am- urban areas for a time. Artisan production of luxury items
bitious workers, however, slipped out of the country ille- grew in France as the rising income of the international
gally and introduced the new methods abroad. middle class created foreign demand for silk scarfs, em-
One such man was William Cockerill, a Lancashire car- broidered needlework, perfumes, and fine wines.
penter. He and his sons began building cotton-spinning
equipment in French-occupied Belgium in 1799. In
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1817 the most famous son, John Cockerill, purchased Government Support
the old summer palace of the deposed bishops of Liège in
southern Belgium. Cockerill converted the palace into a
and Corporate Banking
large industrial enterprise, which produced machinery, Another major force in continental industrialization was
steam engines, and then railway locomotives. He also es- government, which often helped business people in con-
tablished modern ironworks and coal mines. tinental countries to overcome some of their difficulties.
Cockerill’s plants in the Liège area became an indus- Tariff protection was one such support. For example,
trial nerve center, continually gathering new information after Napoleon’s wars ended in 1815, France was sud-
and transmitting it across Europe. Many skilled British denly flooded with cheaper and better British goods. The
workers came illegally to work for Cockerill, and some French government responded by laying high tariffs on
went on to found their own companies throughout Eu- many British imports in order to protect the French econ-
rope. Newcomers brought the latest plans and secrets, so omy. After 1815 continental governments bore the cost
Cockerill could boast that ten days after an industrial ad- of building roads and canals to improve transportation.
vance occurred in Britain, he knew all about it in Bel- They also bore to a significant extent the cost of build-
gium. Thus British technicians and skilled workers were a ing railroads. Belgium led the way in the 1830s and
powerful force in the spread of early industrialization. 1840s. In an effort to tie the newly independent nation
A second agent of industrialization were talented en- together, the Belgian government decided to construct a
trepreneurs such as Fritz Harkort, a business pioneer in state-owned system. Built rapidly as a unified network,
the German machinery industry. Serving in England as Belgium’s state-owned railroads stimulated the develop-
a Prussian army officer during the Napoleonic wars, ment of heavy industry and made the country an early in-
Harkort was impressed and enchanted with what he saw. dustrial leader. Several of the smaller German states also
He concluded that Germany had to match all these Eng- built state systems.
lish achievements as quickly as possible. Setting up shop The Prussian government provided another kind of in-
in an abandoned castle in the still-tranquil Ruhr Valley, valuable support. It guaranteed that the state treasury
Harkort felt an almost religious calling to build steam en- would pay the interest and principal on railroad bonds if
gines and become the “Watt of Germany.” the closely regulated private companies in Prussia were
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A German Ironworks, 1845 This big business enterprise, the Borsig ironworks in Berlin, mas-
tered the new British method of smelting iron ore with coke. Germany, and especially the state of
Prussia, was well endowed with both iron and coal, and the rapid exploitation of these resources
after 1840 transformed a poor agricultural country into an industrial powerhouse. (akg-images)
unable to do so. Thus railroad investors in Prussia ran also weak, increasingly unable to defend itself and maintain
little risk, and capital was quickly raised. In France the its political independence. To promote industry was to de-
state shouldered all the expense of acquiring and laying fend the nation.
roadbed, including bridges and tunnels. Finished road- The practical policies that List focused on in articles
bed was leased to a carefully supervised private company, and in his influential National System of Political Econ-
which usually benefited from a state guarantee of its debts. omy (1841) were railroad building and the tariff. List
In short, governments helped pay for railroads, the all- supported the formation of a customs union, or Zoll-
important leading sector in continental industrialization. verein, among the separate German states. Such a tariff
The career of German journalist and thinker Friedrich union came into being in 1834, allowing goods to move
List (1789–1846) reflects government’s greater role in in- between the German member states without tariffs, while
dustrialization on the continent than in England. List con- erecting a single uniform tariff against other nations. List
sidered the growth of modern industry of the wanted a high protective tariff, which would encourage
utmost importance because manufacturing was a primary infant industries, allowing them to develop and eventu-
means of increasing people’s well-being and relieving their ally hold their own against their more advanced British
poverty. Moreover, List was a dedicated nationalist. He counterparts. List denounced the British doctrine of free
wrote that the “wider the gap between the backward and trade as little more than Britain’s attempt “to make the
advanced nations becomes, the more dangerous it is to re- rest of the world, like the Hindus, its serfs in all indus-
main behind.” An agricultural nation was not only poor but trial and commercial relations.” By the 1840s List’s
economic nationalism had become increasingly popular ful of countries were closing the gap that had been opened
in Germany and elsewhere. up by the Industrial Revolution.
Finally, banks, like governments, also played a larger
and more creative role on the continent than in Britain.
Previously, almost all banks in Europe had been private, Relations Between
organized as secretive partnerships. Because of the possi-
bility of unlimited financial loss, the partners of private Capital and Labor
banks tended to be quite conservative and were content Industrial development brought new social relations and
to deal with a few rich clients and a few big merchants. intensified long-standing problems between capital and
They generally avoided industrial investment as being labor in both urban workshops and cottage industry (see
too risky. pages 628–631). A new group of factory owners and in-
In the 1830s, two important Belgian banks pioneered dustrial capitalists arose. These men and women and
in a new direction. They received permission from the their families strengthened the wealth and size of the
growth-oriented government to establish themselves as middle class, which had previously been made up mainly
corporations enjoying limited liability. That is, a stock- of merchants and professional people. The nineteenth
holder could lose only his or her original investment in century became the golden age of the middle class. Mod-
the bank’s common stock and could not be assessed for ern industry also created a much larger group, the fac-
any additional losses. Publicizing the risk-reducing ad- tory workers. For the first time, large numbers of men,
vantage of limited liability, these Belgian banks were able women, and children came together under one roof to
to attract many shareholders, large and small. They mo- work with complicated machinery for a single owner or a
bilized impressive resources for investment in big compa- few partners in large companies.
nies, became industrial banks, and successfully promoted The growth of new occupational groups in industry
industrial development. stimulated new thinking about social relations. Often
Similar corporate banks became important in France combined with reflections on the French Revolution,
and Germany in the 1850s and 1860s. Usually working
Apago PDF Enhancer this thinking led to the development of a new overarch-
in collaboration with governments, they established and ing interpretation—a new paradigm—regarding social
developed many railroads and many companies working relationships (see Chapter 23). Briefly, this paradigm ar-
in heavy industry, which were increasingly organized as gued, with considerable success, that individuals were
limited liability corporations. The most famous such bank members of economically determined classes, which had
was the Crédit Mobilier of Paris, founded by Isaac and conflicting interests. Accordingly, the comfortable, well-
Emile Pereire, two young Jewish journalists from Bor- educated “public” of the eighteenth century came in-
deaux. The Crédit Mobilier advertised extensively. It used creasingly to see itself as the backbone of the middle class
the savings of thousands of small investors as well as the re- (or the middle classes), and the “people” gradually trans-
sources of big ones. The activities of the bank were far- formed themselves into the modern working class (or
reaching; it built railroads all over France and Europe. As working classes). And if the new class interpretation was
Emile Pereire had said in 1835, “It is not enough to out- more of a deceptive simplification than a fundamental
line gigantic programs on paper. I must write my ideas on truth for some critics, it appealed to many because it
the earth.” seemed to explain what was happening. Therefore, con-
The combined efforts of skilled workers, entrepreneurs, flicting classes existed, in part, because many individuals
governments, and industrial banks meshed successfully came to believe they existed and developed an appro-
between 1850 and the financial crash of 1873. This was a priate sense of class feeling—what Marxists call class-
period of unprecedentedly rapid economic growth on the consciousness.
continent. In Belgium, Germany, and France, key indica-
tors of modern industrial development—such as railway • How did the Industrial Revolution affect social classes,
mileage, iron and coal production, and steam-engine the standard of living, and patterns of work? What
capacity—increased at average annual rates of 5 to 10 per- measures were taken to improve the conditions of workers?
cent. As a result, rail networks were completed in western
and much of central Europe, and the leading continental
countries mastered the industrial technologies that had first
The New Class of Factory Owners
been developed in Great Britain. In the early 1870s, Britain Early industrialists operated in a highly competitive eco-
was still Europe’s most industrial nation, but a select hand- nomic system. As the careers of Watt and Harkort illus-
Relations Between Capital and Labor • 733
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Ford Maddox Brown: Work This midcentury painting provides a rich visual representation of
the new concepts of social class that became common by 1850. The central figures are the colorful
laborers, endowed by the artist with strength and nobility. Close by, a poor girl minds her brother
and sister for her working mother. On the right, a middle-class minister and a social critic observe
and do intellectual work. What work does the couple on horseback perform? (Birmingham Museums
and Art Gallery/ The Bridgeman Art Library)
trate, there were countless production problems, and suc- network of contacts and support. Others, such as Watt
cess and large profits were by no means certain. Manufac- and Cockerill, were of modest means, especially in the
turers therefore waged a constant battle to cut their early days. Artisans and skilled workers of exceptional
production costs and stay afloat. Much of the profit had to ability had unparalleled opportunities. Members of eth-
go back into the business for new and better machinery. nic and religious groups who had been discriminated
“Dragged on by the frenzy of this terrible life,” according against in the traditional occupations controlled by the
to one of the dismayed critics, the struggling manufacturer landed aristocracy jumped at the new chances and often
had “no time for niceties. He must conquer or die, make a helped each other. Scots, Quakers, and other Protestant
fortune or drown himself.”5 dissenters were tremendously important in Britain;
Most early industrialists drew upon their families and Protestants and Jews dominated banking in Catholic
friends for labor and capital, but they came from a vari- France. Many of the industrialists were newly rich,
ety of backgrounds. Many, such as Harkort, were from and, not surprisingly, they were very proud and self-
well-established merchant families, which provided a rich satisfied.
As factories and firms grew larger, opportunities de- don poor. William Wordsworth (1770–1850) lamented the
clined, at least in well-developed industries. It became destruction of the rural way of life and the pollution of the
considerably harder for a gifted but poor young mechanic land and water. Some handicraft workers—notably the
to start a small enterprise and end up as a wealthy manu- Luddites, who attacked whole factories in northern Eng-
facturer. Formal education (for sons and males) became land in 1812 and after—smashed the new machines, which
more important as a means of success and advancement, they believed were putting them out of work. Doctors and
and formal education at the advanced level was expensive. reformers wrote eloquently of problems in the factories and
In Britain by 1830 and in France and Germany by 1860, new towns, while Malthus and Ricardo concluded that
leading industrialists were more likely to have inherited workers would earn only enough to stay alive.
their well-established enterprises, and they were finan-
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cially much more secure than their struggling fathers and
Primary Source: Yorkshire Luddites Threaten the
mothers had been. They also had a greater sense of class- Owner of a Mechanized Factory
consciousness, fully aware that ongoing industrial devel-
opment had widened the gap between themselves and This pessimistic view was accepted and reinforced by
their workers. Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), the future revolutionary
The wives and daughters of successful businessmen and colleague of Karl Marx. After studying conditions in
also found fewer opportunities for active participation in northern England, this young middle-class German pub-
Europe’s increasingly complex business world. Rather lished in 1844 The Condition of the Working Class in
than contributing as vital partners in a family-owned en- England, a blistering indictment of the middle classes.
terprise, as so many middle-class women such as Eliza- “At the bar of world opinion,” he wrote, “I charge the
beth Strutt had done (see the feature “Individuals in English middle classes with mass murder, wholesale rob-
Society: The Strutt Family”), these women were increas- bery, and all the other crimes in the calendar.” The new
ingly valued for their ladylike gentility. By 1850 some in- poverty of industrial workers was worse than the old
fluential women writers and most businessmen assumed poverty of cottage workers and agricultural laborers, ac-
that middle-class wives and daughters should steer clear
Apago PDF Enhancer cording to Engels. The culprit was industrial capitalism,
of undignified work in offices and factories. Rather, a with its relentless competition and constant technical
middle-class lady should protect and enhance her femi- change. Engels’s extremely influential charge of middle-
ninity. She should concentrate on her proper role as wife class exploitation and increasing worker poverty was em-
and mother, preferably in an elegant residential area far bellished by Marx and later socialists.
removed from ruthless commerce and the volatile work- Meanwhile, other observers believed that conditions
ing class. were improving for the working people. Andrew Ure
wrote in 1835 in his study of the cotton industry that
conditions in most factories were not harsh and were
The New Factory Workers even quite good. Edwin Chadwick, a great and conscien-
The social consequences of the Industrial Revolution tious government official well acquainted with the prob-
have long been hotly debated. The condition of British lems of the working population, concluded that the
workers during the transformation has always generated “whole mass of the laboring community” was increas-
the most controversy among historians because Britain ingly able “to buy more of the necessities and minor lux-
was the first country to industrialize and because the so- uries of life.”6 Nevertheless, if all the contemporary
cial consequences seemed harshest there. Before 1850 assessments had been counted up, those who thought
other countries had not proceeded very far with industri- conditions were getting worse for working people would
alization, and almost everyone agrees that the economic probably have been the majority.
conditions of European workers improved after 1850. In an attempt to go beyond the contradictory judg-
Thus the experience of British workers to about 1850 de- ments of contemporaries, some historians have looked at
serves special attention. (Industrial growth also promoted different kinds of sources. Statistical evidence is one such
rapid urbanization, with its own awesome problems, as source. If working people suffered a great economic de-
will be shown in Chapter 24.) cline, as Engels and later socialists asserted, then the pur-
From the beginning, the Industrial Revolution in Britain chasing power of the working person’s wages must have
had its critics. Among the first were the romantic poets. declined drastically.
William Blake (1757–1827) called the early factories “sa- Scholarly statistical studies have weakened the idea
tanic mills” and protested against the hard life of the Lon- that the condition of the working class got much worse
Individuals
in Society
The Strutt Family
F or centuries economic life in Europe revolved around a partner in herself.”‡

hundreds of thousands of small family enterprises. Historians have often
These family enterprises worked farms, crafted prod- overlooked such invalu-
ucts, and traded goods. They built and operated the able contributions from
firms and factories of the early industrial era, with the wives like Elizabeth,
notable exceptions of the capital-hungry railroads and partly because the legal
a few big banks. Indeed, until late in the nineteenth rights and consequences of
century, close-knit family groups continued to control partnership were denied to
most successful businesses, including those organized married women in Britain
as corporations. and Europe in the eigh-
One successful and fairly well-documented family teenth and nineteenth
enterprise began with the marriage of Jedediah Strutt centuries.
(1726–1797) and Elizabeth Woollat (1729–1774) in The Strutt enterprise
Derbyshire in northern England in 1755. The son of a grew and gradually pros- Jedediah Strutt (ca 1790),
farmer, Jedediah fell in love with Elizabeth when he pered, but it always re- by Joseph Wright of Derby.
(Derby Museum & Art Gallery/
was apprenticed away from home as a wheelwright tained its family character.
The Bridgeman Art Library)
and lodged with her parents. Both young people grew The firm built a large silk
up in the close-knit dissenting Protestant community, mill and then went into
which did not accept the doctrines of the state-sponsored cotton spinning in partnership with Richard
Church of England, and the well-educated Elizabeth Arkwright, the inventor of the water frame (see
Apago PDF Enhancer
worked in a local school for dissenters and then for a page 720). The brothers of both Jedediah and Elizabeth
dissenter minister in London. Indecisive and self- worked for the firm, and their eldest daughter worked
absorbed, Jedediah inherited in 1754 a small stock of long hours in the warehouse. Bearing three sons, Eliza-
animals from an uncle and finally married Elizabeth the beth fulfilled yet another vital task because the typical
following year. family firm looked to its own members for managers
Aided by Elizabeth, who was “obviously a very and continued success. All three sons entered the busi-
capable woman” and who supplied some of the drive ness and became cotton textile magnates. Elizabeth
her husband had previously lacked, Jedediah embarked never saw these triumphs. The loyal and talented wife
on a new career.* He invented a machine to make in the family partnership died suddenly at age forty-five
handsome, neat-fitting ribbed silk stockings, which had while in London with Jedediah on a business trip.
previously been made by hand. He secured a patent,
despite strong opposition from competitors, and went Questions for Analysis
into production. Elizabeth helped constantly in the
enterprise, which was nothing less than an informal 1. How and why did the Strutts succeed?
partnership between husband and wife.† 2. What does Elizabeth’s life tell us about the role of
In 1757, for example, when Jedediah was fighting British women in the early Industrial Revolution?
to uphold his patent in the local court, Elizabeth left *R. Fitton and A. Wadsworth, The Strutts and the Arkwrights,
her son of nine months and journeyed to London to 1758–1830: A Study of the Early Factory System (Manchester,
seek a badly needed loan from her former employer. England: Manchester University Press, 1958), p. 23.
She also canvassed her London relatives and dissenter †See the excellent discussion by C. Hall, “Strains in the
friends for orders for stockings and looked for sales ‘Firm of Wife, Children and Friends’? Middle-Class Women
agents and sources of capital. Elizabeth’s letters reveal and Employment in Early Nineteenth-Century England,” in
P. Hudson and W. Lee, eds., Women’s Work and the Family
a detailed knowledge of ribbed stockings and the prices
Economy in Historical Perspective (Manchester, England:
and quality of different kinds of thread. The family Manchester University Press, 1990), pp. 106–132.
biographers, old-line economic historians writing with- ‡
Fitton and Wadsworth, The Strutts, pp. 110–111.
out a trace of feminist concerns, conclude that her
husband “owed much of his success to her energy and Improve Your Grade
counsel.” Elizabeth was always “active in the business— Going Beyond Individuals in Society
735
with industrialization. But the most recent studies also

confirm the view that the early years of the Industrial
Conditions of Work
Revolution were hard ones for British workers. There What about working conditions? Did workers eventually
was little or no increase in the purchasing power of the earn more only at the cost of working longer and harder?
average British worker from about 1780 to about 1820. Were workers exploited harshly by the new factory
The years from 1792 to 1815, a period of almost con- owners?
stant warfare with France, were particularly difficult. The first factories were cotton mills, which began func-
Food prices rose faster than wages, and the living conditioning along rivers and streams in the 1770s. Cottage
tions of the laboring poor declined. Only after 1820, and workers, accustomed to the putting-out system, were re-
especially after 1840, did real wages rise substantially, so luctant to work in the new factories even when they re-
that the average worker earned and consumed roughly ceived relatively good wages because factory work was
50 percent more in real terms in 1850 than in 1770.7 In unappealing. In the factory, workers had to keep up with
short, there was considerable economic improvement for the machine and follow its tempo. They had to show up
workers throughout Great Britain by 1850, but that im- every day and work long, monotonous hours. Factory
provement was hard won and slow in coming. workers had to adjust their daily lives to the shrill call of
This important conclusion must be qualified, however. the factory whistle.
First, the hours in the average workweek increased, as some Cottage workers were not used to that kind of life and
economic historians now believe it had been increasing in discipline. All members of the family worked hard and
parts of northern Europe since the seventeenth century. long, but in spurts, setting their own pace. They could
Thus, to a large extent, workers earned more simply be- interrupt their work when they wanted to. Women and
cause they worked more. Indeed, significant recent re- children could break up their long hours of spinning with
search shows that in England nonagricultural workers other tasks. On Saturday afternoon the head of the fam-
labored about 250 days per year in 1760 as opposed ily delivered the week’s work to the merchant manufac-
to 300 days per year in 1830, while the normal work- turer and got paid. Saturday night was a time of
day remained an exhausting eleven hours throughout the
Apago PDF Enhancer relaxation and drinking, especially for the men. Recover-
entire period. In 1760 nonagricultural workers still ob- ing from his hangover on Tuesday, the weaver bent to his
served many religious and public holidays by not work- task on Wednesday and then worked frantically to meet
ing, and Monday was popularly known as “Saint Monday” his deadline on Saturday. Like some students today, he
because so many workers took the day off. These days might “pull an all-nighter” on Thursday or Friday in or-
of leisure and relaxation declined rapidly after 1760, der to get his work in.
and by 1830 nonagricultural workers had joined land- Also, early factories resembled English poorhouses,
less agricultural laborers in toiling six rather than five days where totally destitute people went to live at public ex-
a week.8 pense. Some poorhouses were industrial prisons, where
Second, the wartime decline in the average worker’s the inmates had to work in order to receive their food and
standard of living was very important. The difficult war lodging. The similarity between large brick factories and
years were formative years for the new factory labor large stone poorhouses increased the cottage workers’
force, and they colored the early experience of modern fear of factories and their hatred of factory discipline.
industrial life in somber tones. It was cottage workers’ reluctance to work in factories
Another way to consider the workers’ standard of liv- that prompted the early cotton mill owners to turn to
ing is to look at the goods that they purchased. Again the abandoned and pauper children for their labor. As we
evidence is somewhat contradictory. Speaking generally, have seen, these owners contracted with local officials to
workers ate somewhat more food of higher nutritional employ large numbers of these children, who had no say
quality as the Industrial Revolution progressed, except in the matter. Pauper children were often badly treated
during wartime. Diets became more varied; people ate and terribly overworked in the mills, as they were when
more potatoes, dairy products, fruits, and vegetables. they were apprenticed as chimney sweeps, market girls,
Clothing improved, but housing for working people shoemakers, and so forth. In the eighteenth century,
probably deteriorated somewhat. In short, per capita use semiforced child labor seemed necessary and was socially
of specific goods supports the position that the standard accepted. From our modern point of view, it was cruel
of living of the working classes rose, at least moderately, exploitation and a blot on the record of the new indus-
after the long wars with France. trial system.
Apago PDF Enhancer
Workers at a Large Cotton Mill This 1833 engraving shows adult women operating power
looms under the supervision of a male foreman, and it accurately reflects both the decline of family
employment and the emergence of a gender-based division of labor in many English factories. The
jungle of belts and shafts connecting the noisy looms to the giant steam engine on the ground
floor created a constant din. (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
By 1790 the early pattern was rapidly changing. The farms and in the putting-out system. The mill or mine
use of pauper apprentices was in decline, and in 1802 it owner bargained with the head of the family and paid
was forbidden by Parliament. Many more factories were him or her for the work of the whole family. In the cot-
being built, mainly in urban areas, where they could use ton mills, children worked for their mothers or fathers,
steam power rather than waterpower and attract a work- collecting scraps and “piecing” broken threads together.
force more easily than in the countryside. The need for In the mines, children sorted coal and worked the ven-
workers was great. Indeed, people came from near and tilation equipment. Their mothers hauled coal in the
far to work in the cities, both as factory workers and as la- tunnels below the surface, while their fathers hewed with
borers, builders, and domestic servants. Yet as they took pick and shovel at the face of the seam.
these new jobs, working people did not simply give in The preservation of the family as an economic unit
to a system of labor that had formerly repelled them. in the factories from the 1790s on made the new sur-
Rather, they helped modify the system by carrying over roundings more tolerable, both in Great Britain and in
old, familiar working traditions. other countries, during the early stages of industrializa-
For one thing, they often came to the mills and the tion. Parents disciplined their children, making firm meas-
mines as family units. This was how they had worked on ures socially acceptable, and directed their upbringing.
The presence of the whole family meant that children work crew was close and personal. This kind of personal
and adults worked the same long hours (twelve-hour relationship had traditionally existed in cottage industry
shifts were normal in cotton mills in 1800). In the early and in urban crafts, and it was more acceptable to many
years, some very young children were employed solely workers than impersonal factory discipline. This system
to keep the family together. For example, Jedediah also provided people with an easy way to find a job. Even
Strutt (see page 735) believed children should be at today, a friend or relative who is a supervisor is frequently
least ten years old to work in his mills, but he reluct- worth a host of formal application forms.
antly employed seven-year-olds to satisfy their parents. Ties of kinship were particularly important for new-
Adult workers were not particularly interested in limit- comers, who often traveled great distances to find work.
ing the minimum working age or hours of their children Many urban workers in Great Britain were from Ireland.
as long as family members worked side by side. Only Forced out of rural Ireland by population growth and
when technical changes threatened to place control deteriorating economic conditions from 1817 on, Irish
and discipline in the hands of impersonal managers and in search of jobs could not be choosy; they took what
overseers did adult workers protest against inhuman con- they could get. As early as 1824, most of the workers in
ditions in the name of their children. the Glasgow cotton mills were Irish; in 1851 one-sixth of
Some enlightened employers and social reformers in the population of Liverpool was Irish. Like many other
Parliament definitely felt otherwise. They argued that immigrant groups held together by ethnic and religious
more humane standards were necessary, and they used ties, the Irish worked together, formed their own neigh-
widely circulated parliamentary reports to influence pub- borhoods, and not only survived but also thrived.
lic opinion. For example, Robert Owen (1771–1858), a
very successful manufacturer in Scotland, testified in
1816 before an investigating committee on the basis
The Sexual Division of Labor
of his experience. He stated that “very strong facts” The era of the Industrial Revolution witnessed major
demonstrated that employing children under ten years of changes in the sexual division of labor. In preindustrial
age as factory workers was “injurious to the children, and
Apago PDF Enhancer Europe most people generally worked in family units. By
not beneficial to the proprietors.”9 Workers also provided tradition, certain jobs were defined by gender—women
graphic testimony at such hearings as the reformers and girls for milking and spinning, men and boys for
pressed Parliament to pass corrective laws. They scored plowing and weaving—but many tasks might go to either
some important successes. sex. Family employment carried over into early factories
Their most significant early accomplishment was the and subcontracting, but it collapsed as child labor was re-
Factory Act of 1833. It limited the factory workday for stricted and new attitudes emerged. A different sexual di-
children between nine and thirteen to eight hours and vision of labor gradually arose to take its place. The man
that of adolescents between fourteen and eighteen to emerged as the family’s primary wage earner, while the
twelve hours, although the act made no effort to regulate woman found only limited job opportunities. Generally
the hours of work for children at home or in small busi- denied good jobs at good wages in the growing urban
nesses. Children under nine were to be enrolled in the el- economy, women were expected to concentrate on un-
ementary schools that factory owners were required to paid housework, child care, and craftwork at home.
establish. The employment of children declined rapidly. This new pattern of “separate spheres” had several as-
Thus the Factory Act broke the pattern of whole families pects. First, all studies agree that married women from the
working together in the factory because efficiency reworking classes were much less likely to work full-time for
quired standardized shifts for all workers. wages outside the house after the first child arrived, al-
Ties of blood and kinship were important in other though they often earned small amounts doing putting-
ways in Great Britain in the formative years between out handicrafts at home and taking in boarders. Second,
about 1790 and 1840. Many manufacturers and builders when married women did work for wages outside the
hired workers through subcontractors. They paid the house, they usually came from the poorest families, where
subcontractors on the basis of what the subcontractors the husbands were poorly paid, sick, unemployed, or
and their crews produced—for smelting so many tons of missing. Third, these poor married (or widowed) women
pig iron or moving so much dirt or gravel for a canal or were joined by legions of young unmarried women, who
roadbed. Subcontractors in turn hired and fired their worked full-time but only in certain jobs. Fourth, all
own workers, many of whom were friends and relations. women were generally confined to low-paying, dead-end
The subcontractor might be as harsh as the greediest cap- jobs. Virtually no occupation open to women paid a wage
italist, but the relationship between subcontractor and sufficient for a person to live independently. Men pre-
dominated in the better-paying, more promising employ- parental eye. The growth of factories and mines brought
ments. Evolving gradually, but largely in place by 1850, unheard-of opportunities for girls and boys to mix on the
the new sexual division of labor in Britain constituted a job, free of familial supervision. Continuing to mix after
major development in the history of women and of the work, they were “more likely to form liaisons, initiate
family. courtships, and respond to advances.”11 Such intimacy
If the reorganization of paid work along gender lines is also led to more unplanned pregnancies and fueled the il-
widely recognized, there is no agreement on its causes. legitimacy explosion that had begun in the late eigh-
One school of scholars sees little connection with indus- teenth century and that gathered force until at least 1850
trialization and finds the answer in the deeply ingrained (see pages 656–657). Thus segregation of jobs by gender
sexist attitudes of a “patriarchal tradition,” which pre- was partly an effort by older people to help control the
dated the economic transformation. These scholars stress sexuality of working-class youths.
the role of male-dominated craft unions in denying Investigations into the British coal industry before
working women access to good jobs and relegating them 1842 provide a graphic example of this concern. (See the
to unpaid housework. Other scholars, stressing that the feature “Listening to the Past: The Testimony of Young
gender roles of women and men can vary enormously Mine Workers” on pages 744–745.) The middle-class
with time and culture, look more to a combination of men leading the inquiry, who expected their daughters
economic and biological factors in order to explain the and wives to pursue ladylike activities, often failed to ap-
emergence of a sex-segregated division of labor. preciate the physical effort of the girls and women who
Three ideas stand out in this more recent interpreta- dragged with belt and chain the unwheeled carts of coal
tion. First, the new and unfamiliar discipline of the clock along narrow underground passages. But they professed
and the machine was especially hard on married women horror at the sight of girls and women working without
of the laboring classes. Above all, relentless factory disci- shirts, which was a common practice because of the heat,
pline conflicted with child care in a way that labor on the and they quickly assumed the prevalence of licentious sex
farm or in the cottage had not. A woman operating ear- with the male miners, who also wore very little clothing.
splitting spinning machinery could mind a child of seven
Apago PDF Enhancer In fact, most girls and married women worked for related
or eight working beside her (until such work was out- males in a family unit that provided considerable protec-
lawed), but she could no longer pace herself through tion and restraint. Yet many witnesses from the working
pregnancy or breast-feed her baby on the job. Thus a class also believed that “blackguardism and debauchery”
working-class woman had strong incentives to concen- were common and that “they are best out of the pits, the
trate on child care within her home if her family could af- lasses.” Some miners stressed particularly the danger of
ford it. sexual aggression for girls working past puberty. As one
Second, running a household in conditions of primi- explained: “I consider it a scandal for girls to work in the
tive urban poverty was an extremely demanding job in its pits. Till they are 12 or 14 they may work very well but af-
own right. There were no supermarkets or public trans- ter that it’s an abomination. . . . The work of the pit does
portation. Everything had to be done on foot. Shopping not hurt them, it is the effect on their morals that I com-
and feeding the family constituted a never-ending chal- plain of.”12 The Mines Act of 1842 prohibited under-
lenge. The woman marched from one tiny shop to an- ground work for all women as well as for boys under ten.
other, dragging her tired children (for who was to watch Some women who had to support themselves protested
them?) and struggling valiantly with heavy sacks and against being excluded from coal mining, which paid
tricky shopkeepers. Yet another brutal job outside the higher wages than most other jobs open to working-class
house—a “second shift”—had limited appeal for the av- women. But provided they were part of families that
erage married woman. Thus women might well have ac- could manage economically, the girls and the women who
cepted the emerging division of labor as the best available had worked underground were generally pleased with the
strategy for family survival in the industrializing society.10 law. In explaining her satisfaction in 1844, one mother of
Third, why were the women who did work for wages four provided a real insight into why many women ac-
outside the home segregated and confined to certain cepted the emerging sexual division of labor:
“women’s jobs”? No doubt the desire of males to mo-
nopolize the best opportunities and hold women down While working in the pit I was worth to my [miner] husband
provides part of the answer. Yet as some feminist scholars seven shillings a week, out of which we had to pay 21⁄2
have argued, sex-segregated employment was also a col- shillings to a woman for looking after the younger children.
lective response to the new industrial system. Previously, I used to take them to her house at 4 o’clock in the morning,
at least in theory, young people worked under a watchful out of their own beds, to put them into hers. Then there was
one shilling a week for washing; besides, there was mending eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As in France
to pay for, and other things. The house was not guided. The during the French Revolution, the British government at-
other children broke things; they did not go to school when tacked monopolies, guilds, and workers combinations in
they were sent; they would be playing about, and get ill-used the name of individual liberty. In 1799 Parliament passed
by other children, and their clothes torn. Then when I came the Combination Acts, which outlawed unions and strikes.
home in the evening, everything was to do after the day’s la- In 1813 and 1814, Parliament repealed the old and often
bor, and I was so tired I had no heart for it; no fire lit, noth- disregarded law of 1563 regulating the wages of artisans
ing cooked, no water fetched, the house dirty, and nothing and the conditions of apprenticeship. As a result of these
comfortable for my husband. It is all far better now, and I and other measures, certain skilled artisan workers, such as
wouldn’t go down again.13 bootmakers and high-quality tailors, found aggressive cap-
italists ignoring traditional work rules and flooding their
trades with unorganized women workers and children to
The Early Labor Movement in Britain beat down wages.
Many kinds of employment changed slowly during and
after the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. In 1850
more British people still worked on farms than in any
other occupation. The second-largest occupation was
domestic service, with more than one million household
servants, 90 percent of whom were women. Thus many
old, familiar jobs outside industry lived on and provided
alternatives for individual workers. This helped ease the
transition to industrial civilization.
Within industry itself, the pattern of artisans working
with hand tools in small shops remained unchanged in
many trades, even as some others were revolutionized by
Apago PDF Enhancer
technological change. For example, as in the case of cot-
ton and coal, the British iron industry was completely
dominated by large-scale capitalist firms by 1850. Many
large ironworks had more than one thousand people on
their payrolls. Yet the firms that fashioned iron into small
metal goods, such as tools, tableware, and toys, em-
ployed on average fewer than ten wage workers, who
used time-honored handicraft skills. Only gradually after
1850 did some owners find ways to reorganize some
handicraft industries with new machines and new pat-
terns of work. The survival of small workshops gave
many workers an alternative to factory employment.
Working-class solidarity and class-consciousness devel-
oped in small workshops as well as in large factories. In
the northern factory districts, where thousands of “hired
hands” looked across at a tiny minority of managers and
owners, anticapitalist sentiments were frequent by the
1820s. Commenting in 1825 on a strike in the woolen cen-
ter of Bradford and the support it had gathered from other
regions, one paper claimed with pride that “it is all the
workers of England against a few masters of Bradford.”14 Celebrating Skilled Labor This handsome engraving
Modern technology had created a few versus a many. embellished the membership certificate of the British carpen-
The transformation of some traditional trades by organ- ters union, one of the leading “new model unions” that repre-
sented skilled workers effectively after 1850. The upper panel
izational changes, rather than technological innovations, shows carpenters building the scaffolding for a great arch; the
could also create ill will and class feeling. The liberal con- lower panel captures the spirit of a busy workshop. (HIP/Art
cept of economic freedom gathered strength in the late Resource, NY)
The liberal capitalist attack on artisan guilds and work ative and socialist communities, including one at New
rules was bitterly resented by many craftworkers, who Harmony, Indiana. Then in 1834 Owen organized one
subsequently played an important part in Great Britain of the largest and most visionary of the early national
and in other countries in gradually building a modern unions, the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union.
labor movement to improve working conditions and to When this and other grandiose schemes collapsed, the
serve worker needs. The Combination Acts were widely British labor movement moved once again after 1851 in
disregarded by workers. Printers, papermakers, carpen- the direction of craft unions. The most famous of these
ters, tailors, and other such craftsmen continued to take “new model unions” was the Amalgamated Society of
collective action, and societies of skilled factory workers Engineers, which represented skilled machinists. These
also organized unions. Unions sought to control the unions won real benefits for members by fairly conserva-
number of skilled workers, limit apprenticeship to mem- tive means and thus became an accepted part of the in-
bers’ own children, and bargain with owners over wages. dustrial scene.
They were not afraid to strike; there was, for example, a British workers also engaged in direct political activity
general strike of adult cotton spinners in Manchester in in defense of their own interests. After the collapse of
1810. In the face of widespread union activity, Parliament Owen’s national trade union, many working people went
repealed the Combination Acts in 1824, and unions were into the Chartist movement, which sought political
tolerated, though not fully accepted, after 1825. democracy. The key Chartist demand—that all men be
The next stage in the development of the British trade- given the right to vote—became the great hope of mil-
union movement was the attempt to create a single large lions of aroused people. Workers were also active in cam-
national union. This effort was led not so much by work- paigns to limit the workday in factories to ten hours and
ing people as by social reformers such as Robert Owen. to permit duty-free importation of wheat into Great
Owen, a self-made cotton manufacturer (see page 738), Britain to secure cheap bread. Thus working people de-
had pioneered in industrial relations by combining firm veloped a sense of their own identity and played an active
discipline with concern for the health, safety, and hours role in shaping the new industrial system. They were nei-
of his workers. After 1815 he experimented with cooper-
Apago PDF Enhancer ther helpless victims nor passive beneficiaries.
• What were the origins of the Industrial Revolution in abundant natural resources, and a flexible labor force,
Britain, and how did it develop between 1780 and Britain experienced between the 1780s and the 1850s an
1850? epoch-making transformation, one that is still aptly termed
• How after 1815 did continental countries respond to the Industrial Revolution.
the challenge of industrialization? Building on technical breakthroughs, power-driven
• How did the Industrial Revolution affect social equipment, and large-scale enterprise, the Industrial
classes, the standard of living, and patterns of work? Revolution in England greatly increased output in cer-
What measures were taken to improve the conditions tain radically altered industries, stimulated the large
of workers? handicraft and commercial sectors, and speeded up over-
all economic growth. Rugged Scotland industrialized at
least as fast as England, and Great Britain became the first
Western society’s industrial breakthrough grew out of a industrial nation. By 1850 the level of British per capita
long process of economic and social change in which the industrial production was surpassing continental levels by
rise of capitalism, overseas expansion, and the growth of a growing margin, and Britain savored a near monopoly
rural industry stood out as critical preparatory develop- in world markets for mass-produced goods.
ments. Eventually taking the lead in all of these develop- Continental countries inevitably took rather different
ments, and also profiting from stable government, paths to the urban industrial society. They relied more on
handicraft production in both towns and villages. Only in rev. ed. 2003. Examines both economic activities and
the 1840s did railroad construction begin to create the cultural beliefs with great skill.
strong demand for iron, coal, and railway equipment that Fuchs, Rachel G. Gender and Poverty in Nineteenth-
speeded up the process of industrialization in the 1850s Century Europe. 2005. Provides a broad comparative
and 1860s. perspective.
The rise of modern industry had a profound impact
on people and their lives. In the early stages, Britain Gaskell, Elizabeth. Mary Barton. 1848. Gaskell’s novel
again led the way, experiencing in a striking manner the offers a realistic portrayal of the new industrial society.
long-term social changes accompanying the economic Goodman, Jordan, and Katrina Honeyman. Gainful
transformation. Factory discipline and Britain’s stern Pursuits: The Making of Industrial Europe, 1600–1914.
capitalist economy weighed heavily on working people, 1988. An excellent general treatment of European in-
who, however, actively fashioned their destinies and re- dustrial growth.
fused to be passive victims. Improvements in the stan- Kemp, Tom. Industrialization in Europe, 2d ed. 1985. A
dard of living came slowly, but they were substantial by useful overview.
1850. The era of industrialization fostered new attitudes
toward child labor, encouraged protective factory legisla- Landes, David. Dynasties: Fortunes and Misfortunes of the
tion, and called forth a new sense of class feeling and an World’s Great Family Businesses. 2006. A collection of-
assertive labor movement. It also promoted a more rigid fering fascinating and insightful histories of famous en-
division of roles and responsibilities within the family terprises and leading capitalists.
that was detrimental to women, another gradual but pro- Pomeranz, Kenneth. The Great Divergence: China, Eu-
found change of revolutionary proportions. rope, and the Making of the Modern World Economy.
2000. A sophisticated reconsideration of why western
Europe underwent industrialization and China did not.
Key Terms Stearns, Peter N. The Industrial Revolution in World His-
Industrial Revolution Apago PDFtory,Enhancer
economic 3d ed. 2007. A useful brief survey.
spinning jenny nationalism Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class.
water frame class-consciousness 1963. A fascinating book in the Marxian tradition that
body linen Luddites is rich in detail and early working-class lore.
steam engines Factory Act of 1833
Valenze, Deborah. The First Industrial Woman. 1995. A
coke Mines Act of 1842
gender study that reinvigorates the debate between
Rocket Combination Acts
“optimists” and “pessimists” about the consequences
Crystal Palace Grand National
of industrialization in Britain.
iron law of wages Consolidated
tariff protection Trades Union Walton, Whitney. France and the Crystal Palace: Bour-
geois Taste and Artisan Manufacture in the 19th Century.
1992. Examines the gradual transformation of handi-
Improve Your Grade Flashcards craft techniques and their persistent importance in the
international economy.
Wrigley, E. A. Continuity, Chance and Change: The Char-
Suggested Reading acter of the Industrial Revolution in England. 1994. An
important reconsideration stressing resources and pop-
Cameron, Rondo, and Larry Neal. A Concise Economic ulation.
History of the World, 4th ed. 2003. Provides an intro-
duction to key issues related to the Industrial Revolu-
tion and has a carefully annotated bibliography.
Clapham, J. H. Economic Development of France and
Germany. 1963. A classic study.
Notes
1. N. F. R. Crafts, British Economic Growth During the Industrial Rev-
Davidoff, Leonore, and Catherine Hall. Family Fortunes: olution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 32.
Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1750–1850, 2. P. Bairoch, “International Industrialization Levels from 1750 to
1980,” Journal of European Economic History 11 (Spring 1982): 9. Quoted in E. R. Pike, “Hard Times”: Human Documents of the In-
269–333. dustrial Revolution (New York: Praeger, 1966), p. 109.
3. Crafts, British Economic Growth, pp. 45, 95–102. 10. See especially J. Brenner and M. Rama, “Rethinking Women’s Op-
4. M. Lévy-Leboyer, Les banques européennes et l’industrialisation pression,” New Left Review 144 (March–April 1984): 33–71, and
dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires sources cited there.
de France, 1964), p. 29. 11. J. Humphries, “. . . ‘The Most Free from Objection’ . . . : The
5. J. Michelet, The People, trans. with an introduction by J. P. McKay Sexual Division of Labor and Women’s Work in Nineteenth-
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973; original publication, Century England,” Journal of Economic History 47 (December
1846), p. 64. 1987): 948.
6. Quoted in W. A. Hayek, ed., Capitalism and the Historians 12. Ibid., p. 941; Pike, “Hard Times,” p. 266.
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), p. 126. 13. Pike, “Hard Times,” p. 208.
7. Crafts, British Economic Growth, p. 95. 14. Quoted in D. Geary, ed., Labour and Socialist Movements in Europe
8. H-J. Voth, Time and Work in England, 1750–1830 (Oxford: Oxford Before 1914 (Oxford: Berg, 1989), p. 29.
University Press, 2000), pp. 268–270; also pp. 118–133.
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The Testimony of Young Mine Workers
T he use of child labor in British industrialization

quickly attracted the attention of humanitarians and
half-past four. We begin to work as soon as we get
down. We get out after four, sometimes at five, in
social reformers. This interest led to investigations by the evening. We work the whole time except an
parliamentary commissions, which resulted in laws hour for dinner, and sometimes we haven’t time to
limiting the hours and the ages of children working in eat. I hurry [move coal wagons underground] by
large factories. Designed to build a case for remedial myself, and have done so for long. I know the
legislation, parliamentary inquiries gave large corves [small coal wagons] are very heavy, they are
numbers of workers a rare chance to speak directly the biggest corves anywhere about. The work is far
to contemporaries and to historians. too hard for me; the sweat runs off me all over
The moving passages that follow are taken from sometimes. I am very tired at night. Sometimes
testimony gathered in 1841 and 1842 by the Ashley when we get home at night we have not power to
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Mines Commission. Interviewing employers and wash us, and then we go to bed. Sometimes we fall
many male and female workers, the commissioners asleep in the chair. Father said last night it was
focused on the physical condition of the youth and on both a shame and a disgrace for girls to work as we
the sexual behavior of workers far underground. The do, but there was naught else for us to do. I began
subsequent Mines Act of 1842 sought to reduce to hurry when I was seven and I have been
immoral behavior and sexual bullying by prohibiting hurrying ever since. I have been 11 years in the
underground work for all women (and for boys pits. The girls are always tired. I was poorly twice
younger than ten). this winter; it was with headache. I hurry for
Robert Wiggins; he is not akin to me. . . . We
don’t always get enough to eat and drink, but we
Mr. Payne, coal master: get a good supper. I have known my father go at
That children are employed generally at nine two in the morning to work . . . and he didn’t
years old in the coal pits and sometimes at eight. come out till four. I am quite sure that we work
In fact, the smaller the vein of coal is in height, constantly 12 hours except on Saturdays. We wear
the younger and smaller are the children required; trousers and our shifts in the pit and great big
the work occupies from six to seven hours per day shoes clinkered and nailed. The girls never work
in the pits; they are not ill-used or worked beyond naked to the waist in our pit. The men don’t insult
their strength; a good deal of depravity exists but us in the pit. The conduct of the girls in the pit is
they are certainly not worse in morals than in good enough sometimes and sometimes bad
other branches of the Sheffield trade, but upon enough. I never went to a day-school. I went a
the whole superior; the morals of this district are little to a Sunday-school, but I soon gave it over. I
materially improving; Mr. Bruce, the clergyman, thought it too bad to be confined both Sundays
has been zealous and active in endeavoring to and week-days. I walk about and get the fresh air
ameliorate their moral and religious on Sundays. I have not learnt to read. I don’t
education. . . . know my letters. I never learnt naught. I never go
to church or chapel; there is no church or chapel
Ann Eggley, hurrier, 18 years old: at Gawber, there is none nearer than a mile. . . . I
I’m sure I don’t know how to spell my name. have never heard that a good man came into the
We go at four in the morning, and sometimes at world who was God’s son to save sinners. I never
744
This illustration of a girl dragging a coal wagon was one of several that shocked public opinion
and contributed to the Mines Act of 1842. (The British Library)
heard of Christ at all. Nobody has ever told me Isabel Wilson, 38 years old, coal putter:
about him, nor have my father and mother ever When women have children thick [fast] they are
taught me to pray. I know no prayer; I never pray. compelled to take them down early. I have been
married 19 years and have had 10 bairns
Patience Kershaw, aged 17: [children]; seven are in life. When on Sir John’s
My father has been dead about a year; my work was a carrier of coals, which caused me to
mother is living and has ten children, five lads and miscarry five times from the strains, and was gai
five lasses; the oldest is about thirty, the youngest [very] ill after each. Putting is no so oppressive;
is four; three lasses go to mill; all the lads are last child was born on Saturday morning, and I
colliers, two getters and three hurriers; one lives at was at work on the Friday night.
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home and does nothing; mother does nought but Once met with an accident; a coal brake my
look after home. cheek-bone, which kept me idle some weeks.
All my sisters have been hurriers, but three went I have wrought below 30 years, and so has
to the mill. Alice went because her legs swelled the guid man; he is getting touched in the
from hurrying in cold water when she was hot. I breath now.
never went to day-school; I go to Sunday-school, None of the children read, as the work is no
but I cannot read or write; I go to pit at five regular. I did read once, but no able to attend to
o’clock in the morning and come out at five in the it now; when I go below lassie 10 years of age
evening; I get my breakfast of porridge and milk keeps house and makes the broth or stir-about.
first; I take my dinner with me, a cake, and eat it as
I go; I do not stop or rest any time for the
purpose; I get nothing else until I get home, and Questions for Analysis
then have potatoes and meat, not every day meat.
I hurry in the clothes I have now got on, trousers 1. To what extent are the testimonies of Ann
and ragged jacket; the bald place upon my head is Eggley and Patience Kershaw in harmony with
made by thrusting the corves; my legs have never that of Payne?
swelled, but sisters’ did when they went to mill; I
hurry the corves a mile and more under ground 2. Describe the work of Eggley and Kershaw.
and back; they weigh 300; I hurry 11 a day; I wear What do you think of their work? Why?
a belt and chain at the workings to get the corves 3. What strikes you most about the lives of
out; the putters [miners] that I work for are naked these workers?
except their caps; they pull off all their clothes; I
see them at work when I go up; sometimes they 4. The witnesses were responding to
beat me, if I am not quick enough, with their questions from middle-class commissioners.
hands; they strike me upon my back; the boys take What did the commissioners seem interested
liberties with me, sometimes, they pull me about; I in? Why?
am the only girl in the pit; there are about 20 boys Source: J. Bowditch and C. Ramsland, eds., Voices of the
and 15 men; all the men are naked; I would rather Industrial Revolution. Copyright © 1961, 1989 by the
work in mill than in coal-pit. University of Michigan. Reprinted by permission.
745
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Revolutionaries in Transylvania. Ana Ipatescu, of the first group of revolutionaries in Transylvania against
Russia, 1848. (National Historical Museum, Bucharest/The Art Archive)
c h a p t e r
23
Ideologies and
Upheavals,
1815–1850
chapter preview
The Peace Settlement

• How did the victorious allies fashion
a general peace settlement, and how
T he momentous economic and political transformation of modern
times began in the late eighteenth century with the Industrial Rev-
olution in England and then the French Revolution. Until about 1815,
did Metternich uphold a conservative these economic and political revolutions were separate, involving differ-
European order? ent countries and activities and proceeding at very different paces. After
peace returned in 1815, the situation changed. Economic and political
Radical Ideas and Early Socialism
changes tended to fuse, reinforcing each other and bringing about what
• What were the basic tenets of historian Eric Hobsbawm has incisively called the dual revolution. For
liberalism, nationalism, and socialism, instance, the growth of the industrial middle class encouraged the drive
and what groups were most attracted for representative government, and the demands of the French sans-
to these ideologies? culottes in 1793 and 1794 inspired many socialist thinkers. Gathering
The Romantic Movement Apago PDF Enhancer
strength, the dual revolution rushed on to alter completely first Europe
• What were the characteristics of the and then the rest of the world. Much of world history in the past two
romantic movement, and who were centuries can be seen as the progressive unfolding of the dual revolution.
In Europe in the nineteenth century, as in Asia and Africa in more re-
some of the great romantic artists?
cent times, the interrelated economic and political transformation was
Reforms and Revolutions built on complicated histories, strong traditions, and highly diverse cul-
• How after 1815 did liberal, national, tures. Radical change was eventually a constant, but the particular results
and socialist forces challenge varied enormously. In central and eastern Europe especially, the tradi-
conservatism in Greece, Great Britain, tional elites—the monarchs, noble landowners, and bureaucrats—proved
and France? capable of defending their privileges and eventually using nationalism as
a way to respond to the dual revolution and to serve their interests, as we
The Revolutions of 1848 shall see in Chapter 25.
• Why in 1848 did revolution triumph The dual revolution also posed a tremendous intellectual challenge.
briefly throughout most of Europe, and The meanings of the economic, political, and social changes that were
why did it fail almost completely? occurring, as well as the ways they would be shaped by human action,
were anything but clear. These changes fascinated observers and stimu-
lated the growth of new ideas and powerful ideologies. The most impor-
tant of these ideological forces were revitalized conservatism and three
ideologies of change—liberalism, nationalism, and socialism. All played
critical roles in the political and social battles of the era and the great
popular upheaval that eventually swept across Europe in the revolutions
of 1848.
747
748
FINLAND
Kingdom of Prussia
KINGDOM OF
Austrian Empire
SWEDEN AND
Boundary of German Confederation NORWAY
St. Petersburg
Oslo
Stockholm
SCOTLAND
Moscow
a
Riga
Se
DENMARK
UNITED KINGDOM N or th Se a
ic
OF GREAT BRITAIN Copenhagen lt
Dublin AND IRELAND
IRELAND
Ba
Manchester SCHLESWIG
RUSSIAN EMPIRE
HOLSTEIN Danzig
SIA
ENGLAND HANOVER PRUS Vi s
OF
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Amsterdam M
t u la
London DO Warsaw
KINGDOM OF THE NG Berlin
NETHERLANDS KI KINGDOM OF Kiev
Elb
Cologne POLAND
e
Dn i e
R h in
Waterloo (Russia) per
SAXONY
A TLAN T IC
e
Se GALICIA
Cracow
Luxembourg
ine
Frankfurt Prague Troppau
OC E A N BAVARIA
UKRAINE
Paris LORRAINE BOHEMIA
EN
BE
E SS
IR
D
CE
WÜRTTEMBERG
BA
Vienna P AR
L o ir e EM
SA
Munich AB
M IA
AL
N Pest OL
FRANCE IA DA
R Buda VI
T A
SWITZERLAND
S
U
A
HUNGARY
TIA
LOMBARDY VENETIA
Milan
OA
PIEDMONT
Venice WALLACHIA Bl ack Sea
Rhône
CR
PARMA
MODENA SERBIA D a nu b e
Marseilles LUCCA
Ad
BOSNIA BULGARIA
TUSCANY PAPAL O
AL
Eb
ri
STATES T
ti
ro
a
UG
ELBA T
KINGDOM OF c O Constantinople
Madrid CORSICA Rome Se
RT
SARDINIA M
(Fr.) a A
PO
SPAIN NAPLES N
ALBANIA E M
SARDINIA P I
KINGDOM R E
OF THE
TWO SICILIES GREECE
Me Athens
dit
GIBRALTAR err
(Gr. Br.) ane SICILY
an
Sea
MALTA
0 200 400 Km.
(Gr. Br.)
0 200 400 Mi.
The Peace Settlement • 749
Chronology
1790s–1840s Romantic movement in literature and
The eventual triumph of revolutionary economic and po- the arts
litical forces was by no means certain as the Napoleonic
era ended. Quite the contrary. The conservative, aristo- 1809–1848 Metternich serves as Austrian foreign
minister
cratic monarchies of Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Great
Britain—the Quadruple Alliance—had finally defeated 1810 Staël, On Germany
France and reaffirmed their determination to hold France
1815 Holy Alliance formed; revision of Corn Laws in
in line. But many other international questions were out-
Britain
standing, and the allies agreed to meet at the Congress
of Vienna to fashion a general peace settlement. 1819 Carlsbad Decrees issued by German Confedera-
Most people felt a profound longing for peace. The tion
great challenge for political leaders in 1814 was to con-
1830 Greece wins independence from Turks
struct a settlement that would last and not sow the seeds
of another war. Their efforts were largely successful and 1830–1848 Reign of Louis Philippe in France
contributed to a century unmarred by destructive, gener-
1832 Reform Bill in Britain
alized war (see Map 23.1).
1839 Blanc, Organization of Work
• How did the victorious allies fashion a general peace
settlement, and how did Metternich uphold a conservative 1845–1851 Great Famine in Ireland
European order?
1847 Ten Hours Act in Britain
1848 Revolutions in France, Austria, and Prussia;

The European Balance of Power Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto
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The allied powers were concerned first and foremost with
the defeated enemy, France. Agreeing to the restoration
of the Bourbon dynasty (see page 708), the allies were
quite lenient toward France after Napoleon’s abdication. by a host of delegates from the smaller European states,
The first Peace of Paris gave to France the boundaries it they also agreed to raise a number of formidable barriers
possessed in 1792, which were larger than those of 1789, against renewed French aggression. The Low Coun-
and France did not have to pay any war reparations. Thus tries—Belgium and Holland—were united under an en-
the victorious powers did not foment a spirit of injustice larged Dutch monarchy capable of opposing France
and revenge in the defeated country. more effectively. Above all, Prussia received considerably
When the four allies of the Quadruple Alliance met to- more territory on France’s eastern border so as to stand
gether at the Congress of Vienna, assisted in a minor way as the “sentinel on the Rhine” against France. In these
ways, the Quadruple Alliance combined leniency toward
France with strong defensive measures.
Mapping the Past In their moderation toward France, the allies were mo-
MAP 23.1 Europe in 1815 Europe’s leaders re-established tivated by self-interest and traditional ideas about the bal-
a balance of political power after the defeat of Napoleon. ance of power. To Klemens von Metternich and Robert
Prussia gained territory on the Rhine and in Saxony, consolidat-
Castlereagh, the foreign ministers of Austria and Great
ing its position as a Great Power. Austria gained the Italian
provinces of Lombardy and Venetia as well as Galicia and land Britain, respectively, as well as their French counterpart,
along the Adriatic Sea. In 1815 Europe contained many differ- Charles Talleyrand, the balance of power meant an inter-
ent states, but international politics was dominated by the five national equilibrium of political and military forces that
Great Powers (or six, if one includes the Ottoman Empire). would discourage aggression by any combination of states
Trace the political boundaries of each Great Power, and com-
or, worse, the domination of Europe by any single state.
pare their geographical strengths and weaknesses.
•1 In which directions might the different Great Powers seek to expand
•
further and gain more people and territory? 2 At what points might
these states then come into conflict with one another?
The Great Powers—Austria, Britain, Prussia, Russia,
and France—used the balance of power to settle their
own dangerous disputes at the Congress of Vienna.
There was general agreement among the victors that
750 CHAPTER 23 • IDEOLOGIES AND UPHEAVALS, 1815–1850
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Adjusting the Balance The Englishman on the left uses his money to counterbalance the peo-
ple that the Prussian and the fat Metternich are gaining in Saxony and Italy. Alexander I sits hap-
pily on his prize, Poland. This cartoon captures the essence of how most people thought about
balance-of-power diplomacy at the Congress of Vienna. (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
each of them should receive compensation in the form of port to the wily Talleyrand and the defeated France he
territory for their successful struggle against the French. represented, signing a secret alliance directed against Rus-
Great Britain had already won colonies and strategic out- sia and Prussia. War seemed imminent. But the threat of
posts during the long wars. Metternich’s Austria gave up war caused the rulers of Russia and Prussia to moderate
territories in Belgium and southern Germany but ex- their demands. Russia accepted a small Polish kingdom,
panded greatly elsewhere, taking the rich provinces of and Prussia took only part of Saxony (see Map 23.1). This
Venetia and Lombardy in northern Italy as well as former compromise was very much within the framework of
Polish possessions and new lands on the eastern coast of balance-of-power ideology.
the Adriatic (see Map 23.1). Unfortunately for France, Napoleon suddenly escaped
One ticklish question almost led to renewed war in Jan- from his “comic kingdom” on the island of Elba. Yet the
uary 1815, however. The vaguely progressive, impetuous second Peace of Paris, concluded after Napoleon’s final
Tsar Alexander I of Russia wanted to restore the ancient defeat at Waterloo, was still relatively moderate toward
kingdom of Poland, on which he expected to bestow the France. Fat old Louis XVIII was restored to his throne
benefits of his rule. The Prussians agreed, provided they for a second time. France lost only a little territory, had
could swallow up the large and wealthy kingdom of Sax- to pay an indemnity of 700 million francs, and had to
ony, their German neighbor to the south. These demands support a large army of occupation for five years.
were too much for Castlereagh and Metternich, who The rest of the settlement already concluded at the
feared an unbalancing of forces in central Europe. In an Congress of Vienna was left intact. The members of the
astonishing about-face, they turned for diplomatic sup- Quadruple Alliance, however, did agree to meet periodi-
cally to discuss their common interests and to consider member states to root out subversive ideas in their uni-
appropriate measures for the maintenance of peace in versities and newspapers. The decrees also established a
Europe. This agreement marked the beginning of the permanent committee with spies and informers to inves-
European “congress system,” which lasted long into the tigate and punish any liberal or radical organizations.
nineteenth century and settled many international crises
through international conferences and balance-of-power
diplomacy.
Metternich and Conservatism
Metternich’s determined defense of the status quo made
him a villain in the eyes of most progressive, optimistic
Intervention and Repression historians of the nineteenth century. Yet rather than de-
There was also a domestic political side to the renounce the man, we can try to understand him and the
establishment of peace. Within their own countries, the general conservatism he represented.
leaders of the victorious states were much less flexible. In Born into the middle ranks of the landed nobility of
1815 under Metternich’s leadership, Austria, Prussia, the Rhineland, Prince Klemens von Metternich (1773–
and Russia embarked on a crusade against the ideas and 1859) was an internationally oriented aristocrat who
politics of the dual revolution. This crusade lasted until made a brilliant diplomatic career in Austria. Austrian
1848. The first step was the Holy Alliance, formed by foreign minister from 1809 to 1848, the cosmopolitan
Austria, Prussia, and Russia in September 1815. First Metternich always remained loyal to his class and jeal-
proposed by Russia’s Alexander I, the alliance soon be- ously defended its rights and privileges. Like most other
came a symbol of the repression of liberal and revolution- conservatives of his time, he did so with a clear con-
ary movements all over Europe. science. The nobility was one of Europe’s most ancient
In 1820 revolutionaries succeeded in forcing the mon- institutions, and conservatives regarded tradition as the
archs of Spain and the southern Italian kingdom of the basic source of human institutions. In their view, the
Two Sicilies to grant liberal constitutions against their proper state and society remained those of pre-1789 Eu-
wills. Metternich was horrified: revolution was rising once
Apago PDF Enhancer rope, which rested on a judicious blend of monarchy, bu-
again. Calling a conference at Troppau in Austria under the reaucracy, aristocracy, and respectful commoners.
provisions of the Quadruple Alliance, he and Alexander I Metternich firmly believed that liberalism, as embod-
proclaimed the principle of active intervention to maintain ied in revolutionary America and France, had been re-
all autocratic regimes whenever they were threatened. Aus- sponsible for a generation of war with untold bloodshed
trian forces then marched into Naples in 1821 and restored and suffering. Like many other conservatives then and
Ferdinand I to the throne of the Two Sicilies, while French since, Metternich blamed liberal middle-class revolution-
armies likewise restored the Spanish regime. aries for stirring up the lower classes, which he believed
In the following years, Metternich continued to battle desired nothing more than peace and quiet.
against liberal political change. Sometimes he could do The threat of liberalism appeared doubly dangerous to
little, as in the case of the new Latin American republics Metternich because it generally went with national aspi-
that broke away from Spain. Nor could he undo the dy- rations. Liberals believed that each people, each national
nastic changes of 1830 and 1831 in France and Belgium. group, had a right to establish its own independent gov-
Nonetheless, until 1848 Metternich’s system proved ernment and seek to fulfill its own destiny. The idea of
quite effective in central Europe, where his power was national self-determination was repellent to Metternich.
the greatest. It not only threatened the primacy of the aristocracy but
Metternich’s policies dominated not only Austria and also threatened to destroy the Austrian Empire and revo-
the Italian peninsula but also the entire German Confed- lutionize central Europe.
eration, which the peace settlement of Vienna had called The vast Austrian Empire of the Habsburgs was a
into being. The confederation was composed of thirty- great dynastic state. Formed over centuries by war, mar-
eight independent German states, including Prussia and riage, and luck, it was made up of many peoples (see
Austria (see Map 23.1). These states met in complicated Map 23.2). The Germans had long dominated the em-
assemblies dominated by Austria, with Prussia a willing pire, yet they accounted for only one-fourth of the
junior partner in the execution of repressive measures. population. The Magyars (Hungarians), a substantially
It was through the German Confederation that Met- smaller group, dominated the kingdom of Hungary,
ternich had the infamous Carlsbad Decrees issued in though they did not account for a majority of the popu-
1819. These decrees required the thirty-eight German lation in that part of the Austrian Empire.
752
RUSSIA
POLAND
SILESIA
GERMAN
Prague
STATES GALICIA
BOHEMIA
MORAVIA
BAVARIA Vienna
Da
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nub
za
e
Tis
AUSTRIA
Budapest
SALZBURG
TYROL
SWITZERLAND HUNGARY
ST
CARINTHIA
YR
TRANSYLVANIA
IA
VENETIA
Milan
LOMBARDY
Venice
CROATIA-SLAVONIA
Po
ROMANIA
Ad
BOSNIA OTTOMAN EMPIRE

at
ri
ITALIAN ic D an u b e
Se ILLYRIA
Germans Carpatho-Ukrainians
a (Ruthenians)
STATES
Hungarians Serbs and Croats
Italians Slovaks
SERBIA
Romanians Slovenes
0 50 100 Km. Habsburg Monarchy
Poles boundaries
0 50 100 Mi.
Czechs
MAP 23.2 Peoples of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1815 The old dynastic state was a patch-
work of nationalities. Note the widely scattered pockets of Germans and Hungarians.
Radical Ideas and Early Socialism • 753
and nationalism, for Austria was simply unable to accom-

modate these ideologies of the dual revolution.
In his efforts to hold back liberalism and nationalism
Metternich was supported by the Russian Empire and, to
a lesser extent, by the Ottoman Empire. Bitter enemies
and often at war with each other, these far-flung empires
also shared several basic characteristics. Both were abso-
lutist states with powerful armies and long traditions of
expansion and conquest. Both were multinational em-
pires made up of many peoples, languages, and religions,
but in each case most of the ruling elite came from the
dominant ethnic group—the Orthodox Christian Rus-
sians centered in central and northern Russia, and the
Muslim Ottoman Turks of Anatolia (much of modern
Turkey). After 1815, both multinational, absolutist states
worked to preserve their respective traditional, conserva-
tive orders. Only in the middle of the nineteenth century
did each in turn experience a profound crisis and embark
on a program of fundamental reform and modernization,
as we shall see in Chapter 25.
Radical Ideas and

Early Socialism
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In the years following the peace settlement of 1815 intel-
lectuals and social observers sought to understand the
Metternich This portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence reveals
much about Metternich the man. Handsome, refined, and
revolutionary changes that had occurred and were still
intelligent, Metternich was a great aristocrat who was passion- taking place. These efforts led to ideas that still motivate
ately devoted to the defense of his class and its interests. the world.
(The Royal Collection, © 2007 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II) Almost all of these basic ideas were radical. In one way
or another, they rejected the old, deeply felt conser-
vatism, with its stress on tradition, a hereditary monar-
chy, a strong and privileged landowning aristocracy, and
an official church. Instead, they developed and refined
The Czechs, the third major group, were concentrated alternative visions—alternative ideologies—and tried to
in Bohemia and Moravia. There were also large numbers convince society to act on them. With time, they were
of Italians, Poles, and Ukrainians as well as smaller groups very successful.
of Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Ruthenians, and Romanians.
• What were the basic tenets of liberalism, nationalism,
The various Slavic peoples, together with the Italians and
and socialism, and what groups were most attracted to
the Romanians, represented a widely scattered and com-
these ideologies?
pletely divided majority in an empire dominated by Ger-
mans and Hungarians. Different ethnic groups often lived
in the same provinces and even in the same villages. Thus
the different parts and provinces of the empire differed in
Liberalism
languages, customs, and institutions. The principal ideas of liberalism—liberty and equality—
The multiethnic state Metternich served was both were by no means defeated in 1815. First realized suc-
strong and weak. It was strong because of its large popu- cessfully in the American Revolution and then achieved
lation and vast territories; it was weak because of its many in part in the French Revolution, this political and social
and potentially dissatisfied nationalities. In these circum- philosophy continued to pose a radical challenge to re-
stances, Metternich virtually had to oppose liberalism vived conservatism. Liberalism demanded representative
government as opposed to autocratic monarchy, equality sentative government, but they generally wanted prop-
before the law as opposed to legally separate classes. The erty qualifications attached to the right to vote. In prac-
idea of liberty also meant specific individual freedoms: tice, this meant limiting the vote to well-to-do aristocratic
freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of as- landowners, substantial businessmen, and successful mem-
sembly, and freedom from arbitrary arrest. In Europe bers of the professions. Workers and peasants, as well as
only France with Louis XVIII’s Constitutional Charter the lower middle class of shopkeepers, clerks, and arti-
and Great Britain with its Parliament and historic rights sans, did not own the necessary property and thus could
of English men and women had realized much of the lib- not vote.
eral program in 1815. Even in those countries, liberalism As liberalism became increasingly identified with the
had not fully succeeded. middle class after 1815, some intellectuals and foes of
Although liberalism retained its cutting edge, it was conservatism felt that liberalism did not go nearly far
seen by many as being a somewhat duller tool than it had enough. Inspired by memories of the French Revolution
been. The reasons for this were that liberalism faced more and the example of Jacksonian democracy in the young
radical ideological competitors in the early nineteenth American republic, they called for universal voting rights,
century. Opponents of liberalism especially criticized its at least for males, and for democracy. These democrats
economic principles, which called for unrestricted private and republicans were more radical than the liberals, and
enterprise and no government interference in the econ- they were more willing than most liberals to endorse vio-
omy. This philosophy was popularly known as the doc- lent upheaval to achieve goals. All of this meant that lib-
trine of laissez faire. (This form of liberalism is often erals and radical, democratic republicans could join forces
called “classical” liberalism in the United States in order against conservatives only up to a point.
to distinguish it sharply from modern American liberal-
ism, which usually favors more government programs to
meet social needs and to regulate the economy.)
Nationalism
The idea of a free economy had first been persuasively Nationalism was a second radical idea in the years after
formulated by Scottish philosophy professor Adam
Apago PDF1815—an idea destined to have an enormous influence
Enhancer
Smith, whose Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
in the modern world. Nationalism had its immediate ori-
Wealth of Nations (1776) founded modern economics. gins in the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars,
Smith was highly critical of eighteenth-century mercan- and there were already hints of its remarkable ability to
tilism and its attempt to regulate trade and economic spread and develop.
activity. Far preferable were free competition and the Early advocates of the “national idea” argued that each
“invisible hand” of the self-regulating market, which people had its own genius and its own cultural unity. For
would give all citizens a fair and equal opportunity to do nationalists this cultural unity was basically self-evident,
what they did best. Smith argued effectively that freely manifesting itself especially in a common language, his-
competitive private enterprise would result in greater in- tory, and territory. In fact, in the early nineteenth century
come for everyone, not just the rich. such cultural unity was more a dream than a reality as far
as most nationalities were concerned. Within each ethnic
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grouping only an elite spoke a standardized written lan-
Primary Source: The Wealth of Nations: A Natural Law
guage. Local dialects abounded, and peasants from
of Economy
nearby villages often failed to understand each other. As
In early-nineteenth-century Britain this economic lib- for historical memory, it divided the inhabitants of the
eralism, which promoted continued economic growth in different German or Italian states as much as it unified
the Industrial Revolution, was embraced most enthusias- them. Moreover, a variety of ethnic groups shared the
tically by business groups and became a doctrine associated territory of most states.
with business interests. Businessmen used the doctrine Despite these basic realities, sooner or later European
to defend their right to do as they wished in their facto- nationalists usually sought to turn the cultural unity that
ries. Labor unions were outlawed because they suppos- they perceived into a political reality. They sought to make
edly restricted free competition and the individual’s the territory of each people coincide with well-defined
“right to work.” boundaries in an independent nation-state. It was this
In the early nineteenth century, liberal political ideals political goal that made nationalism so explosive in cen-
also became more closely associated with narrow class in- tral and eastern Europe after 1815, when there were ei-
terests. Early nineteenth-century liberals favored repre- ther too few states (Austria, Russia, and the Ottoman
When a minority population was large and concentrated,

the nationalist campaign for a standardized language of-
ten led to a push for a separate nation-state.
Many scholars also argue that nations are recent cre-
ations, the product of the new, self-conscious nationalist
ideology. Thus nation-states emerged in the nineteenth
century as “imagined communities,” communities seeking
to bind millions of strangers together around the abstract
concept of an all-embracing national identity. This meant
bringing citizens together with emotionally charged sym-
bols and ceremonies, such as independence holidays and
patriotic parades. On such fleeting occasions the imagined
nation of spiritual equals might celebrate its most hallowed
traditions, which were often recent inventions.2
Historians also stress the dynamic, ever-changing char-
acter of nationalism. Industrialism and mass education,
so important in the later nineteenth century, played only
a minor role before 1850. In those years the faith in na-
tionhood was fresh, idealistic, and progressive.
Between 1815 and 1850 most people who believed in
nationalism also believed in either liberalism or radical,
democratic republicanism. A common faith in the cre-
ativity and nobility of the people was perhaps the single
most important reason for the linking of these two con-
Apago PDF Enhancer cepts. Liberals and especially democrats saw the people as
Building German Nationalism As popular upheaval in the ultimate source of all government. Yet liberals and
France spread to central Europe in March 1848, Germans from
the solid middle classes came together in Frankfurt to draft a nationalists agreed that the benefits of self-government
constitution for a new united Germany. This woodcut com- would be possible only if the people were united by com-
memorates the solemn procession of delegates entering Saint mon traditions that transcended local interests and even
Paul’s Cathedral in Frankfurt, where the delegates would have class differences.
their deliberations. Festivals, celebrations, and parades helped Early nationalists usually believed that every nation,
create a feeling of belonging to a large unseen community, a
nation binding millions of strangers together. (akg-images) like every citizen, had the right to exist in freedom and to
develop its character and spirit. They were confident that
a symphony of nations would promote the harmony and
ultimate unity of all peoples. The great Italian patriot
Empire) or too many (the Italian peninsula and the Ger- Guiseppe Mazzini (1805–1872) believed that “in labor-
man Confederation) and when different peoples over- ing according to the true principles of our country we are
lapped and intermingled. laboring for Humanity.” Thus the liberty of the individ-
In recent years scholars have been trying to understand ual and the love of a free nation overlapped greatly in the
how the nationalist vision, often fitting so poorly with ex- early nineteenth century.
isting conditions and promising so much upheaval, was Yet early nationalists also stressed the differences among
so successful in the long run. Certain interrelated ideas peoples. Even early nationalism developed a strong sense
stand out. of “we” and “they.” To this “we-they” outlook, it was all
Of fundamental importance in the rise of nationalism too easy for nationalists to add two highly volatile ingredi-
was the epoch-making development of complex indus- ents: a sense of national mission and a sense of national su-
trial and urban society, which required much better com- periority. Even the French historian Jules Michelet, so alive
munication between individuals and groups.1 These to the national aspirations of other peoples, could not help
communication needs promoted the use of a standard- speaking in 1846 of the “superiority of France”; the prin-
ized national language within many countries, creating at ciples espoused in the French Revolution had made France
least a superficial cultural unity as it eventually encom- the “salvation of mankind.” (See the feature “Individuals
passed the entire population through mass education. in Society: Jules Michelet” on page 769.)
Russian and German nationalists had a very different guide it forward by undertaking vast public works proj-
opinion of France. In the narratives they constructed, the ects and establishing investment banks. Saint-Simon also
French often seemed oppressive, as the Russians did to stressed in highly moralistic terms that every social insti-
the Poles and as the Germans did to the Czechs. (See the tution ought to have as its main goal improved condi-
feature “Listening to the Past: Speaking for the Czech tions for the poor.
Nation” on pages 776–777.) Thus “they” often emerged After 1830 the socialist critique of capitalism became
as the enemy. sharper. Charles Fourier (1772–1837), a lonely, saintly
Early nationalism was ambiguous. Its main thrust was man with a tenuous hold on reality, envisaged a socialist
liberal and democratic. But below the surface lurked utopia of mathematically precise, self-sufficient commu-
ideas of national superiority and national mission that nities, each made up of 1,620 people. Fourier was also an
could lead to aggression and conflict. early proponent of the total emancipation of women. Ex-
tremely critical of middle-class family life, Fourier be-
lieved that most marriages were only another kind of
French Utopian Socialism prostitution. According to Fourier, young single women
Socialism, the new radical doctrine after 1815, began in were shamelessly “sold” to their future husbands for
France, despite the fact that France lagged far behind dowries and other financial considerations. Therefore,
Great Britain in developing modern industry. Early Fourier called for the abolition of marriage, free unions
French socialist thinkers were acutely aware that the po- based only on love, and sexual freedom. Many middle-
litical revolution in France, the rise of laissez faire, and class men and women found these ideas, which were
the emergence of modern industry in Britain were trans- shared and even practiced by some followers of Saint-
forming society. They were disturbed because they saw Simon, shocking and immoral. The socialist program for
these developments as fomenting selfish individualism the liberation of women as well as workers appeared to
and splitting the community into isolated fragments. them as doubly dangerous and revolutionary.
There was, they believed, an urgent need for a further re- Louis Blanc (1811–1882), a sharp-eyed, intelligent
organization of society to establish cooperation and a
Apago PDF Enhancer journalist, focused on practical improvements. In his Or-
new sense of community. ganization of Work (1839), he urged workers to agitate
Early French socialists believed in economic planning. for universal voting rights and to take control of the state
Inspired by the emergency measures of 1793 and 1794 peacefully. Blanc believed that the state should set up
in France, they argued that the government should ra- government-backed workshops and factories to guaran-
tionally organize the economy and not depend on de- tee full employment. The right to work had to become as
structive competition to do the job. Early socialists also sacred as any other right.
shared an intense desire to help the poor, and they Finally, there was Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–
preached that the rich and the poor should be more 1865), a self-educated printer who wrote a pamphlet in
nearly equal economically. Finally, socialists believed that 1840 titled What Is Property? His answer was that it was
private property should be strictly regulated by the gov- nothing but theft. Property was profit that was stolen
ernment or that it should be abolished and replaced by from the worker, who was the source of all wealth. Un-
state or community ownership. Planning, greater eco- like most socialists, Proudhon feared the power of the
nomic equality, and state regulation of property—these state and was often considered an anarchist.
were the key ideas of early French socialism and of all so- Of great importance, the message of French utopian
cialism since. socialists interacted with the experiences of French urban
One of the most influential early socialist thinkers was workers. Workers cherished the memory of the radical
a nobleman, Count Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825). phase of the French Revolution, and they became vio-
Saint-Simon optimistically proclaimed the tremendous lently opposed to laissez-faire laws that denied workers
possibilities of industrial development: “The age of gold the right to organize. Developing a sense of class in the
is before us!” The key to progress was proper social process, workers favored collective action and govern-
organization. Such an arrangement of society required ment intervention in economic life. Thus the aspirations
the parasites—the court, the aristocracy, lawyers, and of workers and utopian theorists reinforced each other,
churchmen—to give way, once and for all, to the and a genuine socialist movement emerged in Paris in the
doers—the leading scientists, engineers, and industrial- 1830s and 1840s. To Karl Marx was left the task of estab-
ists. The doers would carefully plan the economy and lishing firm foundations for modern socialism.
The Birth of Marxian Socialism

In 1848 the thirty-year-old Karl Marx (1818–1883) and
the twenty-eight-year-old Friedrich Engels (1820–1895)
published The Communist Manifesto, which became the
bible of socialism. The son of a Jewish lawyer who had
converted to Christianity, the atheistic young Marx had
studied philosophy at the University of Berlin before
turning to journalism and economics. He read widely in
French socialist thought, and like Fourier he looked for-
ward to the emancipation of women and the abolition of
the family. By the time Marx was twenty-five, he was de-
veloping his own socialist ideas.
Early French socialists often appealed to the middle
class and the state to help the poor. Marx ridiculed such
appeals as naive. He argued that the interests of the mid-
dle class and those of the industrial working class were in-
evitably opposed to each other. Indeed, according to the
Manifesto, the “history of all previously existing society is
the history of class struggles.” In Marx’s view, one class
had always exploited the other, and with the advent of
modern industry, society was split more clearly than ever
before: between the middle class (the bourgeoisie) and
the modern working class (the proletariat).
Just as the bourgeoisie had triumphed over the feudal
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aristocracy, Marx predicted that the proletariat would
conquer the bourgeoisie in a violent revolution. While a
tiny minority owned the means of production and grew
richer, the ever-poorer proletariat was constantly grow- Karl Marx Active in the revolution of 1848, Marx fled
ing in size and in class-consciousness. In this process, the from Germany in 1849 and settled in London. There he
proletariat was aided, according to Marx, by a portion of wrote Capital, the weighty exposition of his socialist theories,
the bourgeoisie who had gone over to the proletariat and and worked to organize the working class. Marx earned a
modest living as a journalist, supplemented by financial
who (like Marx and Engels) “had raised themselves to support from his coauthor, Friedrich Engels. (The Granger
the level of comprehending theoretically the historical Collection, New York)
moment.” The critical moment, Marx thought, was very
near. “Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist rev-
olution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their
chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF had taught that labor was the source of all value, Marx
ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!” So ends The Communist went on to argue that profits were really wages stolen
Manifesto. from the workers. Moreover, Marx incorporated En-
gels’s charges of terrible oppression of the new class of
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factory workers in England; thus Marx’s doctrines seemed
Primary Source: “Working Men of All Countries, Unite!”
to be based on hard facts.
Marx’s ideas united sociology, economics, and all hu- Marx’s theory of historical evolution was built on the
man history in a vast and imposing edifice. He synthe- philosophy of the German Georg Hegel (1770–1831).
sized in his socialism not only French utopian schemes but Hegel believed that each age is characterized by a domi-
also English classical economics and German philosophy— nant set of ideas, which produces opposing ideas and
the major intellectual currents of his day. eventually a new synthesis. The idea of being had been
Marx’s debt to England was great. He was the last of dominant initially, for example, and it had produced its
the classical economists. Following David Ricardo, who antithesis, the idea of nonbeing. This idea in turn had
resulted in the synthesis of becoming. Thus history has

pattern and purpose.
Romanticism’s Tenets
Marx retained Hegel’s view of history as a dialectic Romanticism was characterized by a belief in emotional
process of change but made economic relationships be- exuberance, unrestrained imagination, and spontaneity
tween classes the driving force. This dialectic explained in both art and personal life. In Germany early romantics
the decline of agrarian feudalism and the rise of industrial of the 1770s and 1780s called themselves the Sturm und
capitalism. Marx stressed repeatedly that the “bour- Drang (“Storm and Stress”), and many romantic artists
geoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary of the early nineteenth century lived lives of tremendous
part. . . . During its rule of scarcely one hundred years the emotional intensity. Suicide, duels to the death, madness,
bourgeoisie has created more massive and more colossal and strange illnesses were not uncommon among leading
productive forces than have all preceding generations to- romantics. Romantic artists typically led bohemian lives,
gether.” Marx’s next idea, that it was now the bour- wearing their hair long and uncombed in preference to
geoisie’s turn to give way to the socialism of revolutionary powdered wigs and living in cold garrets rather than fre-
workers, appeared to many the irrefutable capstone of a quenting stiff drawing rooms. They rejected materialism
brilliant interpretation of humanity’s long development. and sought to escape to lofty spiritual heights through
Thus Marx pulled together powerful ideas and insights to their art. Great individualists, the romantics believed the
create one of the great secular religions out of the intellec- full development of one’s unique human potential to be
tual ferment of the early nineteenth century. the supreme purpose in life.
Nowhere was the break with classicism more apparent
than in romanticism’s general conception of nature.
The Romantic Movement Classicism was not particularly interested in nature. In
the words of the eighteenth-century English author Sam-
Radical concepts of politics and society were accompa- uel Johnson, “A blade of grass is always a blade of grass;
nied by comparable changes in literature and other arts men and women are my subjects of inquiry.” Nature
during the dual revolution. The early nineteenth century was portrayed by classicists as beautiful and chaste, like
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marked the acme of the romantic movement, which pro- an eighteenth-century formal garden. The romantics,
foundly influenced the arts and enriched European cul- in contrast, were enchanted by nature. For some it was
ture immeasurably. awesome and tempestuous, while others saw nature as a
The romantic movement was in part a revolt against source of spiritual inspiration. As the great English land-
classicism and the Enlightenment. Classicism was essen- scape artist John Constable declared, “Nature is Spirit
tially a set of artistic rules and standards that went hand visible.”
in glove with the Enlightenment’s belief in rationality, Most romantics saw the growth of modern industry as
order, and restraint. The classicists believed that the an- an ugly, brutal attack on their beloved nature and on
cient Greeks and Romans had discovered eternally valid the human personality. They sought escape—in the un-
aesthetic rules and that playwrights and painters should spoiled Lake District of northern England, in exotic
continue to follow them. Classicists could enforce these North Africa, in an idealized Middle Ages.
rules in the eighteenth century because they dominated Fascinated by color and diversity, the romantic imagi-
the courts and academies for which artists worked. nation turned toward history with a passion. Beautiful,
Forerunners of the romantic movement appeared from exciting, and important, history was the art of change
about 1750 on. Of these, Rousseau (see page 607)— over time—the key to a universe that was now perceived
the passionate advocate of feeling, freedom, and natural to be organic and dynamic, not mechanical and static as
goodness—was the most influential. Romanticism then the Enlightenment had believed. Historical studies pro-
crystallized fully in the 1790s, primarily in England and moted the growth of national aspirations, fanning the
Germany. The French Revolution kindled the belief that embers of memory and encouraging entire peoples to
radical reconstruction was also possible in cultural and seek in the past their special destinies.
artistic life (even though many early English and German
romantics became disillusioned with events in France and
turned from liberalism to conservatism in politics). Ro- Literature
manticism gained strength until the 1840s. Britain was the first country where romanticism flowered
• What were the characteristics of the romantic movement, fully in poetry and prose, and the British romantic writers
and who were some of the great romantic artists? were among the most prominent in Europe. Wordsworth,
The Romantic Movement • 759
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Nature and the Meaning of Life
Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840)
was Germany’s greatest romantic
painter, and his Traveler Looking over
a Sea of Fog (1815) is a representative
masterpiece. Friedrich’s paintings
often focus on dark, silhouetted
figures silently contemplating an
eerie landscape. Friedrich came to
believe that humans were only an
insignificant part of an all-embracing
higher unity. (Bildarchiv Preussischer
Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY)
Coleridge, and Scott were all active by 1800, to be fol- and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834). In 1798 the
lowed shortly by Byron, Shelley, and Keats. All were po- two poets published their Lyrical Ballads, which aban-
ets: romanticism found its distinctive voice in poetry, as doned flowery classical conventions for the language of
the Enlightenment had in prose. ordinary speech and endowed simple subjects with the
A towering leader of English romanticism, William loftiest majesty.
Wordsworth (1770–1850) traveled in France after his One of the best examples of Wordsworth’s romantic
graduation from Cambridge. There he fell passionately in credo and genius is “Daffodils”:
love with a Frenchwoman, who bore him a daughter.
Deeply influenced by Rousseau and the spirit of the early I wandered lonely as a cloud
French Revolution, Wordsworth returned to England That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
and settled in the countryside with his sister, Dorothy, When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils; Son of a Napoleonic general, Hugo achieved an amaz-

Beside the lake, beneath the trees, ing range of rhythm, language, and image in his lyric po-
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. etry. His powerful novels exemplified the romantic
fascination with fantastic characters, exotic historical set-
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
tings, and human emotions. The hero of Hugo’s famous
The waves beside them danced, but they
Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) is the great cathedral’s
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
deformed bell-ringer, a “human gargoyle” overlooking
A poet could not but be gay,
the teeming life of fifteenth-century Paris. Renouncing
In such a jocund company:
his early conservatism, Hugo equated freedom in litera-
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
ture with liberty in politics and society. Hugo’s political
What wealth the show to me had brought:
evolution was thus exactly the opposite of Wordsworth’s,
For oft, when on my couch I lie in whom youthful radicalism gave way to middle-aged
In vacant or in pensive mood, caution. As the contrast between the two artists suggests,
They flash upon that inward eye romanticism was a cultural movement compatible with
Which is the bliss of solitude; many political beliefs.
And then my heart with pleasure fills, Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin (1804–1876), gener-
And dances with the daffodils. ally known by her pen name, George Sand, defied the
narrow conventions of her time in an unending search
Here indeed are simplicity and love of nature in com- for self-fulfillment. After eight years of unhappy marriage
monplace forms, which could be appreciated by everyone. she abandoned her husband and took her two children
Wordsworth’s conception of poetry as the “spontaneous to Paris to pursue a career as a writer. There Sand soon
overflow of powerful feeling recollected in tranquility” is achieved fame and wealth, eventually writing over eighty
well illustrated by the last stanza. novels on a variety of romantic and social themes. George
Born in Edinburgh, Walter Scott (1771–1832) per- Sand’s striking individualism went far beyond her flam-
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sonified the romantic movement’s fascination with his- boyant preference for men’s clothing and her notorious
tory. Raised on his grandfather’s farm, Scott fell under affairs. Her semi-autobiographical novel Lélia was shock-
the spell of the old ballads and tales of the Scottish bor- ingly modern, delving deeply into her tortuous quest for
der. He was also deeply influenced by German romanti- sexual and personal freedom.
cism, particularly by the immortal poet and dramatist In central and eastern Europe, literary romanticism
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). Scott trans- and early nationalism often reinforced each other. Seek-
lated Goethe’s famous Gotz von Berlichingen, a play ing a unique greatness in every people, well-educated ro-
about a sixteenth-century knight who revolted against mantics plumbed their own histories and cultures. Like
centralized authority and championed individual free- modern anthropologists, they turned their attention to
dom—at least in Goethe’s romantic drama. A natural peasant life and transcribed the folk songs, tales, and
storyteller, Scott composed long narrative poems and a proverbs that the cosmopolitan Enlightenment had dis-
series of historical novels. Scott excelled in re-creating dained. The brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were
the spirit of bygone ages and great historical events, espe- particularly successful at rescuing German fairy tales from
cially those of Scotland. oblivion. In the Slavic lands, romantics played a decisive
Classicism remained strong in France under Napoleon role in converting spoken peasant languages into modern
and inhibited the growth of romanticism there. In 1813 written languages. The greatest of all Russian poets,
Germaine de Staël (1766–1817), a Franco-Swiss writer Aleksander Pushkin (1799–1837), rejecting eighteenth-
living in exile, urged the French to throw away their century attempts to force Russian poetry into a classical
worn-out classical models. Her study On Germany straitjacket, used his lyric genius to mold the modern lit-
(1810) extolled the spontaneity and enthusiasm of Ger- erary language.
man writers and thinkers, and it had a powerful impact
on the post-1815 generation in France. Between 1820
and 1850, the romantic impulse broke through in the
Art and Music
poetry and prose of Lamartine, de Vigny, Hugo, Dumas, The greatest and most moving romantic painter in France
and Sand. Of these, Victor Hugo (1802–1885) was the was Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), probably the ille-
greatest in both poetry and prose. gitimate son of French foreign minister Talleyrand. Dela-
Reforms and Revolutions • 761
croix was a master of dramatic, colorful scenes that stirred considered suicide but eventually overcame despair: “I
the emotions. He was fascinated with remote and exotic will take fate by the throat; it will not bend me com-
subjects, whether lion hunts in Morocco or dreams of lan- pletely to its will.”3 Beethoven continued to pour out im-
guishing, sensuous women in a sultan’s harem. Yet he mortal music, although his last years were silent, spent in
was also a passionate spokesman for freedom. total deafness.
In England the most notable romantic painters were
Joseph M. W. Turner (1775–1851) and John Constable
(1776–1837). Both were fascinated by nature, but their Reforms and Revolutions
interpretations of it contrasted sharply, aptly symbolizing
the tremendous emotional range of the romantic move- While the romantic movement was developing, liberal,
ment. Turner depicted nature’s power and terror; wild national, and socialist forces battered against the conser-
storms and sinking ships were favorite subjects. Consta- vatism of 1815. In some countries, change occurred
ble painted gentle Wordsworthian landscapes in which gradually and peacefully. Elsewhere, pressure built up like
human beings were at one with their environment, the steam in a pressure cooker without a safety valve and
comforting countryside of unspoiled rural England. eventually caused an explosion in 1848. Three impor-
It was in music that romanticism realized most fully tant countries—Greece, Great Britain, and France—
and permanently its goals of free expression and emo- experienced variations on this basic theme between 1815
tional intensity. Abandoning well-defined structures, the and 1848.
great romantic composers used a wide range of forms to • How after 1815 did liberal, national, and socialist forces
create a thousand musical landscapes and evoke a host challenge conservatism in Greece, Great Britain, and
of powerful emotions. Romantic composers also trans- France?
formed the small classical orchestra, tripling its size by
adding wind instruments, percussion, and more brass
and strings. The crashing chords evoking the surge of the
masses in Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude, and the bot-
National Liberation in Greece
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National, liberal revolution, frustrated in Italy and Spain
tomless despair of the funeral march in Beethoven’s
Third Symphony—such were the modern orchestra’s by conservative statesmen, succeeded first after 1815 in
musical paintings that plumbed the depths of human Greece. Since the fifteenth century, the Greeks had been
feeling. living under the domination of the Ottoman Turks. In
This range and intensity gave music and musicians spite of centuries of foreign rule, the Greeks had survived
much greater prestige than in the past. Music no longer as a people, united by their language and the Greek Or-
simply complemented a church service or helped a no- thodox religion. It was perfectly natural that the general
bleman digest his dinner. Music became a sublime end in growth of national aspirations and a desire for indepen-
itself, most perfectly realizing the endless yearning of the dence would inspire some Greeks in the early nineteenth
soul. The unbelievable one-in-a-million performer—the century. This rising national movement led to the forma-
great virtuoso who could transport the listener to ecstasy tion of secret societies and then to revolt in 1821, led by
and hysteria—became a cultural hero. People swooned Alexander Ypsilanti, a Greek patriot and a general in the
for Franz Liszt (1811–1886), the greatest pianist of his Russian army.
age, as they scream for rock stars today. The Great Powers, particularly Metternich, were op-
Though romanticism dominated music until late in the posed to all revolution, even revolution against the Islamic
nineteenth century, no composer ever surpassed its first Turks. They refused to back Ypsilanti and supported the
great master, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827). Ex- Ottoman Empire. Yet for many Europeans, the Greek
tending and breaking open classical forms, Beethoven cause became a holy one. Educated Americans and Euro-
used contrasting themes and tones to produce dramatic peans were in love with the culture of classical Greece;
conflict and inspiring resolutions. As one contemporary Russians were stirred by the piety of their Orthodox
admirer wrote, “Beethoven’s music sets in motion the brethren. Writers and artists, moved by the romantic im-
lever of fear, of awe, of horror, of suffering, and awakens pulse, responded enthusiastically to the Greek national
just that infinite longing which is the essence of Roman- struggle. The famous English romantic poet Lord Byron
ticism.” Beethoven’s range and output were tremendous. even joined the Greeks and died fighting “that Greece
At the peak of his fame, he began to lose his hearing. He may yet be free.”
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Delacroix: Massacre at Chios The Greek struggle for freedom and independence won the
enthusiastic support of liberals, nationalists, and romantics. The Ottoman Turks were portrayed as
cruel oppressors who were holding back the course of history, as in this moving masterpiece by
Delacroix. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY)
The Greeks, though often quarreling among them- destroyed it. Russia then declared another of its periodic
selves, battled on against the Turks and hoped for the wars of expansion against the Turks. This led to the
eventual support of European governments. In 1827 establishment of a Russian protectorate over much of
Great Britain, France, and Russia responded to popular present-day Romania, which had also been under
demands at home and directed Turkey to accept an Turkish rule. Great Britain, France, and Russia finally
armistice. When the Turks refused, the navies of these declared Greece independent in 1830 and installed a
three powers trapped the Turkish fleet at Navarino and German prince as king of the new country in 1832. In
the end, the Greeks had won: a small nation had gained things, placed controls on a heavily taxed press and prac-
its independence in a heroic war of liberation against a tically eliminated all mass meetings. These acts followed
foreign empire. an enormous but orderly protest, at Saint Peter’s Fields
in Manchester, that had been savagely broken up by
armed cavalry. Nicknamed the Battle of Peterloo, in
Liberal Reform in Great Britain scornful reference to the British victory at Waterloo, this
Eighteenth-century British society had been both flex- incident demonstrated the government’s determination
ible and remarkably stable. It was dominated by the land- to repress and stand fast.
owning aristocracy, but that class was neither closed nor Strengthened by ongoing industrial development, the
rigidly defined. Successful business and professional new manufacturing and commercial groups insisted on a
people could buy land and become gentlefolk, while the place for their new wealth alongside the landed wealth of
common people had more than the usual opportunities the aristocracy in the framework of political power and
of the preindustrial world. Basic civil rights for all were social prestige. They called for many kinds of liberal re-
balanced by a tradition of deference to one’s social supe- form: reform of town government, organization of a new
riors. Parliament was manipulated by the king and was police force, more rights for Catholics and dissenters,
thoroughly undemocratic. Only about 8 percent of the and reform of the Poor Laws that provided aid to some
population could vote for representatives to Parliament, low-paid workers. In the 1820s, a less frightened Tory
and by the 1780s there was growing interest in some government moved in the direction of better urban ad-
kind of political reform. ministration, greater economic liberalism, civil equality
But the French Revolution threw the British aristoc- for Catholics, and limited imports of foreign grain. These
racy into a panic for a generation, making it extremely actions encouraged the middle classes to press on for
hostile to any attempts to change the status quo. The reform of Parliament so they could have a larger say in
Tory Party, completely controlled by the landed aristoc- government.
racy, was particularly fearful of radical movements at The Whig Party, though led like the Tories by great
home and abroad. After 1815 the aristocracy defended
Apago PDF Enhancer aristocrats, had by tradition been more responsive to
its ruling position by repressing every kind of popular commercial and manufacturing interests. In 1830 a Whig
protest. ministry introduced “an act to amend the representation
The first step in this direction began with revision of of the people of England and Wales.” Defeated, then
the Corn Laws in 1815. Corn Laws to regulate the for- passed by the House of Commons, this reform bill was
eign grain trade had long existed, but they were not rejected by the House of Lords. But when in 1832 the
needed during a generation of war with France because Whigs got the king to promise to create enough new
the British had been unable to import cheap grain from peers to pass the law, the House of Lords reluctantly gave
eastern Europe, leading to high prices and large profits in rather than see its snug little club ruined by upstart
for the landed aristocracy. Peace meant that grain could manufacturers and plutocrats. A mighty surge of popular
be imported again and that the price of wheat and bread protest had helped the king and lords make up their
would go down, benefiting almost everyone except the minds.
aristocracy. The aristocracy, however, rammed far-reaching The Reform Bill of 1832 had profound
changes in the Corn Laws through Parliament. The new significance. The House of Commons had emerged as
regulation prohibited the importation of foreign grain the all-important legislative body. The new industrial ar-
unless the price at home rose to improbable levels. Sel- eas of the country gained representation in the Com-
dom has a class legislated more selfishly for its own nar- mons, and many old “rotten boroughs”—electoral
row economic advantage or done more to promote a districts that had very few voters and that the landed aris-
class-based view of political action. tocracy had bought and sold—were eliminated.
The change in the Corn Laws, coming as it did at a The redistribution of seats reflected the shift in popu-
time of widespread unemployment and postwar eco- lation to the northern manufacturing counties and the
nomic distress, resulted in protests and demonstrations gradual emergence of an urban society. As a result of
by urban laborers, who were supported by radical intel- the Reform Bill of 1832, the number of voters increased
lectuals. In 1817 the Tory government responded by by about 50 percent, giving about 12 percent of adult
temporarily suspending the traditional rights of peace- men in Britain and Ireland the right to vote. Comfort-
able assembly and habeas corpus. Two years later, Parlia- able middle-class groups in the urban population, as
ment passed the infamous Six Acts, which, among other well as some substantial farmers who leased their land,
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Hayter: The House of Commons, 1833 This collective portrait of the first parliament elected
after the Reform Bill of 1832 was painted over several years. The arrangement of the members
reflects Britain’s historic two-party system, with the majority on one side and the “loyal opposi-
tion” on the other. Most European countries developed multiparty systems and coalition politics,
with competing groups seated in a large half circle. (Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery, London)
received the vote. Thus the pressures building in Great While calling for universal male suffrage, many working-
Britain were successfully—though only temporarily— class people joined with middle-class manufacturers in
released. A major reform had been achieved peacefully. the Anti–Corn Law League, founded in Manchester in
Continued fundamental reform within the system ap- 1839. Mass participation made possible a popular cru-
peared difficult but not impossible. sade led by fighting liberals, who argued that lower food
The principal radical program was embodied in the prices and more jobs in industry depended on repeal of
“People’s Charter” of 1838 and the Chartist movement the Corn Laws. Much of the working class agreed. When
(see page 741). Partly inspired by the economic distress Ireland’s potato crop failed in 1845 and famine prices for
of the working class in the 1830s and 1840s, the food seemed likely in England, Tory prime minister
Chartists’ core demand was universal male (but not fe- Robert Peel joined with the Whigs and a minority of his
male) suffrage. They saw complete political democracy own party to repeal the Corn Laws in 1846 and allow
and rule by the common people as the means to a good free imports of grain. England escaped famine. There-
and just society. Hundreds of thousands of people signed after the liberal doctrine of free trade became almost sa-
gigantic petitions calling on Parliament to grant all men cred dogma in Great Britain.
the right to vote, first and most seriously in 1839, again
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in 1842, and yet again in 1848. Parliament rejected all
Primary Source: A Denunciation of the Corn Laws
three petitions. In the short run, the working poor failed
with their Chartist demands, but they learned a valuable The following year, the Tories passed a bill designed to
lesson in mass politics. help the working classes, but in a different way. The Ten
The Prelude to 1848

March 1814 Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Britain form the Quadruple Alliance to defeat
France.
April 1814 Napoleon abdicates.
May–June 1814 Bourbon monarchy is restored; Louis XVIII issues the Constitutional Charter
providing for civil liberties and representative government.
First Peace of Paris: allies combine leniency with a defensive posture toward France.
October 1814– Congress of Vienna peace settlement establishes balance-of-power principle and
June 1815 creates the German Confederation.
February 1815 Napoleon escapes from Elba and marches on Paris.
June 1815 Napoleon defeated at the Battle of Waterloo.
September 1815 Austria, Prussia, and Russia form the Holy Alliance to repress liberal and
revolutionary movements.
November 1815 Second Peace of Paris and renewal of Quadruple Alliance punish France and
establish the European “congress system.”
1819 In Carlsbad Decrees, Metternich imposes harsh measures throughout the
German Confederation.
1820 Revolution occurs in Spain and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
At the Congress of Troppau, Metternich and Alexander I of Russia proclaim the
principle of intervention to maintain autocratic regimes.
Austria crushes a liberal revolution in Naples and restores the Sicilian autocracy.
Greeks revolt against the Ottoman Turks.
1823 French armies restore the Spanish regime.
1824 Reactionary Charles X succeeds Louis XVIII in France.
1830 Charles X repudiates the Constitutional Charter; insurrection and collapse of the
government follow. Louis Philippe succeeds to the throne and maintains a
narrowly liberal regime until 1848.
Greece wins independence from the Ottoman Empire.
1832 Reform Bill expands British electorate and encourages the middle class.
1839 Louis Blanc publishes Organization of Work.
1840 Pierre Joseph Proudhon publishes What Is Property?
1846 Jules Michelet publishes The People.
1848 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto.
Hours Act of 1847 limited the workday for women and healthy competition between a still-vigorous aristocracy
young people in factories to ten hours. Tory aristocrats and a strong middle class was a crucial factor in Great
continued to champion legislation regulating factory Britain’s peaceful evolution. The working classes could
conditions. They were competing vigorously with the make temporary alliances with either competitor to bet-
middle class for the support of the working class. This ter their own conditions.
pressure of numbers. Once peasants began to cultivate

Ireland and the Great Famine potatoes, many more people could exist. A single acre of
The people of Ireland did not benefit from the political land spaded and planted with potatoes could feed an
competition in Britain. The great mass of the population Irish family of six for a year, whereas two to four acres of
(outside of the northern counties of Ulster, which were grain and pasture were needed to feed the same number.
partly Presbyterian) were Irish Catholics, who rented The potato also could thrive on boggy wastelands.
their land from a tiny minority of Church of England Needing only a big potato patch to survive, Irish men
Protestants. These landlords were content to use their and women married early. Setting up housekeeping was
power to grab as much as possible. easy, for a cabin of mud and stone could be slapped to-
The result was that the condition of the Irish peasantry gether with the help of friends and relatives in a few days.
around 1800 was abominable. The typical peasant lived A mat for a bed, chairs and a table, and an iron pot to boil
in a wretched cottage and could afford neither shoes nor potatoes were easily acquired. To be sure, the young cou-
stockings. Hundreds of shocking accounts describe ple was embracing a life of extreme poverty. They would
hopeless poverty. Yet in spite of terrible conditions, pop- literally live on potatoes—ten pounds a day for an aver-
ulation growth sped onward. The 3 million of 1725 age male—moistened at best with a cup of milk.
reached 4 million in 1780 and doubled to 8 million by Yet the decision to marry and have large families made
1840. Between 1780 and 1840, 1.75 million people left sense. Landlords leased land for short periods only. Peas-
Ireland for Britain and America. ants had no incentive to make permanent improvements
The population grew so quickly for three reasons: ex- because anything beyond what was needed for survival
tensive cultivation of the potato, early marriage, and ex- would quickly be taken by higher rent. Rural poverty was
ploitation of peasants by landlords. The cultivation of the inescapable and better shared with a spouse, while a du-
potato, introduced into Ireland (and all of Europe) in tiful son or a loving daughter was an old person’s best
the late sixteenth century, was originally a response to the hope of escaping destitution.
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Daniel McDonald: The Discov-

ery of the Potato Blight
Although the leaves of diseased
plants usually shriveled and died,
they could also look deceptively
healthy. This Irish family has dug
up its potato harvest and just
discovered to its horror that the
blight has rotted the crop. Like
thousands of Irish families, this
family now faces the starvation
and the mass epidemics of the
Great Famine. (Department of Irish
Folklore, University College, Dublin)
As population and potato dependency grew, condi- Louis appointed as his ministers moderate royalists, who
tions became more precarious. From 1820 onward defi- sought and obtained the support of a majority of the rep-
ciencies and diseases in the potato crop became more resentatives elected to the lower Chamber of Deputies be-
common. In 1845 and 1846, and again in 1848 and tween 1816 and Louis’s death in 1824.
1851, the potato crop failed in Ireland. Louis XVIII’s charter was anything but democratic.
The result was unmitigated disaster—the Great Famine. Only about 100,000 of the wealthiest males out of a to-
Blight attacked the young plants, the leaves withered, tal population of 30 million had the right to vote for the
and the tubers rotted. Widespread starvation and mass deputies who, with the king and his ministers, made the
fever epidemics followed. Yet the British government, laws of the nation. Nonetheless, the “notable people” who
committed to rigid laissez-faire ideology, was slow to act. did vote came from very different backgrounds. There
When it did, its relief efforts were tragically inadequate. were wealthy businessmen, war profiteers, successful pro-
Moreover, the government continued to collect taxes, fessionals, ex-revolutionaries, large landowners from the
and landlords demanded their rents. Tenants who could old aristocracy and the middle class, Bourbons, and Bona-
not pay were evicted and their homes destroyed. Famine partists.
or no, Ireland remained the conquered jewel of foreign The old aristocracy, with its pre-1789 mentality, was a
landowners. minority within the voting population. It was this situation
that Louis’s successor, Charles X (r. 1824–1830), could
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not abide. Crowned in a lavish, utterly medieval, five-hour
Primary Source: The Misery That Was Ireland: The
Potato Famine
ceremony in the cathedral of Reims in 1824, Charles was a
true reactionary. He wanted to re-establish the old order in
The Great Famine shattered the pattern of Irish popu- France. Increasingly blocked by the opposition of the
lation growth. Fully 1 million emigrants fled the famine deputies, Charles’s government turned in 1830 to military
between 1845 and 1851, and at least 1.5 million died or adventure in an effort to rally French nationalism and gain
went unborn because of the disaster. Alone among the popular support. A long-standing economic and diplo-
countries of Europe, Ireland experienced a declining
Apago PDF Enhancer matic dispute with Muslim Algeria, a vassal state of the Ot-
population in the nineteenth century, from about 8 mil- toman Empire, provided the opportunity.
lion in 1845 to 4.4 million in 1911. Ireland became a In June 1830, a French force of 37,000 crossed the
land of continuous out-migration, late marriage, and Mediterranean, landed to the west of Algiers, and took
widespread celibacy. the capital city in three short weeks. Victory seemed
The Great Famine also intensified anti-British feeling complete, but in 1831 tribes in the interior revolted and
and promoted Irish nationalism, for the bitter memory waged a fearsome war until 1847, when French armies fi-
of starvation, exile, and British inaction was burned deeply nally subdued the country. Bringing French, Spanish,
into the popular consciousness. Patriots could call on and Italian settlers to Algeria and leading to the expropri-
powerful collective emotions in their campaigns for land ation of large tracts of Muslim land, the conquest of Al-
reform, home rule, and, eventually, Irish independence. geria marked the rebirth of French colonial expansion.
Emboldened by the good news from Algeria, which
actually had limited impact in Paris, Charles repudiated
The Revolution of 1830 in France the Constitutional Charter in an attempted coup in July
Louis XVIII’s Constitutional Charter of 1814—theoreti- 1830. He issued decrees stripping much of the wealthy
cally a gift from the king but actually a response to politi- middle class of its voting rights, and he censored the
cal pressures—was basically a liberal constitution (see press. The immediate reaction, encouraged by journalists
page 711). The economic and social gains made by sec- and lawyers, was an insurrection in the capital by printers,
tions of the middle class and the peasantry in the French other artisans, and small traders. In “three glorious
Revolution were fully protected, great intellectual and days,” the government collapsed. Paris boiled with revo-
artistic freedom was permitted, and a parliament with lutionary excitement, and Charles fled. Then the upper
upper and lower houses was created. Immediately after middle class, which had fomented the revolt, skillfully
Napoleon’s abortive Hundred Days, the moderate, worldly seated Charles’s cousin, Louis Philippe, duke of Orléans,
king refused to bow to the wishes of die-hard aristocrats on the vacant throne.
such as his brother Charles, who wished to sweep away Louis Philippe (r. 1830–1848) accepted the Con-
all the revolutionary changes and return to a bygone age stitutional Charter of 1814; adopted the red, white,
of royal absolutism and aristocratic pretension. Instead, and blue flag of the French Revolution; and admitted
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The Fall of Algiers, July 1830 France assembled more than six hundred ships for its attack on the Ottoman
dependency of Algeria, and this contemporary engraving depicts the ferocious naval bombardment that destroyed
the capital’s last remaining fortifications. However, after the surrender French soldiers rampaged through the city,
and news of this brutal behavior encouraged Muslims in the interior to revolt and fight on until 1847. (Musée de la
Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Paris, France/Lauros/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library)
that he was merely the “king of the French people.” In

spite of such symbolic actions, the situation in France The Revolutions of
remained fundamentally unchanged. The vote was In 1848 revolutionary political and social ideologies
extended only from 100,000 to 170,000 citizens. The combined with severe economic crisis and the romantic
wealthy notable elite actually tightened its control as the impulse to produce a vast upheaval across Europe. Only
old aristocracy retreated to the provinces to sulk harm- the most advanced and the most backward major coun-
lessly. For the upper middle class, there had been a tries—reforming Great Britain and immobile Russia—
change in dynasty in order to protect the status quo and escaped untouched. Governments toppled; monarchs
the narrowly liberal institutions of 1815. Republicans, and ministers bowed or fled. National independence,
democrats, social reformers, and the poor of Paris were liberal-democratic constitutions, and social reform:
bitterly disappointed. They had made a revolution, but it the lofty aspirations of a generation seemed at hand.
seemed for naught. The social and political divisions that Yet in the end, the revolutions failed.
so troubled Jules Michelet in the 1840s were clear for all
to see. (See the feature “Individuals in Society: Jules • Why in 1848 did revolution triumph briefly throughout
Michelet.”) most of Europe, and why did it fail almost completely?
Individuals
in Society
Jules Michelet
F amous proponent of democratic nationalism and “France sinking hour by

generally recognized as France’s pre-eminent romantic hour,” he tried first to
historian, Jules Michelet (1798–1874) was born and write a book that would
educated in Paris, the only child in a loving family of save France. Published in
poor printers. Largely self-taught in the family print 1846, The People drew on
shop in his early years, the awkward apprentice- personal experience, his-
turned-student entered the prestigious Charlemagne tory, and contemporary
College in 1813 and had to repeat his first year. Then debates, painting a vivid
he sped forward, winning prizes and building a bril- picture of French society
liant academic career. Yet Michelet remained true to his and the social dislocation
roots in the common people, and he drew from history that afflicted all classes. Jules Michelet, in a portrait
a vision of a generous France that would embrace all Rejecting socialism as by Joseph Court.
its children and heal their social divisions. an unrealistic fantasy, (Photo12.com)
The young Michelet was strongly influenced by the Michelet pleaded instead
still largely ignored Italian philosopher Giovanni Bat- for national unity: “One
tista Vico (1668–1744), who viewed history as the people! one country! one France! Never, never, I beg
development of societies and human institutions, as you, must we become two nations! Without unity, we
opposed to the biographies of great men or the work of perish!”* He also called for universal secular educa-
divine providence. Translating and popularizing Vico’s tion, which would teach the revolution in 1789 and
work and quickly writing three general histories, anchor France in a culture of republican democracy.
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Michelet was rewarded with a professorship in Paris. Michelet’s book was widely read and discussed.
He then launched an in-depth study of French society Sickened by the failure of the revolution of 1848
in the Middle Ages. and refusing to swear allegiance to Louis Napoleon,
Motivated by the Gothic revival and romantic Michelet lost his government positions and turned
nationalism, Michelet was also inspired by his to full-time writing. He completed his seven-volume
appointment as historical director of the National history of the French Revolution, filled in the early
Archives after the revolution of 1830. This enabled modern period history of France with another eleven
him to combine teaching and writing with intense volumes, and wrote popular impressions of nature and
research in still largely unexplored documentary anticlerical polemics. Michelet’s later history is often
collections and present what he believed to be the criticized for being overly emotional and biased against
first genuine history of his country and its people. the monarchy, the nobility, and the clergy while idealiz-
Many historians, though not Michelet himself, believe ing popular forces and revolutionary upheaval. A great
that his history of France in the Middle Ages— individualist, Michelet was a gifted writer with a
published between 1833 and 1844 and becoming the grand, heartfelt historical narrative of compassionate
first six volumes in his multivolume History of France nationhood for a noble people.
(1833–1867)—is his most solid, useful, and lasting
accomplishment. They single out his vast knowledge of Questions for Analysis
the sources, his uncanny evocation of times and places,
and his empathic and balanced understanding of differ- 1. How would you describe Michelet’s conception of
ent views and individuals. His treatment of the national history, and how did it evolve over time?
revival under Joan of Arc in the fifteenth century is a 2. Does the study of history help solve contemporary
famous example of his early work. problems? Debate this question, and defend your
Finishing his study of the Middle Ages and shaken position.
by his wife’s death, Michelet became eager to write *Jules Michelet, The People, trans. with an introduction by John P.
the history of the French Revolution as the ultimate McKay (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973), p. 21.
achievement, the time the French people reached ma-
turity and began the long-delayed liberation of mankind. Improve Your Grade
Yet, confronted by growing social divisions and seeing Going Beyond Individuals in Society
769
The government’s stubborn refusal to consider elec-

A Democratic Republic in France toral reform heightened a sense of class injustice among
The late 1840s in Europe were hard economically and middle-class shopkeepers, skilled artisans, and unskilled
tense politically. The potato famine in Ireland in 1845 working people, and it eventually touched off a popular
and 1846 had many echoes on the continent. Bad har- revolt in Paris. Barricades went up on the night of Febru-
vests jacked up food prices and caused misery and unem- ary 22, 1848, and by February 24 Louis Philippe had ab-
ployment in the cities. “Prerevolutionary” outbreaks dicated in favor of his grandson. But the common people
occurred all across Europe: an abortive Polish revolution in arms would tolerate no more monarchy. This refusal
in the northern part of Austria in 1846, a civil war be- led to the proclamation of a provisional republic, headed
tween radicals and conservatives in Switzerland in 1847, by a ten-man executive committee and certified by cries
and an armed uprising in Naples, Italy, in January 1848. of approval from the revolutionary crowd.
Revolution was almost universally expected, but it took A generation of historians and journalists had praised
revolution in Paris—once again—to turn expectations the First French Republic, and their work had borne fruit:
into realities. the revolutionaries were firmly committed to a republic (as
Louis Philippe’s “bourgeois monarchy” had been opposed to any form of constitutional monarchy), and
characterized by stubborn inaction and complacency. they immediately set about drafting a constitution for
There was a glaring lack of social legislation, and politics France’s Second Republic. Moreover, they wanted a truly
was dominated by corruption and selfish special interests. popular and democratic republic so that the healthy, life-
With only the rich voting for deputies, many of the giving forces of the common people—the peasants, the ar-
deputies were docile government bureaucrats. tisans, and the unskilled workers—could reform society
The Triumph of Democratic Republics This French illustration constructs a joyous, optimistic
vision of the initial revolutionary breakthrough in 1848. The peoples of Europe, joined together
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around their respective national banners, are achieving republican freedom, which is symbolized
by the statue of liberty and the discarded crowns. The woman wearing pants—very radical attire—
represents feminist hopes for liberation. (Archive of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milan)
The Revolutions of 1848 • 771
with wise legislation. In practice, building such a republic 1859), who had predicted the overthrow of Louis
meant giving the right to vote to every adult male, and this Philippe’s government. To this brilliant observer, social-
was quickly done. Revolutionary compassion and sympa- ism was the most characteristic aspect of the revolution in
thy for freedom were expressed in the freeing of all slaves Paris.
in French colonies, the abolition of the death penalty, and This socialist revolution was evoking a violent reaction
the establishment of a ten-hour workday for Paris. not only among the frightened middle and upper classes
Yet there were profound differences within the revolu- but also among the bulk of the population—the peas-
tionary coalition in Paris. On the one hand, there were ants. The French peasants owned land, and according to
the moderate, liberal republicans of the middle class. Tocqueville, “private property had become with all those
They viewed universal male suffrage as the ultimate con- who owned it a sort of bond of fraternity.”4 Returning
cession to be made to popular forces, and they strongly from Normandy to take his seat in the new Constituent
opposed any further radical social measures. On the Assembly, Tocqueville saw that a majority of the mem-
other hand, there were radical republicans and hard- bers were firmly committed to the republic and strongly
pressed artisans. Influenced by a generation of utopian opposed to the socialists and their artisan allies, and he
socialists, and appalled by the poverty and misery of the shared their sentiments.
urban poor, the radical republicans were committed to This clash of ideologies—of liberal capitalism and so-
some kind of socialism. So were many artisans, who cialism—became a clash of classes and arms after the elec-
hated the unrestrained competition of cutthroat capital- tions. The new government’s executive committee
ism and who advocated a combination of strong craft dropped Blanc and thereafter included no representative
unions and worker-owned businesses. of the Parisian working class. Fearing that their socialist
Worsening depression and rising unemployment hopes were about to be dashed, artisans and unskilled
brought these conflicting goals to the fore in 1848. workers invaded the Constituent Assembly on May 15
Louis Blanc, who along with a worker named Albert and tried to proclaim a new revolutionary state. But the
represented the republican socialists in the provisional government was ready and used the middle-class National
government, pressed for recognition of a socialist right
Apago PDF Enhancer Guard to squelch this uprising. As the workshops contin-
to work. Blanc asserted that permanent government- ued to fill and grow more radical, the fearful but powerful
sponsored cooperative workshops should be established propertied classes in the Assembly took the offensive. On
for workers. Such workshops would be an alternative to June 22, the government dissolved the national work-
capitalist employment and a decisive step toward a new, shops in Paris, giving the workers the choice of joining
noncompetitive social order. the army or going to workshops in the provinces.
The moderate republicans wanted no such thing. They The result was a spontaneous and violent uprising.
were willing to provide only temporary relief. The result- Frustrated in attempts to create a socialist society, masses
ing compromise set up national workshops—soon to be- of desperate people were now losing even their life-
come little more than a vast program of pick-and-shovel sustaining relief. As a voice from the crowd cried out
public works—and established a special commission un- when the famous astronomer François Arago counseled
der Blanc to “study the question.” This satisfied no one. patience, “Ah, Monsieur Arago, you have never been
The national workshops were, however, better than hungry!”5 Barricades sprang up in the narrow streets of
nothing. An army of desperate poor from the French Paris, and a terrible class war began. Working people
provinces and even from foreign countries streamed into fought with the courage of utter desperation, but the
Paris to sign up. As the economic crisis worsened, the government had the army and the support of peasant
number enrolled in the workshops soared from 10,000 France. After three terrible “June Days” and the death or
in March to 120,000 by June, and another 80,000 were injury of more than ten thousand people, the republican
trying unsuccessfully to join. army under General Louis Cavaignac stood triumphant
While the workshops in Paris grew, the French masses in a sea of working-class blood and hatred.
went to the election polls in late April. Voting in most The revolution in France thus ended in spectacular fail-
cases for the first time, the people of France elected to the ure. The February coalition of the middle and working
new Constituent Assembly about five hundred moderate classes had in four short months become locked in mortal
republicans, three hundred monarchists, and one hun- combat. In place of a generous democratic republic, the
dred radicals who professed various brands of socialism. Constituent Assembly completed a constitution featuring
One of the moderate republicans was the author of a strong executive. This allowed Louis Napoleon, nephew
Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805– of Napoleon Bonaparte, to win a landslide victory in the
election of December 1848. The appeal of his great name transform the mosaic of provinces and peoples that was
as well as the desire of the propertied classes for order at the kingdom of Hungary into a unified, centralized,
any cost had produced a semi-authoritarian regime. Hungarian nation. To the minority groups that formed
half of the population—the Croats, Serbs, and Romani-
ans—such unification was completely unacceptable. Each
The Austrian Empire in 1848 felt entitled to political autonomy and cultural indepen-
Throughout central Europe, the first news of the up- dence. The Habsburg monarchy in Vienna exploited the
heaval in France evoked feverish excitement and eventu- fears of the minority groups, and they were soon locked in
ally revolution. Liberals demanded written constitutions, armed combat with the new Hungarian government. In
representative government, and greater civil liberties a somewhat similar way, Czech nationalists based in Bo-
from authoritarian regimes. When governments hesi- hemia and the city of Prague came into conflict with Ger-
tated, popular revolts followed. Urban workers and stu- man nationalists. (See the feature “Listening to the Past:
dents served as the shock troops, but they were allied Speaking for the Czech Nation” on pages 776–777.) Thus
with middle-class liberals and peasants. In the face of this conflicting national aspirations within the Austrian Em-
united front, monarchs collapsed and granted almost pire enabled the monarchy to play off one ethnic group
everything. The popular revolutionary coalition, having against the other.
secured great and easy victories, then broke down as it Finally, the conservative aristocratic forces gathered
had in France. The traditional forces—the monarchy, the around Emperor Ferdinand I regained their nerve and
aristocracy, the regular army—recovered their nerve, re- reasserted their great strength. The archduchess Sophia,
asserted their authority, and took back many, though not a conservative but intelligent and courageous Bavarian
all, of the concessions. Reaction was everywhere victorious. princess married to the emperor’s brother, provided a
The revolution in the Austrian Empire began in Hun- rallying point. Deeply ashamed of the emperor’s collapse
gary, where nationalistic Hungarians demanded national before a “mess of students,” she insisted that Ferdinand,
autonomy, full civil liberties, and universal suffrage. who had no heir, abdicate in favor of her son, Francis
When the monarchy in Vienna hesitated, Viennese stu-
Apago PDF Enhancer Joseph.6 Powerful nobles who held high positions in the
dents and workers took to the streets, and peasant disor- government, the army, and the church agreed com-
ders broke out in parts of the empire. The Habsburg pletely. They organized around Sophia in a secret con-
emperor Ferdinand I (r. 1835–1848) capitulated and spiracy to reverse and crush the revolution.
promised reforms and a liberal constitution. Metternich Their first breakthrough came when the army bom-
fled in disguise toward London. The old absolutist order barded Prague and savagely crushed a working-class re-
seemed to be collapsing with unbelievable rapidity. volt there on June 17. Other Austrian officials and nobles
The coalition of revolutionaries was not stable, how- began to lead the minority nationalities of Hungary
ever. The Austrian Empire was overwhelmingly agricul- against the revolutionary government proclaimed by the
tural, and serfdom still existed. On March 20, as part of Hungarian patriots. At the end of October, the well-
its capitulation before upheaval, the monarchy abolished equipped, predominately peasant troops of the regular
serfdom, with its degrading forced labor and feudal ser- Austrian army attacked the student and working-class
vices. Feeling they had won a victory reminiscent of that radicals in Vienna and retook the city at the cost of more
in France in 1789, newly free men and women of the than four thousand casualties. Thus the determination of
land then lost interest in the political and social questions the Austrian aristocracy and the loyalty of its army were
agitating the cities. Meanwhile, the coalition of urban the final ingredients in the triumph of reaction and the
revolutionaries also broke down. When artisan workers defeat of revolution.
and the urban poor rose in arms and presented their own When Francis Joseph (r. 1848–1916) was crowned
demands for socialist workshops and universal voting emperor of Austria immediately after his eighteenth
rights for men, the prosperous middle classes recoiled in birthday in December 1848, only Hungary had yet to be
alarm. brought under control. But another determined conser-
The coalition of March was also weakened, and ulti- vative, Nicholas I of Russia (r. 1825–1855), obligingly
mately destroyed, by conflicting national aspirations. In lent his iron hand. On June 6, 1849, 130,000 Russian
March the Hungarian revolutionary leaders pushed troops poured into Hungary and subdued the country
through an extremely liberal, almost democratic, consti- after bitter fighting. For a number of years, the Habs-
tution. But the Hungarian revolutionaries also sought to burgs ruled Hungary as a conquered territory.
press their demands. When the artisans and factory work-

Prussia and the Frankfurt Assembly ers in Berlin exploded in March and joined temporarily
After Austria, Prussia was the largest and most influential with the middle-class liberals in the struggle against
German kingdom. Prior to 1848, the goal of middle- the monarchy, the autocratic yet paternalistic Frederick
class Prussian liberals had been to transform absolutist William IV (r. 1840–1861) vacillated and finally caved in.
Prussia into a liberal constitutional monarchy, which On March 21, he promised to grant Prussia a liberal con-
would lead the thirty-eight states of the German Confed- stitution and to merge Prussia into a new national Ger-
eration into the liberal, unified nation desired by liberals man state that was to be created. But urban workers
throughout the German states. The agitation following wanted much more and the Prussian aristocracy wanted
the fall of Louis Philippe encouraged Prussian liberals to much less than the moderate constitutional liberalism
Street Fighting in Frankfurt, 1848 Workers and students could tear up the cobblestones,
barricade a street, and make it into a fortress. But urban revolutionaries were untrained and
poorly armed. They were no match for professional soldiers led by tough officers who were sent
against them after frightened rulers had recovered their nerve. (The Granger Collection, New York)
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the king conceded. The workers issued a series of demo- began war with Denmark. As the Schleswig-Holstein is-
cratic and vaguely socialist demands that troubled their sue demonstrated, the national ideal was a crucial factor
middle-class allies, and the conservative clique gathered motivating the German middle classes in 1848.
around the king to urge counter-revolution. In March 1849, the National Assembly finally com-
As an elected Prussian Constituent Assembly met in pleted its drafting of a liberal constitution and elected
Berlin to write a constitution for the Prussian state, a self- King Frederick William of Prussia emperor of the new
appointed committee of liberals from various German German national state (minus Austria and Schleswig-
states successfully called for a national assembly to begin Holstein). By early 1849, however, reaction had been
writing a federal constitution for a unified German state. successful almost everywhere. Frederick William had re-
Meeting in Frankfurt in May, the National Assembly asserted his royal authority, disbanded the Prussian Con-
was a curious revolutionary body. It was a really serious stituent Assembly, and granted his subjects a limited,
middle-class body of lawyers, professors, doctors, offi- essentially conservative constitution. Reasserting that he
cials, and businessmen. ruled by divine right, Frederick William contemptuously
Convened to write a constitution, the learned body was refused to accept the “crown from the gutter.” Bogged
soon absorbed in a battle with Denmark over the down by their preoccupation with nationalist issues, the
provinces of Schleswig and Holstein, an extremely com- reluctant revolutionaries in Frankfurt had waited too
plicated issue from a legal point of view. The provinces long and acted too timidly.
were inhabited primarily by Germans but were ruled by When Frederick William, who really wanted to be em-
the king of Denmark, although Holstein was a member of peror but only on his own authoritarian terms, tried to get
the German Confederation. When Frederick VII, the new the small monarchs of Germany to elect him emperor,
nationalistic king of Denmark, tried to integrate both Austria balked. Supported by Russia, Austria forced Prus-
provinces into the rest of his state, the Germans in these sia to renounce all its schemes of unification in late 1850.
provinces revolted. Hypnotized by this conflict, the Na- The German Confederation was re-established. Attempts
tional Assembly at Frankfurt debated ponderously and fi- to unite the Germans—first in a liberal national state
nally called on the Prussian army to oppose Denmark in
Apago PDF Enhancer and then in a conservative Prussian empire—had failed
the name of the German nation. Prussia responded and completely.
• How did the victorious allies fashion a general In 1814 the victorious allied powers sought to restore
peace settlement, and how did Metternich uphold a peace and stability in Europe. Dealing moderately with
conservative European order? France and wisely settling their own differences, the allies
• What were the basic tenets of liberalism, nationalism, laid the foundations for beneficial international coopera-
and socialism, and what groups were most attracted to tion throughout much of the nineteenth century. Led by
these ideologies? Metternich, the conservative powers also sought to pre-
• What were the characteristics of the romantic move- vent the spread of subversive ideas and radical changes in
ment, and who were some of the great romantic artists? domestic politics. Yet European thought has seldom
been more powerfully creative than after 1815, and ide-
• How after 1815 did liberal, national, and socialist ologies of liberalism, nationalism, and socialism all devel-
forces challenge conservatism in Greece, Great Britain,
oped to challenge the existing order in this period of
and France?
early industrialization and rapid population growth. The
• Why in 1848 did revolution triumph briefly romantic movement, breaking decisively with the dic-
throughout most of Europe, and why did it fail almost tates of classicism, reinforced the spirit of change and
completely? revolutionary anticipation.
All of these forces shaped European development after
1815, and they culminated in the liberal and nationalistic
revolutions of 1848. Political, economic, and social pres- Lindemann, Albert S. A History of European Socialism.
sures that had been building since 1815 exploded dra- 1983. A stimulating survey of early socialism and
matically and rocked the continent. Yet the upheavals of Marxism.
1848 were abortive, and very few revolutionary goals Malia, Martin, and Terence Emmons. History’s Locomo-
were realized. The moderate, nationalistic middle classes tives: Revolutions and the Making of the Modern World.
were unable to consolidate their initial victories in France 2006. An ambitious comparative work of high quality.
or elsewhere in Europe. Instead, they drew back when
artisans, factory workers, and radical socialists rose up to Mann, Thomas. Buddenbrooks. A wonderful historical
present their own much more revolutionary demands. novel that traces the rise and fall of a prosperous Ger-
This retreat facilitated the efforts of dedicated aristocrats man family over three generations.
in central Europe to reassert their power. And it made Merriman, John. Police Stories: Building the French State,
possible the crushing of Parisian workers by a coalition of 1815–1851. 2006. An outstanding and innovative com-
solid bourgeoisie and landowning peasantry in France. A pendium.
host of fears, a sea of blood, and a torrent of disillusion Pilbeam, Pamela. French Socialists Before Marx: Workers,
had drowned the lofty ideals and utopian visions of a Women, and the Social Question. 2000. Shows the signif-
generation. The age of romantic revolution was over. icant role of women in utopian socialism.
Soon tough-minded realists would take command to
confront the challenges of the dual revolution. Price, Roger. A Social History of Nineteenth-Century
France. 1987. A fine synthesis.
Rubinstein, W. D. Britain’s Century: A Political and So-
Key Terms cial History, 1815–1905. 1998. An excellent English his-
tory.
dual revolution doers
Congress of Vienna bourgeoisie Sheehan, James J. German History, 1770–1866. 1993. A
Holy Alliance proletariat stimulating general history that skillfully incorporates
Carlsbad Decrees Apago PDF Enhancer
romanticism recent research.
liberalism Sturm und Drang Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. A great nineteenth-century
laissez faire Corn Laws romantic novel that draws an almost lovable picture of
nationalism Battle of Peterloo the famous monster and is highly recommended.
socialism Great Famine
Sperber, Jonathan. The European Revolutions, 1848–
parasites
1851. 1993. A solid synthesis of the great revolutionary
upheaval.
Suggested Reading Notes

1. E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
Berger, Stefan, ed. A Companion to Nineteenth-Century 1983), especially pp. 19–39.
Europe, 1789–1914. 2006. A useful study with an up-to- 2. This paragraph draws on the influential views of B. Anderson,
date bibliography. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of
Nationalism, rev. ed. (London/New York: Verso, 1991), and E. J.
Chadwick, Owen. The Secularization of the European Hobsbawm and T. Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cam-
Mind in the Nineteenth Century. 1976. Considers the bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
important place of religion in nineteenth-century 3. Quoted in F. B. Artz, From the Renaissance to Romanticism: Trends
thought. in Style in Art, Literature, and Music, 1300–1830 (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1962), pp. 276, 278.
Gildea, Robert. Barricades and Borders: Europe, 1800– 4. A. de Tocqueville, Recollections (New York: Columbia University
1914, 2d ed. 1996. A recommended general study. Press, 1949), p. 94.
5. M. Agulhon, 1848 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1973), pp. 68–69.
Greene, Abigail. Fatherlands: State-Building and Nation- 6. W. L. Langer, Political and Social Upheaval, 1832–1852 (New York:
hood in Nineteenth-Century Germany. 2001. A brilliant Harper & Row, 1969), p. 361.
discussion of the smaller German states.
Speaking for the Czech Nation
T he creation of national consciousness and

nationalism often began with a cultural revival that
beyond this heretofore existing federation
between princes, this is then a new demand which
focused on a people’s language and history, which has no historical legal basis. . . . The second
led to calls for cultural autonomy and political reason which prevents me from participating in
independence. In Austria, the influential historian your deliberations is the fact that . . . you . . .
Frantisek Palacky (1798–1876) inspired the Czech are . . . aiming to undermine Austria forever as an
cultural and political revival, re-creating the Czechs independent empire and to make its existence
in his books as progressive and democratic before the impossible—an empire whose preservation,
Counter-Reformation and the long process of integrity and consolidation is, and must be, a
Germanization under Habsburg rule. great and important matter not only for my own
In the revolution of 1848, when the German nation but for the whole of Europe, indeed for
National Assembly in Frankfurt assumed that Austrian mankind and civilization itself. Allow me kindly
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provinces that were part of the German Confederation to explain myself briefly on this point.
would also join a united Germany, it asked Palacky to You know, gentlemen, what power it is that
represent Czech Bohemia. In the famous letter that holds the whole great eastern part of our
follows Palacky rejected this invitation. Asserting the continent; you know that this power [Russia]
reality of a Czech nation and warning of both Russian which now already has grown to vast dimensions,
and German expansionism, he proposed a “union of increases and expands by its own strength every
equals” in a radically transformed Austria. A version decade . . . has for a long time been a threat to its
of Palacky’s proposal was passed by Austria’s neighbours; and . . . that every further step which
constituent assembly in 1849, but the resurgent it will take forward on this path threatens at an
absolutist government vetoed it. ever accelerated pace to produce and found a
universal monarchy, that is to say, an infinite and
. . . I am a Czech of Slav descent and with all the inexpressible evil, a misfortune without measure
little I own and possess I have devoted myself or bound which I, though heart and soul a Slav,
wholly and for ever to the service of my nation. would nonetheless deeply regret for the good of
That nation is small, it is true, but from time mankind even though that monarchy proclaimed
immemorial it has been an independent nation itself a Slav one. . . . The bare possibility of a
with its own character; its rulers have participated Russian universal monarchy has no more
since old times in the federation of German determined opponent or adversary than myself,
princes, but the nation never regarded itself nor not because that monarchy would be Russian but
was it regarded by others throughout all the because it would be universal.
centuries, as part of the German nation. The You know that in south-east Europe, along the
whole union of the Czech lands first with the frontiers of the Russian empire, there live many
Holy German Empire and then with the German nations widely different in origin, language,
Confederation was always a purely dynastic one of history and habits—Slavs, Rumanians, Magyars
which the Czech nation, the Czech Estates, hardly [Hungarians] and Germans, not to speak of
wished to know and which they hardly Greeks, Turks and Albanians—none of whom is
noticed. . . . If anyone asks that the Czech nation strong enough by itself to be able to resist
should now unite with the German nation, successfully for all time the superior neighbour to
776
the east; they could do it only if a close and firm
tie bound them all together. The vital artery of
this necessary union of nations is the Danube; the
focus of its power must never be removed far
from this river, if the union is to be effective at all
and to remain so. Certainly, if the Austrian state
had not existed for ages, we would be obliged in
the interests of Europe and even of mankind to
endeavor to create it as fast as possible.
But why have we seen this state, which by
nature and history is destined to be the bulwark
and guardian of Europe against Asiatic elements
of every kind—why have we seen it in a critical
moment helpless and almost unadvised in the face
of the advancing storm? It is because in an
unhappy blindness which has lasted for very long,
Austria has not recognized the real legal and Frantisek Palacky, in a frontispiece portrait
moral foundation of its existence and has denied accompanying his most important work on
it: the fundamental rule that all the nationalities Czech history. (Visual Connection Archive)
united under its scepter should enjoy complete
equality of rights and respect. The right of nations
is truly a natural right; no nation on earth has the
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right to demand that its neighbour should
towards ruinously undermining, but even utterly
sacrifice itself for its benefit, no nation obliged to
deny or sacrifice itself for the good of its destroying that center from whose might and
neighbour. Nature knows neither ruling nor strength I expect the salvation not only of the
subservient nations. If the union which unites Czech land. . . . For the sake of Europe, Vienna
several different nations is to be firm and lasting, must not sink to the role of a provincial town. If
no nation must have cause to fear that by that there are in Vienna itself such people who
union it will lose any of the goods which it holds demand to have your Frankfurt as their capital,
most dear; on the contrary each must have the then we must cry: Lord, forgive them, for they
certain hope that it will find in the central know not what they ask!
authority defense and protection against possible
violations of equality by neighbours; then every
nation will do its best to strengthen that central Questions for Analysis
authority so that it can successfully provide the
aforesaid defense. I am convinced that even now it 1. Why did Palacky refuse to participate in the
is not too late for the Austrian empire to proclaim German National Assembly?
openly and sincerely this fundamental rule of
justice, the sacred anchor for a ship in danger of 2. What is Palacky’s attitude toward Russia? Why?
floundering and to carry it out energetically in 3. In a famous epigram inspired by Voltaire,
common and in every respect; but every moment Palacky writes, “If the Austrian state had not
is precious; for God’s sake do not let us delay existed for ages, we would be obliged . . . to
another hour with this! . . . create it as fast as possible.” What does he
When I look behind the Bohemian frontiers, mean?
then natural and historical reasons make me turn
not to Frankfurt but to Vienna to seek there the 4. How has Austria failed to perform its mission?
center which is fitted and destined to ensure and Why?
defend the peace, the liberty and the right of my Source: Slightly adapted from Hans Kohn, Pan-Slavism: Its
nation. Your efforts, gentlemen, seem to me now Ideology and History, pp. 65–69. Copyright © 1953. Reprinted
to be directed as I have already stated, not only by permission of the University of Notre Dame Press.
777
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John Perry, A Bill-poster’s Fantasy (1855), explores the endless diversity of big-city entertainment.
(dunhill Museum & Archive, 48 Germyn Street, St. James’s, London)
c h a p t e r
24
Life in the
Emerging Urban
Society in the
Nineteenth
chapter preview
Century
Taming the City
• What was life like in the cities, and
how did urban life change in the
nineteenth century?
Rich and Poor and Those
in Between
• What did the emergence of urban
T he era of intellectual and political upheaval that culminated in the
revolutions of 1848 was also an era of rapid urbanization. After
1848 Western political development veered off in a novel and uncharted
industrial society mean for rich and direction, but the growth of towns and cities rushed forward with undi-
poor and those in between? minished force. Thus Western society was urban and industrial in 1900
as surely as it had been rural and agrarian in 1800. The urbanization of
The Changing Family society was both a result of the Industrial Revolution and a reflection of
• How did families change as theyApago PDF Enhancer
its enormous long-term impact.
coped with the challenges and the
opportunities of the developing urban
civilization? Taming the City
Science and Thought
The growth of industry posed enormous challenges for all elements of
• What major changes in science and Western society, from young factory workers confronting relentless disci-
thought reflected and influenced the pline to aristocratic elites maneuvering to retain political power. As we
new urban society? saw in Chapter 22, the early consequences of economic transformation
were mixed and far-reaching and by no means wholly negative. By 1850
at the latest, working conditions were improving and real wages were ris-
ing for the mass of the population, and they continued to do so until
1914. Thus given the poverty and uncertainty of preindustrial life, some
historians maintain that the history of industrialization in the nineteenth
century is probably better written in terms of increasing opportunities
than in terms of greater hardships.
Critics of this relatively optimistic view of industrialization claim that it
neglects the quality of life in urban areas. They stress that the new indus-
trial towns and cities were awful places where people, especially poor
people, suffered from bad housing, lack of sanitation, and a sense of hope-
lessness. They ask if these drawbacks did not more than cancel out higher
wages and greater opportunity. An examination of the development of
779
780 CHAPTER 24 • LIFE IN THE EMERGING URBAN SOCIETY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
1800 1900
St. Petersburg
Moscow
Copenhagen
Dublin
London Hamburg
Amsterdam Warsaw
Berlin
Paris
Vienna
Lyons
Milan Venice
Marseilles
Madrid
Lisbon Barcelona Rome
Valencia Naples Constantinople
Palermo
0 250 500 Km. 0 250 500 Km.
0 250 500 Mi. 0 250 500 Mi.
Mapping the Past

MAP 24.1 European Cities of 100,000 or More, 1800 and 1900 There were more large cities
in Great Britain in 1900 than in all of Europe in 1800. A careful comparison of these historical snap-
•
shots reveals key aspects of nineteenth-century urbanization. 1 In 1800, what common characteristics
were shared by many large European cities? (For example, how many big cities were capitals and/or leading
•
ports?) 2 Compare the spatial distribution of cities in 1800 with the distribution in 1900. Where and why in 1900
are many large cities concentrated in two clusters?
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cities in the nineteenth century provides some answers to Clearly, deplorable urban conditions did not originate
this complex question. with the Industrial Revolution. What the Industrial Rev-
• What was life like in the cities, and how did urban life olution did was to reveal those conditions more nakedly
change in the nineteenth century? than ever before. The steam engine freed industrialists
from dependence on the energy of fast-flowing streams
and rivers so that by 1800 there was every incentive to
build new factories in urban areas. Cities had better ship-
Industry and the Growth of Cities ping facilities than the countryside and thus better sup-
Since the Middle Ages, European cities had been centers plies of coal and raw materials. There were also many
of government, culture, and large-scale commerce. They hands wanting work in the cities, for cities drew people
had also been congested, dirty, and unhealthy. People like a magnet. And it was a great advantage for a manu-
were packed together almost as tightly as possible within facturer to have other factories nearby to supply the busi-
the city limits. The typical city was a “walking city”: for ness’s needs and buy its products. Therefore, as industry
all but the wealthiest classes, walking was the only avail- grew, there was also a rapid expansion of already over-
able form of transportation. crowded and unhealthy cities.
Infectious disease spread with deadly speed in cities, The challenge of the urban environment was felt first
and people were always more likely to die in the city than and most acutely in Great Britain. The number of people
in the countryside. In the larger towns, more people died living in cities of 20,000 or more in England and Wales
each year than were born, on average, and urban popula- jumped from 1.5 million in 1801 to 6.3 million in 1851
tions were able to maintain their numbers only because and reached 15.6 million in 1891. Such cities accounted
newcomers were continually arriving from rural areas. for 17 percent of the total English population in 1801,
Little could be done to improve these conditions, given 35 percent as early as 1851, and fully 54 percent in 1891.
the pervasive poverty, absence of urban transportation, Other countries duplicated the English pattern as they
lack of medical knowledge, and deadly overcrowding. industrialized (see Map 24.1). An American observer was
Taming the City • 781
hardly exaggerating when he wrote in 1899 that “the Chronology

most remarkable social phenomenon of the present cen-
tury is the concentration of population in cities.”1 ca 1850–1870 Modernization of Paris
In the 1820s and 1830s, people in Britain and France
began to worry about the condition of their cities. In 1850–1914 Condition of working classes improves
those years, the populations of a number of British cities 1854 Pasteur studies fermentation and develops
were increasing by 40 to 70 percent each decade. With pasteurization
urban areas expanding at such previously undreamed-of
rates, people’s fatalistic acceptance of overcrowded, un- 1854–1870 Development of germ theory
sanitary urban living conditions began to give way to ac- 1857 Flaubert, Madame Bovary
tive concern. Something urgently needed to be done.
On one point everyone could agree: except on the 1859 Darwin, On the Origin of Species
outskirts, each town or city was using every scrap of land 1859–1870 Unification of Italy
to the fullest extent. Parks and open areas were almost
nonexistent. Buildings were erected on the smallest pos- 1861–1865 U.S. Civil War
sible lots in order to pack the maximum number of 1866 Austro-Prussian War
people into a given space. Narrow houses were built wall
to wall in long rows. These row houses had neither front 1869 Mendeleev creates periodic table
nor back yards, and only a narrow alley in back separated 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War
one row from the next. Or buildings were built around
tiny courtyards completely enclosed on all four sides. 1880–1881 Dostoevski, The Brothers Karamazov
Many people lived in extremely small, often overcrowded 1880–1913 Birthrate steadily declines in Europe
cellars or attics. “Six, eight, and even ten occupying one
room is anything but uncommon,” wrote a doctor from 1890s Electric streetcars introduced in Europe
Aberdeen in Scotland for a government investigation
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in 1842.
These highly concentrated urban populations lived in conditions; many continental cities with stronger tradi-
extremely unsanitary and unhealthy conditions. Open tions of municipal regulation were every bit as bad.
drains and sewers flowed alongside or down the middle Most responsible of all was the sad legacy of rural hous-
of unpaved streets. Toilet facilities were primitive in the ing conditions in preindustrial society combined with ap-
extreme. In parts of Manchester, as many as two hundred palling ignorance. As one authority concludes, “the decent
people shared a single outhouse. Such privies filled up cottage was the exception, the hovel the rule.”3 Thus
rapidly, and since they were infrequently emptied, sewage housing was far down on the newcomer’s list of priori-
often overflowed and seeped into cellar dwellings. More- ties, and ordinary people generally took dirt and filth for
over, some courtyards in poorer neighborhoods became granted. One English miner told an investigator, “I do
dunghills, collecting excrement that was sometimes sold not think it usual for the lasses [in the coal mines] to wash
as fertilizer. By the 1840s there was among the better-off their bodies; my sisters never wash themselves.” As for the
classes a growing, shocking “realization that, to put it as men, “their legs and bodies are as black as your hat.”4
mildly as possible, millions of English men, women, and
children were living in shit.”2
Who or what was responsible for these awful condi- Public Health and the
tions? The crucial factors were the tremendous pressure of
more people and the total absence of public transporta-
Bacterial Revolution
tion. People simply had to jam themselves together if they Although cleanliness was not next to godliness in most
were to be able to walk to shops and factories. Another people’s eyes, it was becoming so for some reformers.
factor was that government in Great Britain, both local The most famous of these was Edwin Chadwick, one of
and national, was slow to provide sanitary facilities and es- the commissioners charged with the administration of re-
tablish adequate building codes. This slow pace was prob- lief to paupers under Britain’s revised Poor Law of 1834.
ably attributable more to a need to explore and identify Chadwick was a good Benthamite—that is, a follower of
what precisely should be done than to rigid middle-class radical philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832). Ben-
opposition to government action. Certainly, Great Britain tham had taught that public problems ought to be dealt
had no monopoly on overcrowded and unhealthy urban with on a rational, scientific basis and according to the
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Filth and Disease This 1852 drawing from Punch tells volumes about the unhealthy living
conditions of the urban poor. In the foreground children play with a dead rat and a woman
scavenges a dung heap. Cheap rooming houses provide shelter for the frightfully overcrowded
population. (The British Library)
“greatest good for the greatest number.” Applying these that disease was related to filthy environmental conditions,
principles, Chadwick soon became convinced that disease which were in turn caused largely by lack of drainage,
and death actually caused poverty simply because a sick sewers, and garbage collection.
worker was an unemployed worker and orphaned chil- Chadwick correctly believed that the stinking excrement
dren were poor children. Most important, Chadwick be- of communal outhouses could be dependably carried off
lieved that disease could be prevented by cleaning up the by water through sewers at less than one-twentieth the
urban environment. That was his “sanitary idea.” cost of removing it by hand. The cheap iron pipes and tile
Chadwick collected detailed reports from local Poor drains of the industrial age would provide running water
Law officials on the “sanitary conditions of the laboring and sewerage for all sections of town, not just the wealthy
population” and published his hard-hitting findings in ones. In 1848, with the cause strengthened by the cholera
1842. This mass of widely publicized evidence proved epidemic of 1846, Chadwick’s report became the basis of
Taming the City • 783
Great Britain’s first public health law, which created a na-

30
tional health board and gave cities broad authority to build
29
modern sanitary systems.
The public health movement won dedicated supporters 28
in the United States, France, and Germany from the 1840s 27
Germany
on. Governments accepted at least limited responsibility 26
for the health of all citizens, and their programs broke de- 25
cisively with the age-old fatalism of urban populations in
24
the face of shockingly high mortality. By the 1860s and France
Deaths (per thousand)

23
1870s, European cities were making real progress toward
adequate water supplies and sewerage systems, city dwellers 22
were beginning to reap the reward of better health, and 21 England
death rates began to decline (see Figure 24.1). 20 Sweden and Wales
Still, effective control of communicable disease re- 19
quired a great leap forward in medical knowledge and 18
biological theory. Early reformers such as Chadwick were
17
seriously handicapped by the prevailing miasmatic theory
of disease—the belief that people contract disease when 16
they breathe the bad odors of decay and putrefying excre- 15
ment. Keen observation by doctors and public health of- 14
ficials in the 1840s and 1850s pinpointed the role of bad 13
drinking water in the transmission of disease and sug-
gested that contagion was spread through filth and not 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1913
caused by it, thus weakening the miasmatic idea.
The breakthrough was the development of the germ
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FIGURE 24.1 The Decline of Death Rates in England and
theory of disease by Louis Pasteur (1822–1895), a French Wales, Germany, France, and Sweden, 1840–1913 A
chemist who began studying fermentation in 1854 at the rising standard of living, improvements in public health, and
request of brewers. Using his microscope to develop a sim- better medical knowledge all contributed to the dramatic
ple test that brewers could use to monitor the fermentation decline of death rates in the nineteenth century.
process and avoid spoilage, Pasteur found that fermenta-
tion depended on the growth of living organisms and that
the activity of these organisms could be suppressed by heat- tween aerial bacteria and the problem of wound infec-
ing the beverage—by pasteurization. The breathtaking tion. He reasoned that a chemical disinfectant applied to
implication was that specific diseases were caused by specific a wound dressing would “destroy the life of the floating
living organisms—germs—and that those organisms could particles.” Lister’s antiseptic principle worked wonders.
be controlled in people as well as in beer, wine, and milk. In the 1880s, German surgeons developed the more so-
By 1870 the work of Pasteur and others had demon- phisticated practice of sterilizing not only the wound but
strated the general connection between germs and dis- also everything—hands, instruments, clothing—that en-
ease. When, in the middle of the 1870s, German country tered the operating room.
doctor Robert Koch and his coworkers developed pure The achievements of the bacterial revolution coupled
cultures of harmful bacteria and described their life cycles, with the ever more sophisticated public health movement
the dam broke. Over the next twenty years, researchers— saved millions of lives, particularly after about 1880. Mor-
mainly Germans—identified the organisms responsible tality rates began to decline dramatically in European coun-
for disease after disease. These discoveries led to the de- tries (see Figure 24.1) as the awful death sentences of the
velopment of a number of effective vaccines. past—diphtheria, typhoid, typhus, cholera, yellow fever—
Acceptance of the germ theory brought about dra- became vanishing diseases. City dwellers benefited espe-
matic improvements in the deadly environment of hospi- cially from these developments. By 1910 a great silent
tals and surgery. In 1865, when Pasteur showed that the revolution had occurred: the death rates for people of all
air was full of bacteria, English surgeon Joseph Lister ages in urban areas were generally no greater than those
(1827–1912) immediately grasped the connection be- for people in rural areas, and sometimes they were less.
ne
Sei 3
MONTMARTRE
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de l'Est BELLEVILLE
aque
Arc de
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opol
bast
CHAILLOT
. Sé
Blvd
Bois de
1
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GRENELLE
MONTPARNASSE
3 BERCY 3
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Vincennes
0 1 Km. Apago PDF Enhancer Parc
Montsouris
0 1 Mi.
City walls aqueduct

1 Wall of Phillippe Auguste (1180–1210) Paris before 1860 Streets constructed by
Haussmann
2 Tollhouse Wall (1784–1791), razed by Expanded city limits Other streets
Haussmann to rebuild as boulevards established in 1860
3 Fortress Wall (1841–1845) Public parks opened Railway system created by Haussmann
during Second Empire during Second Empire
Source: Encyclopedia Universalis
MAP 24.2 The Modernization of Paris, ca 1850–1870 Broad boulevards, large parks,
and grandiose train stations transformed Paris. The cutting of the new north-south axis—
known as the Boulevard Saint-Michel—was one of Haussmann’s most controversial
projects. It razed much of Paris’s medieval core and filled the Île de la Cité with massive
government buildings.
believed that rebuilding much of Paris would provide

Urban Planning and Public employment, improve living conditions, and testify to
the power and glory of his empire. In the baron Georges
Transportation Haussmann (1809–1884), an aggressive, impatient Alsa-
More effective urban planning was one of the keys to im- tian whom he placed in charge of Paris, Napoleon III
proving the quality of urban life. Urban planning was in found an authoritarian planner capable of bulldozing
decline by the early nineteenth century, but after 1850 its both buildings and opposition. In twenty years, Paris was
practice was revived and extended. France took the lead transformed (see Map 24.2).
during the rule of Napoleon III (r. 1848–1870), who The Paris of 1850 was a labyrinth of narrow, dark streets,
sought to stand above class conflict and promote the wel- the results of desperate overcrowding. In a central city not
fare of all his subjects through government action. He twice the size of New York’s Central Park lived more than
785
Apago PDF Enhancer
Apartment Living in Paris This drawing shows how different social classes lived close together in
European cities in about 1850. Passing the middle-class family on the first floor (American second
floor), the economic condition of the tenants declined until one reached abject poverty in the garret.
(Bibliothèque nationale de France)
one-third of the city’s 1 million inhabitants. Terrible slum Electric streetcars were cheaper, faster, more depend-
conditions and extremely high death rates were facts of able, and more comfortable than their horse-drawn
life. There were few open spaces and only two public counterparts. Service improved dramatically. Millions of
parks for the entire metropolis. Public transportation Europeans—workers, shoppers, schoolchildren—hopped
played a very small role in this enormous walking city. on board during the workweek. And on weekends and
Haussmann and his fellow planners proceeded on holidays, streetcars carried millions on happy outings to
many interrelated fronts. With a bold energy that often parks and countryside, racetracks and music halls. In 1886
shocked their contemporaries, they razed old buildings the horse-drawn streetcars of Austria-Hungary, France,
in order to cut broad, straight, tree-lined boulevards Germany, and Great Britain were carrying about 900 mil-
through the center of the city as well as in new quarters lion riders. By 1910 electric streetcar systems in the four
on the outskirts (see Map 24.2). These boulevards, de- countries were carrying 6.7 billion riders.5 Each man,
signed in part to prevent the easy construction and de- woman, and child was using public transportation four
fense of barricades by revolutionary crowds, permitted times as often in 1910 as in 1886.
traffic to flow freely and afforded impressive vistas. Their Good mass transit helped greatly in the struggle for
creation also demolished some of the worst slums. New decent housing. The new boulevards and horse-drawn
streets stimulated the construction of better housing, es- streetcars had facilitated a middle-class move to better
pecially for the middle classes. Small neighborhood parks housing in the 1860s and 1870s; after 1890 electric street-
and open spaces were created throughout the city, and cars gave people of modest means access to new, im-
two very large parks suitable for all kinds of holiday activ- proved housing. The still-crowded city was able to expand
ities were developed—one on the wealthy west side and and become less congested. In England in 1901, only
one on the poor east side of the city. The city also im- 9 percent of the urban population was “overcrowded” in
proved its sewers, and a system of aqueducts more than terms of the official definition of more than two persons
doubled the city’s supply of good fresh water. per room. On the continent, many city governments in
Rebuilding Paris provided a new model for urban plan- the early twentieth century were building electric street-
ning and stimulated modern urbanism throughout Eu-
Apago PDF Enhancer car systems that provided transportation to new public
rope, particularly after 1870. In city after city, public and private housing developments in outlying areas of
authorities mounted a coordinated attack on many of the the city for the working classes.
interrelated problems of the urban environment. As in
Paris, improvements in public health through better water
supply and waste disposal often went hand in hand with Rich and Poor and Those
new boulevard construction. Cities such as Vienna and
Cologne followed the Parisian example of tearing down in Between
old walled fortifications and replacing them with broad, General improvements in health and in the urban envi-
circular boulevards on which office buildings, town halls, ronment had beneficial consequences for all kinds of
theaters, opera houses, and museums were erected. These people. Yet differences in living conditions among social
ring roads and the new boulevards that radiated out from classes remained gigantic.
them toward the outskirts eased movement and encour-
aged urban expansion (see Map 24.2). Zoning expropria- • What did the emergence of urban industrial society mean
tion laws, which allowed a majority of the owners of land for rich and poor and those in between?
in a given quarter of the city to impose major street or
sanitation improvements on a reluctant minority, were an
important mechanism of the new urbanism.
The development of mass public transportation was
Social Structure
also of great importance in the improvement of urban How much did the almost-completed journey to an ur-
living conditions. In the 1870s, many European cities au- ban, industrialized world change the social framework of
thorized private companies to operate horse-drawn street- rich and poor and those in between? The first great
cars, which had been developed in the United States, to change was a substantial and undeniable increase in the
carry riders along the growing number of major thor- standard of living for the average person. The real wages
oughfares. Then in the 1890s, the real revolution oc- of British workers, for example, which had already risen
curred: European countries adopted another American by 1850, almost doubled between 1850 and 1906. Sim-
transit innovation, the electric streetcar. ilar increases occurred in continental countries as indus-
Rich and Poor and Those in Between • 787
Apago PDF Enhancer
The Urban Landscape: Madrid in 1900 This wistful painting of a Spanish square on a
rainy day, by Enrique Martinez Cubells y Ruiz (1874–1917), includes a revealing commen-
tary on public transportation. Coachmen wait atop their expensive hackney cabs for a wealthy
clientele, while modern electric streetcars that carry the masses converge on the square from
all directions. (Museo Municipal, Madrid / The Bridgeman Art Library)
trial development quickened after 1850. Ordinary people bottom 80 percent received only 40 to 50 percent.
took a major step forward in the centuries-old battle Moreover, the bottom 30 percent of households received
against poverty, reinforcing efforts to improve many as- 10 percent or less of all income. These enormous differ-
pects of human existence. ences are illustrated in Figure 24.2.
There is another side to the income coin, however. The middle classes, smaller than they are today, ac-
Greater economic rewards for the average person did not counted for less than 20 percent of the population; thus
eliminate hardship and poverty, nor did they make the the statistics show that the upper and middle classes alone
wealth and income of the rich and the poor significantly received more than 50 percent of all income. The poorest
more equal. In almost every advanced country around 80 percent—the working classes, including peasants and
1900, the richest 5 percent of all households in the pop- agricultural laborers—received less altogether than the
ulation received 33 percent of all national income. The two richest classes. Moreover, income taxes on the
richest 20 percent of households received anywhere from wealthy were light or nonexistent. Thus the gap between
50 to 60 percent of all national income, while the entire rich and poor remained enormous at the beginning of the
created more new social groups than it destroyed. There

100
Britain developed an almost unlimited range of jobs, skills, and
Denmark earnings; one group or subclass shaded off into another
Prussia in a complex, confusing hierarchy. Thus the tiny elite of
80
the very rich and the sizable mass of the dreadfully poor
were separated from each other by a range of subclasses,
each filled with individuals struggling to rise or at least to
Percent of income
y
lit
60
ua
hold their own in the social order. In this atmosphere of
eq
te competition and hierarchy, neither the middle classes nor
lu
so
ab
the working classes acted as a unified force. This social

of
40 and occupational hierarchy developed enormous varia-

e
rv
Cu
tions, but the age-old pattern of great economic inequal-

ity remained firmly intact.
Curve of
20
absolute
inequality
The Middle Classes
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the diversity
0 20 40 60 80 100
and range within the urban middle class were striking.
Percent of people
Indeed, it is more meaningful to think of a confederation
of middle classes loosely united by occupations requiring
Distribution of Income
mental, rather than physical, skill.
At the top stood the upper middle class, composed
Richest Richest Richest Poorest mainly of the most successful business families from bank-
5% 10% 20% 60% ing, industry, and large-scale commerce. As people in the
Britain 43% 59%Apago PDF Enhancer upper middle class gained in income and progressively
lost all traces of radicalism after the trauma of 1848, they
Denmark 30% 39% 55% 31% were almost irresistibly drawn toward the aristocratic
Prussia 30% 50% 33% lifestyle. And although the genuine hereditary aristocracy
constituted only a tiny minority in every European coun-
try, it retained imposing wealth, unrivaled social prestige,
FIGURE 24.2 The Distribution of Income in Britain, and substantial political influence. This was especially true
Denmark, and Prussia in 1913 The so-called Lorenz curve in central and eastern Europe, where the monarch—the
is useful for showing the degree of economic inequality in a
given society. The closer the actual distribution of income
highest-ranking noble of them all—continued to hold great
lies to the (theoretical) curve of absolute equality, where each political power.
20 percent of the population receives 20 percent of all in- As the aristocracy had long divided the year between
come, the more incomes are nearly equal. European society palatial country estates and lavish townhouses during
was very far from any such equality before World War I. No- “the season,” so the upper middle class purchased coun-
tice that incomes in Prussia were somewhat more equal than
those in Britain. (Source: S. Kuznets, Modern Economic
try places or built beach houses for weekend and summer
Growth, pp. 208–209. Copyright © 1966 by Yale University Press. use. The number of servants was an important indicator
Reprinted by permission of Yale University Press.) of wealth and standing for the middle class, as it had al-
ways been for the aristocracy. Private coaches and car-
riages, ever-expensive items in the city, were also signs of
twentieth century. It was probably almost as great as it rising social status.
had been in the age of agriculture and aristocracy before The topmost reaches of the upper middle class tended
the Industrial Revolution. to shade off into the old aristocracy to form a new upper
The great gap between rich and poor endured, in part, class of at most 5 percent of the population. Much of the
because industrial and urban development made society aristocracy welcomed this development. Having experi-
more diverse and less unified. By no means did society enced a sharp decline in its relative income in the course
split into two sharply defined opposing classes, as Marx of industrialization, the landed aristocracy had met big
had predicted. Instead, economic specialization enabled business coming up the staircase and was often delighted
society to produce more effectively and in the process to trade titles, country homes, and snobbish elegance for
good hard cash. Some of the best bargains were made the suit, and soft, clean hands were no-less-subtle marks
through marriages to American heiresses. Correspond- of class distinction than wages.
ingly, wealthy aristocrats tended increasingly to exploit Relatively well educated but without complex techni-
their agricultural and mineral resources as if they were cal skills, many white-collar groups aimed at achieving
business people. Bismarck was not the only proud noble- professional standing and the accompanying middle-class
man to make a fortune distilling brandy on his estates. status. Elementary school teachers largely succeeded in
Below the wealthy upper middle class were much this effort. From being miserably paid part-time workers
larger, much less wealthy, and increasingly diversified in the early nineteenth century, teachers rode the wave of
middle-class groups. Here one found the moderately mass education to respectable middle-class status and in-
successful industrialists and merchants as well as profes- come. Nurses also rose from the lower ranks of unskilled
sionals in law and medicine. This was the middle middle labor to precarious middle-class standing. Dentistry was
class, solid and quite comfortable but lacking great wealth. taken out of the hands of working-class barbers and
Below it were independent shopkeepers, small traders, placed in the hands of highly trained (and middle-class)
and tiny manufacturers—the lower middle class. Both of professionals.
these traditional elements of the middle class expanded
modestly in size with economic development.
Meanwhile, the traditional middle class was gaining two
Middle-Class Culture
particularly important additions. The expansion of industry In spite of growing occupational diversity and conflicting
and technology created a growing demand for experts with interests, the middle classes were loosely united by a cer-
specialized knowledge. The most valuable of the specialties tain style of life and culture. Food was the largest item in
became solid middle-class professions. Engineering, for the household budget, for middle-class people liked to eat
example, emerged from the world of skilled labor as a very well. The European middle classes consumed meat in
full-fledged profession of great importance, considerable abundance, and a well-off family might spend 10 percent
prestige, and many branches. Architects, chemists, accoun- of its substantial earnings on meat and fully 25 percent of
tants, and surveyors, to name only a few, first achieved pro-
Apago PDF Enhancer its income on food and drink. Spending on food was also
fessional standing in this period. They established criteria great because the dinner party was this class’s favored so-
for advanced training and certification and banded together cial occasion. A wealthy family might give a lavish party for
in organizations to promote and defend their interests. eight to twelve almost every week, whereas more modest
Management of large public and private institutions households would settle for once a month.
also emerged as a kind of profession as governments pro- The middle-class wife could cope with this endless
vided more services and as very large corporations such procession of meals, courses, and dishes because she had
as railroads came into being. Government officials and both servants and money at her disposal. Indeed, the em-
many private executives were not capitalists in the sense ployment of at least one enormously helpful full-time
that they owned business enterprises. But public and pri- maid to cook and clean was the best single sign that a
vate managers did have specialized knowledge and the family had crossed the cultural divide separating the
capacity to earn a good living. And they shared most of working classes from what some contemporary observers
the values of the business-owning entrepreneurs and the called the “servant-keeping classes.” The greater a fam-
older professionals. ily’s income, the greater the number of servants it em-
Industrialization also expanded and diversified the ployed. Food and servants together absorbed about 50
lower middle class. The number of independent, property- percent of income at all levels of the middle class.
owning shopkeepers and small business people grew, and Well fed and well served, the middle classes were also
so did the number of white-collar employees—a mixed well housed by 1900. Many quite prosperous families
group of traveling salesmen, bookkeepers, store managers, rented, rather than owned, their homes. Apartment living,
and clerks who staffed the offices and branch stores of complete with tiny rooms for servants under the eaves of
large corporations. White-collar employees were property- the top floor, was commonplace, and wealthy investors and
less and often earned no more than the better-paid skilled speculative builders found good profits in middle-class
or semiskilled workers did. Yet white-collar workers were housing. By 1900 the middle classes were also quite clothes-
fiercely committed to the middle class and to the ideal of conscious. The factory, the sewing machine, and the de-
moving up in society. In the Balkans, for example, clerks partment store had all helped reduce the cost and expand
let their fingernails grow very long to distinguish them- the variety of clothing. Middle-class women were par-
selves from people who worked with their hands. The tie, ticularly attentive to the fickle dictates of fashion. (See the
feature “Images in Society: Class and Gender Boundaries

in Women’s Fashion, 1850–1914” on pages 792–793.)
The Working Classes
Education was another growing expense, as middle- About four out of five people belonged to the working
class parents tried to provide their children with ever classes at the turn of the century. Many members of the
more crucial advanced education. The keystones of cul- working classes—that is, people whose livelihoods de-
ture and leisure were books, music, and travel. The long pended on physical labor and who did not employ do-
realistic novel, the heroics of composers Wagner and mestic servants—were still small landowning peasants
Verdi, the diligent striving of the dutiful daughter at the and hired farm hands. This was especially true in eastern
piano, and the packaged tour to a foreign country were Europe. In western and central Europe, however, the
all sources of middle-class pleasure. typical worker had left the land. In Great Britain, less
Finally, the middle classes were loosely united by a than 8 percent of the people worked in agriculture, and
shared code of expected behavior and morality. This code in rapidly industrializing Germany only 25 percent were
was strict and demanding. It laid great stress on hard work, employed in agriculture and forestry. Even in less indus-
self-discipline, and personal achievement. Men and women trialized France, less than 50 percent of the people de-
who fell into crime or poverty were generally assumed to pended on the land in 1900.
be responsible for their own circumstances. Traditional The urban working classes were even less unified and
Christian morality was reaffirmed by this code and was homogeneous than the middle classes. In the first place,
preached tirelessly by middle-class people. Drunkenness economic development and increased specialization ex-
and gambling were denounced as vices; sexual purity and panded the traditional range of working-class skills, earn-
fidelity were celebrated as virtues. In short, the middle- ings, and experiences. Meanwhile, the old sharp distinction
class person was supposed to know right from wrong and between highly skilled artisans and unskilled manual work-
was expected to act accordingly. ers gradually broke down. To be sure, highly skilled
Apago PDF Enhancer “A Corner of the Table”

With photographic precision,
the French academic artist
Paul-Émile Chabas (1869–
1937) idealizes the elegance
and intimacy of a sumptuous
dinner party. Throughout
Europe, such dinners were
served in eight or nine separate
courses, beginning with appe-
tizers and ending with coffee
and liqueurs. (Archives
Charmet/The Bridgeman Art
Library)
printers and masons as well as unskilled dockworkers and

common laborers continued to exist. But between these Aristocracy
extremes there appeared ever more semiskilled groups,
many of which were composed of factory workers and
machine tenders (see Figure 24.3).
In the second place, skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled
workers developed widely divergent lifestyles and cultural Middle classes
values, and their differences contributed to a keen sense
• Upper
of social status and hierarchy within the working classes. • Middle
The result was great variety and limited class unity. • Lower
Highly skilled workers, who made up about 15 percent
of the working classes, became a real labor aristocracy.
These workers earned only about two-thirds of the in-
come of the bottom ranks of the servant-keeping classes,
but that was fully twice as much as the earnings of un- Working classes
skilled workers. The most “aristocratic” of the highly skilled • Highly skilled: the “labor aristocracy”
workers were construction bosses and factory foremen, • Semiskilled
men who had risen from the ranks and were fiercely • Unskilled
proud of their achievement. The labor aristocracy also in-
cluded members of the traditional highly skilled handi-
craft trades that had not been mechanized or placed in FIGURE 24.3 The Urban Social Hierarchy
factories, like cabinetmakers, jewelers, and printers.
This group as a whole was under constant long-term
pressure. Irregularly but inexorably, factory methods warned, “The path to the brothel leads through the tav-
were being extended to more crafts, and many skilled ar-
Apago PDF Enhancer ern” and from there quite possibly to drastic decline or
tisans were being replaced by lower-paid semiskilled fac- total ruin for person and family.6 Men and women of the
tory workers. Traditional woodcarvers and watchmakers labor aristocracy were also quick to find fault with those
virtually disappeared, for example, as the making of fur- below them who failed to meet their standards. Finally,
niture and timepieces now took place in the factory. At many members of the labor aristocracy had definite polit-
the same time, the labor aristocracy was consistently ical and philosophical beliefs, which further strengthened
being enlarged by new kinds of skilled workers such as their firm moral code.
shipbuilders and railway locomotive engineers. Thus the Below the labor aristocracy stood semiskilled and un-
labor elite remained in a state of flux as individuals and skilled urban workers. The enormous complexity of this
whole crafts moved in and out of it. sector of the world of labor is not easily summarized. Work-
To maintain this precarious standing, the upper workers in the established crafts—carpenters, bricklayers, pipe
ing class adopted distinctive values and strait-laced, al- fitters—stood near the top of the semiskilled hierarchy, of-
most puritanical behavior. Like the middle classes, the ten flirting with (or sliding back from) the labor elite. A
labor aristocracy was strongly committed to the family large number of the semiskilled were factory workers who
and to economic improvement. Families in the upper earned highly variable but relatively good wages and whose
working class saved money regularly, worried about their relative importance in the labor force was increasing.
children’s education, and valued good housing. Despite Below the semiskilled workers was a larger group of un-
these similarities, skilled workers viewed themselves not skilled workers that included day laborers such as long-
as aspirants to the middle class but as the pacesetters and shoremen, wagon-driving teamsters, teenagers, and every
natural leaders of all the working classes. Well aware of kind of “helper.” Many of these people had real skills and
the degradation not so far below them, they practiced performed valuable services, but they were unorganized
self-discipline and stern morality. and divided, united only by the common fate of meager
The upper working class in general frowned on heavy earnings. The same lack of unity characterized street ven-
drinking and sexual permissiveness. An organized tem- dors and market people—self-employed workers who
perance movement was strong in the countries of north- competed savagely with each other and with the estab-
ern Europe. As one German labor aristocrat somberly lished shopkeepers of the lower middle class.
Images in Society
Class and Gender Boundaries in Women’s Fashion, 1850–1914
later. The corset still binds, but crinoline hoops have
W omen’s fashion was big business in the nine-

teenth century. Long the dominant industrial pursuit
given way to the bustle, a cotton fan with steel rein-
forcement that pushes the dress out in back and exag-
gerates gender differences. The elaborate costume of
in human history, the production of textiles took off the wealthy elite, available in cheaper ready-to-wear
with the Industrial Revolution. In the later nineteenth versions sold through department stores and mail-order
century fashionable clothing, especially for middle- catalogues throughout Europe, had become the stan-
class women, became the first modern consumer in- dard for middle-class women. Emulating the elite in
dustry as careful buyers snapped up the constantly style, conventional middle-class women shopped care-
changing ready-to-wear goods sold by large depart- fully, scouting for sales, and drew a boundary separating
ment stores. themselves from working-class women in their simple
In the nineteenth century, before society cotton clothes. What implications, if any, do you see this
fragmented into many different groups expressing having on class distinctions?
themselves in many dress styles, clothing patterns fo- The young middle-class Englishwoman in an 1893
cused mainly on perceived differences in class and photo (Image 3) has chosen a woman’s tailored suit,
gender. The four illustrations presented here allow one the only major English innovation in nineteenth-
to analyze the social information communicated
Apago PDF Enhancer
through women’s clothing. As you study these illustra-
tions, note the principal characteristics and then try to
draw out the larger implications. What does the im-
practical, restrictive clothing in these images reveal
about society’s view of women during this period?
What is the significance of the emergence of alternative
styles of well-groomed dress?
Most changes in women’s fashion originated in Paris
in the nineteenth century. Image 1 shows the attire
worn by French aristocratic and wealthy middle-class
women in the 1850s and 1860s. Note that these ex-
pensive dresses, flawlessly tailored by an army of skilled
seamstresses, abound in elaborate embroidery, rich
velvety materials, and fancy accessories. The circular
spread of these floor-sweeping gowns is due to the
crinoline, a slip with metal hoops that holds the skirt
out on all sides. These women also are wearing the
corset, the century’s most characteristic women’s un-
dergarment, which was laced up tightly in back and
pressed unmercifully from the breasts to the hips.
What does this image tell you about the life of these
women (their work, leisure activities, and so on)?
The intriguing 1875 painting by Atkinson Grimshaw,
Summer (Image 2), shows a middle-class interior and Image 1 Crinoline Dresses, Paris, 1859. (The Illustrated
the evolution of women’s summer fashion two decades London News Picture Library)
792
Image 3 Alternative
Fashion, England,
Image 2 Summer Dress with Bustle, England, 1893. (Manchester
1875. (Roy Miles, Esq./The Bridgeman Art Library) City Art Galleries)
Image 4 Loose-fitting Dress,

France, 1910. (© Corbis)
Apago PDF Enhancer
century women’s fashion. This “alternative dress”
combines the tie, suit jacket, vest, and straw hat—all
initially items of male attire—with typical feminine
elements, such as the skirt and gloves. This practical,
socially accepted alternative dress appealed to the
growing number of women in paid employment in the
1890s. The historian Diana Crane has argued that this
departure from the dominant style can be seen as a
symbolic, nonverbal assertion of independence and
equality with men.* Do you agree with this? If so,
what was the significance of the pre-1914 turn from
stifling corset to the more flexible brassiere and the
mainstream embrace of loose-fitting garments, such as
the 1910 dress in Image 4? Did the greater freedom of
movement in clothing reflect the emerging emancipa-
tion of Western women? Or was the coquettish femi-
ninity of these loose, flowing dresses only a
repackaging of the dominant culture’s sharply defined
gender boundaries?
*Diana Crane, Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and
Identity in Clothing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000),
pp. 99–114.
Improve Your Grade
Going Beyond Images in Society
793
Apago PDF Enhancer
The Labor Aristocracy This group of British foremen is attending the International Exhi-
bition in Paris in 1862. Their “Sunday best” includes the silk top hats and long morning
coats of the propertied classes, but they definitely remain workers, the proud leaders of labor-
ing people. (© The Board of Trustees of the Victoria & Albert Museum)
One of the largest components of the unskilled group ized skills. Marriage prospects were better, or at least
was domestic servants, whose numbers grew steadily in the more varied, in the city. And though wages were low,
nineteenth century. In advanced Great Britain, for example, they were higher and more regular than in hard agricul-
one out of every seven employed persons was a domestic tural work. Finally, as one London observer noted, young
servant in 1911. The great majority were women; indeed, girls and other migrants were drawn to the city by
one out of every three girls in Britain between the ages of
fifteen and twenty was a domestic servant. Throughout Eu- the contagion of numbers, the sense of something going on,
rope and America, a great many female domestics in the the theaters and the music halls, the brightly lighted streets
cities were recent migrants from rural areas. As in earlier and busy crowds—all, in short, that makes the difference
times, domestic service was still hard work at low pay with between the Mile End fair on a Saturday night, and a dark
limited personal independence and the danger of sexual and muddy country lane, with no glimmer of gas and with
exploitation. For the full-time general maid in a lower- nothing to do.7
middle-class family, there was an unending routine of baby-
sitting, shopping, cooking, and cleaning. In the great Many young domestics from the countryside made a
households, the girl was at the bottom of a rigid hierarchy successful transition to working-class wife and mother. Yet
of status-conscious butlers and housekeepers. with an unskilled or unemployed husband and a growing
Nonetheless, domestic service had real attractions for family, such a woman often had to join the broad ranks of
“rough country girls” with strong hands and few special- workingwomen in the “sweated industries.” These indus-
tries flowered after 1850 and resembled the old putting- for the bulk of the inexpensive “ready-made” clothes dis-
out and cottage industries of earlier times. The women played on department store racks and in tiny shops.
normally worked at home, paid by the piece and not by
the hour. They and their young daughters, for whom or-
ganization and collective action were virtually impossible,
Working-Class Leisure and Religion
earned pitiful wages and lacked any job security. Notwithstanding the rise and fall of groups and individuals,
Some women did hand-decorating of every conceiv- the urban working classes sought fun and recreation, and
able kind of object; the majority, however, made cloth- they found both. Across the face of Europe, drinking re-
ing, especially after the advent of the sewing machine. By mained unquestionably the favorite leisure-time activity of
1900 only a few such tailors lingered on in high-priced working people. For many middle-class moralists as well as
“tailor-made” shops. An army of poor women accounted moralizing historians since, love of drink has been a curse of
Apago PDF Enhancer
A School for Servants Although domestic service was poorly paid, there was always plenty
of competition for the available jobs. Schools sprang up to teach young women the manners
and the household skills that employers in the “servant-keeping classes” demanded. (Corpora-
tion of London: London Metropolitan Archives)
Big City Nightlife The most famous dance hall and

cabaret in Paris was the Moulin Rouge. There La Goulue
(“the Glutton”), who is featured on this poster, performed
her provocative version of the cancan and reigned as the
queen of Parisian sensuality. This is one of many colorful
posters done by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901),
who combined stupendous creativity and dedicated debauch-
ery in his short life. (Bridgeman-Giraudon/Art Resource, NY)
Apago PDF Enhancer
the modern age—a sign of social dislocation and popular ing in public places by married couples and sweethearts
suffering. Certainly, drinking was deadly serious business. became an accepted and widespread practice for the first
One English slum dweller recalled that “drunkenness was time. This greater participation by women undoubtedly
by far the commonest cause of dispute and misery in work- helped civilize the world of drink and hard liquor.
ing class homes. On account of it one saw many a decent The two other leisure-time passions of the working
family drift down through poverty into total want.”8 classes were sports and music halls. A great decline in
Generally, however, heavy “problem” drinking declined “cruel sports,” such as bullbaiting and cockfighting, had
in the late nineteenth century as it became less and less so- occurred throughout Europe by the late nineteenth cen-
cially acceptable. This decline reflected in part the moral tury. Their place was filled by modern spectator sports, of
leadership of the upper working class. At the same time, which racing and soccer were the most popular. There
drinking became more public and social. Cafés and pubs was a great deal of gambling on sports events, and for
became increasingly bright, friendly places. Working-class many a working person a desire to decipher racing forms
political activities, both moderate and radical, were also provided a powerful incentive toward literacy. Music
concentrated in taverns and pubs. Moreover, social drink- halls and vaudeville theaters, the working-class counter-
The Changing Family • 797
parts of middle-class opera and classical theater, were The pattern was different in the United States. There,
enormously popular throughout Europe. In 1900 there most churches also preached social conservatism in the
were more than fifty such halls and theaters in London nineteenth century. But because church and state had al-
alone. Music hall audiences were thoroughly mixed, which ways been separate and because there was always a host
may account for the fact that drunkenness, sexual inter- of competing denominations and even different reli-
course and pregnancy before marriage, marital difficulties, gions, working people identified churches much less with
and problems with mothers-in-law were favorite themes the political and social status quo. Instead, individual
of broad jokes and bittersweet songs. churches in the United States were often closely identi-
In more serious moments, religion and Christian fied with an ethnic group rather than with a social class,
churches continued to provide working people with sol- and churches thrived, in part, as a means of asserting eth-
ace and meaning. The eighteenth-century vitality of pop- nic identity. This same process did occur in Europe if the
ular religion in Catholic countries and the Protestant church or synagogue had never been linked to the state
rejuvenation exemplified by German Pietism and English and served as a focus for ethnic cohesion. Irish Catholic
Methodism (see pages 672–673) carried over into the churches in Protestant Britain and Jewish synagogues in
nineteenth century. Indeed, many historians see the early Russia were outstanding examples.
nineteenth century as an age of religious revival. Yet his-
torians also recognize that by the last two or three
decades of the nineteenth century, a considerable decline The Changing Family
in both church attendance and church donations was oc-
curring in most European countries. And it seems clear Urban life wrought many fundamental changes in the fam-
that this decline was greater for the urban working classes ily. Although much is still unknown, it seems clear that in
than for their rural counterparts or for the middle classes. the second half of the nineteenth century the family had
What did the decline in working-class church atten- stabilized considerably after the disruption of the late eigh-
dance really mean? Some have argued that it accurately teenth and early nineteenth centuries. The home became
reflected a general decline in faith and religious belief.
Apago PDF Enhancer more important for both men and women. The role of
Others disagree, noting correctly that most workingwomen and attitudes toward children underwent substan-
class families still baptized their children and considered tial change, and adolescence emerged as a distinct stage of
themselves Christians. Although more research is neces- life. These are but a few of the transformations that af-
sary, it appears that the urban working classes in Europe fected all social classes in varying degrees.
did become more secular and less religious in the late • How did families change as they coped with the challenges
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They rarely re- and the opportunities of the developing urban civilization?
pudiated the Christian religion, but it tended to play a di-
minishing role in their daily lives.
Part of the reason for this change was that the construc-
tion of churches failed to keep up with the rapid growth of
Premarital Sex and Marriage
urban population, especially in new working-class neigh- By 1850 the preindustrial pattern of lengthy courtship
borhoods. Thus the vibrant, materialistic urban environ- and mercenary marriage was pretty well dead among the
ment undermined popular religious impulses, which were working classes. In its place, the ideal of romantic love
poorly served in the cities. Equally important, however, had triumphed. Couples were ever more likely to come
was the fact that throughout the nineteenth century both from different, even distant, towns and to be more nearly
Catholic and Protestant churches were normally seen as the same age, further indicating that romantic sentiment
they saw themselves—as conservative institutions defend- was replacing tradition and financial considerations.
ing social order and custom. Therefore, as the European Economic considerations in marriage remained more
working classes became more politically conscious, they important to the middle classes than to the working classes
tended to see the established (or quasi-established) “terri- after 1850. In France dowries and elaborate legal marriage
torial church” as defending what they wished to change contracts were common practice among the middle classes
and as allied with their political opponents. Especially the in the later nineteenth century, and marriage was for many
men of the urban working classes developed vaguely anti- families one of life’s most crucial financial transactions. A
church attitudes, even though they remained neutral or popular author advised young Frenchmen that “marriage
positive toward religion. They tended to regard regular is in general a means of increasing one’s credit and one’s
church attendance as “not our kind of thing”—not part of fortune and of insuring one’s success in the world.”9 This
urban working-class culture. preoccupation with money led many middle-class men in
France and elsewhere to marry late, after they had been es- ter 1850. In many parts of urban Europe around 1900, as
tablished economically, and to choose women consider- many as one woman in three was going to the altar an
ably younger than themselves. These differences between expectant mother. Moreover, unmarried people almost
husband and wife became a source of tension in many certainly used the cheap condoms and diaphragms the in-
middle-class marriages. dustrial age had made available to prevent pregnancy, at
A young woman of the middle class found her roman- least in predominately Protestant countries.
tic life carefully supervised by her well-meaning mother, Thus unmarried young people were probably engaging
who schemed for a proper marriage and guarded her in just as much sexual activity as their parents and grand-
daughter’s virginity like the family’s credit. (See the fea- parents who had created the illegitimacy explosion of
ture “Listening to the Past: Middle-Class Youth and Sex- 1750 to 1850. But in the later nineteenth century, preg-
uality” on pages 812–813.) After marriage, middle-class nancy for a young single woman led increasingly to mar-
morality sternly demanded fidelity. riage and the establishment of a two-parent household.
Middle-class boys were watched, too, but not as vigi- This important development reflected the growing re-
lantly. By the time they reached late adolescence, they spectability of the working classes as well as their gradual
had usually attained considerable sexual experience with economic improvement. Skipping out was less acceptable,
maids or prostitutes. and marriage was less of an economic challenge. Thus the
In the early nineteenth century, sexual experimenta- urban working-class couple became more stable, and that
tion before marriage also triumphed, as did illegitimacy. stability strengthened the family as an institution.
There was an illegitimacy explosion between 1750 and
1850 (see page 656). By the 1840s, one birth in three
was occurring outside of wedlock in many large cities of
Prostitution
western, northern, and central Europe. In Vienna and In Paris alone, 155,000 women were registered as prosti-
Stockholm, one out of every two births was illegitimate. tutes between 1871 and 1903, and 750,000 others were
Although poverty and economic uncertainty undoubt- suspected of prostitution in the same years. Men of all
edly prevented many lovers from marrying, there were
Apago PDF Enhancer classes visited prostitutes, but the middle and upper classes
also many among the poor and propertyless who saw lit- supplied much of the motivating cash. Thus, though many
tle wrong with having illegitimate offspring. Thus the middle-class men abided by the publicly professed code of
pattern of romantic ideals, premarital sexual activity, and stern puritanical morality, others indulged their appetites
widespread illegitimacy was firmly established by mid- for prostitutes and sexual promiscuity.
century among the urban working classes. My Secret Life, the anonymous eleven-volume autobiog-
Some regions, especially those little touched by indus- raphy of an English sexual adventurer from the servant-
trialization and urbanization, did not experience an ille- keeping classes, provides a remarkable picture of such a
gitimacy explosion. Neither did certain churches and man. Beginning at an early age with a maid, the author
religious communities that strictly prohibited premarital becomes progressively obsessed with sex and devotes his
sex. “The Catholic Church in Ireland and many southern life to living his sexual fantasies. In almost every one of
European regions, Calvinist communities in the Nether- his innumerable encounters all across Europe, this man
lands, Moslems in the Balkans, and Jewish communities of wealth simply buys his pleasure. Usually meetings are
throughout Europe seem to have been successful in en- arranged in a businesslike manner: regular and part-time
forcing this norm.”10 Although these religious groups prostitutes quote their prices; working-class girls are cor-
exercised strict external control, they succeeded in large rupted by hot meals and baths.
part because their young people internalized the values At one point, he offers a young girl a sixpence for a kiss
they were taught and acted accordingly. and gets it. Learning that the pretty, unskilled working
In western, northern, and central Europe, the rising girl earns nine pence a day, he offers her the equivalent of
rate of illegitimacy was reversed in the second half of the a week’s salary for a few moments of fondling. When she
nineteenth century: more babies were born to married finally agrees, he savagely exults that “her want was my
mothers. Some observers have argued that this shift re- opportunity.” Later he offers more money for more grat-
flected the growth of puritanism and a lessening of sexual ification, and when she refuses, he tries unsuccessfully to
permissiveness among the unmarried. This explanation, rape her in a hackney cab. On another occasion he takes
however, is unconvincing. a farm worker by force.11
The percentage of brides who were pregnant continued Obviously atypical in its excesses, My Secret Life does re-
to be high and showed little or no tendency to decline af- veal the dark side of sex and class in urban society. Fre-
quently thinking of their wives largely in terms of money, After 1850 the work of most wives became increas-
family, and social position, the men of the comfortable ingly distinct and separate from that of their husbands.
classes often purchased sex and even affection from poor Husbands became wage earners in factories and offices,
girls both before and after marriage. Moreover, the great while wives tended to stay home and manage households
continuing differences between rich and poor made for and care for children. The preindustrial pattern among
every kind of debauchery and sexual exploitation. Brutal both peasants and cottage workers, in which husbands
sexist behavior was part of life—a part the sternly moral and wives worked together and divided up household
women (and men) of the upper working class detested and duties and child rearing, declined. Only in a few occupa-
tried to shield their daughters from. For many poor young tions, such as retail trade, did married couples live where
women, prostitution, like domestic service, was a stage of they worked and struggle together to make their mom-
life and not a permanent employment. Having done it for a and-pop operations a success. Factory employment for
while in their twenties, they went on to marry (or live with) married women also declined as the early practice of hir-
men of their own class and establish homes and families. ing entire families in the factory disappeared.
As economic conditions improved, most men expected
married women to work outside the home only in poor
Kinship Ties families. One old English worker recalled that “the boy
Within working-class homes, ties to relatives after marriage— wanted to get into a position that would enable him to
kinship ties—were in general much stronger than many keep a wife and family, as it was considered a thoroughly
social observers have recognized. Most newlyweds tried unsatisfactory state of affairs if the wife had to work to
to live near their parents, though not in the same house. help maintain the home.”12 The ideal became a strict di-
Indeed, for many married couples in later-nineteenth- vision of labor by gender and rigidly constructed sepa-
century cities, ties to mothers and fathers, uncles and rate spheres: the wife as mother and homemaker, the
aunts, were more important than ties to unrelated ac- husband as wage earner.
quaintances. This rigid gender division of labor meant that married
People turned to their families for help in coping with
Apago PDF Enhancer women faced great injustice when they needed—or
sickness, unemployment, death, and old age. Although wanted—to move into the man’s world of employment
governments were generally providing more welfare ser- outside the home. Husbands were unsympathetic or hos-
vices by 1900, the average couple and its children in- tile. Well-paying jobs were off-limits to women, and a
evitably faced crises. Funerals, for example, brought sudden woman’s wage was almost always less than a man’s, even
demands, requiring a large outlay for special clothes, car- for the same work.
riages, and burial services. Unexpected death or deser- Moreover, married women were subordinated to their
tion could leave the bereaved or abandoned, especially husbands by law and lacked many basic legal rights. In
widows and orphans, in need of financial aid or perhaps a England the situation in the early nineteenth century was
foster home. Relatives responded hastily to such cries, summed up in a famous line from jurist William Black-
knowing full well that their own time of need and repay- stone: “In law husband and wife are one person, and the
ment would undoubtedly come. husband is that person.” Thus a wife in England had no
Relatives were also valuable at less tragic moments. If a legal identity and hence no right to own property in her
couple was very poor, an aged relation often moved in to own name. Even the wages she might earn belonged to
cook and mind the children so that the wife could earn her husband. In France the Napoleonic Code (see pages
badly needed income outside the home. Sunday dinners 704–705) also enshrined the principle of female subordi-
were often shared, as were outgrown clothing and useful nation and gave the wife few legal rights regarding prop-
information. Often the members of a large family group erty, divorce, and custody of the children. Legal inferiority
all lived in the same neighborhood. for women permeated Western society.
With all women facing discrimination in education and
employment and with middle-class women suffering espe-
Gender Roles and Family Life cially from a lack of legal rights, there is little wonder that
Industrialization and the growth of modern cities some women rebelled and began the long-continuing fight
brought great changes to the lives of European women. for equality of the sexes and the rights of women. Their
These changes were particularly consequential for mar- struggle proceeded on two main fronts. First, following in
ried women, and most women did marry in the nine- the steps of women such as Mary Wollstonecraft (see page
teenth century. 694), organizations founded by middle-class feminists
campaigned for equal legal rights for women as well as action of new furniture or a new apartment, were hers. In
cess to higher education and professional employment. France women had even greater power in their assigned
These middle-class feminists argued that unmarried women domain. One English feminist noted in 1908 that “though
and middle-class widows with inadequate incomes simply legally women occupy a much inferior status than men
had to have more opportunities to support themselves. [in France], in practice they constitute the superior sex.
Middle-class feminists also recognized that paid (as op- They are the power behind the throne.”13
posed to unpaid) work could relieve the monotony that Women ruled at home partly because running the ur-
some women found in their sheltered middle-class exis- ban household was a complicated, demanding, and valu-
tence and put greater meaning into their lives. able task. Twice-a-day food shopping, penny-pinching,
In the later nineteenth century, these organizations economizing, and the growing crusade against dirt—not
scored some significant victories, such as the 1882 law to mention child rearing—were a full-time occupation.
giving English married women full property rights. More Nor were there any laborsaving appliances to help, and
women found professional and white-collar employment, even when servants were present, they had to be carefully
especially after about 1880. But progress was slow and watched and supervised. Working yet another job for
hard won. For example, in Germany before 1900, women wages outside the home had limited appeal for most mar-
were not admitted as fully registered students at a single ried women unless such earnings were essential for fam-
university, and it was virtually impossible for a woman to ily survival. Many married women in the working classes
receive certification and practice as a lawyer or doctor. did make a monetary contribution to family income by
(See the feature “Individuals in Society: Franziska Tibur- taking in boarders or doing piecework at home in the
tius.”) In the years before 1914, middle-class feminists in- sweated industries (see page 794).
creasingly focused their attention on political action and The wife also guided the home because a good deal of
fought for the right to vote for women. her effort was directed toward pampering her husband as
Women inspired by utopian and especially Marxian so- he expected. In countless humble households, she saw
cialism blazed a second path. Often scorning the pro- that he had meat while she ate bread, that he relaxed by
grams of middle-class feminists, socialist women leaders
Apago PDF Enhancer the fire while she did the dishes.
argued that the liberation of working-class women would The woman’s guidance of the household went hand in
come only with the liberation of the entire working class hand with the increased emotional importance of home
through revolution. In the meantime, they championed and family. The home she ran was idealized as a warm
the cause of workingwomen and won some practical im- shelter in a hard and impersonal urban world. For a child
provements, especially in Germany, where the socialist of the English slums in the early 1900s,
movement was most effectively organized. In a general
home, however poor, was the focus of all love and interests,
way, these different approaches to women’s issues re-
a sure fortress against a hostile world. Songs about its beau-
flected the diversity of classes in urban society.
ties were ever on people’s lips. “Home, sweet home,” first
Improve Your Grade heard in the 1870s, had become “almost a second national
Primary Source: A Socialist Solution to the Question of anthem.” Few walls in lower-working-class houses lacked
Women’s Rights “mottoes”—colored strips of paper, about nine inches wide
and eighteen inches in length, attesting to domestic joys:
If the ideology and practice of rigidly separate spheres
EAST, WEST, HOME’S BEST; BLESS OUR HOME; GOD
undoubtedly narrowed women’s horizons and caused
IS MASTER OF THIS HOUSE; HOME IS THE NEST
some women to rebel, there was a brighter side to the
WHERE ALL IS BEST.14
same coin. As home and children became the typical
wife’s main concerns in the late nineteenth century, her By 1900 home and family were what life was all about for
control and influence there apparently became increas- millions of people of all classes.
ingly strong throughout Europe. Among the English Married couples also developed stronger emotional
working classes, it was the wife who generally determined ties to each other. Even in the comfortable classes, mar-
how the family’s money was spent. In many families, the riages in the late nineteenth century were based more on
husband gave all his earnings to his wife to manage, sentiment and sexual attraction than they had been ear-
whatever the law might read. She returned to him only a lier in the century, as money and financial calculation de-
small allowance for carfare, beer, tobacco, and union clined in importance. Affection and eroticism became
dues. All the major domestic decisions, from the chil- more central to the couple after marriage. Gustave Droz,
dren’s schooling and religious instruction to the selec- whose bestseller Mr., Mrs., and Baby went through 121
Individuals
in Society
Franziska Tiburtius
W hy did a small number of women in the late nine- sive discrimination. She
teenth century brave great odds and embark on profes- was not even permitted
sional careers? And how did a few of those manage to to take the state medi-
reach their objectives? The career and personal reflec- cal exams and could
tions of Franziska Tiburtius, a pioneer in German med- practice only as an un-
icine, suggest that talent, determination, and economic regulated (and unpro-
necessity were critical ingredients.* fessional) “natural
Like many women of her time who would study and healer.” But after per-
pursue professional careers, Franziska Tiburtius sistent fighting with
(1843–1927) was born into a property-owning family the bureaucrats, she
of modest means. The youngest of nine children on a was able to display her
Franziska Tiburtius, pioneering
small estate in northeastern Germany, the sensitive diploma and practice as woman physician in Berlin.
child wilted under a harsh governess but flowered with “Franziska Tiburtius, (Ullstein Bilderdienst/The Granger
a caring teacher and became an excellent student. M.D. University of Collection, NewYork)
Graduating at sixteen and needing to support her- Zurich.” She and Lehmus
self, Tiburtius had few opportunities. A young woman were in business.
from a “proper” background could work as a gov- Soon the two women realized their dream and
erness or a teacher without losing her respectability opened a clinic, subsidized by a wealthy industrialist,
and spoiling her matrimonial prospects, but that was for women factory workers. The clinic filled a great
about it. She tried both avenues. Working for six years need and was soon treating many patients. A room
Apago PDF Enhancer
as a governess in a noble family and no doubt learning with beds for extremely sick women was later
that poverty was often one’s fate in this genteel profes- expanded into a second clinic.
sion, she then turned to teaching. Called home from Tiburtius and Lehmus became famous. For fifteen
her studies in Britain in 1871 to care for her brother, years, they were the only women doctors in all Berlin.
who had contracted typhus as a field doctor in the An inspiration for a new generation of women, they
Franco-Prussian War, she found her calling. She de- added the wealthy to their thriving practice. But Tibur-
cided to become a medical doctor. tius’s clinics always concentrated on the poor, provid-
Supported by her family, Tiburtius’s decision was ing them with subsidized and up-to-date treatment.
truly audacious. In all Europe, only the University of Talented, determined, and working with her partner,
Zurich in republican Switzerland accepted female stu- Tiburtius experienced the joys of personal achievement
dents. Moreover, if it became known that she had stud- and useful service, joys that women and men share in
ied medicine and failed, she would never get a job as a equal measure.
teacher. No parent would entrust a daughter to an
“emancipated” radical who had carved up dead bodies! Questions for Analysis
Although the male students at the university some-
times harassed the women with crude pranks, Tiburtius 1. How does Franziska Tiburtius’s life reflect both the
thrived. The revolution of the microscope and the dis- challenges and the changing roles of middle-class
covery of microorganisms was rocking Zurich, and she women in the later nineteenth century?
was fascinated by her studies. She became close friends 2. In what ways was Tiburtius’s career related to
with a fellow female medical student from Germany, improvements in health in urban society and to the
Emilie Lehmus, with whom she would form a lifelong expansion of the professions?
partnership in medicine. She did her internship with *This portrait draws on Conradine Lück, Frauen: Neun Lebens-
families of cottage workers around Zurich and loved schicksale (Reutlingen: Ensslin & Laiblin, n.d.), pp. 153–185.
her work.
Graduating at age thirty-three in 1876, Tiburtius
went to stay with her brother the doctor in Berlin. Improve Your Grade
Though well qualified to practice, she ran into perva- Going Beyond Individuals in Society
801
editions between 1866 and 1884, saw love within mar-

riage as the key to human happiness. He condemned 40
men who made marriage sound dull and practical, men
who were exhausted by prostitutes and rheumatism and 38
Germany
who wanted their young wives to be little angels. He
36
urged women to follow their hearts and marry men more
nearly their own age: 34
A husband who is stately and a little bald is all right, but a 32
Births (per thousand)

young husband who loves you and who drinks out of your England
glass without ceremony, is better. Let him, if he ruffles your 30 and Wales
dress a little and places a kiss on your neck as he passes. Let Sweden
28
him, if he undresses you after the ball, laughing like a fool.
You have fine spiritual qualities, it is true, but your little 26
body is not bad either and when one loves, one loves com-
pletely. Behind these follies lies happiness.15 24 France
Many French marriage manuals of the late 1800s 22

stressed that women had legitimate sexual needs, such as
20
the “right to orgasm.” Perhaps the French were a bit more
enlightened in these matters than other nationalities. But 18
the rise of public socializing by couples in cafés and mu-
sic halls as well as franker affection within the family sug- 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1913
gests a more erotic, pleasurable intimate life for women
throughout Western society. This, too, helped make the
even satisfying.
Apago PDFFIGURE
woman’s role as mother and homemaker acceptable and 24.4 The Decline of Birthrates in England and
Enhancer
Wales, France, Germany, and Sweden, 1840–1913
Women had fewer babies for a variety of reasons, including
the fact that their children were increasingly less likely to
die before reaching adulthood. Compare with Figure 24.1
Child Rearing on page 783.
One striking sign of deepening emotional ties within the
family was the growing love and concern that mothers
gave their tiny infants. Because so many babies died so roll around on the carpet, play at being a horse and a
early in life, mothers in preindustrial Western society of- great wolf, and undress their baby.”16 Another sign, from
ten avoided making a strong emotional commitment to a France, of increased affection is that fewer illegitimate
newborn in order to shield themselves from recurrent babies were abandoned as foundlings after about 1850.
heartbreak. Early emotional bonding and a willingness to Moreover, the practice of swaddling disappeared com-
make real sacrifices for the welfare of the infant were be- pletely. Instead, ordinary mothers allowed their babies
ginning to spread among the comfortable classes by the freedom of movement and delighted in their spontaneity.
end of the eighteenth century, but the ordinary mother The loving care lavished on infants was matched by
of modest means adopted new attitudes only as the nine- greater concern for older children and adolescents. They,
teenth century progressed. The baby became more im- too, were wrapped in the strong emotional ties of a more
portant, and women became better mothers. intimate and protective family. For one thing, European
Mothers increasingly breast-fed their infants, for ex- women began to limit the number of children they bore in
ample, rather than paying wet nurses to do so. Breast- order to care adequately for those they had. It was evident
feeding involved sacrifice—a temporary loss of freedom, by the end of the nineteenth century that the birthrate was
if nothing else. Yet in an age when there was no good al- declining across Europe, as Figure 24.4 shows, and it
ternative to mother’s milk, it saved lives. This surge of continued to do so until after World War II. The Eng-
maternal feeling also gave rise to a wave of specialized lishwoman who married in the 1860s, for example, had an
books on child rearing and infant hygiene, such as Droz’s average of about six children; her daughter marrying in the
phenomenally successful book. Droz urged fathers to get 1890s had only four; and her granddaughter marrying in
into the act and pitied those “who do not know how to the 1920s had only two or possibly three.
Apago PDF Enhancer

A Working-Class Home, 1875 Emotional ties within ordinary families grew stronger in the nineteenth
century. Parents gave their children more love and better care. (Illustrated London News Library)
The most important reason for this revolutionary of almost unbearable intensity. The result was that many
reduction in family size, in which the comfortable and children and especially adolescents came to feel trapped
well-educated classes took the lead, was parents’ desire to and in need of greater independence.
improve their economic and social position and that of Prevailing biological and medical theories led parents
their children. Children were no longer an economic to believe in the possibility that their own emotional char-
asset in the later nineteenth century. By having fewer acteristics were passed on to their offspring and that they
youngsters, parents could give those they had valuable were thus directly responsible for any abnormality in a
advantages, from music lessons and summer vacations child. The moment the child was conceived was thought
to long, expensive university educations and suitable to be of enormous importance. “Never run the risk of
dowries. A young German skilled worker with only one conception when you are sick or over-tired or unhappy,”
child spoke for many in his class when he said, “We want wrote one influential American woman. “For the bodily
to get ahead, and our daughter should have things better condition of the child, its vigor and magnetic qualities, are
than my wife and sisters did.”17 Thus the growing much affected by conditions ruling this great moment.”18
tendency of couples in the late nineteenth century to So might the youthful “sexual excess” of the father curse
use a variety of contraceptive methods—rhythm method, future generations. Although this was true in the case of
withdrawal method, and mechanical devices—certainly syphilis, which could be transmitted to unborn children,
reflected increased concern for children. the rigid determinism of such views left little scope for the
Indeed, many parents, especially in the middle classes, child’s individual development.
probably became too concerned about their children, un- Another area of excessive parental concern was the sex-
wittingly subjecting them to an emotional pressure cooker ual behavior of the child. Masturbation was viewed with
horror, for it represented an act of independence and roots of adult behavior, that exaggeration was itself a re-
even defiance. Diet, clothing, games, and sleeping were flection of the tremendous emotional intensity of family
carefully regulated. Girls were discouraged from riding life in the late nineteenth century.
horses and bicycling because rhythmic friction simulated The working classes probably had more avenues of
masturbation. Boys were dressed in trousers with shallow escape from such tensions than did the middle classes.
and widely separated pockets. Between 1850 and 1880, Unlike their middle-class counterparts, who remained
there were surgical operations for children who persisted economically dependent on their families until a long
in masturbating. Thereafter until about 1905, various re- education was finished or a proper marriage secured,
straining apparatuses were more often used. working-class boys and girls went to work when they
These and less blatant attempts to repress the child’s reached adolescence. Earning wages on their own, they
sexuality were a source of unhealthy tension, often made could bargain with their parents for greater indepen-
worse by the rigid division of gender roles within the dence within the household by the time they were six-
family. It was widely believed that mother and child loved teen or seventeen. If they were unsuccessful, they could
each other easily but that relations between father and and did leave home to live cheaply as paying lodgers in
child were necessarily difficult and often tragic. The fa- other working-class homes. Thus the young person from
ther was a stranger; his world of business was far removed the working classes broke away from the family more eas-
from the maternal world of spontaneous affection. More- ily when emotional ties became oppressive. In the twen-
over, the father was demanding, often expecting the child tieth century, middle-class youths would follow this lead.
to succeed where he himself had failed and making his
love conditional on achievement. Little wonder that the
imaginative literature of the late nineteenth century came Science and Thought
to deal with the emotional and destructive elements of
father-son relationships. In the Russian Feodor Dosto- Major changes in Western science and thought accompa-
evski’s great novel The Brothers Karamazov (1880–1881), nied the emergence of urban society. Two aspects of these
for example, four sons work knowingly or unknowingly
Apago PDF Enhancer complex intellectual developments stand out as especially
to destroy their father. Later at the murder trial, one of significant. First, scientific knowledge expanded rapidly,
the brothers claims to speak for all mankind and screams influencing the Western worldview even more profoundly
out, “Who doesn’t wish his father dead?” than ever before and spurring the creation of new products
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), the Viennese founder of and whole industries. Second, between about the 1840s
psychoanalysis, formulated the most striking analysis of the and the 1890s, European literature underwent a shift from
explosive dynamics of the family, particularly the middle- soaring romanticism to tough-minded realism.
class family in the late nineteenth century. A physician by • What major changes in science and thought reflected and
training, Freud began his career treating mentally ill pa- influenced the new urban society?
tients. He noted that the hysteria of his patients appeared
to originate in bitter early-childhood experiences wherein
the child had been obliged to repress strong feelings.
When these painful experiences were recalled and repro-
The Triumph of Science
duced under hypnosis or through the patient’s free associ- As the pace of scientific advance quickened and as theoret-
ation of ideas, the patient could be brought to understand ical advances resulted in great practical benefits, science
his or her unhappiness and eventually deal with it. exercised growing influence on human thought. The intel-
One of Freud’s most influential ideas concerned the lectual achievements of the scientific revolution had resulted
Oedipal tensions resulting from the son’s instinctive in few such benefits, and theoretical knowledge had also
competition with the father for the mother’s love and af- played a relatively small role in the Industrial Revolution in
fection. More generally, Freud postulated that much of England. But breakthroughs in industrial technology enor-
human behavior is motivated by unconscious emotional mously stimulated basic scientific inquiry, as researchers
needs whose nature and origins are kept from conscious sought to explain theoretically how such things as steam en-
awareness by various mental devices he called defense gines and blast furnaces actually worked. The result was an
mechanisms. Freud concluded that much unconscious explosive growth of fundamental scientific discoveries from
psychological energy is sexual energy, which is repressed the 1830s onward. And in contrast to earlier periods, these
and precariously controlled by rational thinking and theoretical discoveries were increasingly transformed into
moral rules. If Freud exaggerated the sexual and familial material improvements for the general population.
Science and Thought • 805
A perfect example of the translation of better scientific of the population. Natural processes appeared to be de-
knowledge into practical human benefits was the work of termined by rigid laws, leaving little room for either
Louis Pasteur and his followers in biology and the medical divine intervention or human will. Yet scientific and tech-
sciences. Another was the development of the branch of nical advances had also fed the Enlightenment’s op-
physics known as thermodynamics. Building on Isaac timistic faith in human progress, which now appeared
Newton’s laws of mechanics and on studies of steam endless and automatic to many middle-class minds.
engines, thermodynamics investigated the relationship Third, the methods of science acquired unrivaled pres-
between heat and mechanical energy. By midcentury, tige after 1850. For many, the union of careful experiment
physicists had formulated the fundamental laws of thermo- and abstract theory was the only reliable route to truth and
dynamics, which were then applied to mechanical engi- objective reality. The “unscientific” intuitions of poets and
neering, chemical processes, and many other fields. The law the revelations of saints seemed hopelessly inferior.
of conservation of energy held that different forms of
energy—such as heat, electricity, and magnetism—could be
converted but neither created nor destroyed. Nineteenth-
Social Science and Evolution
century thermodynamics demonstrated that the physical From the 1830s onward, many thinkers tried to apply the
world was governed by firm, unchanging laws. objective methods of science to the study of society. In
Chemistry and electricity were two other fields charac- some ways, these efforts simply perpetuated the critical
terized by extremely rapid scientific progress. And in thinking of the philosophes. Yet there were important
both fields, “science was put in the service of industry,” differences. The new “social scientists” had access to the
as the influential economist Alfred Marshall (1842– massive sets of numerical data that governments had be-
1924) argued at the time. gun to collect on everything from children to crime, from
Chemists devised ways of measuring the atomic weight population to prostitution. In response, social scientists
of different elements, and in 1869 the Russian chemist developed new statistical methods to analyze these facts
Dmitri Mendeleev (1834–1907) codified the rules of “scientifically” and supposedly to test their theories. And
chemistry in the periodic law and the periodic table.
Apago PDF Enhancer the systems of the leading nineteenth-century social sci-
Chemistry was subdivided into many specialized branches, entists were more unified, all-encompassing, and dog-
such as organic chemistry—the study of the compounds matic than those of the philosophes. Marx was a prime
of carbon. Applying theoretical insights gleaned from this example (see pages 757–758).
new field, researchers in large German chemical companies Another extremely influential system builder was French
discovered ways of transforming the dirty, useless coal tar philosopher Auguste Comte (1798–1857). Initially a dis-
that accumulated in coke ovens into beautiful, expensive ciple of the utopian socialist Saint-Simon (see page 756),
synthetic dyes for the world of fashion. The basic discover- Comte wrote the six-volume System of Positive Philosophy
ies of Michael Faraday (1791–1867) in electromagnetism (1830–1842), which was largely overlooked during the
in the 1830s and 1840s resulted in the first dynamo (gen- romantic era. But when the political failures of 1848 com-
erator) and opened the way for the subsequent develop- pleted the swing to realism, Comte’s philosophy came into
ment of the telegraph, electric motor, electric light, and its own. Its influence has remained great to this day.
electric streetcar. Comte postulated that all intellectual activity pro-
The successful application of scientific research in the gresses through predictable stages:
fast-growing electrical and organic chemical industries
promoted solid economic growth between 1880 and The great fundamental law . . . is this:—that each of our
1913 and provided a model for other industries. System- leading conceptions—each branch of our knowledge—
atic “R & D”—research and development—was born in passes successively through three different theoretical con-
the late nineteenth century. ditions: the Theological, or fictitious; the Metaphysical, or
The triumph of science and technology had at least abstract; and the Scientific, or positive. . . . The first is the
three more significant consequences. First, though ordi- necessary point of departure of human understanding, and
nary citizens continued to lack detailed scientific knowl- the third is the fixed and definitive state. The second is
edge, everyday experience and innumerable popularizers merely a transition.19
impressed the importance of science on the popular mind.
Second, as science became more prominent in popular By way of example, Comte noted that the prevailing
thinking, the philosophical implications of science for- explanation of cosmic patterns had shifted, as knowl-
mulated in the Enlightenment spread to broad sections edge of astronomy developed, from the will of God (the
Apago PDF Enhancer
Satirizing Darwin’s Ideas The heated controversies over Darwin’s theory of evolution also spawned innumerable jokes and
cartoons. This cartoon depicts a bearded Charles Darwin and the atheistic materialist Emile Littré performing as monkeys in a
circus. (Musée de la Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet/Archives Charmet/The Bridgeman Art Library)
theological) to the will of an orderly nature (the meta- enlightened citizens. Dismissing the “fictions” of tradi-
physical) to the rule of unchanging laws (the scientific). tional religions, Comte became the chief priest of the re-
Later, this same intellectual progression took place in in- ligion of science and rule by experts.
creasingly complex fields—physics, chemistry, and, fi- Comte’s stages of knowledge exemplify the nineteenth-
nally, the study of society. Comte believed that by century fascination with the idea of evolution and dynamic
applying the scientific method, also called the positivist development. Thinkers in many fields, such as the roman-
method, his new discipline of sociology would soon dis- tic historians and “scientific” Marxists, shared and applied
cover the eternal laws of human relations. This colossal this basic concept. In geology, Charles Lyell (1797–1875)
achievement would in turn enable expert social scientists effectively discredited the long-standing view that the
to impose a disciplined harmony and well-being on less earth’s surface had been formed by short-lived cataclysms,
such as biblical floods and earthquakes. Instead, according excellence, the “Newton of biology,” who had revealed
to Lyell’s principle of uniformitarianism, the same geolog- once again the powers of objective science. Darwin’s find-
ical processes that are at work today slowly formed the ings also reinforced the teachings of secularists such as
earth’s surface over an immensely long time. The evolu- Comte and Marx, who scornfully dismissed religious be-
tionary view of biological development, first proposed by lief in favor of agnostic or atheistic materialism. In the
the Greek Anaximander in the sixth century B.C., re- great cities especially, religion was on the defensive. Fi-
emerged in a more modern form in the work of Jean Bap- nally, many writers applied the theory of biological evolu-
tiste Lamarck (1744–1829). Lamarck asserted that all tion to human affairs. Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), an
forms of life had arisen through a long process of continu- English disciple of Auguste Comte, saw the human race
ous adjustment to the environment. as driven forward to ever-greater specialization and
Lamarck’s work was flawed—he believed that the char- progress by the brutal economic struggle. According to
acteristics parents acquired in the course of their lives Spencer, this unending struggle efficiently determined
could be inherited by their children—and was not ac- the “survival of the fittest.” The poor were the ill-fated
cepted, but it helped prepare the way for Charles Dar- weak; the prosperous were the chosen strong. Under-
win (1809–1882), the most influential of all nineteenth- standably, Spencer and other Social Darwinists were es-
century evolutionary thinkers. As the official naturalist on pecially popular with the upper middle class.
a five-year scientific cruise to Latin America and the South
Improve Your Grade
Pacific beginning in 1831, Darwin carefully collected
Primary Source: Survival of the Fittest Applied to
specimens of the different animal species he encountered Human Kind
on the voyage. Back in England, convinced by fossil evi-
dence and by his friend Lyell that the earth and life on it
were immensely ancient, Darwin came to doubt the gen-
eral belief in a special divine creation of each species of an-
Realism in Literature
imal. Instead, he concluded, all life had gradually evolved In literature, the key themes of realism emerged in the
from a common ancestral origin in an unending “struggle
Apago PDF Enhancer 1840s and continued to dominate Western culture and
for survival.” After long hesitation, Darwin published his style until the 1890s. Realist writers believed that litera-
research, which immediately attracted wide attention. ture should depict life exactly as it was. Forsaking poetry
Darwin’s great originality lay in suggesting precisely for prose and the personal, emotional viewpoint of the
how biological evolution might have occurred. His the- romantics for strict, scientific objectivity, the realists sim-
ory is summarized in the title of his work On the Origin of ply observed and recorded—content to let the facts speak
Species by the Means of Natural Selection (1859). Deci- for themselves.
sively influenced by Thomas Malthus’s gloomy theory The major realist writers focused their extraordinary
that populations naturally grow faster than their food powers of observation on contemporary everyday life.
supplies (see page 726), Darwin argued that chance dif- Emphatically rejecting the romantic search for the exotic
ferences among the members of a given species help and the sublime, they energetically pursued the typical
some survive while others die. Thus the variations that and the commonplace. Beginning with a dissection of the
prove useful in the struggle for survival are selected nat- middle classes, from which most of them sprang, many
urally and gradually spread to the entire species through realists eventually focused on the working classes, especially
reproduction. Darwin did not explain why such varia- the urban working classes, which had been neglected in
tions occurred in the first place, and not until the early imaginative literature before this time. The realists put a
twentieth century did the study of genetics and the con- microscope to many unexplored and taboo subjects—sex,
cept of mutation provide some answers. strikes, violence, alcoholism—and hastened to report that
slums and factories teemed with savage behavior. Many
Improve Your Grade
shocked middle-class critics denounced realism as ugly
Primary Source: The Theory of Natural Selection and
the Evolution of Species
sensationalism wrapped provocatively in pseudoscientific
declarations and crude language.
As the capstone of already-widespread evolutionary The realists’ claims of objectivity did not prevent the
thinking, Darwin’s theory had a powerful and many- elaboration of a definite worldview. Unlike the romantics,
sided influence on European thought and the European who had gloried in individual freedom and an unlimited
middle classes. Darwin was hailed as the great scientist par universe, realists were strict determinists. Human beings,
Apago PDF Enhancer

Manet: Emile Zola The young novelist’s
sensitivity and strength of character permeate
this famous portrait by the great French painter
Edouard Manet. Focusing on nuances and
subtle variations, Manet was at first denounced
by the critics, and after Zola lost a newspaper
job defending Manet they became close friends.
Manet was strongly influenced by Japanese
prints, seen in the background.
(Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY)
like atoms, were components of the physical world, and Père Goriot (1835), the hero, a poor student from the
all human actions were caused by unalterable natural laws. provinces, eventually surrenders his idealistic integrity to
Heredity and environment determined human behavior; feverish ambition and society’s pervasive greed.
good and evil were merely social conventions. Madame Bovary (1857), the masterpiece of Gustave
The realist movement began in France, where roman- Flaubert (1821–1880), is far narrower in scope than
ticism had never been completely dominant, and three of Balzac’s work but unparalleled in its depth and accuracy
its greatest practitioners—Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola— of psychological insight. Unsuccessfully prosecuted as an
were French. Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) spent outrage against public morality and religion, Flaubert’s
thirty years writing a vastly ambitious panorama of carefully crafted novel tells the ordinary, even banal, story
postrevolutionary French life. Known collectively as The of a frustrated middle-class housewife who has an adul-
Human Comedy, this series of nearly one hundred books terous love affair and is betrayed by her lover. Without
vividly portrays more than two thousand characters from moralizing, Flaubert portrays the provincial middle class
virtually all sectors of French society. Balzac pictures ur- as petty, smug, and hypocritical.
ban society as grasping, amoral, and brutal, characterized Emile Zola (1840–1902) was most famous for his
by a Darwinian struggle for wealth and power. In Le seamy, animalistic view of working-class life. But he also
wrote gripping, carefully researched stories featuring the

stock exchange, the big department store, and the army,
as well as urban slums and bloody coal strikes. Like many
later realists, Zola sympathized with socialism, a sympa-
thy evident in his overpowering novel Germinal (1885).
Realism quickly spread beyond France. In England,
Mary Ann Evans (1819–1880), who wrote under the
pen name George Eliot, brilliantly achieved a more
deeply felt, less sensational kind of realism. “It is the
habit of my imagination,” George Eliot wrote, “to strive
after as full a vision of the medium in which a character
moves as one of the character itself.” Her great novel
Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (1871–1872) ex-
amines masterfully the ways in which people are shaped
by their social medium as well as their own inner striv-
ings, conflicts, and moral choices. Thomas Hardy
(1840–1928) was more in the Zola tradition. His novels,
such as Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891) and The Return of
the Native (1878), depict men and women frustrated and
crushed by fate and bad luck.
The greatest Russian realist, Count Leo Tolstoy
(1828–1910), combined realism in description and char-
acter development with an atypical moralizing, which
came to dominate his later work. Tolstoy’s greatest work
is War and Peace (1864–1869), a monumental novel set
Apago PDF Enhancer
against the historical background of Napoleon’s invasion
of Russia in 1812. Tolstoy probed deeply into the lives of
a multitude of unforgettable characters, such as the ill-
fated Prince Andrei; the shy, fumbling Pierre; and the en-
chanting, level-headed Natasha. Tolstoy went to great
pains to develop his fatalistic theory of history, which re-
gards free will as an illusion and the achievements of even
the greatest leaders as only the channeling of historical
necessity. Yet Tolstoy’s central message is one that most
of the people discussed in this chapter would have read-
ily accepted: human love, trust, and everyday family ties
are life’s enduring values.
Thoroughgoing realism (or “naturalism,” as it was of-
ten called) arrived late in the United States, most arrest-
ingly in the work of Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945). His
first novel, Sister Carrie (1900), a story of an ordinary
farm girl who does well going wrong in Chicago, so out-
raged conventional morality that the publisher withdrew
the book. The United States subsequently became a bas-
tion of literary realism in the twentieth century after the
movement had faded away in Europe. “Life Is Everywhere” The simple but profound joys of
everyday life infuse this outstanding example of Russia’s pow-
erful realist tradition. Painted in 1888 by N. A. Yaroshenko,
this representation of the mother and child and adoring men
also draws on the classic theme of the infant Jesus and the
holy family. (Sovfoto)
higher real wages, increased social security, political par-

• What was life like in the cities, and how did urban ticipation, and education. Urban society in the late nine-
life change in the nineteenth century?
teenth century represented a long step forward for
• What did the emergence of urban industrial society humanity, but it remained very unequal.
mean for rich and poor and those in between? Inequality was a favorite theme of realist novelists such
• How did families change as they coped with the as Balzac and Zola. More generally, literary realism re-
challenges and the opportunities of the developing flected Western society’s growing faith in science, mate-
urban civilization? rial progress, and evolutionary thinking. The emergence
• What major changes in science and thought reflected of urban, industrial civilization accelerated the seculariza-
and influenced the new urban society? tion of the Western worldview.
The revolution in industry had a decisive influence on the

urban environment. The populations of towns and cities
Key Terms
grew rapidly because it was economically advantageous to Benthamite defense mechanisms
locate factories and offices in urban areas. This rapid miasmatic theory thermodynamics
growth worsened long-standing overcrowding and un- germ theory organic chemistry
healthy living conditions and posed a frightening challenge pasteurization positivist method
Apago PDF Enhancer
for society. Eventually government leaders, city planners, antiseptic principle evolution
reformers, scientists, and ordinary citizens responded. They labor aristocracy Social Darwinists
took effective action in public health and provided them- illegitimacy explosion realism
selves with other badly needed urban services. Gradually separate spheres
they tamed the ferocious savagery of the traditional city.
As the quality of urban life improved, the class structure
became more complex and diversified than before. Urban
society featured many distinct social groups, which existed
in a state of constant flux and competition. The gap be-
tween rich and poor remained enormous and really quite
traditional in mature urban society, although there were Suggested Reading
countless gradations between the extremes. Large num- Anderson, Bonnie S., and Judith P. Zinsser. A History of
bers of poor women in particular continued to labor as Their Own: Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present,
workers in sweated industries, as domestic servants, and as vol. 2, rev. ed. 2000. An excellent, wide-ranging survey.
prostitutes in order to satisfy the demands of their masters Barnes, David S. The Great Stink of Paris and the Nineteenth-
in the servant-keeping classes. Century Struggle Against Filth and Germs. 2006. An excel-
Major changes in family life accompanied the more lent introduction to sanitary developments and attitudes
complex and diversified class system. Especially among toward public health.
the working classes, family life became more stable, more
loving, and less mercenary. These improvements had a Coontz, Stephanie. Marriage, a History: From Obedience
price, however. Gender roles for men and women became to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage. 2005. A
sharply defined and rigidly separate. Women especially lively investigation of the historical background to cur-
tended to be locked into a subordinate and stereotypical rent practice.
role. Nonetheless, on balance, the quality of family life Crane, Diana. Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gen-
improved for all family members. Better, more stable der, and Identity. 2001. An innovative and extremely
family relations reinforced the benefits for the masses of helpful historical investigation.
Gottlieb, Beatrice. The Family in the Western World. 1993. Notes

A wide-ranging synthesis.
1. A. Weber, The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century (New York:
Hunt, Tristram. Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of Columbia University Press, 1899), p. 1.
the Victorian City. 2006. Considers British urban life 2. S. Marcus, “Reading the Illegible,” in The Victorian City: Images
and Realities, ed. H. J. Dyos and Michael Wolff, vol. 1 (London:
and civic pride.
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), p. 266.
Maynes, Mary Jo. Taking the Hard Road: Life Course in 3. E. Gauldie, Cruel Habitations: A History of Working-Class Housing,
French and German Workers’ Biographies in the Era of In- 1780–1918 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974), p. 21.
4. Quoted in E. Chadwick, Report on the Sanitary Condition of the
dustrialization. 1995. Includes fascinating stories that
Labouring Population of Great Britain, ed. M. W. Flinn (Edinburgh:
provide insight into how workers saw themselves. University of Edinburgh Press, 1965; original publication, 1842),
Olsen, Donald J. The City as a Work of Art: London, Paris, pp. 315–316.
5. J. P. McKay, Tramways and Trolleys: The Rise of Urban Mass Transport
and Vienna. 1988. An architectural feast.
in Europe (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 81.
Perrot, Michelle, ed. A History of Private Life. 1990. A 6. Quoted in R. P. Neuman, “The Sexual Question and Social
fascinating multivolume work. Democracy in Imperial Germany,” Journal of Social History 7
(Winter 1974): 276.
Pilbeam, Pamela. The Middle Classes in Europe, 1789–1914: 7. Quoted in J. A. Banks, “The Contagion of Numbers,” in The Vic-
France, Germany, Italy, and Russia. 1990. A stimulating torian City: Images and Realities, ed. H. J. Dyos and Michael Wolff,
introduction to middle-class life. vol. 1 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), p. 112.
8. Quoted in R. Roberts, The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First
Schmiechen, James, and Kenneth Carls. The British Mar- Quarter of the Century (Manchester, England: University of Man-
ket Hall: A Social and Architectural History. 1999. A chester Press, 1971), p. 95.
pathbreaking and beautiful study of Britain’s enclosed 9. Quoted in T. Zeldin, France, 1848–1945, vol. 1 (Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1973), p. 288.
markets and how they revolutionized the sale of food.
10. J. Ehmer, “Marriage,” in The History of the European Family, ed. D.
Thompson, F. M. L. The Rise of Respectable Society: A So- Kertzer and M. Barbagli, vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press,
cial History of Victorian Britain, 1830–1900. 1986. A 2002), p. 319.
laudable survey. Apago PDF Enhancer 11. S. Marcus, The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexuality and Pornogra-
phy in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England (New York: Basic Books,
Weiner, Jonathan. The Beak of the Finch: The Story of Evo- 1966), p. 142.
lution in Our Time. 1994. A prize-winning, highly read- 12. Quoted in G. S. Jones, “Working-Class Culture and Working-
Class Politics in London, 1870–1900: Notes on the Remaking of
able account of Darwin and evolution.
a Working Class,” Journal of Social History 7 (Summer 1974): 486.
Zeldin, Theodore. France, 1848–1945, 2 vols. 1973, 13. Quoted in Zeldin, France, p. 346.
1977. A pioneering social history that opened many 14. Roberts, The Classic Slum, p. 35.
15. Quoted in Zeldin, France, p. 295.
new lines of inquiry.
17. Quoted in Neuman, “The Sexual Question,” p. 281.
18. Quoted in S. Kern, “Explosive Intimacy: Psychodynamics of the Vic-
torian Family,” History of Childhood Quarterly 1 (Winter 1974): 439.
19. A. Comte, The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, trans. H. Mar-
tineau, vol. 1 (London: J. Chapman, 1853), pp. 1–2.
Middle-Class Youth and Sexuality
G rowing up in Vienna in a prosperous Jewish

family, Stephan Zweig (1881–1942) became an
experience them, was silently admitted by custom.
But to admit frankly that a woman could be
influential voice calling for humanitarian values and subject to similar desires, or that creation for its
international culture in early-twentieth-century eternal purposes also required a female polarity,
Europe. Passionately opposed to the First World War, would have transgressed the conception of the
Zweig wrote poetry, plays, and novels. But he was “sanctity of womanhood.” In the pre-Freudian
most famous for many outstanding biographies, which era, therefore, the axiom was agreed upon that a
featured shrewd psychological portraits of intriguing female person could have no physical desires as
historical figures such as Magellan and Marie long as they had not been awakened by man, and
Antoinette. After Hitler came to power in Germany in that, obviously, was officially permitted only in
1933, Zweig lived in exile until his death in 1942. marriage. But even in those moral times, in Vienna
Zweig’s last work was The World of Yesterday in particular, the air was full of dangerous erotic
Apago PDF Enhancer
(1943), one of the truly fascinating autobiographies of infection, and a girl of good family had to live in a
the twentieth century. In the following passage taken completely sterilized atmosphere, from the day of
from that work, Zweig recalls and also interprets the her birth until the day when she left the altar on
romantic experiences and the sexual separation of her husband’s arm. In order to protect young
middle-class youth before the First World War. girls, they were not left alone for a single
moment. . . . Every book which they read was
During the eight years of our higher schooling inspected, and above all else, young girls were
[beyond grade school], something had occurred constantly kept busy to divert their attention from
which was of great importance to each one of us: any possible dangerous thoughts. They had to
we ten-year-olds had grown into virile young men practise the piano, learn singing and drawing,
of sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen, and Nature foreign languages, and the history of literature and
began to assert its rights. . . . It did not take us art. They were educated and overeducated. But
long to discover that those authorities in whom while the aim was to make them as educated and
we had previously confided—school, family, as socially correct as possible, at the same time
and public morals—manifested an astonishing society anxiously took great pains that they should
insincerity in this matter of sex. But what is more, remain innocent of all natural things to a degree
they also demanded secrecy and reserve from us in unthinkable today. A young girl of good family
this connection. . . . was not allowed to have any idea of how the male
This “social morality,” which on the one hand body was formed, or to know how children came
privately presupposed the existence of sexuality into the world, for the angel was to enter into
and its natural course, but on the other would matrimony not only physically untouched, but
not recognize it openly at any price, was doubly completely “pure” spiritually as well. “Good
deceitful. While it winked one eye at a young man breeding,” for a young girl of that time, was
and even encouraged him with the other “to sow identical with ignorance of life; and this ignorance
his wild oats,” as the kindly language of the home ofttimes lasted for the rest of their lives. . . .
put it, in the case of a woman it studiously shut What possibilities actually existed for a young
both eyes and acted as if it were blind. That a man man of the middle-class world? In all the others,
could experience desires, and was permitted to in the so-called lower classes, the problem was no
812
problem at all. . . . In most of our Alpine villages
the number of natural children greatly exceeded
the legitimate ones. Among the proletariat, the
worker, before he could get married, lived with
another worker in free love. . . . It was only in our
middle-class society that such a remedy as an early
marriage was scorned. . . . And so there was an
artificial interval of six, eight, or ten years between
actual manhood and manhood as society accepted
it; and in this interval the young man had to take
care of his own “affairs” or adventures.
Those days did not give him too many
opportunities. Only a very few particularly rich
young men could afford the luxury of keeping a
mistress, that is, taking an apartment and paying
her expenses. And only a very few fortunate
young men achieved the literary ideal of love of An elegant ball for upper-class youth, with
the times—the only one which it was permitted debutantes, junior officers, and vigilant chaperons
to describe in novels—an affair with a married watching in the background. (State Russian Museum,
woman. The others helped themselves for the St. Petersburg, Russia/The Bridgeman Art Library)
most part with shopgirls and waitresses, and this
offered little inner satisfaction. . . . But, generally hermetically locked up under the control of the
Apago PDF Enhancer
speaking, prostitution was still the foundation of
family, hindered in their free bodily as well as
the erotic life outside of marriage; in a certain intellectual development. The young men were
sense it constituted a dark underground vault over forced to secrecy and reticence by a morality
which rose the gorgeous structure of middle-class which fundamentally no one believed or obeyed.
society with its faultless, radiant façade. Unhampered, honest relationships—in other
The present generation has hardly any idea of the words, all that could have made youth happy and
gigantic extent of prostitution in Europe before the joyous according to the laws of Nature—were
[First] World War. Whereas today it is as rare to permitted only to the very few.
meet a prostitute on the streets of a big city as it is
to meet a wagon in the road, then the sidewalks
were so sprinkled with women for sale that it was
more difficult to avoid than to find them. To this Questions for Analysis
was added the countless number of “closed
houses,” the night clubs, the cabarets, the dance 1. According to Zweig, how did the sex lives
parlours with their dancers and singers, and the of young middle-class women and young
bars with their “come-on” girls. At that time middle-class men differ? What accounted for
female wares were offered for sale at every hour these differences?
and at every price. . . . And this was the same city, 2. Was there nonetheless a basic underlying unity
the same society, the same morality, that was in the way society treated both the young men
indignant when young girls rode bicycles, and and the young women of the comfortable
declared it a disgrace to the dignity of science when middle class? If so, what was that unity?
Freud in his calm, clear, and penetrating manner
established truths that they did not wish to be true. 3. Zweig ends this passage with a value judgment:
The same world that so pathetically defended the “It was a bad time for youth.” Do you agree or
purity of womanhood allowed this cruel sale of disagree? Why?
women, organized it, and even profited thereby. Source: The World of Yesterday by Stephan Zweig, translated
We should not permit ourselves to be misled by by Helmut Ripperger. Translation copyright 1943 by the
sentimental novels or stories of that epoch. It was Viking Press, Inc. Used with permission of Viking Penguin,
a bad time for youth. The young girls were a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
813
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France’s Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie greet Britain’s Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in a dazzling
ceremony in Paris in 1855. (The Royal Collection, © 2007 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II)
c h a p t e r
25
The Age of
Nationalism,
1850–1914
chapter preview
Napoleon III in France

• How in France did Napoleon III seek
to reconcile popular and conservative
T he revolutions of 1848 closed one era and opened another. Urban
industrial society began to take a strong hold on the continent and
in the young United States, as it already had in Great Britain. Interna-
forces in an authoritarian nation- tionally, the repressive peace and diplomatic stability of Metternich’s
state? time were replaced by a period of war and rapid change. In thought and
culture, exuberant romanticism gave way to hardheaded realism. In the
Nation Building in Italy and
Atlantic economy, the hard years of the 1840s were followed by good
Germany
times and prosperity throughout most of the 1850s and 1860s. Perhaps
• How did the process of unification in most important of all, Western society progressively developed, for bet-
Italy and Germany create conservative ter or worse, a new and effective organizing principle capable of coping
nation-states? with the many-sided challenge of the dual revolution and the emerging
Nation Building in the United Apago PDF Enhancer
urban civilization. That principle was nationalism—dedication to an
States identification with the nation-state.
• In what ways did the United States The triumph of nationalism is an enormously significant historical de-
experience the full drama of nation velopment that was by no means completely predictable. After all, nation-
building? alism had been a powerful force since at least 1789, but it had repeatedly
failed to realize its goals, most spectacularly so in 1848. Yet by 1914 na-
The Modernization of Russia and tionalism had become in one way or another an almost universal faith in
the Ottoman Empire Europe and in the United States, a faith that had evolved to appeal not only
• What steps did Russia and the to predominately middle-class liberals but also to the broad masses of society.
Ottoman Turks take toward To understand this fateful evolution is the task of this chapter.
modernization, and how successful
were they?
The Responsive National State, Napoleon III in France
1871–1914
Early nationalism was generally liberal and idealistic and often democratic
• Why after 1871 did ordinary citizens and radical as well. The ideas of nationhood and popular sovereignty posed
feel a growing loyalty to their a fearful revolutionary threat to conservatives like Metternich. Yet from the
governments? vantage point of the twenty-first century, it is clear that nationalism wears
Marxism and the Socialist many masks: it may be narrowly liberal or democratic and radical, as it was
Movement for Mazzini and Michelet, but it can also flourish in dictatorial states, which
• Why did the socialist movement may be conservative, fascist, or communist. Napoleon I’s France had
grow, and how revolutionary was it? already combined national feeling with authoritarian rule. Significantly, it
815
816 CHAPTER 25 • T H E A G E O F N AT I O N A L I S M , 1 8 5 0 – 1 9 1 4
was Napoleon’s nephew, Louis Napoleon, who revived into a demigod as they created a Napoleonic legend after
and extended this merger. In doing so, he provided a 1820. Second, as Karl Marx stressed at the time, middle-
model for political leaders elsewhere. class and peasant property owners feared the socialist chal-
• How in France did Napoleon III seek to reconcile popular lenge of urban workers, and they wanted a tough ruler to
and conservative forces in an authoritarian nation-state? provide protection. Third, in late 1848 Louis Napoleon
had a positive “program” for France, which had been elab-
orated in widely circulated pamphlets before the election
The Second Republic and which guided him through his long reign.
Above all, Louis Napoleon believed that the govern-
and Louis Napoleon ment should represent the people and that it should try
Although Louis Napoleon Bonaparte had played no part hard to help them economically. But how were these tasks
in French politics before 1848, universal male suffrage gave to be done? Parliaments and political parties were not the
him three times as many votes as the four other presiden- answer, according to Louis Napoleon. French politicians
tial candidates combined in the French presidential elec- represented special-interest groups, particularly middle-
tion of December 1848. This outcome occurred for several class ones. The answer was a strong, even authoritarian,
reasons. First, Louis Napoleon had the great name of his national leader, like the first Napoleon, who would serve
uncle, whom romantics had transformed from a dictator all the people, rich and poor. This leader would be linked
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Paris in the Second Empire The flash and glitter of unprecedented prosperity in the Sec-
ond Empire come alive in this vibrant contemporary painting. Writers and intellectuals chat
with elegant women and trade witticisms with financiers and government officials at the Café
Tortoni, a favorite rendezvous for fashionable society. Horse-drawn omnibuses with open top
decks mingle with cabs and private carriages on the broad new boulevard. (Lauros/Giraudon/
The Bridgeman Art Library)
Napoleon III in France • 817
to each citizen by direct democracy, his sovereignty un- Chronology

corrupted by politicians and legislative bodies. These po-
litical ideas went hand in hand with Louis Napoleon’s 1852–1871 Reign of Napoleon III in France
vision of national unity and social progress. The state and
its leader had a sacred duty to provide jobs and stimulate 1859–1870 Unification of Italy
the economy. All classes would benefit by such action. 1860–1900 Industrialization of Russia
Louis Napoleon’s political and social ideas were at least
vaguely understood by large numbers of French peasants 1861 Freeing of Russian serfs
and workers in December 1848. To many common 1861–1865 U.S. Civil War
people, he appeared to be a strong man and a forward-
looking champion of their interests, and that is why they 1866 Austro-Prussian War
voted for him. 1870–1871 Franco-Prussian War
1870–1878 Kulturkampf, Bismarck’s attack on

Improve Your Grade
Catholic Church
Primary Source: The French Elect Another Bonaparte:
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte 1880s Educational reforms affect Catholic schools in
France
Elected to a four-year term, President Louis Napoleon
had to share power with a conservative National Assem- 1883 First social security laws to help workers in
bly. But in 1851, after the Assembly failed to change the Germany
constitution so he could run for a second term, Louis
1905 Bloody Sunday in Russia
Napoleon began to conspire with key army officers. On
December 2, 1851, he illegally dismissed the Assembly 1908 Young Turks in power
and seized power in a coup d’état. There was some
armed resistance in Paris and widespread insurrection in
at least partially realized. Until the mid-1860s there was
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the countryside in southern France, but these protests
considerable support from France’s most dissatisfied group,
were crushed by the army. Restoring universal male suf-
the urban workers. Napoleon III’s regulation of pawn-
frage, Louis Napoleon called on the French people, as his
shops and his support of credit unions and better housing
uncle had done, to legalize his actions. They did: 92 per-
for the working classes were evidence of positive concern
cent voted to make him president for ten years. A year
in the 1850s. In the 1860s, he granted workers the right
later, 97 percent in a plebiscite made him hereditary em-
to form unions and the right to strike—important eco-
peror; for the third time, and by the greatest margin yet,
nomic rights denied by earlier governments.
the authoritarian Louis Napoleon was overwhelmingly
At first, political power remained in the hands of the
elected to lead the French nation.
emperor. He alone chose his ministers, and they had
great freedom of action. At the same time, Napoleon III
restricted but did not abolish the Assembly. Members
Napoleon III’s Second Empire were elected by universal male suffrage every six years,
Louis Napoleon—now proclaimed Emperor Napoleon and Louis Napoleon and his government took the parlia-
III—experienced both success and failure between 1852 mentary elections very seriously. They tried to entice no-
and 1870. His greatest success was with the economy, table people, even those who had opposed the regime, to
particularly in the 1850s. His government encouraged stand as government candidates in order to expand the
the new investment banks and massive railroad construc- base of support. Moreover, the government used its offi-
tion that were at the heart of the Industrial Revolution cials and appointed mayors to spread the word that the
on the continent. The government also fostered general election of the government’s candidates—and the defeat
economic expansion through an ambitious program of of the opposition—was the key to roads, tax rebates, and
public works, which included the rebuilding of Paris to a thousand other local concerns.
improve the urban environment (see page 784). The In 1857 and again in 1863, Louis Napoleon’s system
profits of business people soared with prosperity, and un- worked brilliantly and produced overwhelming electoral
employment declined greatly. victories. Yet in the 1860s, Napoleon III’s electoral system
Louis Napoleon always hoped that economic progress gradually disintegrated. A sincere nationalist, Napoleon
would reduce social and political tensions. This hope was had wanted to reorganize Europe on the principle of
nationality and gain influence and territory for France Venetia were taken by Metternich’s Austria. Sardinia and
and himself in the process. Instead, problems in Italy and Piedmont were under the rule of an Italian monarch, and
the rising power of Prussia led to increasing criticism at Tuscany, with its famous capital Florence, shared north-
home from his Catholic and nationalist supporters. With central Italy with several smaller states. Central Italy and
increasing effectiveness, the middle-class liberals who Rome were ruled by the papacy, which had always con-
had always wanted a less authoritarian regime continued sidered an independent political existence necessary to
to denounce his rule. fulfill its spiritual mission. Naples and Sicily were ruled, as
Napoleon was always sensitive to the public mood. they had been for almost a hundred years, by a branch of
Public opinion, he once said, always wins the last victory. the Bourbons. Metternich was not wrong in dismissing
Thus in the 1860s, he progressively liberalized his em- Italy as “a geographical expression” (see Map 25.1).
pire. He gave the Assembly greater powers and the oppo- Between 1815 and 1848, the goal of a unified Italian
sition candidates greater freedom, which they used to nation captured the imaginations of many Italians. There
good advantage. In 1869 the opposition, consisting of were three basic approaches. The first was the radical
republicans, monarchists, and liberals, polled almost 45 program of the idealistic patriot Giuseppe Mazzini, who
percent of the vote. preached a centralized democratic republic based on uni-
The next year, a sick and weary Louis Napoleon again versal male suffrage and the will of the people (see page
granted France a new constitution, which combined a 755). The second was that of Vincenzo Gioberti, a
basically parliamentary regime with a hereditary emperor Catholic priest who called for a federation of existing
as chief of state. In a final great plebiscite on the eve of states under the presidency of a progressive pope. The
the disastrous war with Prussia, 7.5 million Frenchmen third was the program of those who looked for leadership
voted in favor of the new constitution, and only 1.5 mil- to the autocratic kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont, much
lion opposed it. Napoleon III’s attempt to reconcile a as many Germans looked to Prussia.
strong national state with universal male suffrage was still The third alternative was strengthened by the failures of
evolving and was doing so in a democratic direction. 1848, when Austria smashed Mazzini’s republicanism. Al-
Apago PDF Enhancer most by accident, Sardinia’s monarch, Victor Emmanuel,
retained the liberal constitution granted under duress in
Nation Building in Italy March 1848. This constitution provided for a fair degree
of civil liberties and real parliamentary government, with
and Germany deputies elected by a limited franchise based on income.
Louis Napoleon’s triumph in 1848 and his authoritarian To the Italian middle classes, Sardinia appeared to be a lib-
rule in the 1850s provided the old ruling classes of Eu- eral, progressive state ideally suited to achieve the goal of
rope with a new model in politics. To what extent might national unification. By contrast, Mazzini’s brand of dem-
the expanding urban middle classes and even portions of ocratic republicanism seemed quixotic and too radical.
the growing working classes rally to a strong and essen- As for the papacy, the initial cautious support by Pius
tially conservative national state? This was one of the IX (r. 1846–1878) for unification had given way to fear
great political questions in the 1850s and 1860s. In cen- and hostility after he was temporarily driven from Rome
tral Europe, a resounding answer came with the national during the upheavals of 1848. For a long generation, the
unification of Italy and Germany. papacy would stand resolutely opposed not only to na-
tional unification but also to most modern trends. In
• How did the process of unification in Italy and Germany 1864 in the Syllabus of Errors, Pius IX strongly denounced
create conservative nation-states? rationalism, socialism, separation of church and state, and
religious liberty, denying that “the Roman pontiff can
and ought to reconcile and align himself with progress,
Italy to 1850 liberalism, and modern civilization.”
Italy had never been united prior to 1850. Part of Rome’s
great empire in ancient times, the Italian peninsula was
divided in the Middle Ages into competing city-states
Cavour and Garibaldi in Italy
that led the commercial and cultural revival of the West Sardinia had the good fortune of being led by a brilliant
with amazing creativity. A battleground for Great Powers statesman, Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, the domi-
after 1494, Italy was reorganized in 1815 at the Congress nant figure in the Sardinian government from 1850 until
of Vienna. The rich northern provinces of Lombardy and his death in 1861. Indicative of the coming tacit alliance
Nation Building in Italy and Germany • 819
Kingdom of Sardinia before 1859

AUSTRIAN EMPIRE
SWITZERLAND To Kingdom of Sardinia, 1859
To Kingdom of Sardinia, 1860
To Kingdom of Italy, 1866, 1870
VENETIA Major battles
SAVOY LOMBARDY
(From Austria) (From Austria 1866) Boundary of Kingdom of Italy after unification
(To France 1860)
Magenta Milan Trieste
Villafranca
Solferino Venice
Turin Po
PIEDMONT PARMA
FRANCE
A
EN
ROMAGNA
Genoa
OD
Bologna
M
NICE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
K
T
(To France 1860) E
I
M
AR
N
Nice Pisa Florence CH

G
Marseilles ES
A
D
TUSCANY
dr
ia
O
T i be r
ti
M
c
Elba Se
O F
PAPAL STATES
a
CORSICA
(1870)
(France)
S A R D I N I A
Rome
Bari
Naples
Taranto
SARDINIA
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Tyrrhenian Sea
KINGDOM OF
THE TWO SICILIES
Medit Palermo
err
ane Strait of
an Messina
Se SICILY
a
0 50 100 Km.
0 50 100 Mi.
MAP 25.1 The Unification of Italy, 1859–1870 The leadership of Sardinia-Piedmont,

nationalist fervor, and Garibaldi’s attack on the kingdom of the Two Sicilies were decisive
factors in the unification of Italy.
between the aristocracy and the solid middle class under only for the states of northern and perhaps central Italy
the banner of the strong nation-state, Cavour came from in a greatly expanded kingdom of Sardinia.
a noble family, and he made a substantial fortune in busi- In the 1850s, Cavour worked to consolidate Sardinia
ness before entering politics. Cavour’s national goals as a liberal constitutional state capable of leading north-
were limited and realistic. Until 1859 he sought unity ern Italy. His program of highways and railroads, of civil
liberties and opposition to clerical privilege, increased area around Milan. The rest of the map of Italy would re-
support for Sardinia throughout northern Italy. Yet Cavour main essentially unchanged. Cavour resigned in a rage.
realized that Sardinia could not drive Austria out of Yet Cavour’s plans were salvaged by the skillful maneu-
Lombardy and Venetia and unify northern Italy under vers of his allies in the moderate nationalist movement.
Victor Emmanuel without the help of a powerful ally. Ac- While the war against Austria had raged in the north, pro-
cordingly, he worked for a secret diplomatic alliance with Sardinian nationalists in central Italy had fanned popular
Napoleon III against Austria. revolts and driven out their easily toppled princes. Using
Finally, in July 1858 Cavour succeeded and goaded and controlling the popular enthusiasm, the middle-class
Austria into attacking Sardinia in 1859. Napoleon III nationalist leaders in central Italy called for fusion with
came to Sardinia’s defense. Then after the victory of the Sardinia. This was not at all what France and the other
combined Franco-Sardinian forces, Napoleon III did a Great Powers wanted, but the nationalists held firm.
sudden about-face. Deciding it was not in his interest to Cavour returned to power in early 1860 and gained
have too strong a state on his southern border and criti- Napoleon III’s support by ceding Savoy and Nice to
cized by French Catholics for supporting the pope’s de- France. The people of central Italy then voted over-
clared enemy, Napoleon III abandoned Cavour. He made whelmingly to join a greatly enlarged kingdom of Sar-
a compromise peace with the Austrians at Villafranca in dinia. Cavour had achieved his original goal of a northern
July 1859. Sardinia would receive only Lombardy, the Italian state (see Map 25.1).
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Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel The historic meeting in Naples between the leader of
Italy’s revolutionary nationalists and the king of Sardinia sealed the unification of northern
and southern Italy in a unitary state. With only the sleeve of his red shirt showing, Garibaldi
offers his hand—and his conquests—to the uniformed king and his moderate monarchical
government. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)
For superpatriots such as Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807– At the same time, powerful economic forces were un-
1882), the job of unification was still only half done. The dermining the political status quo. Modern industry grew
son of a poor sailor, Garibaldi personified the romantic, rapidly within the German customs union, or Zollverein,
revolutionary nationalism and republicanism of Mazzini founded in 1834 to stimulate trade and increase the rev-
and 1848. Leading a corps of volunteers against Austria enues of member states. The Zollverein had not included
in 1859, Garibaldi emerged in 1860 as an independent Austria, and after 1848 this exclusion became a crucial
force in Italian politics. factor in the Austro-Prussian rivalry.
Partly to use him and partly to get rid of him, Cavour The Zollverein’s tariff duties were substantially re-
secretly supported Garibaldi’s bold plan to “liberate” the duced so that Austria’s highly protected industry could
kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Landing on the shores of not bear to join. In retaliation, Austria tried to destroy
Sicily in May 1860, Garibaldi’s guerrilla band of a thou- the Zollverein, but without success. Indeed, by the end
sand Red Shirts captured the imagination of the Sicilian of 1853 all the German states except Austria had joined
peasantry. Outwitting the twenty-thousand-man royal the customs union. A new Germany excluding Austria
army, the guerrilla leader won battles, gained volunteers, was becoming an economic reality. Middle-class and
and took Palermo. Then he and his men crossed to the business groups in the Zollverein were enriching them-
mainland, marched triumphantly toward Naples, and pre- selves and finding solid economic reasons to bolster their
pared to attack Rome and the pope. But the wily Cavour idealistic support of national unification. Prussia’s lead-
quickly sent Sardinian forces to occupy most of the Papal ing role within the Zollverein gave it a valuable advan-
States (but not Rome) and to intercept Garibaldi. tage in its struggle against Austria’s supremacy in German
Cavour realized that an attack on Rome would bring political affairs.
about war with France, and he also feared Garibaldi’s The national uprising in Italy in 1859 made a pro-
radicalism and popular appeal. Thus he immediately or- found impression in the German states. In Prussia great
ganized a plebiscite in the conquered territories. Despite political change and war—perhaps with Austria, perhaps
the urging of some radical supporters, the patriotic Gari- with France—seemed quite possible. Along with his top
baldi did not oppose Cavour, and the people of the south
Apago PDF Enhancer military advisers, the tough-minded William I of Prussia
voted to join Sardinia. When Garibaldi and Victor Em- (r. 1861–1888), who had replaced the unstable Frederick
manuel rode through Naples to cheering crowds, they William IV as regent in 1858 and become king himself in
symbolically sealed the union of north and south, of 1861, was convinced of the need for major army reforms.
monarch and nation-state. William I wanted to double the size of the highly disci-
Cavour had succeeded. He had controlled Garibaldi plined regular army. Army reforms meant a bigger de-
and had turned popular nationalism in a conservative di- fense budget and higher taxes.
rection. The new kingdom of Italy, which expanded to Prussia had emerged from 1848 with a parliament of
include Venice in 1866 and Rome in 1870, was a parlia- sorts, which was in the hands of the liberal middle
mentary monarchy under Victor Emmanuel, neither rad- class by 1859. The wealthy middle class wanted society
ical nor democratic. Despite political unity, only a small to be less, not more, militaristic. Above all, middle-class
minority of Italian males had the right to vote. The prop- representatives wanted to establish once and for all that
ertied classes and the common people were divided. A the parliament, not the king, had the ultimate political
great and growing social and cultural gap separated the power and that the army was responsible to Prussia’s
progressive, industrializing north from the stagnant, elected representatives. These demands were popular.
agrarian south. The new Italy was united on paper, but The parliament rejected the military budget in 1862, and
profound divisions remained. the liberals triumphed completely in new elections. King
William then called on Count Otto von Bismarck to head
a new ministry and defy the parliament. This was a mo-
Germany Before Bismarck mentous choice.
In the aftermath of 1848, the German states were locked in
a political stalemate. After Austria and Russia blocked Fred- Bismarck and the Austro-Prussian
erick William’s attempt to unify Germany “from above,”
tension grew between Austria and Prussia as each power
War, 1866
sought to block the other within the German Confedera- The most important figure in German history between
tion (see pages 751 and 773–774). Stalemate also prevailed Luther and Hitler, Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) has
in the domestic politics of the individual states in the 1850s. been the object of enormous interest and debate. A great
hero to some, a great villain to others, Bismarck was fered Austria realistic, even generous, peace terms. Austria
above all a master of politics. Born into the Prussian paid no reparations and lost no territory to Prussia, al-
landowning aristocracy, the young Bismarck was a wild though Venetia was ceded to Italy. But the German Con-
and tempestuous student given to duels and drinking. federation was dissolved, and Austria agreed to withdraw
Proud of his Junker heritage and always devoted to his from German affairs. The states north of the Main River
Prussian sovereign, Bismarck had a strong personality were grouped in the new North German Confederation,
and an unbounded desire for power. Yet in his drive to led by an expanded Prussia. The mainly Catholic states of
secure power for himself and for Prussia, Bismarck was the south remained independent while forming alliances
extraordinarily flexible and pragmatic. “One must always with Prussia. Bismarck’s fundamental goal of Prussian ex-
have two irons in the fire,” he once said. He kept his op- pansion was being realized (see Map 25.2).
tions open, pursuing one policy and then another as he
moved with skill and cunning toward his goal.
Bismarck first honed his political skills as a high-ranking
The Taming of the Parliament
diplomat for the Prussian government. When he took of- Bismarck had long been convinced that the old order he
fice as chief minister in 1862, he made a strong but unfa- so ardently defended should make peace, on its own
vorable impression. His speeches were a sensation and a terms, with the liberal middle class and the nationalist
scandal. Declaring that the government would rule with- movement. He realized that nationalism was not neces-
out parliamentary consent, Bismarck lashed out at the sarily hostile to conservative, authoritarian government.
middle-class opposition: “The great questions of the day Moreover, Bismarck believed that because of the events
will not be decided by speeches and resolutions—that of 1848, the German middle class could be led to prefer
was the blunder of 1848 and 1849—but by blood and the reality of national unity under conservative leadership
iron.” Denounced for this view that “might makes right,” to a long, uncertain battle for truly liberal institutions.
Bismarck had the Prussian bureaucracy go right on col- During the constitutional struggle over army reform and
lecting taxes, even though the parliament refused to ap- parliamentary authority, he had delayed but not aban-
prove the budget. Bismarck reorganized the army. And
Apago PDF Enhancer doned this goal. Thus during the attack on Austria in
for four years, from 1862 to 1866, the voters of Prussia 1866, he increasingly identified Prussia’s fate with the
continued to express their opposition by sending large “national development of Germany.”
liberal majorities to the parliament. In the aftermath of victory, Bismarck fashioned a federal
Opposition at home spurred the search for success constitution for the new North German Confederation.
abroad. The ever-knotty question of Schleswig-Holstein Each state retained its own local government, but the king
provided a welcome opportunity. In 1864, when the of Prussia became president of the confederation, and the
Danish king tried again, as in 1848, to bring the provinces chancellor—Bismarck—was responsible only to the pres-
into a more centralized Danish state against the will of the ident. The federal government—William I and Bismarck—
German Confederation, Prussia joined Austria in a short controlled the army and foreign affairs. There was also a
and successful war against Denmark. However, Bismarck legislature with members of the lower house elected by
was convinced that Prussia had to control completely the universal, single-class, male suffrage. With this radical in-
northern, predominately Protestant part of the German novation, Bismarck opened the door to popular partici-
Confederation, which meant expelling Austria from Ger- pation and the possibility of going over the head of the
man affairs. After the victory over Denmark, Bismarck’s middle class directly to the people, much as Napoleon III
skillful maneuvering had Prussia in a position to force had done in France. All the while, however, ultimate power
Austria out by war, if necessary. Bismarck knew that a war rested in the hands of Prussia and its king and army.
with Austria would have to be a localized one that would In Prussia itself, Bismarck held out an olive branch to
not provoke a mighty alliance against Prussia. By skillfully the parliamentary opposition. Marshaling all his diplo-
neutralizing Russia and France, he was in a position to en- matic skill, Bismarck asked the parliament to pass a special
gage in a war of his own making. indemnity bill to approve after the fact all the govern-
The Austro-Prussian War of 1866 lasted only seven ment’s spending between 1862 and 1866. Most of the
weeks. Utilizing railroads to mass troops and the new liberals jumped at the chance to cooperate. With German
breechloading needle gun to achieve maximum firepower, unity in sight, they repented their “sins.” The constitu-
the reorganized Prussian army overran northern Germany tional struggle was over, and the German middle class was
and defeated Austria decisively at the Battle of Sadowa in accepting respectfully the monarchical authority and the
Bohemia. Anticipating Prussia’s future needs, Bismarck of- aristocratic superiority that Bismarck represented. In the
0 50 100 Km. SWEDEN

DENMARK
0 50 100 Mi. N em a n
Baltic Sea
Königsberg
SCHLESWIG
North Sea Danzig
Kiel EAST PRUSSIA
HOLSTEIN
Lübeck
Hamburg POMERANIA WEST PRUSSIA
MECKLENBURG
Bremen
OLDENBURG Elb A
e
HANOVER
Wa Vistul
BRANDENBURG I rta a
Amsterdam Hanover Berlin Warsaw
NETHERLANDS S POSEN
S RUSSIAN EMPIRE
U
WESTPHALIA R
Essen P
Mu
Antwerp Ru POLAND
hr Oder
lde
Leipzig
BELGIUM Cologne
Bonn Weimar Dresden
RHINE
SAXONY SILESIA
PROVINCE
Sadowa
e
ell
Frankfurt 1866
Mai Cracow
os
n Prague
M
Sedan
1870 Luxembourg BOHEMIA
N Olmütz
Nuremberg Vl
eck
ine
Verdun tav
E
ar
Rh
MORAVIA
a
LORRAINE Karlsruhe
va
R
ra
Stuttgart BAVARIA
Nancy
Mo
I
P
Strasbourg WÜRTTEMBERG
Apago PDF Enhancer Danube M
CE
Inn E
ALSA
Munich Vienna
BADEN N
A
I Pest
FRANCE R Buda
T
S
Innsbruck A U
SWITZERLAND
Prussia before 1866
Conquered by Prussia in
Austro-Prussian War, 1866
Austrian territories excluded from
North German Confederation, 1867
ITALY Joined with Prussia to form
North German Confederation, 1867
Major battles South German states joining with
Prussia to form German Empire, 1871
German Confederation boundary, 1815–1866
Won by Prussia in
Bismarck's German Empire, 1871 Franco-Prussian War, 1871
Mapping the Past

MAP 25.2 The Unification of Germany, 1866–1871 This map shows how Prussia expanded and a
new German empire was created through two wars, the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the Franco-
Prussian War of 1870–1871. It deserves careful study because it highlights how central Europe was remade
•
and the power of Prussia-Germany was greatly increased. 1 What were the results of the Austro-Prussian War?
Specifically, how did Prussia treat its neighbors in the north, such as Hanover and Saxony? 2 What losses did Austria
•
•
experience in 1866? 3 What were the results of the Franco-Prussian War for France and for the predominately Catholic
states of southern Germany, such as Bavaria and Württemberg?
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Interactive Map: Unification of Germany, 1866–1871
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Proclaiming the German Empire, January 1871 This commemorative painting by Anton
von Werner testifies to the nationalistic intoxication in Germany after the victory over France.
William I of Prussia stands on a platform surrounded by princes and generals in the famous
Hall of Mirrors in the palace of Versailles, while officers from all the units around a besieged
Paris cheer and salute him with uplifted swords as emperor of a unified Germany. Bismarck,
like a heroic white knight, stands between king and army. (akg-images)
years before 1914, the values of the aristocratic Prussian leaders of the Second Empire, goaded by Bismarck and
army officer increasingly replaced those of the middle- alarmed by their powerful new neighbor on the Rhine,
class liberal in public esteem and set the social standard.1 had decided on a war to teach Prussia a lesson.
As soon as war against France began in 1870, Bismarck
had the wholehearted support of the south German states.
The Franco-Prussian War, 1870–1871 With other governments standing still—Bismarck’s gen-
The final act in the drama of German unification fol- erosity to Austria in 1866 was paying big dividends—
lowed quickly. Bismarck realized that a patriotic war with German forces under Prussian leadership decisively defeated
France would drive the south German states into his the main French army at Sedan on September 1, 1870.
arms. The French obligingly played their part. The ap- Louis Napoleon himself was captured and humiliated.
parent issue—whether a distant relative of Prussia’s William Three days later, French patriots in Paris proclaimed yet an-
I (and France’s Napoleon III) might become king of other French republic and vowed to continue fighting. But
Spain—was only a diplomatic pretext. By 1870 the French after five months, in January 1871, a starving Paris surren-
Nation Building in the United States • 825
dered, and France went on to accept Bismarck’s harsh peace divided by slavery from its birth, as economic development
terms. By this time, the south German states had agreed to in the young republic carried free and slaveholding states
join a new German Empire. The victorious William I was in very different directions. Northerners extended family
proclaimed emperor of Germany in the Hall of Mirrors farms westward and began building English-model facto-
in the palace of Versailles. Europe had a nineteenth-century ries in the Northeast. By 1850 an industrializing, urbaniz-
German “sun king.” As in the 1866 constitution, the king ing North was also building a system of canals and
of Prussia and his ministers had ultimate power in the railroads and attracting most of the European immi-
new German Empire, and the lower house of the legisla- grants. In sharp contrast, industry and cities did not de-
ture was elected by universal male suffrage. velop in the South, and newcomers avoided the region.
Bismarck and the German Empire imposed a harsh And even though three-quarters of all Southern white
peace on France. France was forced to pay a colossal in- families were small farmers and owned no slaves in 1850,
demnity of 5 billion francs and to cede the rich eastern plantation owners holding twenty or more slaves domi-
province of Alsace and part of Lorraine to Germany. The nated the economy and society. These profit-minded slave
German general staff asserted that this annexation would owners used gangs of black slaves to claim a vast new
enhance military security, and German nationalists claimed kingdom across the Deep South where cotton was king
that the Alsacians, who spoke a German dialect as well as (see Map 25.3). By 1850, this kingdom produced 5 mil-
French, wanted to rejoin the fatherland after more than lion bales a year and satisfied an apparently insatiable de-
two hundred years. But both cases were weak, and re- mand from textile mills in Europe and New England.
venge for France’s real and imagined aggression in the The rise of the cotton empire revitalized slave-based
past was probably the decisive factor. In any event, French agriculture, spurred exports, and played a key role in ig-
men and women of all classes viewed the seizure of Alsace niting rapid U.S. economic growth. The large profits
and Lorraine as a terrible crime. They could never forget flowing from cotton also led influential Southerners to
and never forgive, and thus relations between France and defend slavery. In doing so, Southern whites developed a
Germany after 1871 were tragically poisoned. strong cultural identity and came to see themselves as a
The Franco-Prussian War, which Europeans generally
Apago PDF Enhancer closely knit “we” distinct from the Northern “they.”
saw as a test of nations in a pitiless Darwinian struggle for Northern whites viewed their free-labor system as being
existence, released an enormous surge of patriotic feeling no less economically and morally superior. Thus regional
in Germany. Bismarck’s genius, the invincible Prussian antagonisms intensified.
army, the solidarity of king and people in a unified nation— These antagonisms came to a climax after 1848 when
these and similar themes were trumpeted endlessly dur- a defeated Mexico ceded to the United States a vast
ing and after the war. The weakest of the Great Powers in area stretching from west Texas to the Pacific Ocean.
1862 (after Austria, Britain, France, and Russia), Prussia Debate over the extension of slavery in this new territory
had become, with fortification by the other German states, caused attitudes to harden on both sides. In Abraham
the most powerful state in Europe in less than a decade. Lincoln’s famous words, the United States was a “house
Most Germans were enormously proud, blissfully imag- divided” by slavery, contradictory economic systems,
ining themselves the fittest and best of the European conflicting values, and regional loyalties.
species. Semi-authoritarian nationalism and a “new con- Lincoln’s election as president in 1860 gave Southern
servatism,” which was based on an alliance of the proper- “fire-eaters” the chance they had been waiting for. Eventu-
tied classes and sought the active support of the working ally eleven states left the Union, determined to win their
classes, had triumphed in Germany. own independence, and formed the Confederate States of
America. When Southern troops fired on a Union fort in
South Carolina’s Charleston harbor, war began.
Nation Building in The long Civil War (1861–1865) was the bloodiest con-
flict in all of American history, but in the end the South was
the United States decisively defeated and the Union preserved. The vastly su-
• In what ways did the United States experience the full perior population, industry, and transportation of the
drama of nation building? North placed the South at a great, probably fatal, disadvan-
tage. Yet less obvious factors tied to morale and national
Closely linked to European developments in the nine- purpose were also extremely important. The enormous gap
teenth century, the United States experienced the full between the slave-owning elite and the poor whites also
drama of bloody nation building. The “United” States was made it impossible for the South to build effectively on the
IOWA PA.
N.J.
NEBRASKA
TERRITORY
OHIO MD. DEL.
INDIANA
Washington
ILLINOIS
VIRGINIA
KANSAS
TERRITORY
MISSOURI KENTUCKY
NORTH
CAROLINA
TENNESSEE
INDIAN ARKANSAS
TERRITORY SOUTH
CAROLINA
Columbia
Augusta
ATLANTIC
GEORGIA Charleston
ALABAMA OCEAN
Macon
MISSISSIPPI Savannah
LOUISIANA
TEXAS Slave Population, 1860
(Percent of total population by county)
Mobile
Baton More than 50%
Rouge
New Orleans 30–50%
FLORIDA
10–30%
Less than 10%
No slaves or unsettled
0 150 300 Km.
Area of cotton
production
0 150 300 Mi.
Apago PDF Enhancer Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1860 Census of Population.
MAP 25.3 Slavery in the United States, 1860 This map illustrates the nation on the eve of
the Civil War. Although many issues contributed to the developing opposition between North
and South, slavery was the fundamental, enduring force that underlay all others. Lincoln’s pre-
diction, “I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free,” tragi-
cally proved correct. (Source: Carol Berkin et al., Making America: A History of the United States,
2d ed., p. 322. Copyright © 1999 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Reprinted with permission.)
patriotism of 1861. As the war ground on, many ordinary nationalism grew out of the war to prevent the realiza-
whites felt that the burden was falling mainly on their shoul- tion of Southern nationhood.
ders as big planters resisted taxation and used loopholes to
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avoid the draft. Desertions from Southern armies mounted
Primary Source: “Four Score and Seven Years Ago . . .”
rapidly from 1863 on as soldiers became disillusioned.
In the North, by contrast, many people prospered dur-
ing the war years. Enthusiasm remained high, and certain
dominant characteristics of American life and national cul- The Modernization of Russia
ture took shape. Powerful business corporations emerged, and the Ottoman Empire
steadfastly supported by the Republican Party during and
after the war. The Homestead Act of 1862, which gave The Russian and the Ottoman empires also experienced
western land to settlers, and the Thirteenth Amendment profound political crises in the mid-nineteenth century.
of 1865, which ended slavery, reinforced the concept of These crises were unlike those occurring in Italy and Ger-
free labor taking its chances in a market economy. Finally, many, for neither Russia nor the Ottoman Empire as-
the success of Lincoln and the North in holding the pired to build a single powerful state out of a jumble of
Union together seemed to confirm that the “manifest principalities. Both empires were already vast multina-
destiny” of the United States was indeed to straddle a tional states, built on long traditions of military conquest
continent as a great world power. Thus a new American and absolutist rule by elites from the dominant ethnic
The Modernization of Russia and the Ottoman Empire • 827
groups—the Russians and the Ottoman Turks. In the (r. 1855–1881) and his ministers along the path of rapid
early nineteenth century these governing elites in both social change and general modernization.
states were strongly opposed to representative govern- The first and greatest of the reforms was the freeing of
ment and national self-determination, and they contin- the serfs in 1861. Human bondage was abolished forever,
ued to concentrate on absolutist rule and competition and the emancipated peasants received, on average, about
with other Great Powers. half of the land. Yet they had to pay fairly high prices for
For both states relentless power politics led to serious their land, and because the land was owned collectively,
trouble. It became clear to the leaders of both empires each peasant village was jointly responsible for the pay-
that they had to embrace the process of modernization, ments of all the families in the village. Collective owner-
defined narrowly and usefully as the changes that enable a ship and responsibility made it very difficult for individual
country to compete effectively with the leading countries peasants to improve agricultural methods or leave their
at a given time. This limited conception of modernization villages. Thus old patterns of behavior predominated, and
fits Russia after the Crimean War particularly well, and it the effects of reform were limited.
helps explain developments in the Ottoman Empire. Most of the later reforms were also halfway measures.
• What steps did Russia and the Ottoman Turks take In 1864 the government established a new institution of
toward modernization, and how successful were they? local government, the zemstvo. Members of this local
assembly were elected by a three-class system of towns,
peasant villages, and noble landowners. A zemstvo exec-
utive council dealt with local problems. Russian liberals
The “Great Reforms” hoped that this reform would lead to an elected national
In the 1850s, Russia was a poor agrarian society with a rap- parliament, but they were soon disappointed. The local
idly growing population. Industry was little developed, and zemstvo remained subordinate to the traditional bu-
almost 90 percent of the population lived off the land. reaucracy and the local nobility. More successful was re-
Agricultural techniques were backward, and serfdom was form of the legal system, which established independent
still the basic social institution. Bound to the lord on a
Apago PDF Enhancer courts and equality before the law. Education and poli-
hereditary basis, the peasant serf was little more than a cies toward Russian Jews were also liberalized somewhat,
slave. Serfs were obliged to furnish labor services or money and censorship was relaxed but not removed.
payments as the lord saw fit. Moreover, the lord could Until the twentieth century, Russia’s greatest strides
choose freely among the serfs for army recruits, who had to toward modernization were economic rather than politi-
serve for twenty-five years, and he could punish a serf with cal. Industry and transport, both so vital to the military,
deportation to Siberia. Sexual exploitation of female serfs were transformed in two industrial surges. The first of
by their lords was common. these came after 1860. The government encouraged and
Serfdom had become the great moral and political issue subsidized private railway companies, and construction
for the government by the 1840s. Then the Crimean War boomed. In 1860 the empire had only about 1,250 miles
of 1853 to 1856, arising out of a dispute with France over of railroads; by 1880 it had about 15,500 miles. The rail-
who should protect certain Christian shrines in the Ot- roads enabled agricultural Russia to export grain and thus
toman Empire, brought crisis. Because the fighting was earn money for further industrialization. Industrial sub-
concentrated in the Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea, urbs grew up around Moscow and St. Petersburg, and a
Russia’s transportation network of rivers and wagons class of modern factory workers began to take shape.
failed to supply the distant Russian armies adequately. Industrial development strengthened Russia’s military
France and Great Britain, aided by Sardinia and the Ot- forces and gave rise to territorial expansion to the south
toman Empire, inflicted a humiliating defeat on Russia. and east. Imperial expansion greatly excited many ardent
This military defeat marked a turning point in Russian Russian nationalists and superpatriots, who became some
history because it demonstrated that Russia had fallen of the government’s most enthusiastic supporters. Indus-
behind the rapidly industrializing nations of western Eu- trial development also contributed mightily to the spread
rope in many areas. At the very least, Russia needed rail- of Marxian thought and the transformation of the Rus-
roads, better armaments, and reorganization of the army sian revolutionary movement after 1890.
if it was to maintain its international position. Moreover, In 1881 Alexander II was assassinated by a small group
the disastrous war had caused hardship and raised the of terrorists. The era of reform came to an abrupt end, for
specter of massive peasant rebellion. Reform of serfdom the new tsar, Alexander III (r. 1881–1894), was a deter-
was imperative. Military disaster thus forced Alexander II mined reactionary. Nevertheless, economic modernization
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The Fruits of Terrorism, 1881 In the late 1870s a small group of revolutionaries believed
that killing the tsar could destroy the Russian state. Succeeding in blowing up the reforming
Alexander II after several near misses, the five assassins, including one woman, were quickly
caught and hanged. Russia entered an era of reaction and harsh authoritarian rule. (Visual
Connection Archive)
sped forward in the massive industrial surge of the 1890s. eigners to build great factories in backward Russia, and
Nationalism played a decisive role, as it had after the this policy was brilliantly successful, especially in south-
Crimean War. The key leader was Sergei Witte, the tough, ern Russia. There, in eastern Ukraine, foreign capitalists
competent minister of finance from 1892 to 1903. In- and their engineers built an enormous and very modern
spired by the writings of Friedrich List (see pages steel and coal industry.2 In 1900 peasants still constituted
731–732), Witte believed that the harsh reality of indus- the great majority of the population, but a fiercely auto-
trial backwardness was threatening Russia’s power and cratic and independent Russia was industrializing and
greatness. catching up with the advanced nations of the West.
Therefore, under Witte’s leadership the government
built state-owned railroads rapidly, doubling the network
to thirty-five thousand miles by the end of the century.
The Revolution of 1905
Witte established high protective tariffs to build Russian Catching up partly meant vigorous territorial expansion,
industry, and he put the country on the gold standard for this was the age of Western imperialism. By 1903
of the “civilized world” in order to strengthen Russian fi- Russia had established a sphere of influence in Chinese
nances. Manchuria and was casting greedy eyes on northern Ko-
Witte’s greatest innovation was to use the West to rea. When the diplomatic protests of equally imperialis-
catch up with the West. He aggressively encouraged for- tic Japan were ignored, the Japanese launched a surprise
The Modernization of Russia and the Ottoman Empire • 829
attack in February 1904. To the amazement of self- the largest group in the newly elected Duma, saw the
confident Europeans, Japan scored repeated victories, and Fundamental Laws as a step backward. Efforts to cooper-
Russia was forced in September 1905 to accept a humiliate with the tsar’s ministers soon broke down. After
ating defeat. months of deadlock, the tsar dismissed the Duma. There-
As is often the case, military disaster abroad brought upon he and his reactionary advisers unilaterally rewrote
political upheaval at home. The business and professional the electoral law so as to increase greatly the weight of the
classes had long wanted to match economic with political propertied classes at the expense of workers, peasants, and
modernization. Their minimal goal was to turn the last of national minorities.
Europe’s absolutist monarchies into a liberal, representa- The new law had the intended effect. With landowners
tive regime. Factory workers, strategically concentrated assured half the seats in the Duma, the government se-
in the large cities, had all the grievances of early industri- cured a loyal majority in 1907 and again in 1912. Thus
alization and were organized in a radical and still illegal armed, the tough, energetic chief minister, Peter Stolypin,
labor movement. Peasants had gained little from the era pushed through important agrarian reforms designed to
of reforms and were suffering from poverty and over- break down collective village ownership of land and en-
population. At the same time, nationalist sentiment was courage the more enterprising peasants—his “wager on
emerging among the empire’s minorities. The politically the strong.” In 1914, Russia was partially modernized, a
and culturally dominant ethnic Russians were only about conservative constitutional monarchy with a peasant-
45 percent of the population, and by 1900 some intellec- based but industrializing economy.
tuals among the subject nationalities were calling for self-
rule and autonomy. Separatist nationalism was strongest
among the Poles and Ukrainians. With the army pinned Decline and Reform in
down in Manchuria, all these currents of discontent con-
verged in the revolution of 1905.
the Ottoman Empire
The beginning of the revolution pointed up the incom- Although the Ottoman Empire began to decline slowly
petence of the government. On a Sunday in January
Apago PDF Enhancer after reaching its high point of development under
1905, a massive crowd of workers and their families con- Suleiman the Magnificent in the sixteenth century, the
verged peacefully on the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg Ottomans began in the eighteenth century to fall rapidly
to present a petition to the tsar. Suddenly troops opened behind western Europe in science, industrial skill, and
fire, killing and wounding hundreds. The Bloody Sunday military technology. At the same time, Russia’s powerful
massacre turned ordinary workers against the tsar and westernized army pushed southward, overrunning and
produced a wave of general indignation. occupying Ottoman provinces on the Danube River. The
Outlawed political parties came out into the open, danger that the Great Powers of Europe would gradually
and by the summer of 1905 strikes, peasant uprisings, conquer the Ottoman Empire and divide up its vast ter-
revolts among minority nationalities, and troop mutinies ritories was real.
were sweeping the country. The revolutionary surge culmi- Caught up in the Napoleonic wars and losing more ter-
nated in October 1905 in a great paralyzing general strike, ritory to Russia, the Ottomans were forced in 1816 to
which forced the government to capitulate. The tsar issued grant Serbia local autonomy. In 1830, the Greeks won
the October Manifesto, which granted full civil rights and their national independence, while French armies began
promised a popularly elected Duma (parliament) with real their long and bloody conquest of the Arabic-speaking
legislative power. The manifesto split the opposition. Fright- province of Algeria (see pages 776–777). French efforts
ened middle-class leaders helped the government repress to strip Algerians of their culture and identity were brutal
the uprising and survive as a constitutional monarchy. and persistent, eventually resulting in one of Africa’s most
On the eve of the opening of the first Duma in May bitter anticolonial struggles after 1945.
1906, the government issued the new constitution, the Ottoman weakness reflected the decline of the sultan’s
Fundamental Laws. The tsar retained great powers. The “slave army,” the so-called janissary corps. In the six-
Duma, elected indirectly by universal male suffrage, and teenth century the Ottoman sultans levied an annual
a largely appointive upper house could debate and pass slave tax of one thousand to three thousand male chil-
laws, but the tsar had an absolute veto. As in Bismarck’s dren on the conquered Christian provinces in the
Germany, the emperor appointed his ministers, who did Balkans. The boys and other slaves were raised in Turkey
not need to command a majority in the Duma. as Muslims, were trained to fight and administer, and
The disappointed, predominately middle-class liberals, joined the elite corps of the Ottoman infantry. With
time, however, the janissaries became a corrupt and priv- pages 853–854). In 1831, and again in 1839, his French-
ileged hereditary caste. A transformation of the army was trained forces occupied the Ottoman provinces of Syria
absolutely necessary to battle the Europeans more effec- and then Iraq and appeared ready to depose Mahmud II.
tively, as well as to enhance the sultanate’s authority The Ottoman sultan survived, but only because the Eu-
within the empire. ropean powers forced Muhammad Ali to withdraw. The
The reform-minded Mahmud III (r. 1808–1839) pro- European powers, minus France, preferred a weak and
ceeded cautiously, picking loyal officers and building up dependent Ottoman state to a strong and revitalized
his dependable artillery corps. In 1826 his council or- Muslim entity under a dynamic leader such as Muham-
dered the janissaries to drill in the European manner. As mad Ali.
expected, the janissaries revolted and charged the palace, Realizing their precarious position, liberal Ottoman
where they were mowed down by the waiting artillery statesmen launched in 1839 an era of radical reforms,
corps. which lasted with fits and starts until 1876 and culmi-
The destruction of the janissaries cleared the way for nated in a constitution and a short-lived parliament.
building a new army, but it came too late to stop the rise Known as the Tanzimat (literally, regulations or orders),
of Muhammad Ali, the Ottoman governor in Egypt (see these reforms were designed to remake the empire on a
Apago PDF Enhancer
Pasha Halim Receiving Archduke Maximilian of Austria As this painting suggests,

Ottoman leaders became well versed in European languages and culture. They also mastered
the game of power politics, playing one European state off against another and securing the
Ottoman Empire’s survival. The black servants on the right may be slaves from Sudan. (Mira-
mare Palace Trieste/Dagli Orti/The Art Archive)
The Responsive National State, 1871–1914 • 831
western European model. New decrees called for the Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire—did subject
equality of Muslims, Christians, and Jews before the law peoples still strive for political unity and independence.
and a modernized administration and military. New • Why after 1871 did ordinary citizens feel a growing
commercial laws allowed free importation of foreign loyalty to their governments?
goods and permitted foreign merchants to operate freely
throughout the empire. Of great importance for later de-
velopments, growing numbers among the elite and the
upwardly mobile embraced Western education and ac-
General Trends
cepted secular values to some extent. Despite some major differences between countries, Euro-
Intended to bring revolutionary modernization such pean domestic politics after 1871 had a common frame-
as that experienced by Japan in the Meiji era (see pages work, the firmly established national state. The common
870–872), the Tanzimat permitted partial recovery but themes within that framework were the emergence of
fell short of its goals for several reasons. First, the liberal mass politics and growing mass loyalty toward the na-
reforms failed to halt the growth of nationalism among tional state.
Christian subjects in the Balkans (see Chapter 29), which For good reason, ordinary people—the masses of an
resulted in crises and defeats that undermined all reform industrializing, urbanizing society—felt increasing loy-
efforts. Second, the Ottoman initiatives did not curtail alty to their governments. More people could vote. By
the appetite of Western imperialism, which secured a 1914 universal male suffrage had become the rule rather
stranglehold on the Ottoman economy. than the exception. This development had as much psy-
Finally, equality before the law for all citizens and reli- chological as political significance. Ordinary men were
gious communities actually increased religious disputes, no longer denied the right to vote because they lacked
which were in turn exacerbated by the relentless inter- wealth or education. They felt that they counted; they
ference of the European powers. This development em- could influence the government to some extent. They
bittered relations between the religious communities, were becoming “part of the system.”
distracted the government from its reform mission, and
Apago PDF Enhancer Women also began to demand the right to vote. The
split Muslims into secularists and religious conservatives. women’s suffrage movement achieved its first success in
These Islamic conservatives became the most dependable the western United States, and by 1913 women could vote
support of Sultan Abdülhamid (r. 1876–1909), who in twelve states. Europe, too, moved slowly in this direc-
abandoned the model of European liberalism in his long tion. In 1914 Norway gave the vote to most women. Else-
and repressive reign. where, women such as the English Emmeline Pankhurst
The combination of declining international power were very militant in their demands. They heckled politi-
and conservative tyranny eventually led to a powerful cians and held public demonstrations. These efforts gener-
resurgence of the modernizing impulse among idealistic ally failed before 1914, but they prepared the way for the
Turkish exiles in Europe and young army officers in Istan- triumph of the women’s suffrage movement immediately
bul. These fervent patriots, the so-called Young Turks, after World War I.
seized power in the revolution of 1908, and they forced As the right to vote spread, politicians and parties in
the sultan to implement reforms. Failing to stop the rising national parliaments represented the people more respon-
tide of anti-Ottoman nationalism in the Balkans, the sively. The multiparty system prevailing in most countries
Young Turks helped prepare the way for the birth of mod- meant that parliamentary majorities were built on shift-
ern secular Turkey after the defeat and collapse of the Ot- ing coalitions of different parties, and this gave individual
toman Empire in World War I (see pages 889–890). parties leverage to obtain benefits for their supporters.
Governments also passed laws to alleviate general prob-
lems, thereby acquiring greater legitimacy and appearing
The Responsive National State more worthy of support.
– There was a less positive side to building support for
strong nation-states after 1871. Governments found that
For central and western Europe, the unification of Italy they could manipulate national feeling to create a sense of
and Germany by “blood and iron” marked the end of a unity and to divert attention away from underlying class
dramatic period of nation building. After 1871 the heart- conflicts. Conservative and moderate leaders found that
land of Europe was organized into strong national states. workers who voted socialist would rally around the flag
Only on the borders of Europe—in Ireland and Russia, in in a diplomatic crisis or cheer when distant territory of
Apago PDF Enhancer

“Votes for Women!” The long-simmering campaign for women’s suffrage in England
came to a rapid boil after 1903, as militants took to the streets, disrupted political meetings,
and tried to storm Parliament. Manhandled by the police and often jailed, some activists
responded by damaging public property and going on hunger strikes in prison. This 1908
illustration shows demonstrators giving a hero’s welcome to Mary Leigh, the first suffragette
imprisoned for property damage after she threw rocks through the windows of the prime
minister’s house. (The Art Archive)
doubtful value was seized in Africa or Asia (see Chap- the everyday business of government was conducted by
ter 26). Therefore, after 1871 governing elites frequently the separate states, but there was a strong national gov-
used antiliberal and militaristic policies to help manage do- ernment with a chancellor—until 1890, Bismarck—and a
mestic conflicts, but at the expense of increasing the inter- popularly elected lower house, called the Reichstag. Al-
national tensions that erupted in 1914 in cataclysmic war though Bismarck refused to be bound by a parliamentary
and revolution (see Chapter 27). majority, he tried nonetheless to maintain one. This situa-
In these same years some fanatics and demagogic political tion gave the political parties opportunities. Until 1878
leaders also sought to build extreme nationalist movements Bismarck relied mainly on the National Liberals, who
by whipping up popular animosity toward imaginary ene- had rallied to him after 1866. They supported legisla-
mies, especially the Jews. The growth of modern anti- tion useful for further economic and legal unification of
Semitism after 1880 epitomized the most negative aspects the country.
of European nationalism before the First World War. Less wisely, they backed Bismarck’s attack on the
Catholic Church, the so-called Kulturkampf, or “struggle
for civilization.” Like Bismarck, the middle-class National
The German Empire Liberals were particularly alarmed by Pius IX’s declaration
Politics in Germany after 1871 reflected many of the gen- of papal infallibility in 1870. That dogma seemed to ask
eral developments. The new German Empire was a federal German Catholics to put loyalty to their church above loy-
union of Prussia and twenty-four smaller states. Much of alty to their nation. Only in Protestant Prussia did the Kul-
turkampf have even limited success. Catholics throughout anywhere. Bismarck’s social security system did not wean
the country generally voted for the Catholic Center Party, workers from voting socialist, but it did give them a small
which blocked passage of national laws hostile to the stake in the system and protect them from some of the
church. Finally, in 1878 Bismarck abandoned his attack. uncertainties of the complex urban industrial world. This
Indeed, he and the Catholic Center Party entered into an enormously significant development was a product of po-
uneasy but mutually advantageous alliance. Their reasons litical competition and government efforts to win popu-
for doing so were largely economic. lar support.
Bismarck moved to enact high tariffs on cheap grain
Improve Your Grade
from the United States, Canada, and Russia, against
Primary Source: The Welfare State Is Born
which less efficient European producers could not com-
pete. This won over not only the Catholic Center, whose Increasingly, the great issues in German domestic pol-
supporters were small farmers in western and southern itics were socialism and the Marxian Social Democratic
Germany, but also the Protestant Junkers, who had large Party. In 1890 the new emperor, the young, idealistic,
landholdings in the east. With the tariffs, then, Bismarck and unstable William II (r. 1888–1918), opposed Bis-
won Catholic and conservative support. marck’s attempt to renew the law outlawing the Social
Bismarck had been looking for a way to increase taxes, Democratic Party. Eager to rule in his own right and to
and the solution he chose was higher tariffs. Many other earn the support of the workers, William II forced Bis-
governments acted similarly. The 1880s and 1890s saw a marck to resign. After the “dropping of the pilot,” Ger-
widespread return to protectionism. France, in particu- man foreign policy changed profoundly and mostly for
lar, established very high tariffs to protect agriculture and the worse, but the government did pass new laws to aid
industry, peasants and manufacturers, from foreign com- workers and to legalize socialist political activity.
petition. Thus the German government and other govern- Yet William II was no more successful than Bismarck in
ments responded effectively to a major economic problem getting workers to renounce socialism. Indeed, socialist
and won greater loyalty. The general rise of protection- ideas spread rapidly, and more and more Social Democrats
ism in this period was also an outstanding example of the
Apago PDF Enhancer were elected to the Reichstag in the 1890s. After oppos-
dangers of self-centered nationalism: new tariffs led to ining a colonial war in German Southwest Africa in 1906
ternational name-calling and nasty trade wars. that led to important losses in the general elections of
As for socialism, Bismarck tried to stop its growth in 1907, the German Social Democratic Party broadened its
Germany because he genuinely feared its revolutionary base and adopted a more patriotic tone. In 1912 the party
language and allegiance to a movement transcending the scored a great electoral victory, becoming the largest single
nation-state. In 1878, after two attempts on the life of party in the Reichstag. This victory shocked aristocrats
William I by radicals (though not socialists), Bismarck used and their wealthy conservative middle-class allies, height-
a carefully orchestrated national outcry to ram through ening the fears of an impending socialist upheaval in both
the Reichstag a law that strictly controlled socialist meet- groups. Yet the “revolutionary” socialists were actually be-
ings and publications and outlawed the Social Democratic coming less radical in Germany. In the years before World
Party, which was thereby driven underground. However, War I, the strength of socialist opposition to greater mili-
German socialists displayed a discipline and organization tary spending and imperialist expansion declined substan-
worthy of the Prussian army itself. Bismarck decided to tially, for example. German socialists identified increasingly
try another tack. with the German state, and they concentrated on gradual
Thus Bismarck’s essentially conservative nation-state social and political reform.
pioneered with social measures designed to win the sup-
port of working-class people. In 1883 he pushed through
the Reichstag the first of several modern social security
Republican France
laws to help wage earners. The laws of 1883 and 1884 es- Although Napoleon III’s reign made some progress in re-
tablished national sickness and accident insurance; the ducing antagonisms between classes, the war with Prussia
law of 1889 established old-age pensions and retirement undid these efforts, and in 1871 France seemed hope-
benefits. Henceforth sick, injured, and retired workers lessly divided once again. The patriotic republicans who
could look forward to some regular benefits from the proclaimed the Third Republic in Paris after the military
state. This national social security system, paid for through disaster at Sedan refused to admit defeat. They defended
compulsory contributions by wage earners and employ- Paris with great heroism for weeks, living off rats and zoo
ers as well as grants from the state, was the first of its kind animals until they were starved into submission by German
armies in January 1871. When national elections then How is one to account for this? Luck played a part. Until
sent a large majority of conservatives and monarchists to 1875 the monarchists in the “republican” National As-
the National Assembly and France’s new leaders decided sembly had a majority but could not agree who should be
they had no choice but to surrender Alsace and Lorraine king. The compromise Bourbon candidate refused to rule
to Germany, the traumatized Parisians exploded in patri- except under the white flag of his ancestors—a completely
otic frustration and proclaimed the Paris Commune in unacceptable condition. In the meantime, Thiers’s destruc-
March 1871. Vaguely radical, the leaders of the Com- tion of the radical Commune and his other firm measures
mune wanted to govern Paris without interference from showed the fearful provinces and the middle class that the
the conservative French countryside. The National As- Third Republic might be moderate and socially conserv-
sembly, led by aging politician Adolphe Thiers, would ative. France therefore retained the republic, though re-
hear none of it. The Assembly ordered the French army luctantly. As President Thiers cautiously said, this was “the
into Paris and brutally crushed the Commune. Twenty government which divides us least.”
thousand people died in the fighting. As in June 1848, it Another stabilizing factor was the skill and determina-
was Paris against the provinces, French against French. tion of the moderate republican leaders in the early years.
Out of this tragedy, France slowly formed a new na- The most famous of these was Léon Gambetta, the son
tional unity, achieving considerable stability before 1914. of an Italian grocer, a warm, easygoing, unsuccessful lawyer
who had turned professional politician. By
1879 the great majority of members of
both the upper and the lower houses of the
National Assembly were republicans, and
the Third Republic had firm foundations
after almost a decade.
The moderate republicans sought to pre-
serve their creation by winning the hearts
Apago PDF Enhancer and minds of the next generation. Trade
unions were fully legalized, and France ac-
quired a colonial empire. More important,
a series of laws between 1879 and 1886 es-
tablished free compulsory elementary edu-
cation for both girls and boys. At the same
time, they greatly expanded the state sys-
tem of public tax-supported schools. In
France and elsewhere the general expan-
sion of public education served as a critical
nation-building tool throughout the West-
ern world in the late nineteenth century. In
France most elementary and much second-
ary education had traditionally been in the
parochial schools of the Catholic Church,
which had long been hostile to republics
and to much of secular life. Free compul-
sory elementary education in France be-
came secular republican education.
Although the educational reforms of the
1880s disturbed French Catholics, many of
them rallied to the republic in the 1890s.
The limited acceptance of the modern
world by the more liberal Pope Leo XIII
Captain Alfred Dreyfus Leaving an 1899 reconsideration of his original
court martial, Dreyfus receives an insulting “guard of dishonor” from soldiers (1878–1903) eased tensions between church
whose backs are turned. Top army leaders were determined to brand Dreyfus and state. Unfortunately, the Dreyfus affair
a traitor. (Roger-Viollet/Getty Images) changed all that.
Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish captain in the French army, supreme court of the land, it ruled against labor unions in
was falsely accused and convicted of treason. His family two important decisions. And after the Liberal Party came
never doubted his innocence and fought to reopen the to power in 1906, the Lords vetoed several measures
case, enlisting the support of prominent republicans and passed by the Commons, including the so-called People’s
intellectuals such as novelist Emile Zola. In 1898 and Budget, which was designed to increase spending on so-
1899, the case split France apart. On one side was the cial welfare services. The Lords finally capitulated, as they
army, which had manufactured evidence against Dreyfus, had done in 1832, when the king threatened to create
joined by anti-Semites and most of the Catholic estab- enough new peers to pass the bill.
lishment. On the other side stood the civil libertarians Aristocratic conservatism yielded to popular democracy
and most of the more radical republicans. once and for all. The result was that extensive social wel-
fare measures, slow to come to Great Britain, were passed
Improve Your Grade
Primary Source: “J’Accuse” the French Army
in a spectacular rush between 1906 and 1914. Dur-
ing those years, the Liberal Party, inspired by the fiery
This battle, which eventually led to Dreyfus’s being Welshman David Lloyd George (1863–1945), substan-
declared innocent, revived republican feeling against the tially raised taxes on the rich as part of the People’s Bud-
church. Between 1901 and 1905, the government sev- get. This income helped the government pay for national
ered all ties between the state and the Catholic Church af- health insurance, unemployment benefits, old-age pen-
ter centuries of close relations. The salaries of priests and sions, and a host of other social measures. The state was
bishops were no longer paid by the government, and all integrating the urban masses socially as well as politically.
churches were given to local committees of lay Catholics. This record of accomplishment was only part of the
Catholic schools were put on their own financially and story, however. On the eve of World War I, the unan-
soon lost a third of their students. The state school sys- swered question of Ireland brought Great Britain to the
tem’s power of indoctrination was greatly strengthened. brink of civil war. The terrible Irish famine fueled an
In France only the growing socialist movement, with its Irish revolutionary movement. Thereafter, the English
very different and thoroughly secular ideology, stood in
Apago PDF Enhancer slowly granted concessions, such as the abolition of the
opposition to patriotic, republican nationalism. privileges of the Anglican Church and rights for Irish peas-
ants. Liberal prime minister William Gladstone (1809–
1898), who had proclaimed twenty years earlier that
Great Britain and Ireland “my mission is to pacify Ireland,” introduced bills to
Britain in the late nineteenth century has often been seen give Ireland self-government in 1886 and in 1893. They
as a shining example of peaceful and successful political failed to pass. After two decades of relative quiet, Irish
evolution, where an effective two-party parliament skill- nationalists in the British Parliament saw their chance.
fully guided the country from classical liberalism to full- They supported the Liberals in their battle for the Peo-
fledged democracy with hardly a misstep. This view of ple’s Budget and received a home-rule bill for Ireland in
Great Britain is not so much wrong as it is incomplete. Af- return.
ter the right to vote was granted to males of the solid mid- Thus Ireland, the emerald isle, was on the brink of
dle class in 1832, opinion leaders and politicians wrestled achieving self-government. Yet Ireland was composed of
with the uncertainties of a further expansion of the fran- two peoples. As much as the Irish Catholic majority in
chise. In 1867 Benjamin Disraeli and the Conservatives ex- the southern counties wanted home rule, precisely that
tended the vote to all middle-class males and the best-paid much did the Irish Protestants of the northern counties
workers in the Second Reform Bill, in order to broaden the of Ulster come to oppose it. Motivated by the accumu-
Conservative Party’s traditional base of aristocratic and lated fears and hostilities of generations, the Protestants
landed support. After 1867 English political parties and of Ulster refused to submerge themselves in a Catholic
electoral campaigns became more modern, and the “lower Ireland, just as Irish Catholics had refused to submit to a
orders” appeared to vote as responsibly as their “betters.” Protestant Britain.
Hence the Third Reform Bill of 1884 gave the vote to al- The Ulsterites vowed to resist home rule in northern
most every adult male. Ireland. By December 1913 they had raised 100,000
While the House of Commons was drifting toward armed volunteers, and they were supported by much of
democracy, the House of Lords was content to slumber English public opinion. Thus in 1914 the Liberals in the
nobly. Between 1901 and 1910, however, that bastion of House of Lords introduced a compromise home-rule bill
aristocratic conservatism tried to reassert itself. Acting as that did not apply to the northern counties. This bill,
feeling. Though Great Britain had much going for it—

power, Parliament, prosperity—none of these availed in
the face of the conflicting nationalisms created by Catholics
and Protestants in northern Ireland. Similarly, progressive
Sweden was powerless to stop the growth of the Norwe-
gian national movement, which culminated in Norway’s
breaking away from Sweden and becoming a fully inde-
pendent nation in 1905. In this light, one can also see
how hopeless was the case of the Ottoman Empire in Eu-
rope in the later nineteenth century. It was only a matter
of time before the Serbs, Bulgarians, and Romanians would
break away, and they did.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire

The dilemma of conflicting nationalisms in Ireland also
helps one appreciate how desperate the situation in the
Austro-Hungarian Empire had become by the early twen-
tieth century. In 1849 Magyar nationalism had driven
Hungarian patriots to declare an independent Hungarian
republic, which was savagely crushed by Russian and Aus-
trian armies (see page 772). Throughout the 1850s, Hun-
gary was ruled as a conquered territory, and Emperor
Francis Joseph and his bureaucracy tried hard to central-
Apago PDF Enhancer ize the state and Germanize the language and culture of
the different nationalities.
Then in the wake of defeat by Prussia in 1866, a weak-
ened Austria was forced to strike a compromise and es-
tablish the so-called dual monarchy. The empire was
divided in two, and the nationalistic Magyars gained vir-
tual independence for Hungary. Henceforth each half of
the empire agreed to deal with its own “barbarians”—its
“No Home Rule” Posters like this one helped to foment
own minorities—as it saw fit. The two states were joined
pro-British, anti-Catholic sentiment in the northern Irish only by a shared monarch and common ministries for fi-
counties of Ulster before the First World War. The rifle raised nance, defense, and foreign affairs.
defiantly and the accompanying rhyme are a thinly veiled In Austria ethnic Germans were only one-third of the
threat of armed rebellion and civil war. (Reproduced with the population, and in 1895 many Germans saw their tradi-
kind permission of the Trustees of the National Museums & Galleries
of Northern Ireland. Photograph © Ulster Museum, Belfast)
tional dominance threatened by Czechs, Poles, and other
Slavs. A particularly emotional issue in the Austrian par-
liament was the language used in government and ele-
which openly betrayed promises made to Irish national- mentary education at the local level. From 1900 to 1914
ists, was rejected, and in September the original home- the parliament was so divided that ministries generally
rule bill was passed but simultaneously suspended for the could not obtain a majority and ruled instead by decree.
duration of the hostilities—the momentous Irish ques- Efforts by both conservatives and socialists to defuse na-
tion had been overtaken by an earth-shattering world tional antagonisms by stressing economic issues that cut
war in August 1914. across ethnic lines were largely unsuccessful.
Irish developments illustrated once again the power of In Hungary the Magyar nobility in 1867 restored the
national feeling and national movements in the nine- constitution of 1848 and used it to dominate both the
teenth century. Moreover, they were proof that govern- Magyar peasantry and the minority populations until
ments could not elicit greater loyalty unless they could 1914. Only the wealthiest one-fourth of adult males had
capture and control that elemental current of national the right to vote, making the parliament the creature of
the Magyar elite. Laws promoting the use of the Magyar on long traditions of religious intolerance, ghetto exclu-
(Hungarian) language in schools and government were sion, and periodic anti-Jewish riots and expulsions, this
rammed through and bitterly resented, especially by the anti-Semitism was also a modern development. It built on
Croatians and Romanians. While Magyar extremists cam- the general reaction against liberalism and its economic
paigned loudly for total separation from Austria, the rad- and political policies. Modern anti-Semitism whipped up
ical leaders of the subject nationalities dreamed in turn of resentment against Jewish achievement and Jewish “fi-
independence from Hungary. Unlike most major coun- nancial control,” while fanatics claimed that the Jewish
tries, which harnessed nationalism to strengthen the state race (rather than the Jewish religion) posed a biological
after 1871, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was progres- threat to the German people. Anti-Semitic beliefs were
sively weakened and destroyed by it. particularly popular among conservatives, extremist na-
tionalists, and people who felt threatened by Jewish com-
petition, such as small shopkeepers, officeworkers, and
Jewish Emancipation and professionals.
Anti-Semites also created modern political parties to
Modern Anti-Semitism attack and degrade Jews. In 1893, the prewar electoral high
Revolutionary changes in political principles and the tri-
umph of the nation-state brought equally revolutionary
changes in Jewish life in western and central Europe. Be-
ginning in France in 1791, Jews gradually gained their
civil rights, although the process was slow and uneven.
The decisive turning point came in 1848, when Jews
formed part of the revolutionary vanguard in Vienna and
Berlin and the Frankfurt Assembly endorsed full rights for
German Jews. Important gains in 1848 survived the con-
servative reaction, and throughout the 1850s and 1860s
Apago PDF Enhancer
liberals in Austria, Italy, and Prussia pressed successfully
for legal equality. In 1871 the constitution of the new
German Empire consolidated the process of Jewish eman-
cipation in central Europe. It abolished all restrictions on
Jewish marriage, choice of occupation, place of residence,
and property ownership. Exclusion from government em-
ployment and discrimination in social relations remained.
However, according to one leading historian, by 1871 “it
was widely accepted in Central Europe that the gradual
disappearance of anti-Jewish prejudice was inevitable.”3
The process of emancipation presented Jews with chal-
lenges and opportunities. Traditional Jewish occupations,
such as court financial agent, village moneylender, and
peddler, were undermined by free-market reforms, but
careers in business, the professions, and the arts were
opening to Jewish talent. Many Jews responded energeti-
cally and successfully. Active in finance and railroad build-
ing, European Jews excelled in wholesale and retail trade,
consumer industries, journalism, medicine, and law. By Edmond de Rothschild Visits Palestine Born into the
1871 a majority of Jewish people in western and central French branch of modern Europe’s most famous banking
Europe had improved their economic situation and en- family, Baron Edmond de Rothschild played an important role
tered the middle classes. Most Jewish people also identi- in early Jewish settlements in the Ottoman province of Pales-
fied strongly with their respective nation-states and with tine. Beginning in the 1880s, Rothschild purchased large
tracts of land from Arab landowners, and on several occasions
good reason saw themselves as patriotic citizens. he visited the Jewish colonists that he continued to support.
Vicious anti-Semitism reappeared after the stock mar- Seen here in a long coat on a Turkish train, he is flanked by
ket crash of 1873, beginning in central Europe. Drawing Ottoman officials. (Courtesy, Central Zionist Archive, Jerusalem)
point in Germany, small anti-Semitic parties secured 2.9 • Why did the socialist movement grow, and how
percent of the votes cast. However, in Austrian Vienna in revolutionary was it?
the early 1890s, Karl Lueger and his “Christian socialists”
won striking electoral victories, spurring Theodor Herzl
to turn from German nationalism and advocate political
Zionism and the creation of a Jewish state. (See the fea-
The Socialist International
ture “Individuals in Society: Theodor Herzl.”) Lueger, Socialism appealed to large numbers of workingmen and
the popular mayor of Vienna from 1897 to 1910, com- workingwomen in the late nineteenth century, and the
bined fierce anti-Semitic rhetoric with municipal owner- growth of socialist parties after 1871 was phenomenal.
ship of basic services, and he appealed especially to the (See the feature “Listening to the Past: The Making of a
German-speaking lower middle class—and an unsuccess- Socialist” on pages 844–845.) Neither Bismarck’s antiso-
ful young artist named Adolf Hitler. cialist laws nor his extensive social security system checked
Before 1914 anti-Semitism was most oppressive in east- the growth of the German Social Democratic Party,
ern Europe, where Jews also suffered from terrible poverty. which espoused the Marxian ideology. By 1912 it had
In the Russian empire, where there was no Jewish emanci- millions of followers and was the largest party in the
pation and 4 million of Europe’s 7 million Jewish people Reichstag. Socialist parties also grew in other countries,
lived in 1880, officials used anti-Semitism to channel pop- though nowhere else with such success. In 1883 Russian
ular discontent away from the government and onto the exiles in Switzerland founded the Russian Social Demo-
Jewish minority. Russian Jews were denounced as foreign cratic Party, which grew rapidly after 1890 despite internal
exploiters who corrupted national traditions, and in 1881– disputes. In France various socialist parties re-emerged in
1882 a wave of violent pogroms commenced in southern the 1880s after the carnage of the Paris Commune. They
Russia. The police and the army stood aside for days while were finally unified in 1905 in an increasingly powerful
peasants looted and destroyed Jewish property. Official ha- Marxian party called the French Section of the Workers
rassment continued in the following decades, and quotas International. Belgium and Austria-Hungary also had
were placed on Jewish residency, education, and participa-
Apago PDF Enhancer strong socialist parties.
tion in the professions. As a result, some Russian Jews As the name of the French party suggests, Marxian so-
turned toward self-emancipation and the vision of a Zion- cialist parties were eventually linked together in an inter-
ist settlement in Palestine. Large numbers also emigrated national organization. As early as 1848, Marx had laid
to western Europe and the United States. About 2.75 mil- out his intellectual system in The Communist Manifesto
lion Jews left eastern Europe between 1881 and 1914. (see pages 757–758). He had declared that “the working
men have no country,” and he had urged proletarians of
Improve Your Grade
all nations to unite against their governments. Joining
Primary Source: A Russian Zionist Makes the Case for
a Jewish Homeland
the flood of radicals and republicans who fled continen-
tal Europe for England and America after the unsuccess-
ful revolutions of 1848, Marx settled in London. Poor
and depressed, he lived on his meager earnings as a jour-
Marxism and the Socialist nalist and on the gifts of his friend Friedrich Engels.
Movement Marx never stopped thinking of revolution. Digging
deeply into economics and history, he concluded that
Nationalism served, for better or worse, as a new unify- revolution follows economic crisis and tried to prove this
ing principle. But what about socialism? Socialist parties, in his greatest theoretical work, Capital (1867).
which were generally Marxian parties dedicated to an in- The bookish Marx also excelled as a practical orga-
ternational proletarian revolution, grew rapidly in these nizer. In 1864 he played an important role in founding
years. Did this mean that national states had failed to gain the First International of socialists—the International
the support of workers? Certainly, many prosperous and Working Men’s Association. In the following years, he
conservative citizens were greatly troubled by the social- battled successfully to control the organization and used
ist movement. And numerous historians have portrayed its annual meetings as a means of spreading his realistic,
the years before 1914 as a time of increasing conflict be- “scientific” doctrines of inevitable socialist revolution.
tween revolutionary socialism, on the one hand, and a Then Marx enthusiastically embraced the passionate,
nationalist alliance of the conservative aristocracy and the vaguely radical patriotism of the Paris Commune and its
prosperous middle class, on the other. terrible conflict with the French National Assembly as a
Individuals
in Society
Theodor Herzl
I n September 1897, only days after his vision and failed, and attempts to
energy had called into being the First Zionist Congress combat anti-Semitism
in Basel, Switzerland, Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) would never succeed.
assessed the results in his diary: “If I were to sum up Only by building an in-
the Congress in a word—which I shall take care not to dependent Jewish state
publish—it would be this: At Basel I founded the Jew- could the Jewish people
ish state. If I said this out loud today I would be achieve dignity and
greeted by universal laughter. In five years perhaps, and renewal. As recent
certainly in fifty years, everyone will perceive it.”* scholarship shows, Theodor Herzl.
Herzl’s buoyant optimism, which so often carried him Herzl developed his (Library of Congress)
forward, was prophetic. Leading the Zionist movement political nationalism, or
until his death at age forty-four in 1904, Herzl guided Zionism, before the
the first historic steps toward modern Jewish political anti-Jewish agitation accompanying the Dreyfus affair,
nationhood and the creation of Israel in 1948. which only strengthened his faith in his analysis.
Theodor Herzl was born in Budapest, Hungary, into Generally rebuffed by skeptical Jewish elites in west-
an upper-middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family. ern and central Europe, Herzl turned for support to
When Herzl was eighteen, his family moved to Vienna, youthful idealists and the poor Jewish masses. He be-
where he studied law. As a university student, he soaked came an inspiring man of action, rallying the delegates
up the liberal beliefs of most well-to-do Viennese Jews, to the annual Zionist congresses, directing the growth
who also championed the assimilation of German cul- of the worldwide Zionist organization, and working
Apago PDF Enhancer
ture. Wrestling with his nonreligious Jewishness and his
strong pro-German feeling, Herzl embraced German
himself to death. Herzl also understood that national
consciousness required powerful emotions and sym-
nationalism and joined a German dueling fraternity. bols, such as a Jewish flag. Flags build nations, he said,
There he discovered that full acceptance required because people “live and die for a flag.”
openly anti-Semitic attitudes and a repudiation of all Putting the Zionist vision before non-Jews and world
things Jewish. This Herzl could not tolerate, and he public opinion, Herzl believed in international diplo-
resigned. After receiving his law degree, he embarked macy and political agreements. He traveled constantly
on a literary career. In 1889 Herzl married into a to negotiate with European rulers and top officials,
wealthy Viennese Jewish family, but he and his socialite seeking their support in securing territory for a Jewish
wife were mismatched and never happy together. state, usually in the Ottoman Empire. Aptly described
Herzl achieved considerable success as both a jour- by an admiring contemporary as “the first Jewish states-
nalist and a playwright. His witty comedies focused on man since the destruction of Jerusalem,” Herzl proved
the bourgeoisie, including Jewish millionaires trying to most successful in Britain. He paved the way for the
live like aristocrats. Accepting many German stereo- 1917 Balfour Declaration, which solemnly pledged
types, Herzl sometimes depicted eastern Jews as unedu- British support for a “Jewish homeland” in Palestine.
cated and grasping. But as a dedicated, highly educated
liberal, he mainly believed that the Jewish shortcom- Questions for Analysis
ings he perceived were the results of age-old persecu-
tion and would disappear through education and 1. Describe Theodor Herzl’s background and early
assimilation. Herzl also took a growing pride in Jewish beliefs. Do you see a link between Herzl’s early
steadfastness in the face of victimization and suffering. German nationalism and his later Zionism?
He savored memories of his early Jewish education and 2. How did Herzl work as a leader to turn his Zionist
going with his father to the synagogue. vision into a reality?
The emergence of modern anti-Semitism shocked
*Quotes are from Theodor Herzl, The Diaries of Theodor Herzl,
Herzl, as it did many acculturated Jewish Germans. Mov-
trans. and ed. with an introduction by Marvin Lowenthal (New
ing to Paris in 1891 as the correspondent for Vienna’s York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1962), pp. 224, 22, xxi.
leading liberal newspaper, Herzl studied politics and
pondered recent historical developments. He then came
to a bold conclusion, published in 1896 as The Jewish
State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution to the Jewish Improve Your Grade
Question. According to Herzl, Jewish assimilation had Going Beyond Individuals in Society
839
giant step toward socialist revolution. This impetuous ac- others rejoiced in the growing power of socialism and the
tion frightened many of his early supporters, especially Second International.
the more moderate British labor leaders. The First Inter-
national collapsed.
Yet international proletarian solidarity remained an im-
Unions and Revisionism
portant objective for Marxists. In 1889, as the individual Was socialism really radical and revolutionary in these
parties in different countries grew stronger, socialist lead- years? On the whole, it was not. Indeed, as socialist par-
ers came together to form the Second International, ties grew and attracted large numbers of members, they
which lasted until 1914. The International was only a looked more and more toward gradual change and
federation of national socialist parties, but it had a great steady improvement for the working class and less and
psychological impact. Every three years, delegates from less toward revolution. The mainstream of European so-
the different parties met to interpret Marxian doctrines cialism became militantly moderate; that is, socialists in-
and plan coordinated action. May 1 (May Day) was de- creasingly combined radical rhetoric with sober action.
clared an annual international one-day strike, a day of Workers themselves were progressively less inclined to
marches and demonstrations. A permanent executive for follow radical programs. There were several reasons for
the International was established. Many feared and many this. As workers gained the right to vote and to partici-
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“Greetings from the May Day Festival” Workers participated enthusiastically in the
annual one-day strike on May 1 to honor internationalist socialist solidarity, as this postcard
from a happy woman visitor to her cousin suggests. Speeches, picnics, and parades were the
order of the day, and workers celebrated their respectability and independent culture. Picture
postcards developed with railroads and mass travel. (akg-images)
Marxism and the Socialist Movement • 841
pate politically in the nation-state, they focused their at- workers developed, and between 1901 and 1906 the legal
tention more on elections than on revolutions. And as position of British unions was further strengthened.
workers won real, tangible benefits, this furthered the Germany was the most industrialized, socialized, and
process. Workers were also not immune to patriotic edu- unionized continental country by 1914. German unions
cation and indoctrination during military service, and were not granted important rights until 1869, and until
many responded positively to drum-beating parades and the antisocialist law was repealed in 1890, they were fre-
aggressive foreign policy as they loyally voted for social- quently harassed by the government as socialist fronts. Nor
ists. Nor were workers a unified social group. were socialist leaders particularly interested in union activ-
Perhaps most important of all, workers’ standard of liv- ity, believing as they did in the iron law of low wages and
ing rose gradually but substantially after 1850 as the prom- the need for political revolution. The result was that as late
ise of the Industrial Revolution was at least partially as 1895, there were only about 270,000 union members
realized. In Great Britain, for example, workers could buy in a male industrial workforce of nearly 8 million. Then,
almost twice as much with their wages in 1906 as in 1850, with German industrialization still storming ahead and al-
and most of the increase came after 1870. Workers ex- most all legal harassment eliminated, union membership
perienced similar gradual increases in most continental skyrocketed, reaching roughly 3 million in 1912.
countries after 1850, though much less strikingly in late- This great expansion both reflected and influenced the
developing Russia. Improvement in the standard of living changing character of German unions. Increasingly,
was much more than merely a matter of higher wages. The unions in Germany focused on bread-and-butter issues—
quality of life improved dramatically in urban areas. For all wages, hours, working conditions—rather than on the
these reasons, workers tended more and more to become dissemination of pure socialist doctrine. Genuine collec-
militantly moderate: they demanded gains, but they were tive bargaining, long opposed by socialist intellectuals as
less likely to take to the barricades in pursuit of them. a “sellout,” was officially recognized as desirable by the
The growth of labor unions reinforced this trend German Trade Union Congress in 1899. When employ-
toward moderation. In the early stages of industrializa- ers proved unwilling to bargain, a series of strikes forced
tion, modern unions were generally prohibited by law. A
Apago PDF Enhancer them to change their minds.
famous law of the French Revolution had declared all Between 1906 and 1913, successful collective bargaining
guilds and unions illegal in the name of “liberty” in 1791. gained a prominent place in German industrial relations. In
In Great Britain, attempts by workers to unite were con- 1913 alone, over ten thousand collective bargaining agree-
sidered criminal conspiracies after 1799. Other countries ments affecting 1.25 million workers were signed. Gradual
had similar laws, and these obviously hampered union improvement, not revolution, was becoming the primary
development. In France, for example, about two hun- goal of the German trade-union movement.
dred workers were imprisoned each year between 1825 The German trade unions and their leaders were in fact,
and 1847 for taking part in illegal combinations. Unions if not in name, thoroughgoing revisionists. Revisionism—
were considered subversive bodies, only to be hounded that most awful of sins in the eyes of militant Marxists in
and crushed. the twentieth century—was an effort by various socialists
From this sad position workers struggled to escape. to update Marxian doctrines to reflect the realities of the
Great Britain led the way in 1824 and 1825 when unions time. Thus the socialist Edward Bernstein (1850–1932)
won the right to exist but (generally) not the right to argued in 1899 in his Evolutionary Socialism that Marx’s
strike. After the collapse of Robert Owen’s attempt to predictions of ever-greater poverty for workers and ever-
form one big union in the 1830s (see page 741), new and greater concentration of wealth in ever-fewer hands had
more practical kinds of unions appeared. Limited primarily been proved false. Therefore, Bernstein suggested, social-
to highly skilled workers such as machinists and carpenters, ists should reform their doctrines and tactics. They should
the “new model unions” avoided both radical politics and combine with other progressive forces to win gradual evo-
costly strikes. Instead, their sober, respectable leaders con- lutionary gains for workers through legislation, unions,
centrated on winning better wages and hours for their and further economic development. These views were de-
members through collective bargaining and compromise. nounced as heresy by the German Social Democratic
This approach helped pave the way to full acceptance in Party and later by the entire Second International. Yet the
Britain in the 1870s, when unions won the right to strike revisionist, gradualist approach continued to gain the tacit
without being held legally liable for the financial damage acceptance of many German socialists, particularly in the
inflicted on employers. After 1890 unions for unskilled trade unions.
Moderation found followers elsewhere. In France the restrained by a trade-union movement that was both very
great socialist leader Jean Jaurès (1859–1914) formally weak and very radical. In England the socialist but non-
repudiated revisionist doctrines in order to establish a Marxian Labour Party, reflecting the well-established union
unified socialist party, but he remained at heart a gradu- movement, was formally committed to gradual reform. In
alist and optimistic secular humanist. Questions of revo- Spain and Italy, Marxian socialism was very weak. There
lution split Russian Marxists. anarchism, seeking to smash the state rather than the bour-
Socialist parties before 1914 had clear-cut national char- geoisie, dominated radical thought and action.
acteristics. Russians and socialists in the Austro-Hungarian In short, socialist policies and doctrines varied from
Empire tended to be the most radical. The German party country to country. Socialism itself was to a large extent
talked revolution and practiced reformism, greatly influ- “nationalized” behind the imposing façade of international
enced by its enormous trade-union movement. The unity. This helps explain why when war came in 1914, al-
French party talked revolution and tried to practice it, un- most all socialist leaders supported their governments.
• How in France did Napoleon III seek to reconcile expand the power of Prussia and its king in a new Ger-
popular and conservative forces in an authoritarian man Empire.
nation-state? In the midcentury years, the United States, Russia, and
Apago PDF Enhancer the Ottoman Empire also experienced crises of nation
• How did the process of unification in Italy and
Germany create conservative nation-states? building. The United States overcame sectionalism in a war
• In what ways did the United States experience the that prevented an independent South and seemed to con-
full drama of nation building? firm America’s destiny as a great world power. In autocratic
Russia, defeat in the Crimean War led to the emancipa-
• What steps did Russia and the Ottoman Turks take tion of the serfs, economic modernization with railroad
toward modernization, and how successful were they?
building and industrialization, and limited political re-
• Why after 1871 did ordinary citizens feel a growing form. The Ottoman Empire also sought to modernize to
loyalty to their governments? protect the state, but it was considerably less successful.
• Why did the socialist movement grow, and how Nation-states gradually enlisted widespread popular
revolutionary was it? support, providing men and women with a greater sense
of belonging and giving them specific political, social,
and economic improvements. Even the growing socialist
After 1850, Western society became nationalistic as well movement became increasingly national in orientation,
as urban and industrial. Conservative monarchical gov- gathering strength as a champion of working-class inter-
ernments, recovering from the revolutionary trauma of ests in domestic politics. Yet even though nationalism
1848, learned to remodel early so as to build stronger served to unite peoples, it also drove them apart—obvious
states with greater popular support. Napoleon III in not only in the United States before the Civil War and in
France led the way, combining authoritarian rule with Austria-Hungary and Ireland, but also throughout Eu-
economic prosperity and positive measures for the poor. rope. There the universal national faith, which usually re-
In Italy, Cavour joined traditional diplomacy with na- duced social tensions within states, promoted a bitter,
tional revolt in the north and Garibaldi’s revolutionary almost Darwinian, competition between states and thus
patriotism in the south, expanding the liberal Sardinian threatened the progress and unity it had helped to build,
monarchy into a conservative nation-state. Bismarck also as we shall see in Chapters 26 and 27.
combined traditional statecraft with national feeling to
Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Empire, 1875–1914. 1987.

Key Terms An outstanding interpretative work.
Red Shirts janissary corps Kitchen, Martin. The Cambridge Illustrated History of
Zollverein Tanzimat Germany. 1996. Features handsome pictures and a
Homestead Act Young Turks readable text.
modernization Reichstag Quataert, Donald. The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1900, 2d
zemstvo Kulturkampf ed. 2005. An excellent introduction.
revolution of 1905 Dreyfus affair
Bloody Sunday People’s Budget Ridley, Jasper. Phoenix: Garibaldi. 2001. A thorough
October Manifesto Zionism study of the world-renowned revolutionary nationalist.
Duma revisionism Rogger, Hans. Russia in the Age of Modernisation and Rev-
olution, 1881–1917. 1983. A fine study on Russian de-
velopment that includes an excellent bibliography.
Schulze, Hagen, and William E. Yuill. States, Nations and
Nationalism: From the Middle Ages to the Present. 1996.
Suggested Reading An important study that explores the resurgence of Eu-
ropean nationalism since the fall of communism.
Berend, Ivan T. History Derailed: Central and Eastern Eu-
rope in the Long Nineteenth Century. 2003. Focuses on Slezkine, Yuri. The Jewish Century. 2004. A brilliant in-
industrialization and its consequences. terpretation of Jewish achievement in the modern era.
Blanning, T. C. W. Oxford Illustrated History of Modern Tombs, Robert. France, 1814–1914. 1996. An impressive
Europe. 1996. A heavily illustrated text that provides survey with a useful bibliography.
useful surveys of the entire nineteenth century. Vital, David. A People Apart: The Jews in Europe,
Boyce, D. George. Nationalism in Ireland, 2d ed. 1991. 1789–1939. 1999. An engaging and judicious survey.
Apago PDF Enhancer
Provides an excellent account of the Irish struggle for
nationhood.
Clyman, Toby W., and Judith Vowles, eds. Russia Notes
Through Women’s Eyes: Autobiographies from Tsarist 1. H. Schulze, States, Nations and Nationalism: From the Middle Ages
Russia. 1999. An eye-opening collection detailing to the Present (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), pp. 222–223, 246–247.
women’s experiences in Russia. 2. J. McKay, Pioneers for Profit: Foreign Entrepreneurship and Russian
Industrialization, 1885–1913 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Fink, Carole. Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Press, 1970), pp. 112–157.
Powers, the Jews, and the International Protection, 3. R. Seltzer, Jewish People, Jewish Thought: The Jewish Experience in
1878–1938. 2004. Skilled consideration of the cruelty History (New York: Macmillan, 1980), p. 533.
and tragedy of ethnic conflict and minority oppression.
Geary, Dick, ed. Labour and Socialist Movements in Eu-
rope Before 1914. 1989. An excellent collection that ex-
amines labor movements in several different countries.
The Making of a Socialist
N ationalism and socialism appeared locked in

bitter competition in Europe before 1914, but they
I seemed to myself to be almost rich. . . . [Yet]
from the women of this factory one can judge
actually complemented each other in many ways. how sad and full of deprivation is the lot of a
Both faiths were secular as opposed to religious, and factory worker. In none of the neighbouring
both fostered political awareness. A working person factories were the wages so high; we were envied
who became interested in politics and developed everywhere. Parents considered themselves
nationalist beliefs might well convert to socialism at a fortunate if they could get their daughters of
later date. fourteen in there on leaving school. . . . And even
This was the case for Adelheid Popp (1869–1939), here, in this paradise, all were badly nourished.
a self-taught workingwoman who became an Those who stayed at the factory for the dinner
influential socialist leader. Born into a desperately hour would buy themselves for a few pennies a
poor working-class family in Vienna and sausage or the leavings of a cheese shop. . . . In
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remembering only a “hard and gloomy childhood,” spite of all the diligence and economy, every
she was forced by her parents to quit school at age one was poor, and trembled at the thought of
ten to begin full-time work. She struggled with low- losing her work. All humbled themselves, and
paying piecework for years before she landed a solid suffered the worst injustice from the foremen,
factory job, as she recounts in the following selection not to risk losing this good work, not to be
from her widely read autobiography. without food. . . .
Always an avid reader, Popp became the editor of I did not only read novels and tales; I had
a major socialist newspaper for German working- begun . . . to read the classics and other good
women. She then told her life story so that all books. I also began to take an interest in public
workingwomen might share her truth: “Socialism events. . . . I was not democratically inclined. I
could change and strengthen others, as it did me.” was full of enthusiasm then for emperors, and
kings and highly placed personages played no
[Finally] I found work again; I took everything small part in my fancies. . . . I bought myself a
that was offered me in order to show my strict Catholic paper, that criticised very adversely
willingness to work, and I passed through much. the workers’ movement, which was attracting
But at last things became better. [At age fifteen] I notice. Its aim was to educate in a patriotic and
was recommended to a great factory which stood religious direction. . . . I took the warmest
in the best repute. Three hundred girls and about interest in the events that occurred in the royal
fifty men were employed. I was put in a big room families, and I took the death of the Crown Prince
where sixty women and girls were at work. of Austria so much to heart that I wept a whole
Against the windows stood twelve tables, and at day. . . . Political events [also] held me in
each sat four girls. We had to sort the goods suspense. The possibility of a war with Russia
which had been manufactured, others had to roused my patriotic enthusiasm. I saw my brother
count them, and a third set had to brand on them already returning from the battlefield covered
the mark of the firm. We worked from 7 A.M. to with glory. . . .
7 P.M. We had an hour’s rest at noon, half-an-hour When a particularly strong anti-Semitic feeling
in the afternoon. . . . I had never yet been paid was noticeable in political life, I sympathised with
so much. . . . it for a time. A broad sheet, “How Israel Attained
844
Power and Sovereignty over all the Nations of the
Earth,” fascinated me. . . .
About this time an Anarchist group was active.
Some mysterious murders which had taken place
were ascribed to the Anarchists, and the police
made use of them to oppress the rising workmen’s
movement. . . . I followed the trial of the
Anarchists with passionate sympathy. I read all the
speeches, and because, as always happens, Social
Democrats, whom the authorities really wanted to
attack, were among the accused, I learned their
views. I became full of enthusiasm. Every single
Social Democrat . . . seemed to me a hero. . . .
There was unrest among the workers . . . and
demonstrations of protest followed. When these
were repeated the military entered the
“threatened” streets. . . . In the evenings I
rushed in the greatest excitement from the 1890 engraving of a meeting of workers in Berlin.
factory to the scene of the disturbance. The (Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY)
military did not frighten me; I only left the place
when it was “cleared.”
Later on my mother and I lived with one of my hands of a few, and introduced as a contrast the
brothers who had married. Friends came to him, shoemakers who had no shoes and the tailors who
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among them some intelligent workmen. One of
these workmen was particularly intelligent,
had no clothes. On breaks I read aloud the articles
in the Social Democratic paper and explained
and . . . could talk on many subjects. He was the what Socialism was as far as I understood it. . . .
first Social Democrat I knew. He brought me [While I was reading] it often happened that one
many books, and explained to me the difference of the clerks passing by shook his head and said to
between Anarchism and Socialism. I heard from another clerk: “The girl speaks like a man.”
him, also for the first time, what a republic was,
and in spite of my former enthusiasm for royal
dynasties, I also declared myself in favour of a
republican form of government. I saw everything Questions for Analysis
so near and so clearly, that I actually counted the
weeks which must still elapse before the 1. How did Popp describe and interpret work in
revolution of state and society would take place. the factory?
From this workman I received the first Social 2. To what extent did her socialist interpretation
Democratic party organ. . . . I first learned from it of factory life fit the facts she described?
to understand and judge of my own lot. I learned
to see that all I had suffered was the result not of 3. What were Popp’s political interests before she
a divine ordinance, but of an unjust organization became a socialist?
of society. . . . 4. How and why did she become a Social
In the factory I became another woman. . . . I Democrat?
told my [female] comrades all that I had read of
5. Was this account likely to lead other
the workers’ movement. Formerly I had often
workingwomen to socialism? Why or why not?
told stories when they had begged me for them.
But instead of narrating . . . the fate of some Source: Slightly adapted from A. Popp, The Autobiography
queen, I now held forth on oppression and of a Working Woman, trans. E. C. Harvey (Chicago: F. G.
exploitation. I told of accumulated wealth in the Browne, 1913), pp. 29, 34–35, 39, 66–69, 71, 74, 82–90.
845
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Africans in Madagascar transport a French diplomat in 1894, shortly before France annexed the island.
(Snark/Art Resource, NY)
c h a p t e r
26
The West and
the World,
1815–1914
chapter preview
Industrialization and the World

Economy
• What were some of the global
W hile industrialization and nationalism were transforming urban
life and Western society, Western society itself was reshaping the
world. At the peak of its power and pride, the West entered the third and
consequences of European most dynamic phase of the aggressive expansion that had begun with the
industrialization between 1815 and Crusades and continued with the great discoveries and the rise of
1914? seaborne colonial empires. An ever-growing stream of products, people,
and ideas flowed out of Europe in the nineteenth century. Hardly any
The Great Migration
corner of the globe was left untouched. The most spectacular manifesta-
• How was massive migration an tions of Western expansion came in the late nineteenth century when the
integral part of Western expansion? leading European nations established or enlarged their far-flung political
Western Imperialism, 1880–1914 empires. The political annexation of territory in the 1880s—the “new
• How and why after 1875 did Apago PDF Enhancer
imperialism,” as it is often called by historians—was the capstone of a
European nations rush to build profound underlying economic and technological process.
political empires in Africa and Asia?
Responding to Western
Imperialism Industrialization and the World Economy
• What was the general pattern of The Industrial Revolution created, first in Great Britain and then in con-
non-Western responses to Western tinental Europe and North America, a growing and tremendously dy-
expansion, and how did India, Japan, namic economic system. In the course of the nineteenth century, that
and China meet the imperialist system was extended across the face of the earth. Some of this extension
challenge? into non-Western areas was peaceful and beneficial for all concerned, for
the West had many products and techniques the rest of the world de-
sired. If peaceful methods failed, however, Europeans did not stand on
ceremony. They used their superior military power to force non-Western
nations to open their doors to Western economic interests. In general,
Westerners fashioned the global economic system so that the largest
share of the ever-increasing gains from trade, technology, and migration
flowed to the West and its propertied classes.
• What were some of the global consequences of European industrialization
between 1815 and 1914?
847
848 CHAPTER 26 • THE WEST AND THE WORLD, 1815–1914
The Rise of Global Inequality 3000

Great Britain
The Industrial Revolution in Europe marked a momen-
Average income per person

Developed countries
tous turning point in human history. Indeed, only by 2325
(in 1960 U.S. dollars)

placing Europe’s economic breakthrough in a global per- Third World
spective can one truly appreciate its revolutionary impli-
cations and consequences. 1550
From such a global perspective, the ultimate significance
of the Industrial Revolution was that it allowed those re-
775
gions of the world that industrialized in the nineteenth cen-
tury to increase their wealth and power enormously in
comparison to those that did not. As a result, a gap between 100
the industrializing regions (mainly Europe and North 1750 1860 1913 1950 1970
America) and the nonindustrializing ones (mainly Africa, Note: The Third World includes Africa, Asia, Latin America,
Asia, and Latin America) opened up and grew steadily and Oceania. Developed countries include all European
countries, Canada, the United States, and Japan.
throughout the nineteenth century. Moreover, this pattern
of uneven global development became institutionalized, or
built into the structure of the world economy. Thus we FIGURE 26.1 The Growth of Average Income per Person
evolved a “lopsided world,” a world of rich lands and poor. in the Third World, Developed Countries, and Great
Britain, 1750–1970 Growth is given in 1960 U.S. dollars
In recent years historical economists have begun to and prices. (Source: P. Bairoch and M. Lévy-Leboyer, eds., Disparities
chart the long-term evolution of this gap with some pre- in Economic Development Since the Industrial Revolution.
cision. Figure 26.1 summarizes the important findings of Copyright © 1981. Reprinted by permission of Palgrave
one such study. It compares the long-term evolution of Macmillan, UK.)
average income per person in today’s “developed” (or in-
dustrialized) regions—defined as Europe, North Amer-
Apago PDFdenceEnhancer
ica, and Japan—with that found in Africa, Asia, and Latinand decolonization, did Third World countries fi-
America, also often known as the Third World. To get nally make some real economic progress, beginning in
these individual income figures, researchers estimate a their turn the critical process of industrialization.
country’s gross national product (GNP) at different The rise of these enormous income disparities, which
points in time, convert those estimates to some common are poignant indicators of equal disparities in food and
currency, and divide by the total population. clothing, health and education, life expectancy and general
Figure 26.1 highlights three main points. First, in material well-being, has generated a great deal of debate.
1750 the average standard of living was no higher in Eu- One school of interpretation stresses that the West used
rope as a whole than in the rest of the world. In 1750 science, technology, capitalist organization, and even its
Europe was still a poor agricultural society. By 1970, critical worldview to create its wealth and greater physical
however, the average person in the wealthiest countries well-being. Another school argues that the West used its
had an income fully twenty-five times as great as that re- political and economic power to steal much of its riches,
ceived by the average person in the poorest countries of continuing in the nineteenth (and twentieth) century the
Africa and Asia. rapacious colonialism born of the era of expansion.
Second, it was industrialization that opened the gaps These issues are complex, and there are few simple an-
in average wealth and well-being among countries and swers. As noted in Chapter 22, the wealth-creating poten-
regions. One sees that Great Britain had jumped well tial of technological improvement and more intensive
above the European average by 1830, when the first in- capitalist organization was indeed great. At the same time,
dustrial nation was well in advance of its continental those breakthroughs rested, in part, on Great Britain’s
competitors. One also sees how Great Britain’s lead grad- having already used political force to dominate part of the
ually narrowed as other European countries and the world economy by the late eighteenth century. In the
United States successfully industrialized in the course of nineteenth century other industrializing countries joined
the nineteenth century. with Britain to extend Western domination over the entire
Third, income per person stagnated in the Third World world economy. Wealth—unprecedented wealth—was in-
before 1913, in striking contrast to the industrializing re- deed created, but the lion’s share of that new wealth
gions. Only after 1945, in the era of political indepen- flowed to the West and its propertied classes.
Industrialization and the World Economy • 849
The World Market Chronology

Commerce between nations has always been a powerful 1853 Perry “opens” Japan for trade
stimulus to economic development. Never was this more
true than in the nineteenth century, when world trade 1863–1879 Reign of Ismail in Egypt
grew prodigiously. In 1913 the value of world trade was 1865–1909 Reign of Leopold II in Belgium
roughly $38 billion, or about twenty-five times what it had
been in 1800, even though prices of both manufactured 1867 Meiji Restoration in Japan
goods and raw materials were lower in 1913 than in 1869 Completion of Suez Canal
1800. In a general way, the enormous increase in interna-
tional commerce summed up the growth of an interlock- 1898 United States takes over Philippines; hundred
ing world economy centered in and directed by Europe. days of reform in China
Great Britain played a key role in using trade to tie the 1899 Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden”
world together economically. In 1815 Britain already had
a colonial empire, for India, Canada, Australia, and other 1902 Conrad, Heart of Darkness; Hobson, Imperialism
scattered areas remained British possessions after Ameri-
can independence. The technological breakthroughs of
the Industrial Revolution allowed Britain to manufacture America, Asia, and Africa connected seaports with inland
cotton textiles, iron, and other goods more cheaply and cities and regions, as opposed to linking and developing
to far outstrip domestic demand for such products. Thus cities and regions within a given country. Thus railroads
British manufacturers sought export markets first in Eu- dovetailed admirably with Western economic interests,
rope and then around the world. facilitating the inflow and sale of Western manufactured
Take the case of cotton textiles. By 1820 Britain was goods and the export and the development of local
exporting 50 percent of its production. Europe bought raw materials.
50 percent of these cotton textile exports, while India
Apago PDF Enhancer The power of steam revolutionized transportation by
bought only 6 percent. Then as European nations and sea as well as by land. Steam power, long used to drive pad-
the United States erected protective tariff barriers and dle wheelers on rivers, particularly in Russia and North
promoted domestic industry, British cotton textile man- America, finally began to supplant sails on the oceans of
ufacturers aggressively sought and found other foreign the world in the late 1860s. Lighter, stronger, cheaper
markets in non-Western areas. By 1850 India was buying steel replaced iron, which had replaced wood. Screw pro-
25 percent and Europe only 16 percent of a much larger pellers superseded paddle wheels, while mighty compound
total. As a British colony, India could not raise tariffs to steam engines cut fuel consumption by half. Passenger and
protect its ancient cotton textile industry, and thousands freight rates tumbled, and the intercontinental shipment
of Indian weavers lost their livelihoods. of low-priced raw materials became feasible.
After the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 (see page An account of an actual voyage by a typical tramp
764), Britain became the world’s single best market. Un- freighter highlights nineteenth-century developments in
til 1914 Britain remained the world’s emporium, where global trade. The ship left England in 1910 carrying rails
not only agricultural products and raw materials but and general freight to western Australia. From there it
also manufactured goods entered freely. Free access to carried lumber to Melbourne in southeastern Australia,
Britain’s market stimulated the development of mines where it took on harvester combines for Argentina. In
and plantations in many non-Western areas. Buenos Aires it loaded wheat for Calcutta, and in Cal-
The growth of trade was facilitated by the conquest of cutta it took on jute for New York. From New York it
distance. The earliest railroad construction occurred in carried a variety of industrial products to Australia before
Europe (including Russia) and in America north of the Rio returning to England with lead, wool, and wheat after a
Grande; other parts of the globe saw the building of rail voyage of approximately seventy-two thousand miles to
lines after 1860. By 1920 more than one-quarter of the six continents in seventeen months.
world’s railroads were in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and The revolution in land and sea transportation helped Euro-
Australia. Wherever railroads were built, they drastically pean pioneers open up vast new territories and produce agri-
reduced transportation costs, opened new economic op- cultural products and raw materials there for sale in Europe.
portunities, and called forth new skills and attitudes. Improved transportation enabled Asia, Africa, and Latin
Much of the railroad construction undertaken in Latin America to ship not only the traditional tropical products—
cargo to Australia. World commodity prices were also in-

stantaneously conveyed by the same network of commu-
nications.
The growth of trade and the conquest of distance
encouraged the expanding European economy to make
massive foreign investments beginning about 1840. By
the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Europeans had
invested more than $40 billion abroad. Great Britain,
France, and Germany were the principal investing coun-
tries (see Map 26.1). The great gap between rich and poor
within Europe meant that the wealthy and moderately
well-to-do could and did send great sums abroad in
search of interest and dividends.
Most of the capital exported did not go to European
colonies or protectorates in Asia and Africa. About three-
quarters of total European investment went to other
European countries, the United States and Canada, Aus-
tralia and New Zealand, and Latin America. Europe found
its most profitable opportunities for investment in con-
struction of the railroads, ports, and utilities that were nec-
essary to settle and develop the almost-vacant lands in such
places as Australia and the Americas. By lending money for
a foreign railroad, Europeans also enabled white settlers to
buy European rails and locomotives and developed sources
Apago PDF Enhancer of cheap food and raw materials. Much of this investment
was peaceful and mutually beneficial for lenders and bor-
rowers. The victims were Native American Indians and
Australian aborigines, who were decimated by the dis-
eases, liquor, and weapons of an aggressively expanding
Western society.
British Ships and Shipbuilders The British continued to The Opening of China and Japan
dominate international trade before the First World War. This
handsome membership certificate of the British shipbuilders Europe’s relatively peaceful development of robust off-
union features the vessels that drew the world together and shoots in sparsely populated North America, Australia, and
were Britain’s pride. Britain’s thriving shipbuilding industry much of Latin America absorbed huge quantities of goods,
was concentrated in southern Scotland along the Clyde. investments, and migrants. From a Western point of view,
(Trade Union Congress, London/The Bridgeman Art Library) that was the most important aspect of Europe’s global
thrust. Yet Europe’s economic and cultural penetration of
spices, tea, sugar, coffee—but also new raw materials for old, densely populated civilizations was also profoundly sig-
industry, such as jute, rubber, cotton, and coconut oil. nificant, especially for the non-European peoples affected
Intercontinental trade was enormously facilitated by by it. With such civilizations Europeans also increased their
the Suez and Panama Canals. Of great importance, too, trade and profit, and they were prepared to use force, if
was large and continual investment in modern port facil- necessary, to attain their desires. This was what happened
ities, which made loading and unloading cheaper, faster, in China and Japan, two crucial examples of the general
and more dependable. Finally, transoceanic telegraph ca- pattern of intrusion into non-Western lands.
bles inaugurated rapid communications among the finan- Traditional Chinese civilization was self-sufficient. For
cial centers of the world. While a British tramp freighter centuries China had sent more goods and inventions to
steamed from Calcutta to New York, a broker in London Europe than it had received, and this was still the case in
was arranging by telegram for it to carry an American the early nineteenth century. Trade with Europe was care-
To European countries,
including Russia
a To A
anad sia
and C
ed States
e Unit
To th
To
Au
st
ra
lia
an
a
d
To A
ic
Ne
er
w
Am
frica
Ze
in
al
at
an
L
d
To
Millions of 1913 dollars

$9,000
$6,000
Great Britain
Apago PDF Enhancer France
$3,000 Germany
MAP 26.1 European Investment to 1914 Foreign investment grew rapidly after 1850,
and Britain, France, and Germany were the major investing nations. As this map suggests,
most European investment was not directed to the African and Asian areas seized by the
“new imperialism” after 1880.
fully regulated by the Chinese imperial government—the China and “safe and unrestricted liberty” in trade. Spurred
Qing (or Manchu) Dynasty—which required all foreign on by economic motives, they pressured the British gov-
merchants to live in the southern city of Canton and to ernment to take decisive action and enlisted the support of
buy from and sell to only the local merchant monopoly. British manufacturers with visions of vast Chinese markets
Practices considered harmful to Chinese interests, such as to be opened.
the sale of opium, were strictly forbidden. At the same time, the Qing government decided that the
For years the little community of foreign merchants in opium trade had to be stamped out. It was ruining the
Canton had to accept the Chinese system. By the 1820s, people and stripping the empire of its silver, which was
however, the dominant group, the British, were flexing going to British merchants to pay for the opium. The
their muscles. Moreover, in the smoking of opium—that government began to prosecute Chinese drug dealers vig-
“destructive and ensnaring vice” denounced by Chinese orously and in 1839 it ordered the foreign merchants to
decrees—they had found something the Chinese really obey China’s laws. The British merchants refused and were
wanted. Grown legally in British-occupied India, opium expelled, whereupon war soon broke out.
was smuggled into China by means of fast ships and bribed Using troops from India and being in control of the
officials. By 1836 the aggressive goal of the British mer- seas, the British occupied several coastal cities and forced
chants in Canton was an independent British colony in China to surrender. In the Treaty of Nanking in 1842,
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Britain and China at War, 1841 Britain capitalized on its overwhelming naval superiority,
and this British aquatint celebrates a dramatic moment in a crucial battle near Guangzhou.
Having received a direct hit from a steam-powered British ironclad, a Chinese sailing ship
explodes into a wall of flame. The Chinese lost eleven ships and five hundred men in the two-
hour engagement; the British suffered only minor damage. (National Maritime Museum, London)
the imperial government was forced to cede the island of civilization and even less use for Westerners. European
Hong Kong to Britain forever, pay an indemnity of $100 traders and missionaries first arrived in Japan in the six-
million, and open up four large cities to foreign trade teenth century. By 1640 Japan had reacted quite nega-
with low tariffs. tively to their presence. The government decided to seal
Thereafter the opium trade flourished, and Hong Kong off the country from all European influences in order to
developed rapidly as an Anglo-Chinese enclave. China preserve traditional Japanese culture and society. When
continued to accept foreign diplomats in Beijing (Peking), American and British whaling ships began to appear off
the imperial capital. Finally, there was a second round of Japanese coasts almost two hundred years later, the pol-
foreign attack between 1856 and 1860, culminating in the icy of exclusion was still in effect. An order of 1825 com-
occupation of Beijing by seventeen thousand British and manded Japanese officials to “drive away foreign vessels
French troops and the intentional burning of the em- without second thought.”1
peror’s summer palace. Another round of harsh treaties Japan’s unbending isolation seemed hostile and barbaric
gave European merchants and missionaries greater privi- to the West, particularly to the United States. It com-
leges and protection and forced the Chinese to accept plicated the practical problems of shipwrecked American
trade and investment on unfavorable terms for several sailors and the provisioning of whaling ships and China
more cities. Thus did Europeans use military aggression to traders sailing in the eastern Pacific. It also thwarted the
blow a hole in the wall of Chinese seclusion and open the hope of trade and profit. Moreover, Americans shared
country to foreign trade and foreign ideas. the self-confidence and dynamism of expanding Western
China’s neighbor Japan had its own highly distinctive society, and they felt destined to play a great role in the
Pacific. To Americans it seemed the duty of the United Europeans by 1864. Europeans served not only as army
States to force the Japanese to share their ports and be- officers but also as engineers, doctors, government offi-
have as a “civilized” nation. cials, and police officers. Others turned to trade, finance,
After several unsuccessful American attempts to es- and shipping.
tablish commercial relations with Japan, Commodore To pay for his ambitious plans, Muhammad Ali en-
Matthew Perry steamed into Edo (now Tokyo) Bay in couraged the development of commercial agriculture.
1853 and demanded diplomatic negotiations with the em- This development had profound implications. Egyptian
peror. Japan entered a grave crisis. Some Japanese war- peasants were poor but largely self-sufficient, growing
riors urged resistance, but senior officials realized how food for their own consumption on state-owned lands al-
defenseless their cities were against naval bombardment. lotted to them by tradition. Faced with the possibility of
Shocked and humiliated, they reluctantly signed a treaty export agriculture, high-ranking officials and members of
with the United States that opened two ports and per- Muhammad Ali’s family began carving large private land-
mitted trade. Over the next five years, more treaties spelled holdings out of the state domain. The new landlords
out the rights and privileges of the Western nations and made the peasants their tenants and forced them to grow
their merchants in Japan. Japan was “opened.” What the cash crops geared to European markets. Thus Egyptian
British had done in China with war, the Americans had landowners “modernized” agriculture, but to the detri-
done in Japan with only the threat of war. ment of peasant well-being.
These trends continued under Muhammad Ali’s grand-
son Ismail, who in 1863 began his sixteen-year rule as
Western Penetration of Egypt Egypt’s khedive, or prince. Educated at France’s lead-
Egypt’s experience illustrates not only the explosive ing military academy, Ismail was a westernizing autocrat.
power of the expanding European economy and society The large irrigation networks he promoted caused cot-
but also their seductive appeal in non-Western lands. Eu- ton production and exports to Europe to boom, and
ropean involvement in Egypt also led to a new model of with his support the Suez Canal was completed by a
formal political control, which European powers applied
Apago PDF Enhancer French company in 1869. The Arabic of the masses re-
widely in Africa and Asia after 1882. placed the Turkish of the conquerors as the official lan-
Of great importance in African and Middle Eastern his- guage. Young Egyptians educated in Europe spread new
tory, the ancient land of the pharaohs had since 525 B.C. skills, and Cairo acquired modern boulevards and West-
been ruled by a succession of foreigners, most recently by ern hotels. As Ismail proudly declared, “My country is no
the Ottoman Turks. In 1798 French armies under young longer in Africa, we now form part of Europe.”2
General Napoleon Bonaparte invaded the Egyptian part Yet Ismail was too impatient and reckless. His projects
of the Ottoman Empire and occupied the territory for were enormously expensive, and by 1876 Egypt owed
three years. Into the power vacuum left by the French foreign bondholders a colossal debt that it could not pay.
withdrawal stepped an extraordinary Albanian-born Turk- Rather than let Egypt go bankrupt and repudiate its
ish general, Muhammad Ali (1769–1849). loans, the governments of France and Great Britain inter-
First appointed governor of Egypt by the Turkish sul- vened politically to protect the European bondholders.
tan, Muhammad Ali set out to build his own state on the They forced Ismail to appoint French and British com-
strength of a large, powerful army organized along Euro- missioners to oversee Egyptian finances so that the Egyp-
pean lines. He drafted for the first time the illiterate, de- tian debt would be paid in full. This momentous decision
spised peasant masses of Egypt, and he hired French and implied direct European political control and was a sharp
Italian army officers to train these raw recruits and their break with the previous pattern of trade and investment.
Turkish officers. The government was also reformed, new Throughout most of the nineteenth century, Europeans
lands were cultivated, and communications were improved. had used military might and political force primarily to
By the time of his death in 1849, Muhammad Ali had es- make sure that non-Western lands would accept Euro-
tablished a strong and virtually independent Egyptian pean trade and investment. Now Europeans were going
state, to be ruled by his family on a hereditary basis within to determine the state budget and effectively rule Egypt.
the Turkish empire. Foreign financial control evoked a violent nationalistic
Muhammad Ali’s policies of modernization attracted reaction among Egyptian religious leaders, young intel-
large numbers of Europeans to the banks of the Nile. lectuals, and army officers. In 1879, under the leader-
The port city of Alexandria had more than fifty thousand ship of Colonel Ahmed Arabi, they formed the Egyptian
The Opening of the Suez Canal A long procession of eighty ships passed through the
Suez Canal when it was opened in November 1869, and thousands of spectators lined the
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shores and joined in the celebrations. The building of the hundred-mile canal was a momen-
tous event, cutting in half the length of the journey between Europe and Asia. (Archives
Charmet/The Bridgeman Art Library)
Nationalist Party. Continuing diplomatic pressure, which model was to predominate until 1914. Thus did Europe’s
forced Ismail to abdicate in favor of his weak son, Tewfiq Industrial Revolution lead to tremendous political as
(r. 1879–1892), resulted in bloody anti-European riots well as economic expansion throughout the world af-
in Alexandria in 1882. A number of Europeans were ter 1880.
killed, and Tewfiq and his court had to flee to British
ships for safety. When the British fleet bombarded Alexan-
dria, more riots swept the country, and Colonel Arabi led
a revolt. But a British expeditionary force put down the The Great Migration
rebellion and occupied all of Egypt. A poignant human drama was interwoven with economic
The British said their occupation was temporary, but expansion: millions of people pulled up stakes and left
British armies remained in Egypt until 1956. They main- their ancestral lands in the course of history’s greatest mi-
tained the façade of the khedive’s government as an au- gration. To millions of ordinary people, for whom the
tonomous province of the Ottoman Empire, but the opening of China and the interest on the Egyptian debt
khedive was a mere puppet. British rule did result in tax had not the slightest significance, this great movement
reforms and somewhat better conditions for peasants, was the central experience in the saga of Western expan-
while foreign bondholders received their interest and sion. It was, in part, because of this great migration that
Egyptian nationalists nursed their injured pride. the West’s impact on the world in the nineteenth century
British rule in Egypt provided a new model for Euro- was so powerful and many-sided.
pean expansion in densely populated lands. Such expan-
sion was based on military force, political domination, • How was massive migration an integral part of Western
and a self-justifying ideology of beneficial reform. This expansion?
The Great Migration • 855
The Pressure of Population 4,000 40

In the early eighteenth century, the growth of European
3,500
population entered its third and decisive stage, which
continued unabated until the early twentieth century 35
Percentage of world population

3,000
(see Figure 26.2). Birthrates eventually declined in the

nineteenth century, but so did death rates, mainly be-
2,500
cause of the rising standard of living and secondarily be- 30
cause of the medical revolution. Thus the population of 2,000
Europe (including Asiatic Russia) more than doubled,
from approximately 188 million in 1800 to roughly 432 1,500
million in 1900. 25
These figures actually understate Europe’s population 1,000
explosion, for between 1815 and 1932 more than 60
million people left Europe. These migrants went primar- 500 20
ily to the “areas of European settlement”—North and 250
South America, Australia, New Zealand, and Siberia—
1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 1980
where they contributed to a rapid growth in numbers.
“European” population as a percentage
Since population grew more slowly in Africa and Asia
of world population
than in Europe and the Americas, as Figure 26.2 shows, World population
Europeans and people of predominately European origin “European” population
jumped from about 22 percent of the world’s total to
Note: “European” population includes Europe and also areas of
about 38 percent on the eve of World War I. predominately European settlement—Asiatic Russia, North
The growing number of Europeans provided further America, South America, and Australia/New Zealand.
impetus for Western expansion. It was a driving force be-
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hind emigration. As in the eighteenth century, the rapid
FIGURE 26.2 The Increase of European and World Popu-
increase in numbers put pressure on the land and led to lations, 1750–1980 (Sources: W. Woodruff, Impact of Western
land hunger and relative overpopulation in area after Man: A Study of Europe’s Role in the World Economy. St. Mar-
tin’s Press, New York, 1967, p. 103; United Nations, Statistical Year-
area. In most countries, migration increased twenty years
book, 1982, 1985, pp. 2–3.)
after a rapid growth in population, as many children of
the baby boom grew up, saw little available land and few
opportunities, and migrated. This pattern was especially emigration reflected not only rural poverty but also the
prevalent when rapid population increase predated ex- movement of skilled, industrial technicians and the pref-
tensive industrial development, which offered the best erences shown to British migrants in the British Empire.
long-term hope of creating jobs within the country and Ultimately, about one-third of all European migrants
reducing poverty. Thus millions of country folk went between 1840 and 1920 came from the British Isles. Ger-
abroad as well as to nearby cities in search of work and man migration was quite different. It grew irregularly af-
economic opportunity. ter about 1830, reaching a first peak in the early 1850s
Before looking at the people who migrated, let us con- and another in the early 1880s. Thereafter it declined rap-
sider three facts. First, the number of men and women idly, for Germany’s rapid industrialization was providing
who left Europe increased rapidly before World War I. As adequate jobs at home. This pattern contrasted sharply
Figure 26.3 shows, more than 11 million left in the first with that of Italy. More and more Italians left the country
decade of the twentieth century, over five times the num- right up to 1914, reflecting severe problems in Italian vil-
ber departing in the 1850s. The outflow of migrants was lages and relatively slow industrial growth. Thus migra-
clearly an enduring characteristic of European society for tion patterns mirrored social and economic conditions in
the entire period. the various European countries and provinces.
Second, different countries had very different patterns Third, although the United States absorbed the largest
of movement. As Figure 26.3 also shows, people left number of European migrants, less than half of all migrants
Britain and Ireland (which are not distinguished in the went to the United States. Asiatic Russia, Canada, Argen-
British figures) in large numbers from the 1840s on. This tina, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand also attracted
11,500
11,000
8,000
7,000
Emigrants (in thousands)
6,000
5,000
4,000
3,000
2,000
1,000
1851–1860 1871–1880 1891–1900 1911–1920 1931–1940 FIGURE 26.3 Emigration from

1861–1870 1881–1890 1901–1910 1921–1930 Europe by Decades, 1851–1940
(Source: Copyright © W. Woodruff, from
Total emigration from Europe Germany Impact of Western Man, by W. Woodruff,
Great Britain and Ireland Italy 1982. Reprinted with permission of Uni-
versity Press of America.)
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large numbers, as Figure 26.4 shows. Moreover, migrants were a great asset to the countries that received
grants accounted for a larger proportion of the total pop- them. This was doubly so because the vast majority were
ulation in Argentina, Brazil, and Canada than in the young and very often unmarried. They came in the prime
United States. The common American assumption that of life and were ready to work hard in the new land, at
European migration meant migration to the United least for a time. Many Europeans moved but remained
States is quite inaccurate. within Europe, settling temporarily or permanently in an-
other European country. Jews from eastern Europe and
peasants from Ireland migrated to Great Britain, Russians
European Migrants and Poles sought work in Germany, and Latin peoples
What kind of people left Europe, and what were their from Spain, Portugal, and Italy entered France. Many Eu-
reasons for doing so? The European migrant was most ropeans were truly migrants as opposed to immigrants—
often a small peasant landowner or a village craftsman that is, they returned home after some time abroad. One
whose traditional way of life was threatened by too little in two migrants to Argentina and probably one in three to
land, estate agriculture, and cheap, factory-made goods. the United States eventually returned to their native land.
German peasants who left the Rhineland and southwest- The likelihood of repatriation varied greatly by nation-
ern Germany between 1830 and 1854, for example, felt ality. People who migrated from the Balkans, for instance,
trapped by what Friedrich List called the “dwarf econ- were much more likely to return to their countries than
omy,” with its tiny landholdings and declining craft in- people from Ireland and eastern European Jews. Once
dustries. Selling out and moving to buy much cheaper again, the possibility of buying land in the old country
land in the American Midwest became a common re- was of central importance. In Ireland (as well as in Eng-
sponse. Thus the European migrant was generally an en- land and Scotland) land was tightly held by large, often
ergetic small farmer or skilled artisan trying hard to stay absentee landowners, and little land was available for pur-
ahead of poverty, not a desperately impoverished landless chase. In Russia most land was held by non-Jews. There-
peasant or urban proletarian. fore, when Russian Jewish artisans began in the 1880s to
Determined to maintain or improve their status, mi- escape both factory competition and oppression by mi-
The Great Migration • 857
ORIGINS DESTINATIONS
Finland, Denmark,
France, Belgium, Other 4% United
Switzerland, etc. 4% Brazil 7% States 45%
Netherlands 1%
Portugal 5% Norway 1% Australia/
Sweden 2% New Zealand 7%
Russia 4%*
Poland 5%
Canada 8%
Austria 7% Great Britain
and Ireland 34%
Argentina 10%
Spain 9%
Germany 11% Italy 19% Asiatic Russia 20%
* Not including migrants to Asiatic Russia.
FIGURE 26.4 Origins and Destinations of European Emigrants, 1851–1960 (Source:

Copyright © W. Woodruff, from Impact of Western Man, by W. Woodruff, 1982. Reprinted with
permission of University Press of America.)
grating, it was basically a once-and-for-all departure. The mass movement of Italians illustrates many of the
Non-Jewish migrants from Russia had access to land and characteristics of European migration. As late as the 1880s,
returned much more frequently to their peasant villages three of every four Italians depended on agriculture. With
in central Russia, Poland, and Ukraine. the influx of cheap North American wheat, many small
Apago PDF Enhancer
An Italian Custom in
Argentina Italian immi-
grants introduced the game of
boccia to Argentina, where it
took hold and became a popu-
lar recreation for men. Dressed
up in their Sunday best, these
Argentinian laborers are totally
focused on the game, which is
somewhat like horseshoes or
shuffleboard. (Hulton Archive/
Getty Images)
landowning peasants whose standard of living was falling would blaze the way and others would follow, forming a
began to leave their country. Many Italians went to the “migration chain.”
United States, but before 1900 more went to Argentina Many landless young European men and women were
and Brazil. In Brazil the large coffee planters, faced with spurred to leave by a spirit of revolt and independence.
the collapse of black slavery, attracted Italians to their In Sweden and in Norway, in Jewish Russia and in Italy,
plantations with subsidized travel and promises of rela- these young people felt frustrated by the small privileged
tively high wages. classes, which often controlled both church and govern-
Many Italians had no intention of settling abroad per- ment and resisted demands for change and greater oppor-
manently. Some called themselves swallows. After har- tunity. Many a young Norwegian seconded the passionate
vesting their own wheat and flax in Italy, they “flew” to cry of Norway’s national poet, Martinius Bjørnson: “Forth
Argentina to harvest wheat between December and April. will I! Forth! I will be crushed and consumed if I stay.”3
Returning to Italy for the spring planting, they repeated Thus for many, migration was a radical way to “get out
this exhausting process. This was a very hard life, but a from under.” Migration slowed down when the people
frugal worker could save $250 to $300 in the course of won basic political and social reforms, such as the right to
a season. vote and social security.
Ties of family and friendship played a crucial role in the
movement of peoples. Many people from a given province
or village settled together in rural enclaves or tightly knit
Asian Migrants
urban neighborhoods thousands of miles away. Very often Not all migration was from Europe. A substantial num-
a strong individual—a businessman, a religious leader— ber of Chinese, Japanese, Indians, and Filipinos—to name
Vaccinating Migrants Bound for

Hawaii, 1904 First Chinese, then
Japanese, and finally Koreans and
Apago PDF Enhancer Filipinos went in large numbers across
the Pacific to labor in Hawaii on
American-owned sugar plantations in
the late nineteenth century. The native
Hawaiians had been decimated by
disease, preparing the way for the
annexation of Hawaii by the United
States in 1898. (Corbis)
Western Imperialism, 1880–1914 • 859
only four key groups—responded to rural hardship with ing contrasted sharply with the economic penetration of
temporary or permanent migration. At least 3 million non-Western territories between 1816 and 1880, which
Asians (as opposed to more than 60 million Europeans) had left a China or a Japan “opened” but politically inde-
moved abroad before 1920. Most went as indentured la- pendent. By contrast, the empires of the late nineteenth
borers to work under incredibly difficult conditions on century recalled the old European colonial empires of
the plantations or in the gold mines of Latin America, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and led con-
southern Asia, Africa, California, Hawaii, and Australia. temporaries to speak of the new imperialism.
White estate owners very often used Asians to replace Characterized by a frantic rush to plant the flag over as
or supplement blacks after the suppression of the slave many people and as much territory as possible, the new im-
trade. perialism had momentous consequences. It resulted in new
In the 1840s, for example, there was a strong demand tensions among competing European states, and it led to
for field hands in Cuba, and the Spanish government ac- wars and rumors of war with non-European powers. The
tively recruited Chinese laborers. Between 1853 and 1873, new imperialism was aimed primarily at Africa and Asia. It
when such migration was stopped, more than 130,000 put millions of black, brown, and yellow peoples directly
Chinese laborers went to Cuba. The majority spent their under the rule of whites.
lives as virtual slaves. The great landlords of Peru also • How and why after 1875 did European nations rush to
brought in more than 100,000 workers from China in the build political empires in Africa and Asia?
nineteenth century, and there were similar movements of
Asians elsewhere.
Such migration from Asia would undoubtedly have
grown to much greater proportions if planters and mine
The Scramble for Africa
owners in search of cheap labor had been able to hire The most spectacular manifestation of the new imperial-
as many Asian workers as they wished. But they could ism was the seizure of Africa, which broke sharply with
not. Asians fled the plantations and gold mines as soon as previous patterns and fascinated contemporary Europeans
possible, seeking greater opportunities in trade and
Apago PDF Enhancer and Americans. As late as 1880, European nations con-
towns. There they came into conflict with local popula- trolled only 10 percent of the African continent, and their
tions, whether in Malaya, East Africa, or areas settled by possessions were hardly increasing. The French had be-
Europeans. These European settlers demanded a halt to gun conquering Algeria in 1830, and by 1880 substantial
Asian migration. By the 1880s, Americans and Australians numbers of French, Italian, and Spanish colonists had
were building great white walls—discriminatory laws settled among the overwhelming Arab majority.
designed to keep Asians out. At the other end of the continent, in South Africa, the
A crucial factor in the migrations before 1914 was, British had taken possession of the Dutch settlements
therefore, the general policy of “whites only” in the open at Cape Town during the wars with Napoleon I. This
lands of possible permanent settlement. This, too, was part takeover had led disgruntled Dutch cattle ranchers and
of Western dominance in the increasingly lopsided world. farmers in 1835 to make their so-called Great Trek into
Largely successful in monopolizing the best overseas op- the interior, where they fought the Zulu and Xhosa
portunities, Europeans and people of European ancestry peoples for land. After 1853, while British colonies such
reaped the main benefits from the great migration. By as Canada and Australia were beginning to evolve toward
1913 people in Australia, Canada, and the United States self-government, the Boers, or Afrikaners (as the descen-
all had higher average incomes than people in Great dants of the Dutch in the Cape Colony were beginning
Britain, still Europe’s wealthiest nation. to call themselves), proclaimed their political indepen-
dence and defended it against British armies. By 1880
Afrikaner and British settlers, who detested each other,
Western Imperialism – had wrested control of much of South Africa from the
Zulu, Xhosa, and other African peoples.
The expansion of Western society reached its apex be- European trading posts and forts dating back to the
tween about 1880 and 1914. In those years, the leading Age of Discovery and the slave trade dotted the coast of
European nations not only continued to send massive West Africa. The Portuguese proudly but ineffectively
streams of migrants, money, and manufactured goods held their old possessions in Angola and Mozambique.
around the world, but also rushed to create or enlarge Elsewhere over the great mass of the continent, Euro-
vast political empires abroad. This political empire build- peans did not rule.
860
SPANISH M e d i
t e
Tangier MOROCCO rr
Algiers a
n
MADEIRA IS. Casablanca e a
TUNISIA n
(Portugal) S e a
MOROCCO Tripoli Cyrene
IFNI
CANARY IS. Cairo

(Spain)
ALGERIA
LIBYA
RIO DE ORO
EGYPT
R
ed
S A H A R A i le ARABIA
Se
FRENCH WEST AFRICA
a
GAMBIA
Ni
Omdurman ERITREA
ge
r
L. Chad Khartoum
PORTUGUESE
GUINEA ANGLO-EGYPTIAN Adowa
B lu
SUDAN FRENCH SOMALILAND
A
RIC
e
SIERRA LEONE NIGERIA Fashoda Nile
BRITISH
AF
D
SOMALILAND
Wh
ETHIOPIA
AN
IVORY GOLD
LIBERIA COAST COAST AL
ite
IL
AL
RI
Nile
TOGOLAND
M
TO
CAMEROONS
Ubangi
SO
UA
N
Co IA
EQ
SPANISH GUINEA ng AL
o IT
H
UGANDA BRITISH
C
EAST AFRICA
N
E
FR L. Victoria
BELGIAN CONGO
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CABINDA L. Tanganyika
GERMAN
EAST AFRICA
Mombasa
ZANZIBAR (Gr. Br.)
ATLANTIC OCEAN
INDIAN
OCEAN
ANGOLA L. Nyasa
NORTHERN
RHODESIA
Za
NYASALAND
m
bez
i
AR
SOUTHERN MOZAMBIQUE SC
GERMAN RHODESIA
GA
SOUTHWEST
DA
AFRICA
BECHUANALAND
MA
AR TRANSVAAL
AB
STATES SWAZILAND
Egypt ORANGE
FREE STATE
S A H A R A BASUTOLAND
UNION OF
L
A
SOUTH AFRICA NAT

SUDANESE EMPIRES
Cape Town
I
E
U IL
Ashanti Ibo
AG
NG H
LA SWA
BA
British Portuguese
NTU
Ki
ku
yu
French Belgian
German Spanish
Independent African
Italian
PEOPLE
States
S
0 400 800 Km.

COLONIAL PRESENCE Khoisan
IN AFRICA, 1878 (Bushmen)
0 400 800 Mi.
Hottentots
Between 1880 and 1900, the situation changed drasti- educated nonwhites lost the right to vote outside the
cally. Britain, France, Germany, and Italy scrambled for Cape Colony. (See the feature “Individuals in Society:
African possessions as if their national livelihoods depended Cecil Rhodes.”)
on it (see Map 26.2). By 1900 nearly the whole continent In the complexity of the European seizure of Africa, cer-
had been carved up and placed under European rule: only tain events and individuals stand out. Of enormous im-
Ethiopia in northeast Africa, which repulsed Italian in- portance was the British occupation of Egypt in 1882,
vaders, and Liberia on the West African coast, which had which established the new model of formal political con-
been settled by freed slaves from the United States, re- trol. There was also the role of Leopold II of Belgium
mained independent. In the years before 1914, the Euro- (r. 1865–1909), an energetic, strong-willed monarch with
pean powers tightened their control and established a lust for distant territory. “The sea bathes our coast, the
colonial governments to rule their gigantic empires. world lies before us,” he had exclaimed in 1861. “Steam
and electricity have annihilated distance, and all the non-
Improve Your Grade
appropriated lands on the surface of the globe can become
Primary Source: European Imperialism in Africa: A
Veteran Explains the Rules of the Game
the field of our operations and of our success.”4 By 1876
Leopold was focusing on central Africa. Subsequently, he
The Dutch settler republics also succumbed to imperial- formed a financial syndicate under his personal control to
ism, but the final outcome was quite different. The British, send Henry M. Stanley, a sensation-seeking journalist and
led by Cecil Rhodes in the Cape Colony, leapfrogged part-time explorer, to the Congo basin. Stanley was able
over the Afrikaner states in the early 1890s and estab- to establish trading stations, sign “treaties” with African
lished protectorates over Bechuanaland (now Botswana) chiefs, and plant Leopold’s flag. Leopold’s actions alarmed
and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia), named in the French, who quickly sent out an expedition under
honor of its freelance imperial founder. Trying unsuc- Pierre de Brazza. In 1880 de Brazza signed a treaty of pro-
cessfully to undermine the stubborn Afrikaners in the tection with the chief of the large Teke tribe and began to
Transvaal, where English-speaking capitalists like Rhodes establish a French protectorate on the north bank of the
were developing fabulously rich gold mines, the British
Apago PDF Enhancer Congo River.
conquered their white rivals in the bloody South African Leopold’s buccaneering intrusion into the Congo area
War (1899–1902). In 1910 their territories were united raised the question of the political fate of Africa. By 1882
with the old Cape Colony and the eastern province of Europe had caught “African fever.” There was a gold
Natal in a new Union of South Africa, established— rush mentality, and the race for territory was on.
unlike any other territory in Africa—as a largely “self- To lay down some basic rules for this new and danger-
governing” colony. This enabled the defeated Afrikaners ous game of imperialist competition in sub-Saharan
to use their numerical superiority over the British set- Africa, Jules Ferry of France and Otto von Bismarck of
tlers to gradually take political power, as even the most Germany arranged an international conference on Africa
in Berlin in 1884 and 1885. The conference established
the principle that European claims to African territory had
Mapping the Past to rest on “effective occupation” in order to be recog-
nized by other states. This meant that Europeans would
MAP 26.2 The Partition of Africa The European powers
carved up Africa after 1880 and built vast political empires. push relentlessly into interior regions from all sides and
European states also seized territory in Asia in the nineteenth that no single European power would be able to claim the
century, although some Asian states and peoples managed to entire continent. The conference recognized Leopold’s
maintain their political independence, as may be seen on Map personal rule over a neutral Congo free state and agreed
26.3, page 864. The late nineteenth century was the high
to work to stop slavery and the slave trade in Africa.
point of European imperialism. Compare the patterns of Euro-
pean imperialism in Africa and Asia, using this map and Map The Berlin conference coincided with Germany’s sud-
•
26.3. 1 What European countries were leading imperialist states in
••
both Africa and Asia, and what lands did they hold? 2 What countries
in Africa and Asia maintained their political independence? 3 From an
den emergence as an imperial power. Prior to about
1880, Bismarck, like many other European leaders at the
time, had seen little value in colonies. Colonies reminded
imperialist perspective, what in 1914 did the United States and Japan,
him, he said, of a poor but proud nobleman who wore a
two very different countries, have in common in Africa and Asia?
fur coat when he could not afford a shirt underneath.
Then in 1884 and 1885, as political agitation for expan-
Improve Your Grade sion increased, Bismarck did an abrupt about-face, and
Interactive Map: Africa in 1914 Germany established protectorates over a number of
small African kingdoms and tribes in Togo, Cameroons,

southwest Africa, and, later, East Africa. In acquiring
colonies, Bismarck cooperated against the British with
France’s Ferry, who was as ardent for empire as he was
for education. With Bismarck’s tacit approval, the French
pressed southward from Algeria, eastward from their old
forts on the Senegal coast, and northward from their
protectorate on the Congo River.
Meanwhile, the British began enlarging their West Afri-
can enclaves and impatiently pushing northward from the
Cape Colony and westward from Zanzibar. Their thrust
southward from Egypt was blocked in Sudan by fiercely
independent Muslims who massacred a British force at
Khartoum in 1885.
A decade later, another British force, under General
Horatio H. Kitchener, moved cautiously and more suc-
cessfully up the Nile River, building a railroad to supply
arms and reinforcements as it went. Finally, in 1898 these
British troops met their foe at Omdurman (see Map 26.2),
where Muslim tribesmen armed with spears charged time
and time again, only to be cut down by the recently in-
vented machine gun. For one smug participant, the young
British officer Winston Churchill, it was “like a pan-
tomime scene” in a play. “These extraordinary foreign
Apago PDF Enhancer figures . . . march up one by one from the darkness of
Barbarism to the footlights of civilization . . . and their
conquerors, taking their possessions, forget even their
names.” For another, more somber English observer,
“It was not a battle but an execution. The bodies were
not in heaps . . . but they spread evenly over acres and
acres.”5 In the end, eleven thousand brave Muslim
tribesmen lay dead, while only twenty-eight Britons had
been killed.
Continuing up the Nile after the Battle of Omdurman,
Kitchener’s armies found that a small French force had
already occupied the village of Fashoda. Locked in impe-
rial competition with Britain ever since the British occu-
pation of Egypt, France had tried to beat the British to
one of Africa’s last unclaimed areas—the upper reaches of
the Nile. The result was a serious diplomatic crisis and
even the threat of war. Eventually, wracked by the Drey-
fus affair (see page 834) and unwilling to fight, France
backed down and withdrew its forces, allowing the
British to take over.
The British conquest of Sudan exemplifies the general
European Imperialism at Its Worst This 1908 English process of empire building in Africa. The fate of the Mus-
cartoon, “Leopold, King of the Congo, in his national dress,” lim force at Omdurman was eventually inflicted on all
focuses on the barbaric practice of cutting off the hands and native peoples who resisted European rule: they were
feet of Africans who refused to gather as much rubber as
Leopold’s company demanded. In 1908 an international hu- blown away by vastly superior military force. But how-
man rights campaign forced the Belgian king to cede his per- ever much the European powers squabbled for territory
sonal fief to the Belgian state. (The Granger Collection, New York) and privilege around the world, they always had the sense
Individuals
in Society
Cecil Rhodes
C ecil Rhodes (1853–1902) epitomized the

dynamism and the ruthlessness of the new imperial-
ism. He built a corporate monopoly, claimed vast
tracts in Africa, and established the famous Rhodes
scholarships to develop colonial (and American) lead-
ers who would love and strengthen the British Em-
pire. But to Africans, he left a bitter legacy.
Rhodes came from a large middle-class family and
at seventeen went to southern Africa to seek his for-
tune. He soon turned to diamonds, newly discovered at Cecil Rhodes, after crushing the last African revolt in
Kimberley, picked good partners, and was wealthy by Rhodesia in 1896.
1876. But Rhodes, often called a dreamer, wanted more. (Brown Brothers)
He entered Oxford University, while returning periodi-
cally to Africa, and his musings crystallized in a belief in
progress through racial competition and territorial ex- dealmaker who believed that everyone could be had
pansion. “I contend,” he wrote, “that we [English] are for a price. According to his best biographer, Rhodes’s
the finest race in the world and the more of the world we homosexuality—discreet, partially repressed, and
inhabit the better it is for the human race.”* undeniable—was also “a major component of his
Rhodes’s belief in British expansion never wavered. magnetism and his success.”† Never comfortable with
In 1880 he formed the De Beers Mining Company, and women, he loved male companionship. He drew to-
Apago PDF Enhancer
by 1888 his firm monopolized southern Africa’s dia- gether a “band of brothers,” both gay and straight, to
mond production and earned fabulous profits. Rhodes share in the pursuit of power.
also entered the Cape Colony’s legislature and became Rhodes cared nothing for the rights of blacks. Ever a
the all-powerful prime minister from 1890 to 1896. combination of visionary and opportunist, he looked
His main objective was to dominate the Afrikaner forward to an eventual reconciliation of Afrikaners and
republics and to impose British rule on as much land as British in a united white front. Therefore, as prime
possible beyond their northern borders. Working minister of the Cape Colony, he broke with the colony’s
through a state-approved private company financed in liberal tradition and supported Afrikaner demands to
part by De Beers, Rhodes’s agents forced and cajoled reduce drastically the number of black voters and limit
African kings to accept British “protection,” then put black freedoms. This helped lay the foundation for the
down rebellions with Maxim machine guns. Britain Union of South Africa’s brutal policy of racial segrega-
thus obtained a great swath of empire on the cheap. tion known as apartheid after 1948.
But Rhodes, like many high achievers obsessed with
power and personal aggrandizement, went too far. He
backed, and then in 1896 declined to call back, a failed
invasion of the Transvaal, which was designed to topple 1. How did Rhodes relate to Afrikaners and to black
the Dutch-speaking republic. Repudiated by top British Africans? How do you account for the differences
leaders who had encouraged his plan, Rhodes had to and the similarities?
resign as prime minister. In declining health, he continued 2. In what ways does Rhodes’s career throw additional
to agitate against the Afrikaner republics. He died at age light on the debate over the causes of the new
forty-nine as the South African War (1899–1902) ended. imperialism?
In accounting for Rhodes’s remarkable but flawed
*Robert Rotberg, The Founder: Cecil Rhodes and the Pursuit of
achievements, both sympathetic and critical biogra- Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 150.
phers stress his imposing size, enormous energy, and †
Ibid., p. 408.
powerful personality. His ideas were commonplace, but
he believed in them passionately, and he could per-
suade and inspire others to follow his lead. Rhodes the Improve Your Grade
idealist was nonetheless a born negotiator, a crafty Going Beyond Individuals in Society
863
864
Tobolsk RUSSIAN EMPIRE
SIBERIA
Sea of
Omsk
L. Baikal Okhotsk
Amur AMUR DISTRICT
I rt
Irkutsk Chita (1858) Sakhalin
ys
h
MANCHURIA
OUTER MONGOLIA Khabarovsk KARAFUTO
L. Balkhash (1858) (Jap. 1905)
(1854) (Autonomous, Russian sphere 1912)
C Aral Harbin
Sea
as
(1873) INNER
MONGOLIA
pia
SINKIANG Shenyang Vladivostok

(Mukden) (1860)
n S
RE
Tashkent Beijing KOREA S e a o f
ow)
(1864) (1905, 1910)
Port Arthur
PI
Tientsin
ea
(Rus. 1898; Jap. 1905) J a p a n
ell
Merv
EM
(Y
Teheran (1884) He Jiaozhou Weihai Tokyo
ng (Gr. Br. 1898)
RUSSIAN SPHERE H ua (Ger. 1898)
(1907) AFGHANISTAN KASHMIR
Apago PDF Enhancer

(1846) CHINA E
HI TIBET Nanjing East ES
PERSIA PUNJAB MA AN
LA Lhasa Chongqing
Wuhan Shanghai China JAP
BRITISH YA
SPHERE Delhi (Gr. Br. 1842)
p.)
BALUCHISTAN S zi Sea
(1907) Ga NEPAL Y an g
(Ja
(1883) us d n BHUTAN Pescadores .
Fuzhou Is
In
ge
Guangzhou Xiamen (Jap. 1895) yu
s
(Gr. Br. 1842) uk PACIFIC

Karachi BRITISH INDIA Ry
BURMA Macao Formosa
Calcutta (Port. 1557)
(1852, 1885) Hong Kong (Jap. 1895)
INDIA Hanoi (Gr. Br. 1842) OCEAN
Diu Bombay Zhanjiang
(Port.) (Fr. 1898)
Yanaon Bay
(Fr.) Rangoon SIAM
of PHILIPPINE IS.
Arabian Goa Bangkok
South (U.S.; from Spain 1898)
(Port.) Bengal FRENCH Manila
Madras INDOCHINA
Sea Pondichéry (1859, 1907) China
Karikal (Fr.) Andaman Is.
(Gr. Br.) Saigon
(Fr.) Sea
Ceylon BRITISH
NORTH BORNEO
(1888)
MALAY STATES
(1874, 1909) SARAWAK
Territories held by (1888)
Western powers: Singapore
(Gr. Br. 1819) Borneo
Great Britain Japan and its territories Sumatra Celebes
Netherlands Independent Asian states
New Guinea
France
United States INDIAN OCEAN Java (Port. 1859)
(1619) Timor
Russia (Neth.)
0 500 1000 Km.
Railroads
0 500 1000 Mi.
MAP 26.3 Asia in 1914 India remained under British rule, while China precariously pre-
served its political independence. The Dutch empire in modern-day Indonesia was old, but
French control of Indochina was a product of the new imperialism.
to stop short of actually fighting each other. Imperial am- had exploited most profitably for more than a century.
bitions were not worth a great European war. When continental powers began to grab territory in the
1880s, the British followed suit immediately. They feared
that France and Germany would seal off their empires
Imperialism in Asia with high tariffs and restrictions and that future eco-
Although the sudden division of Africa was more spec- nomic opportunities would be lost forever.
tacular, Europeans also extended their political control in Actually, the overall economic gains of the new impe-
Asia. In 1815 the Dutch ruled little more than the island rialism proved quite limited before 1914. The new
of Java in the East Indies. Thereafter they gradually colonies were simply too poor to buy much, and they of-
brought almost all of the three-thousand-mile archipel- fered few immediately profitable investments. Nonethe-
ago under their political authority, though—in good im- less, even the poorest, most barren desert was jealously
perialist fashion—they had to share some of the spoils prized, and no territory was ever abandoned. Colonies
with Britain and Germany. In the critical decade of the became important for political and diplomatic reasons.
1880s, the French under the leadership of Ferry took In- Each leading country saw colonies as crucial to national
dochina. India, Japan, and China also experienced a pro- security, military power, and international prestige. For
found imperialist impact (see Map 26.3). instance, safeguarding the Suez Canal played a key role in
Two other great imperialist powers, Russia and the the British occupation of Egypt, and protecting Egypt in
United States, also acquired rich territories in Asia. Russia turn led to the bloody conquest of Sudan. Far-flung pos-
moved steadily forward on two fronts throughout the sessions guaranteed ever-growing navies the safe havens
nineteenth century. Russians conquered Muslim areas to and the dependable coaling stations they needed in time
the south in the Caucasus and in Central Asia and also proof crisis or war.
ceeded to nibble greedily on China’s outlying provinces in Many people were convinced that colonies were es-
the Far East, especially in the 1890s. sential to great nations. “There has never been a great
The United States’s great conquest was the Philippines, power without great colonies,” wrote one French publi-
taken from Spain in 1898 after the Spanish-American
Apago PDF Enhancer cist in 1877. “Every virile people has established colonial
War. When it quickly became clear that the United States power,” echoed the famous nationalist historian of Ger-
had no intention of granting independence, Philippine many, Heinrich von Treitschke. “All great nations in the
patriots rose in revolt and were suppressed only after long, fullness of their strength have desired to set their mark
bitter fighting. Some Americans protested the taking of upon barbarian lands and those who fail to participate in
the Philippines, but to no avail. Thus another great West- this great rivalry will play a pitiable role in time to come.”6
ern power joined the imperialist ranks in Asia. Treitschke’s harsh statement reflects not only the
increasing aggressiveness of European nationalism after
Bismarck’s wars of German unification but also Social
Causes of the New Imperialism Darwinian theories of brutal competition among races. As
Many factors contributed to the late-nineteenth-century one prominent English economist argued, the “strongest
rush for territory and empire, which was in turn one as- nation has always been conquering the weaker . . . and
pect of Western society’s generalized expansion in the the strongest tend to be best.” Thus European nations,
age of industry and nationalism. It is little wonder that which were seen as racially distinct parts of the dominant
controversies have raged over interpretation of the new white race, had to seize colonies to show they were strong
imperialism, especially since authors of every persuasion and virile. Moreover, since racial struggle was nature’s in-
have often exaggerated particular aspects in an attempt to escapable law, the conquest of “inferior” peoples was just.
prove their own theories. Yet despite complexity and “The path of progress is strewn with the wreck . . . of in-
controversy, basic causes are clearly identifiable. ferior races,” wrote one professor in 1900. “Yet these
Economic motives played an important role in the ex- dead peoples are, in very truth, the stepping stones on
tension of political empires, especially the British Empire. which mankind has risen to the higher intellectual and
By the late 1870s, France, Germany, and the United deeper emotional life of today.”7 Social Darwinism and
States were industrializing rapidly behind rising tariff harsh racial doctrines fostered imperialist expansion.
barriers. Great Britain was losing its early lead and facing So did the industrial world’s unprecedented techno-
increasingly tough competition in foreign markets. In logical and military superiority. Three aspects were cru-
this new economic situation, Britain came to value old cial. First, the rapidly firing machine gun, so lethal at
possessions, especially its vast colony of India, which it Omdurman in Sudan, was an ultimate weapon in many
another unequal battle. Second, newly discovered qui- imperial propagandists relentlessly stressed that colonies
nine proved no less effective in controlling attacks of benefited workers as well as capitalists, providing jobs
malaria, which had previously decimated whites in the and cheap raw materials that raised workers’ standard of
tropics whenever they left breezy coastal enclaves and living. Government leaders and their allies in the tabloid
dared to venture into mosquito-infested interiors. Third, press successfully encouraged the masses to savor foreign
the combination of the steamship and the international triumphs and glory in the supposed increase in national
telegraph permitted Western powers to quickly concen- prestige. In short, conservative leaders defined imperial-
trate their firepower in a given area when it was needed. ist development as a national necessity, which they used
Never before—and never again after 1914—would the to justify the status quo and their hold on power.
technological gap between the West and non-Western re- Finally, certain special-interest groups in each country
gions of the world be so great. were powerful agents of expansion. Shipping companies
Social tensions and domestic political conflicts also wanted lucrative subsidies. White settlers demanded more
contributed mightily to overseas expansion. In Germany, land and greater protection. Missionaries and humanitar-
in Russia, and in other countries to a lesser extent, con- ians wanted to spread religion and stop the slave trade.
temporary critics of imperialism charged conservative po- Military men and colonial officials, whose role has often
litical leaders with manipulating colonial issues in order been overlooked, foresaw rapid advancement and high-
to divert popular attention from the class struggle at paid positions in growing empires. The actions of such
home and to create a false sense of national unity. Thus groups pushed the course of empire forward.
Apago PDF Enhancer
A Missionary School A Swahili schoolboy leads his classmates in a reading lesson in Dar es
Salaam in German East Africa before 1914, as portraits of Emperor William II and his wife
look down on the classroom. Europeans argued that they were spreading the benefits of a
superior civilization with schools like this one, which is unusually solid because of its strategic
location in the capital city. (Ullstein Bilderdienst/The Granger Collection, New York)
ary groups kept trying. Unfortunately, “many missionaries

A “Civilizing Mission” had drunk at the well of European racism,” and this prob-
Western society did not rest the case for empire solely on ably prevented them from doing better.9
naked conquest and a Darwinian racial struggle or on
power politics and the need for naval bases on every ocean.
Imperialists developed additional arguments in order to
Critics of Imperialism
satisfy their consciences and answer their critics. The expansion of empire aroused sharp, even bitter, crit-
A favorite idea was that Europeans could and should ics. A forceful attack was delivered in 1902, after the un-
“civilize” more primitive, nonwhite peoples. According popular South African War, by radical English economist
to this view, nonwhites would eventually receive the ben- J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) in his Imperialism, a work
efits of modern economies, cities, advanced medicine, that influenced Lenin and others. Hobson contended
and higher standards of living. In time, they might be that the rush to acquire colonies was due to the eco-
ready for self-government and Western democracy. Thus nomic needs of unregulated capitalism, particularly the
the French spoke of their sacred “civilizing mission.” In need of the rich to find outlets for their surplus capital.
1899 Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), who wrote master- Yet, Hobson argued, imperial possessions did not pay off
fully of Anglo-Indian life and was perhaps the most influ- economically for the country as a whole. Only unscrupu-
ential British writer of the 1890s, exhorted Europeans lous special-interest groups profited from them, at the
(and Americans in the United States) to unselfish service expense of both the European taxpayer and the natives.
in distant lands: Moreover, Hobson argued that the quest for empire di-
verted popular attention away from domestic reform and
Take up the White Man’s Burden—
the need to reduce the great gap between rich and poor.
Send forth the best ye breed—
These and similar arguments were not very persuasive,
Go bind your sons to exile
however. Most people then (and now) were sold on the
To serve your captives’ need,
idea that imperialism was economically profitable for the
To wait in heavy harness,
Apago PDF Enhancer homeland, and a broad and genuine enthusiasm for em-
On fluttered folk and wild—
pire developed among the masses.
Your new-caught, sullen peoples
Hobson and many other critics struck home, however,
Half-devil and half-child.8
with their moral condemnation of whites imperiously rul-
Many Americans accepted the ideology of the white ing nonwhites. They rebelled against crude Social Darwin-
man’s burden. It was an important factor in the deci- ian thought. “O Evolution, what crimes are committed in
sion to rule, rather than liberate, the Philippines after thy name!” cried one foe. Another sardonically coined a
the Spanish-American War. Like their European coun- new beatitude: “Blessed are the strong, for they shall prey
terparts, these Americans sincerely believed that their on the weak.”10 Kipling and his kind were lampooned as
civilization had reached unprecedented heights and that racist bullies whose rule rested on brutality, racial con-
they had unique benefits to bestow on all “less advanced” tempt, and the Maxim machine gun. Henry Labouchère,
peoples. Another argument was that imperial govern- a member of Parliament and prominent spokesman for this
ment protected natives from tribal warfare as well as position, mocked Kipling’s famous poem:
cruder forms of exploitation by white settlers and busi-
Pile on the Brown Man’s burden!
ness people.
And if ye rouse his hate,
Peace and stability under European control also facili-
Meet his old-fashioned reasons
tated the spread of Christianity. In Africa Catholic and
With Maxims up to date,
Protestant missionaries competed with Islam south of the
With shells and Dum-Dum bullets
Sahara, seeking converts and building schools to spread
A hundred times plain
the Gospel. Many Africans’ first real contact with whites
The Brown Man’s loss must never
was in mission schools. Some peoples, such as the Ibo in
Imply the White Man’s gain.11
Nigeria, became highly Christianized.
Such occasional successes in black Africa contrasted with Similarly, in 1902 in Heart of Darkness Polish-born nov-
the general failure of missionary efforts in India, China, elist Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) castigated the “pure
and the Islamic world. There Christians often preached in selfishness” of Europeans in “civilizing” Africa; the main
vain to peoples with ancient, complex religious beliefs. Yet character, once a liberal scholar, turns into a savage brute.
the number of Christian believers around the world did in- Critics charged Europeans with applying a degrading
crease substantially in the nineteenth century, and mission- double standard and failing to live up to their own noble
ideals. At home Europeans had won or were winning time, however, the modernizers tended to gain the upper
representative government, individual liberties, and a cer- hand.
tain equality of opportunity. In their empires, Europeans When the power of both the traditionalists and the
imposed military dictatorships on Africans and Asians; modernizers was thoroughly shattered by superior force,
forced them to work involuntarily, almost like slaves; and the great majority of Asians and Africans accepted impe-
discriminated against them shamelessly. Only by renounc- rial rule. Political participation in non-Western lands was
ing imperialism, its critics insisted, and giving captive historically limited to small elites, and the masses were
peoples the freedoms Western society had struggled for used to doing what their rulers told them. In these circum-
since the French Revolution would Europeans be worthy stances Europeans, clothed in power and convinced of their
of their traditions. Europeans who denounced the impe- righteousness, governed smoothly and effectively. They
rialist tide provided colonial peoples with a Western ide- received considerable support from both traditionalists (lo-
ology of liberation. cal chiefs, landowners, religious leaders) and modernizers
(Western-educated professional classes and civil servants).
Nevertheless, imperial rule was in many ways an im-
Responding to Western posing edifice built on sand. Support for European rule
Imperialism among the conforming and accepting millions was shal-
low and weak. Thus the conforming masses followed
To peoples in Africa and Asia, Western expansion repre- with greater or lesser enthusiasm a few determined per-
sented a profoundly disruptive assault. Everywhere it threat- sonalities who came to oppose the Europeans. Such lead-
ened traditional ruling classes, traditional economies, ers always arose, both when Europeans ruled directly and
and traditional ways of life. Christian missionaries and when they manipulated native governments, for at least
European secular ideologies challenged established be- two basic reasons.
liefs and values. Non-Western peoples experienced a cri- First, the nonconformists—the eventual anti-imperialist
sis of identity, one made all the more painful by the leaders—developed a burning desire for human dignity.
power and arrogance of the white intruders.
Apago PDF Enhancer They came to feel that such dignity was incompatible with
• What was the general pattern of non-Western responses foreign rule. Second, potential leaders found in the West-
to Western expansion, and how did India, Japan, and China ern world the ideologies and justification for their protest.
meet the imperialist challenge? They discovered liberalism, with its credo of civil liberty
and political self-determination. They echoed the de-
mands of anti-imperialists in Europe and America that the
West live up to its own ideals. Above all, they found them-
The Pattern of Response selves attracted to modern nationalism, which asserted
Generally, the initial response of African and Asian rulers that every people had the right to control its own destiny.
to aggressive Western expansion was to try to drive the After 1917 anti-imperialist revolt would find another
unwelcome foreigners away. This was the case in China, weapon in Lenin’s version of Marxian socialism. Thus the
Japan, and upper Sudan, as we have seen. Violent anti- anti-imperialist search for dignity drew strength from West-
foreign reactions exploded elsewhere again and again, but ern thought and culture, as is apparent in the development
the superior military technology of the industrialized West of three major Asian countries—India, Japan, and China.
almost invariably prevailed. Beaten in battle, many Africans
and Asians concentrated on preserving their cultural tradi-
tions at all costs. Others found themselves forced to recon-
Empire in India
sider their initial hostility. Some (such as Ismail of Egypt) India was the jewel of the British Empire, and no colonial
concluded that the West was indeed superior in some ways area experienced a more profound British impact. Unlike
and that it was therefore necessary to reform their societies Japan and China, which maintained a real or precarious
and copy some European achievements, especially if they independence, and unlike African territories, which were
wished to escape full-blown Western political rule. Thus it annexed by Europeans only at the end of the nineteenth
is possible to think of responses to the Western impact as a century, India was ruled more or less absolutely by Britain
spectrum, with “traditionalists” at one end, “westernizers” for a very long time.
or “modernizers” at the other, and many shades of opinion Arriving in India on the heels of the Portuguese in the
in between. Both before and after European domination, seventeenth century, the British East India Company had
the struggle among these groups was often intense. With conquered the last independent native state by 1848. The
Responding to Western Imperialism • 869
Apago PDF Enhancer
Imperial Complexities in India Britain permitted many native princes to continue their
rule, if they accepted British domination. This photo shows a road-building project designed
to facilitate famine relief in a southern native state. Officials of the local Muslim prince and
their British “advisers” watch over workers drawn from the Hindu majority. (Nizam’s Good
Works Project—Famine Relief: Road Building, Aurangabad 1895–1902, from Judith Mara Gutman,
Through Indian Eyes. Courtesy, Private Collection)
last “traditional” response to European rule—the attempt crushed, primarily by loyal native troops from southern In-
by the established ruling classes to drive the white man out dia. Thereafter Britain ruled India directly.
by military force—was broken in India in 1857 and 1858. After 1858 India was ruled by the British Parliament in
Those were the years of the Great Rebellion (which the London and administered by a tiny, all-white civil service in
British called a “mutiny”), when an insurrection by Mus- India. In 1900 this elite consisted of fewer than 3,500 top
lim and Hindu mercenaries in the British army spread officials, for a population of 300 million. The white elite,
throughout northern and central India before it was finally backed by white officers and native troops, was competent
and generally well-disposed toward the welfare of the In- modern economic development, which was a second re-
dian peasant masses. Yet it practiced strict job discrimina- sult of British rule. Irrigation projects for agriculture, the
tion and social segregation, and most of its members quite world’s third-largest railroad network for good commu-
frankly considered the jumble of Indian peoples and castes nications, and large tea and jute plantations geared to the
to be racially inferior. As Lord Kitchener, one of the most world economy were all developed. Unfortunately, the
distinguished top military commanders in India, stated: lot of the Indian masses improved little, for the increase
in production was eaten up by population increase.
It is this consciousness of the inherent superiority of the Eu-
Finally, with a well-educated, English-speaking Indian
ropean which has won for us India. However well educated
bureaucracy and modern communications, the British
and clever a native may be, and however brave he may prove
created a unified, powerful state. They placed under the
himself, I believe that no rank we can bestow on him would
same general system of law and administration the differ-
cause him to be considered an equal of the British officer.12
ent Hindu and Muslim peoples and the vanquished king-
British women played an important part in the impe- doms of the entire subcontinent—groups that had fought
rial enterprise, especially after the opening of the Suez each other for centuries and had been repeatedly con-
Canal in 1869 made it much easier for civil servants and quered by Muslim and Mongol invaders. It was as if Eu-
businessmen to bring their wives and children with them rope, with its many states and varieties of Christianity,
to India. These British families tended to live in their had been conquered and united in a single great empire.
own separate communities, where they occupied large In spite of these achievements, the decisive reaction
houses with well-shaded porches, handsome lawns, and to European rule was the rise of nationalism among the
a multitude of servants. It was the wife’s responsibility Indian elite. No matter how anglicized and necessary a
to manage this complex household. Many officials’ wives member of the educated classes became, he or she could
learned to relish their duties, and they directed their house- never become the white ruler’s equal. The top jobs, the
holds and servants with the same self-confident authori- best clubs, the modern hotels, and even certain railroad
tarianism that characterized British political rule in India. compartments were sealed off to brown-skinned Indians.
(See the feature “Listening to the Past: A British Woman
Apago PDF Enhancer The peasant masses might accept such inequality as the
in India” on pages 876–877.) latest version of age-old oppression, but the well-educated,
A small minority of British women—many of them English-speaking elite eventually could not. For the elite,
feminists, social reformers, or missionaries, both married racial discrimination meant injured pride and bitter injus-
and single—sought to go further and shoulder the “white tice. It flagrantly contradicted those cherished Western
women’s burden” in India, as one historian has described concepts of human rights and equality. Moreover, it was
it.13 These women tried especially to improve the lives of based on dictatorship, no matter how benign.
Indian women, both Hindu and Muslim, and to move By 1885, when educated Indians came together to
them closer through education and legislation to the bet- found the predominately Hindu Indian National Con-
ter conditions that they believed Western women had at- gress, demands were increasing for the equality and self-
tained. Their greatest success was educating some elite government that Britain had already granted white-settler
Hindu women who took up the cause of reform. colonies, such as Canada and Australia. By 1907, embold-
With British men and women sharing a sense of mission ened in part by Japan’s success (see the next section), the
as well as strong feelings of racial and cultural superiority, radicals in the Indian National Congress were calling for
the British acted energetically and introduced many desir- complete independence. Even the moderates were de-
able changes to India. Realizing that they needed well- manding home rule for India through an elected parlia-
educated Indians to serve as skilled subordinates in the ment. Although there were sharp divisions between
government and army, the British established a modern Hindus and Muslims, Indians were finding an answer to
system of progressive secondary education in which all in- the foreign challenge. The common heritage of British
struction was in English. Thus through education and gov- rule and Western ideals, along with the reform and revital-
ernment service, the British offered some Indians excellent ization of the Hindu religion, had created a genuine
opportunities for both economic and social advancement. movement for national independence.
High-caste Hindus, particularly quick to respond, emerged
as skillful intermediaries between the British rulers and the
Indian people, and soon they formed a new elite pro-
The Example of Japan
foundly influenced by Western thought and culture. When Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Japan in
This new bureaucratic elite played a crucial role in 1853 with his crude but effective gunboat diplomacy,
Japan was a complex feudal society. At the top stood a fig-

urehead emperor, but real power was in the hands of a
hereditary military governor, the shogun. With the help
of a warrior nobility known as samurai, the shogun gov-
erned a country of hard-working, productive peasants and
city dwellers. Often poor and restless, the intensely proud
samurai were humiliated by the sudden American intru-
sion and the unequal treaties with Western countries.
When foreign diplomats and merchants began to settle
in Yokohama, radical samurai reacted with a wave of an-
tiforeign terrorism and antigovernment assassinations
between 1858 and 1863. The imperialist response was
swift and unambiguous. An allied fleet of American, British,
Dutch, and French warships demolished key forts, fur-
ther weakening the power and prestige of the shogun’s
government. Then in 1867, a coalition led by patriotic
samurai seized control of the government with hardly
any bloodshed and restored the political power of the
emperor. This was the Meiji Restoration, a great turning
point in Japanese development.
The immediate, all-important goal of the new govern-
ment was to meet the foreign threat. The battle cry of the
Meiji reformers was “Enrich the state and strengthen the
armed forces.” Yet how were these tasks to be done? In
an about-face that was one of history’s most remarkable
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chapters, the young but well-trained, idealistic but flexible
leaders of Meiji Japan dropped their antiforeign attacks.
Convinced that Western civilization was indeed superior
in its military and industrial aspects, they initiated from
above a series of measures to reform Japan along modern
lines. In the broadest sense, the Meiji leaders tried to har-
ness the power inherent in Europe’s dual revolution in or-
der to protect their country and catch up with the West.
In 1871 the new leaders abolished the old feudal struc- The Rapid Modernization of the Japanese Army This
ture of aristocratic, decentralized government and formed woodcut from about 1870 shows Japanese soldiers outfitted in
a strong unified state. Following the example of the French Western uniforms and marching in Western formation. Japan-
Revolution, they dismantled the four-class legal system ese reformers, impressed by Prussian discipline and success on
and declared social equality. They decreed freedom of the battlefield, looked to Germany for their military models.
(Ryogoku Tsuneo Tamba Collection/Laurie Platt Winfrey)
movement in a country where traveling abroad had been
a most serious crime. They created a free, competitive,
government-stimulated economy. Japan began to build This army of draftees effectively put down disturbances in
railroads and modern factories. Thus the new generation the countryside, and in 1877 it was used to crush a major
adopted many principles of a free, liberal society, and, as in rebellion by feudal elements protesting the loss of their
Europe, such freedom resulted in a tremendously creative privileges. Japan also borrowed rapidly and adapted skill-
release of human energy. fully the West’s science and modern technology, particu-
Yet the overriding concern of Japan’s political leader- larly in industry, medicine, and education. Many Japanese
ship was always a powerful state, and to achieve this, more were encouraged to study abroad, and the government
than liberalism was borrowed from the West. A powerful paid large salaries to attract foreign experts. These experts
modern navy was created, and the army was completely were always carefully controlled, however, and replaced
reorganized along European lines, with three-year mili- by trained Japanese as soon as possible.
tary service for all males and a professional officer corps. By 1890, when the new state was firmly established, the
wholesale borrowing of the early restoration had given Second, destructive foreign aggression lessened, for the
way to more selective emphasis on those things foreign Europeans had obtained their primary goal of commer-
that were in keeping with Japanese tradition. Following cial and diplomatic relations. Indeed, some Europeans
the model of the German Empire, Japan established an contributed to the dynasty’s recovery. A talented Irish-
authoritarian constitution and rejected democracy. The man effectively reorganized China’s customs office and
power of the emperor and his ministers was vast, that of increased the government tax receipts, while a sympa-
the legislature limited. thetic American diplomat represented China in foreign
Japan successfully copied the imperialism of Western lands and helped strengthen the central government.
society. Expansion not only proved that Japan was strong; Such efforts dovetailed with the dynasty’s efforts to adopt
it also cemented the nation together in a great mission. some aspects of Western government and technology
Having “opened” Korea with the gunboat diplomacy of while maintaining traditional Chinese values and beliefs.
imperialism in 1876, Japan decisively defeated China in a The parallel movement toward domestic reform and
war over Korea in 1894 and 1895 and took Formosa limited cooperation with the West collapsed under the
(modern-day Taiwan). In the next years, Japan competed blows of Japanese imperialism. The Sino-Japanese War of
aggressively with the leading European powers for influ- 1894 to 1895 and the subsequent harsh peace treaty re-
ence and territory in China, particularly Manchuria. There vealed China’s helplessness in the face of aggression, trig-
Japanese and Russian imperialism met and collided. In gering a rush for foreign concessions and protectorates in
1904 Japan attacked Russia without warning, and after a China. At the high point of this rush in 1898, it appeared
bloody war, Japan emerged with a valuable foothold in that the European powers might actually divide China
China, Russia’s former protectorate over Port Arthur (see among themselves, as they had recently divided Africa.
Map 26.3). By 1910, with the annexation of Korea, Japan Probably only the jealousy each nation felt toward its im-
had become a major imperialist power. perialist competitors saved China from partition, although
Japan became the first non-Western country to use an the U.S. Open Door policy, which opposed formal annex-
ancient love of country to transform itself and thereby ation of Chinese territory, may have helped tip the balance.
meet the many-sided challenge of Western expansion.
Apago PDF Enhancer In any event, the tempo of foreign encroachment greatly
Moreover, Japan demonstrated convincingly that a mod- accelerated after 1894.
ern Asian nation could defeat and humble a great West- So, too, did the intensity and radicalism of the Chinese
ern power. Many Chinese nationalists were fascinated by reaction. Like the leaders of the Meiji Restoration, some
Japan’s achievement. A group of patriots in French-ruled modernizers saw salvation in Western institutions. In 1898
southern Vietnam sent Vietnamese students to Japan to the government launched a desperate hundred days of
learn the island empire’s secret of success. Japan provided reform in an attempt to meet the foreign challenge. More
patriots throughout Asia and Africa with an inspiring ex- radical reformers, such as the revolutionary Sun Yat-sen
ample of national recovery and liberation. (1866–1925), who came from the peasantry and was edu-
cated in Hawaii by Christian missionaries, sought to over-
throw the dynasty altogether and establish a republic.
Toward Revolution in China On the other side, some traditionalists turned back
In 1860 the two-hundred-year-old Qing Dynasty in China toward ancient practices, political conservatism, and fanat-
appeared on the verge of collapse. Efforts to repel foreign- ical hatred of the “foreign devils.” “Protect the country,
ers had failed, and rebellion and chaos wracked the coun- destroy the foreigner” was their simple motto. Such con-
try. Yet the government drew on its traditional strengths servative, antiforeign patriots had often clashed with for-
and made a surprising comeback that lasted more than eign missionaries, whom they charged with undermining
thirty years. reverence for ancestors and thereby threatening the Chi-
Two factors were crucial in this reversal. First, the tra- nese family and the entire society. In the agony of defeat
ditional ruling groups temporarily produced new and ef- and unwanted reforms, secret societies such as the Boxers
fective leadership. Loyal scholar-statesmen and generals rebelled. In northeastern China, more than two hundred
quelled disturbances such as the great Tai Ping rebellion. foreign missionaries and several thousand Chinese Chris-
The empress dowager Tzu Hsi, a truly remarkable woman, tians were killed. Once again the imperialist response was
governed in the name of her young son and combined swift and harsh. Peking was occupied and plundered by
shrewd insight with vigorous action to revitalize the foreign armies. A heavy indemnity was imposed.
bureaucracy. The years after the Boxer Rebellion (1900–1903) were
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The Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi (1835–1908) Tzu Hsi drew on conservative forces, like
the court eunuchs surrounding her here, to maintain her power. Three years after her death
in 1908, a revolution broke out and forced the last Chinese emperor, a boy of six, to abdi-
cate. (Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives, Smithsonian Institution. Photogra-
pher: Hsun-ling. Negative no. 261)
ever more troubled. Anarchy and foreign influence spread sands of years of emperors and empires, a loose coalition
as the power and prestige of the Qing Dynasty declined of revolutionaries proclaimed a Western-style republic
still further. Antiforeign, antigovernment revolutionary and called for an elected parliament. The transformation
groups agitated and plotted. Finally in 1912, a sponta- of China under the impact of expanding Western society
neous uprising toppled the Qing Dynasty. After thou- entered a new phase, and the end was not in sight.
• What were some of the global consequences of Key Terms

European industrialization between 1815 and 1914?
Third World Afrikaners
• How was massive migration an integral part of
Western expansion? opium trade Berlin conference
khedive white man’s burden
• How and why after 1875 did European nations rush great migration Great Rebellion
to build political empires in Africa and Asia?
swallows shogun
• What was the general pattern of non-Western great white walls samurai
responses to Western expansion, and how did India, new imperialism hundred days of reform
Japan, and China meet the imperialist challenge?

In the nineteenth century, the industrializing West en-
tered the third and most dynamic phase of its centuries-
old expansion into non-Western lands. In so doing,
Western nations promoted a prodigious growth of world Suggested Reading
trade, forced reluctant countries such as China and Japan Aldrich, Robert. Greater France: A History of French
into the globalizing economy, and profitably subordi-
Apago PDF Enhancer
nated many lands to their economic interests. Western
Overseas Expansion. 1996. A well-balanced study.
nations also sent forth millions of emigrants to the sparsely Bagchi, Amiya Kumar. Perilous Passage: Mankind and the
populated areas of European settlement, which generally Ascendancy of Capital. 2005. A spirited radical critique
limited migration from Asia. of the “rise of the West.”
After 1875, Western countries grabbed vast political Conklin, Alice. A Mission to Civilize: The French Republi-
empires in Africa and rushed to establish political influ- can Ideal and West Africa, 1895–1930. 1997. An out-
ence in Asia. The reasons for this culminating surge were standing examination of French imperialism.
many, but the economic thrust of robust industrial capital- Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. A novel that unfor-
ism, an ever-growing lead in technology, and the compet- gettably probes European imperial motives.
itive pressures of European nationalism were particularly
important. Cook, Scott B. Colonial Encounters in the Age of High Im-
Western expansion had far-reaching consequences. For perialism. 1996. A stimulating overview with a very
the first time in human history, the world became in many readable account of the explorer Stanley and central
ways a single unit. Moreover, European expansion diffused Africa.
the ideas and techniques of a highly developed civilization. Crews, Robert. For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in
Yet the West relied on force to conquer and rule, and it Russia and Central Asia. 2006. Considers neglected as-
treated non-Western peoples as racial inferiors. Thus non- pects of Russian imperialism.
Western elites, often armed with Western doctrines, grad- Curtin, P., et al. African History: From Earliest Times to In-
ually responded to the Western challenge. As the histories dependence, 2d ed. 1995. An excellent brief introduc-
of India, Japan, and China show, non-Western elites tion to Africa in the age of imperialism.
launched a national, anti-imperialist struggle for dignity,
genuine independence, and modernization. This struggle Ebrey, Patricia Buckley. The Cambridge Illustrated History
would emerge as a central drama of world history after the of China. 1999. A lively and beautiful work by a leading
great European civil war of 1914 to 1918, which reduced specialist.
the West’s technological advantage and shattered its self- Fage, J. D. A History of Africa, 3d ed. 1995. A highly rec-
confidence and complacent moral superiority. ommended account.
Goodlad, Graham. British Foreign and Imperial Policy, Notes

1865–1919. 2000. A lively examination of Britain’s lead-
1. Quoted in J. W. Hall, Japan, from Prehistory to Modern Times (New
ing position in European imperialism. York: Delacorte Press, 1970), p. 250.
Hochshild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, 2. Quoted in Earl of Cromer, Modern Egypt (London, 1911), p. 48.
3. Quoted in T. Blegen, Norwegian Migration to America, vol. 2
Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, 1895–1930. 1997.
(Northfield, Minn.: Norwegian-American Historical Association,
A chilling account of Belgian imperialism in the Congo. 1940), p. 468.
Maier, Charles S. Among Empires: American Ascendancy 4. Quoted in W. L. Langer, European Alliances and Alignments,
1871–1890 (New York: Vintage Books, 1931), p. 290.
and Its Predecessors. 2006. Examines imperial power in
5. Quoted in J. Ellis, The Social History of the Machine Gun (New
history and how well America measures up. York: Pantheon Books, 1975), pp. 86, 101.
Marshall, P. J., ed. Cambridge Illustrated History of the 6. Quoted in G. H. Nadel and P. Curtis, eds., Imperialism and Colo-
nialism (New York: Macmillan, 1964), p. 94.
British Empire. 1996. A stunning pictorial history.
7. Quoted in W. L. Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 2d ed.
Midgley, Clare, ed. Gender and Imperialism. 1998. Exam- (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951), pp. 86, 88.
ines the complex questions related to European women 8. Rudyard Kipling, The Five Nations (London, 1903).
9. E. H. Berman, “African Responses to Christian Mission Educa-
and imperialism.
tion,” African Studies Review 17 (1974): 530.
Rotberg, Robert I. The Founder: Cecil Rhodes and the 10. Quoted in Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism, p. 88.
Pursuit of Power. 1988. Examines the imperialist’s mind 11. Quoted in Ellis, The Social History of the Machine Gun, pp. 99–100.
12. Quoted in K. M. Panikkar, Asia and Western Dominance: A Survey
and times with great acuity.
of the Vasco da Gama Epoch of Asian History (London: George
Said, Edward. Orientalism. 1978. An exceedingly influen- Allen & Unwin, 1959), p. 116.
tial cultural study of imperialism and non-Europeans. 13. A. Burton, “The White Women’s Burden: British Feminists and
‘The Indian Women,’ 1865–1915,” in Western Women and Imperi-
alism: Complicity and Resistance, ed. N. Chauduri and M. Strobel
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), pp. 137–157.
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A British Woman in India
G uides for housekeeping became popular in

Europe in the nineteenth century as middle-class
faced as a necessary condition of life, until a few
generations of training shall have started the
women funneled great energy into their homes. A Indian servant on a new inheritance of habit. It
British woman in India probably consulted The must never be forgotten that at present those
Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook by Flora mistresses who aim at anything beyond keeping a
Annie Steel and Grace Gardiner, a bestseller good table are in the minority, and that
published in 1888 and frequently updated. pioneering is always arduous work.
Steel (1847–1929) moved to India in 1867 with her The first duty of a mistress is, of course, to be
husband, a civil engineer, and lived there until the able to give intelligible orders to her servants;
family returned to England in 1889. Accustomed to therefore it is necessary she should learn to speak
directing a large household with several Indian Hindustani. No sane Englishwomen would dream
servants, Steel believed herself well qualified to offer of living, say, for twenty years, in Germany, Italy,
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advice “to English girls to whom fate may assign the or France, without making the attempt, at any
task of being house-mothers in our Eastern empire.” rate, to learn the language. . . .
The following passage focuses on how the British The next duty is obviously to insist on her
mistress should manage her Indian servants, and orders being carried out. And here we come to
along with practical suggestions it lays bare some the burning question: “How is this to be done?”
basic attitudes and assumptions of Europeans in Certainly, there is at present very little to which
colonial settings. Steel subsequently wrote books on we can appeal in the average Indian servant, but
India, education, and women’s issues. then, until it is implanted by training, there is very
little sense of duty in a child; yet in some well-
Housekeeping in India, when once the first regulated nurseries obedience is a foregone
strangeness has worn off, is a far easier task in many conclusion. The secret lies in making rules, and
ways than it is in England, though it none the less keeping to them. The Indian servant is a child in
requires time, and, in this present transitional everything save age, and should be treated as a
period, an almost phenomenal patience. . . . child; that is to say, kindly, but with the greatest
And, first it must be distinctly understood that it firmness. The laws of the household should be
is not necessary, or in the least degree desirable, that those of the Medes and Persians, and first faults
an educated woman should waste the best years of should never go unpunished. By overlooking a
her life in scolding and petty supervision. Life holds first offence, we lose the only opportunity we have
higher duties, and it is indubitable that friction and of preventing it becoming a habit.
over-zeal is a sure sign of a bad housekeeper. . . . But it will be asked, How are we to punish our
Easy, however, as the actual housekeeping is in servants when we have no hold either on their
India, the personal attention of the mistress is minds or bodies? . . .
quite as much needed here as at home. The In their own experience the authors have found a
Indian servant, it is true, learns more readily, and system of rewards and punishments perfectly easy
is guiltless of the sniffiness with which Mary Jane of attainment. One of them has for years adopted
[the servant in England] receives suggestions, but the plan of engaging her servants at so much a
a few days of absence or neglect on the part of the month—the lowest rate at which such servant is
mistress, results in the servants falling into their obtainable—and so much extra as buksheesh [a
old habits with the inherited conservatism of dirt. bonus], conditional on good service. For instance,
This is, of course, disheartening, but it has to be a khitmutgâr [male table servant] is engaged
876
permanently on Rs. 9 a month, but the additional
rupee which makes the wage up to that usually
demanded by good servants is a fluctuating
assessment! . . . That plan has never been objected
to, and . . . the household quite enters into the
spirit of the idea, infinitely preferring it to volcanic
eruptions of fault-finding. . . .
In regard to actual housekeeping, the authors
emphatically deny the common assertion that it
must necessarily run on different lines to what it
does in England. Economy, prudence, efficiency
are the same all over the world, and because
butcher meat is cheap, that is no excuse for its
being wasted. Some modification, of course, there
must be, but as little as possible. . . .
A good mistress in India will try to set a good
example to her servants in routine, method, and
tidiness. Half-an-hour after breakfast should be
sufficient for the whole arrangements for the day;
but that half-hour should be given as punctually
as possible. An untidy mistress invariably has
untidy, a weak one, idle servants. It should never
be forgotten that—though it is true in both An English lady attended by her Indian servants.
hemispheres that if you want a thing done you (Stapleton Collection, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library)
should do it yourself—still, having to do it is a
distinct confession of failure in your original being built up day by day, sickly or healthy, accor-
intention. Anxious housewifes are too apt to ding to the food given them; and bear in mind the
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accept defeat in this way; the result being that the fact that, in India especially, half the comfort of life
lives of educated women are wasted in doing the depends on clean, wholesome, digestible food. . . .
work of lazy servants. We do not wish to advocate an unholy
The authors’ advice is therefore— haughtiness; but an Indian household can no
“Never do work which an ordinarily good servant more be governed peacefully, without dignity and
ought to be able to do. If the one you have will not or prestige, than an Indian Empire. For instance, if
cannot do it, get another who can.” . . . the mistress wishes to teach the cook a new dish,
Having thus gone generally into the duties of let her give the order for everything, down to
the mistress, we may detail what in our opinion charcoal, to be ready at a given time, and the cook
should be the daily routine. in attendance; and let her do nothing herself that
The great object is to secure three things— the servants can do, if only for this reason, that
smooth working, quick ordering, and subsequent the only way of teaching is to see things done, not
peace and leisure to the mistress. It is as well, to let others see you do them.
therefore, with a view to the preservation of
temper, to eat your breakfast in peace before
venturing into the pantry and cookroom; it is
besides a mistake to be constantly on the worry. Questions for Analysis
Inspection parade should begin, then, immedi-
ately after breakfast, or as near ten o’clock as 1. What challenges does the British housekeeper
circumstances will allow. The cook should be face in India? How, according to Steel, should
waiting—in clean raiment—with a pile of plates, she meet them?
and his viands for the day spread out on a table. 2. In what ways do Steel’s comments and
With everything en evidence, it will not take five housekeeping policies reflect the attitudes of
minutes to decide on what is best, while a very European imperialism?
constant occurrence at Indian tables—the serving
up of stale, sour, and unwholesome food—will be Source: F. A. Steel and G. Gardiner, The Complete Indian
avoided. It is perhaps not pleasant to go into such Housekeeper and Cook (London: William Heinemann,
details, but a good mistress will remember the 1902), chap. 1. Reprinted in L. DiCaprio and M. Wiesner,
breadwinner who requires blood-forming nourish- eds., Lives and Voices: Sources in European Women’s History
ment, and the children whose constitutions are (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), pp. 323–328.
877
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French soldiers in the trenches man a machine gun, the weapon that killed so many, in this chilling work
by Christopher Nevinson. (© Tate, London 2007/Art Resource, NY)
c h a p t e r
27
The Great Break:
War and
Revolution,
1914–1919
chapter preview
The First World War

• What caused the Great War, and why
did it have such revolutionary
consequences?
The Home Front
I n the summer of 1914, the nations of Europe went willingly to war.
They believed they had no other choice. Moreover, both peoples and
governments confidently expected a short war leading to a decisive vic-
• What was the impact of total war on tory. Such a war, they believed, would “clear the air,” and European so-
civilian populations? ciety would be able to go on as before.
These expectations were almost totally mistaken. The First World War
The Russian Revolution was long, indecisive, and tremendously destructive. To the shell-shocked
• Why did World War I bring socialist generation of survivors, it was known simply as the Great War: the war of
revolution in Russia? unprecedented scope and intensity. From today’s perspective, it is clear
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that the First World War marked a great break in the course of Western
historical development since the French and Industrial Revolutions. A
• How did the Allies fashion a peace noted British political scientist has gone so far as to say that even in vic-
settlement, and why was it
torious and relatively fortunate Great Britain, the First World War was the
unsuccessful? great turning point in government and society, “as in everything else in
modern British history. . . . There’s a much greater difference between
the Britain of 1914 and, say, 1920, than between the Britain of 1920 and
today.”1 This strong statement contains a great amount of truth, for all
of Europe as well as for Britain. World War I was a revolutionary conflict
of gigantic proportions.
The First World War

The First World War was extremely long and destructive because it in-
volved all the Great Powers and because it quickly degenerated into a
senseless military stalemate. Like evenly matched boxers in a championship
bout, the two sides tried to wear each other down. But there was no ref-
eree to call a draw, only the blind hammering of a life-or-death struggle.
• What caused the Great War, and why did it have such revolutionary
consequences?
879
880 CHAPTER 27 • T H E G R E AT B R E A K : W A R A N D R E V O L U T I O N , 1 9 1 4 – 1 9 1 9
Yet, as Bismarck never tired of repeating after 1871, Ger-

The Bismarckian System of Alliances many was a “satisfied” power. Within Europe, Germany
The Franco-Prussian War and the founding of the German had no territorial ambitions and wanted only peace.
Empire opened a new era in international relations. France But how was peace to be preserved? Bismarck’s first
was decisively defeated in 1871 and forced to pay a large concern was to keep an embittered France diplomatically
war indemnity and give up Alsace-Lorraine. In ten short isolated and without military allies. His second concern
years, from 1862 to 1871, Bismarck had made Prussia- was the threat to peace posed from the east, from Austria-
Germany—traditionally the weakest of the Great Powers— Hungary and from Russia. Those two enormous multi-
the most powerful nation in Europe (see pages 821–825). national empires had many conflicting interests, particularly
FIGURE 27.1 The Alliance

System After 1871 Bismarck’s
subtle diplomacy maintained rea-
sonably good relations among the
Three Emperors’ League, 1873 eastern monarchies—Germany,
Russia, and Austria-Hungary—and
kept France isolated. The situation
changed dramatically in 1891,
Austrian-German Alliance, 1879–1918 when the Russian-French Alliance
divided the Great Powers into two
fairly equal military blocs.
Alliance of the Three Emperors, 1881–1887
Apago PDF Enhancer

Triple Alliance, 1882–1915
Russian-German Reinsurance Treaty, 1887–1890
Russian-French Alliance, 1894–1917
Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1902–1915

Germany
Austria-Hungary
Anglo-French Entente, 1904
Russia
Italy
Anglo-Russian
France Agreement, 1907
England
Japan
Triple Entente,
1914–1918
1880 1890 1900 1910 1918

1871 1914
End of Franco-Prussian War Beginning of
World War I
The First World War • 881
in southeastern Europe, where the strength of the Ot- Chronology

toman Empire was ebbing fast. There was a real threat
that Germany might be dragged into a great war between 1912 First Balkan War
the two rival empires. Bismarck’s solution was a system of
alliances (see Figure 27.1) to restrain both Russia and 1914 Assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand
Austria-Hungary, to prevent conflict between them, and 1914 –1918 World War I
to isolate a hostile France, which could never forget the
loss of Alsace-Lorraine. 1915 Italy and Bulgaria enter World War I; Ministry
A first step was the creation in 1873 of the conser- of Munitions established in Britain
vative Three Emperors’ League, which linked the mon- 1916 German males between seventeen and sixty
archs of Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Russia in an required to work only for war effort; Rasputin murdered
alliance against radical movements. In 1877 and 1878,
1916–1918 Growth of antiwar movement throughout
when Russia’s victories in a war with the Ottoman Em-
Europe
pire threatened the balance of Austrian and Russian in-
terests in the Balkans and the balance of British and 1917 Russian Revolution
Russian interests in the entire Middle East, Bismarck
1919 Treaty of Versailles
played the role of sincere peacemaker. But his balancing
efforts at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 infuriated Rus-
sian nationalists, and this led Bismarck to conclude a de-
fensive military alliance with Austria against Russia in isolated republican France to court absolutist Russia, of-
1879. This alliance lasted until 1918 and the end of fering loans, arms, and friendship. In both countries, there
World War I. Motivated by tensions with France, Italy were enthusiastic public demonstrations of friendship in
joined Germany and Austria in 1882, thereby forming 1891, and in early 1894 France and Russia became mili-
what became known as the Triple Alliance. tary allies. This alliance (see Figure 27.1) was to remain in
Bismarck continued to work for peace in eastern Europe,
Apago PDF Enhancer effect as long as the Triple Alliance of Austria, Germany,
seeking to neutralize tensions between Austria-Hungary and Italy existed. As a result, continental Europe was dan-
and Russia. In 1881 he capitalized on their mutual fears gerously divided into two rival blocs.
and cajoled them both into a secret alliance with Germany.
Improve Your Grade
This Alliance of the Three Emperors lasted until 1887.
Primary Source: Bismarck’s Worst Nightmare:
Bismarck also maintained good relations with Britain A Franco-Russian Rapprochement
and Italy, while encouraging France in Africa but keeping
France isolated in Europe. In 1887 Russia declined to re- Great Britain’s foreign policy became increasingly crucial.
new the Alliance of the Three Emperors because of new Long content with “splendid isolation” and no permanent
tensions in the Balkans. Bismarck craftily substituted the alliances, Britain after 1891 was the only uncommitted
Russian-German Reinsurance Treaty, by which both states Great Power. Could Britain afford to remain isolated, or
promised neutrality if the other was attacked. would it feel compelled to take sides? Many Germans
Bismarck’s accomplishments in foreign policy after 1871 and some Britons felt that a “natural alliance” united the
were great. For almost a generation, he maintained Ger- advanced, racially related Germanic and Anglo-Saxon
man leadership in international affairs, and he worked peoples. However, the generally good relations that had
successfully for peace by managing conflicts and by prevailed between Prussia and Great Britain ever since
restraining Austria-Hungary and Russia with defensive the mid-eighteenth century gave way to a bitter Anglo-
alliances. German rivalry.
There were several reasons for this tragic development.
Commercial rivalry in world markets between Germany
The Rival Blocs and Great Britain increased sharply in the 1890s, and Ger-
In 1890 the young, impetuous Emperor William II dis- many’s pursuit of world power unsettled the British.
missed Bismarck, in part because of the chancellor’s Above all, Germany’s decision in 1900 to expand greatly
friendly policy toward Russia since the 1870s. William its battle fleet posed a challenge to Britain’s long-standing
then adamantly refused to renew the Russian-German naval supremacy. This decision coincided with the hard-
Reinsurance Treaty, in spite of Russian willingness to do fought South African War (1899–1902) between the
so. This fateful departure in foreign affairs prompted long- British and the tiny Dutch republics of southern Africa,
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German Warships Under Full Steam As these impressive ships engaged in battle exercises
in 1907 suggest, Germany did succeed in building a large modern navy. But Britain was
equally determined to maintain its naval superiority, and the spiraling arms race helped
poison relations between the two countries. (Archives Charmet/Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs/
Archives Charmet/The Bridgeman Art Library)
which brought into the open widespread anti-British feel- Germany’s leaders decided to test the strength of the en-
ing, as editorial writers in many nations denounced this tente. They foolishly rattled their swords by insisting in
latest manifestation of British imperialism. Thus British 1905 on an international conference on the whole Moroc-
leaders prudently set about shoring up their exposed po- can question. But Germany’s crude bullying forced France
sition with alliances and agreements. and Britain closer together, and the conference left
Britain improved its often-strained relations with the Germany empty-handed and isolated (except for Austria-
United States and in 1902 concluded a formal alliance Hungary).
with Japan (see Figure 27.1). Britain then responded fa- The result of the Moroccan crisis was something of a
vorably to the advances of France’s skillful foreign minister, diplomatic revolution. Britain, France, Russia, and even
Théophile Delcassé, who wanted better relations with the United States began to see Germany as a potential
Britain and was willing to accept British rule in Egypt in threat, a would-be intimidator that might seek to domi-
return for British support of French plans to dominate nate all Europe. At the same time, German leaders began
Morocco. The resulting Anglo-French Entente of 1904 to see sinister plots to “encircle” Germany and block its
settled all outstanding colonial disputes between Britain development as a world power. In 1907 Russia, battered
and France. by its disastrous war with Japan and the revolution of
Frustrated by Britain’s turn toward France in 1904, 1905, agreed to settle its quarrels with Great Britain in
Persia and Central Asia with the Anglo-Russian Agree- Russia’s weakness after the revolution of 1905, Austria in
ment (see Figure 27.1). 1908 formally annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, with
Germany’s decision to add a large, enormously expen- their large Serbian, Croatian, and Muslim populations.
sive fleet of big-gun battleships to its already expanding The kingdom of Serbia erupted in rage but could do
navy also heightened tensions after 1907. German na- nothing without Russian support.
tionalists, led by the extremely persuasive Admiral Alfred Then, in 1912, in the First Balkan War, Serbia joined
von Tirpitz, saw a large navy as the legitimate mark of a Greece and Bulgaria to attack the Ottoman Empire and
great world power and as a source of pride and patriotic then quarreled with Bulgaria over the spoils of victory—
unity. But British leaders such as David Lloyd George a dispute that led in 1913 to the Second Balkan War.
saw it as a detestable military challenge, which forced Austria intervened in 1913 and forced Serbia to give up
them to spend the “People’s Budget” (see page 835) on Albania. After centuries, nationalism had finally destroyed
battleships rather than social welfare. Unscrupulous jour- the Ottoman Empire in Europe (see Map 27.2). This
nalists and special-interest groups in both countries also sudden but long-awaited event elated the Balkan nation-
portrayed healthy competition in foreign trade and in- alists and dismayed the leaders of multinational Austria-
vestment as a form of economic warfare. In 1909 the Hungary. The former hoped and the latter feared that
mass-circulation London Daily Mail hysterically informed Austria might be next to be broken apart.
its readers in a series of reports that “Germany is deliber- Within this tense context, Archduke Francis Ferdinand,
ately preparing to destroy the British Empire.”2 By then heir to the Austrian and Hungarian thrones, and his wife,
Britain was psychologically, if not officially, in the Franco- Sophie, were assassinated by Serbian revolutionaries liv-
Russian camp. The leading nations of Europe were di- ing in Bosnia on June 28, 1914, during a state visit to the
vided into two hostile blocs, both ill-prepared to deal with Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. After some hesitation, the
upheaval on Europe’s southeastern frontier. leaders of Austria-Hungary concluded that Serbia was
implicated and had to be severely punished once and for
all. On July 23 Austria-Hungary finally presented Serbia
The Outbreak of War with an unconditional ultimatum. The Serbian govern-
Apago PDF Enhancer
In the early years of the twentieth century, war in the Bal- ment had forty-eight hours in which to agree to demands
kans was as inevitable as anything can be in human history. that would amount to ceding control of the Serbian
The reason was simple: nationalism was destroying the Ot- state. When Serbia replied moderately but evasively,
toman Empire in Europe and threatening to break up the Austria began to mobilize and then declared war on Ser-
Austro-Hungarian Empire. The only questions were what bia on July 28. Thus a desperate multinational Austria-
kinds of wars would occur and where they would lead. Hungary deliberately chose war in a last-ditch attempt to
Greece had long before led the struggle for national stem the rising tide of hostile nationalism within its
liberation, winning its independence in 1832. In 1875 borders and save the existing state. The “Third Balkan
widespread nationalist rebellion in the European provinces War” had begun.
of the sprawling Ottoman Empire had resulted in Turkish Of prime importance in Austria-Hungary’s fateful deci-
repression, Russian intervention, and Great Power tension was Germany’s unconditional support. Emperor
sions. Bismarck had helped resolve this crisis at the 1878 William II and his chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-
Congress of Berlin, which worked out the partial division Hollweg, realized that war between Austria and Russia was
of Turkish possessions in Europe. Austria-Hungary ob- the most probable result, for a resurgent Russia could
tained the right to “occupy and administer” Bosnia and not stand by, as in the Bosnian crisis, and simply watch
Herzegovina. Serbia and Romania won independence, the Serbs be crushed. Yet Bethmann-Hollweg apparently
and a part of Bulgaria won local autonomy. The Ottoman hoped that while Russia (and therefore France) would go
Empire retained important Balkan holdings, for Austria- to war, Great Britain would remain neutral, unwilling to
Hungary and Russia each feared the other’s domination fight for “Russian aggression” in the distant Balkans.
of totally independent states in the area (see Map 27.1). In fact, the diplomatic situation was already out of
By 1903, however, nationalism in southeastern Eu- control. Military plans and timetables began to dictate pol-
rope was on the rise once again. Serbia led the way, be- icy. Russia, a vast country, would require much longer to
coming openly hostile toward both Austria-Hungary and mobilize its armies than Germany and Austria-Hungary.
the Ottoman Empire. The Serbs, a Slavic people, looked All the complicated mobilization plans of the Russian
to Slavic Russia for support of their national aspirations. general staff had assumed a war with both Austria and
To block Serbian expansion and to take advantage of Germany: Russia could not mobilize against one without
0 100 200 Km. 0 100 200 Km.
0 100 200 Mi. RUSSIA 0 100 200 Mi. RUSSIA
Dn
ies Vienna
ter
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
Pr
Pr
Budapest
ut
ut
h
h
HUNGARIANS
HUNGARIANS
BESSARABIA
TRANSYLVANIA
S av
a
ROMANIA DOBRUJA ROMANIA
BOSNIA (Independent) (To Romania) BOSNIA Bucharest
HERZEGOVINA
Belgrade
SERBIA HE Sarajevo
D anube
(Independent) RZ
EG Black
BULGARIA Black OV
IN Sea
(Autonomous) Sea A
SERBIA BULGARIA
EAST ROUMELIA Sofia
(To Bulgaria, 1885)
MONTENEGRO O
T MONTENEGRO MACEDONIANS
T ROUMELIA
ALBANIA O ALBANIA Constantinople
M
MACEDONIA A
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PI
R OTTOMAN
E
EMPIRE
GREECE GREECE
Ottoman Empire before 1878

Ottoman Empire after 1878
Apago PDF Enhancer Ottoman Empire
Occupied by Austria-Hungary Mediterranean Predominately Serbians and Croats Mediterranean
Independent or autonomous Sea Predominately Romanians
Sea
MAP 27.1 The Balkans After the Congress of MAP 27.2 The Balkans in 1914 Ethnic boundaries
Berlin, 1878 The Ottoman Empire suffered large did not follow political boundaries, and Serbian national
territorial losses but remained a power in the Balkans. aspirations threatened Austria-Hungary.
mobilizing against the other. Therefore, on July 29 Tsar Improve Your Grade
Nicholas II ordered full mobilization and in effect de- Primary Source: The British Rationale for Entering
clared general war. World War I
The German general staff had also thought only in
terms of a two-front war. The staff ’s plan for war called
for knocking out France first with a lightning attack
Reflections on the Origins of the War
through neutral Belgium before turning on Russia. So In reflecting on the origins of the First World War, it seems
German armies attacked Belgium, whose neutrality had clear that Austria-Hungary deliberately started the Third
been solemnly guaranteed in 1839 by all the great states Balkan War. A war for the right to survive was Austria-
including Prussia. Thus Germany’s terrible, politically Hungary’s desperate, though understandable, response to
disastrous response to a war in the Balkans was an all-out the aggressive, yet understandable, revolutionary drive of
invasion of France by way of the plains of neutral Bel- Serbian nationalists to unify their people in a single state.
gium on August 3. In the face of this act of aggression, Moreover, in spite of Russian intervention in the quarrel, it
Great Britain joined France and declared war on Ger- is clear that from the beginning of the crisis, Germany not
many the following day. The First World War had begun. only pushed and goaded Austria-Hungary but also was re-
Apago PDF Enhancer
Nationalist Opposition in the Balkans This band of well-armed and determined guerril-
las from northern Albania was typical of groups fighting against Ottoman rule in the Balkans.
Balkan nationalists succeeded in driving the Ottoman Turks out of most of Europe, but their
victory increased tensions with Austria-Hungary and among the Great Powers. (Roger-
Viollet/Getty Images)
sponsible for turning a little war into the Great War by tic conflicts and social tensions lay at the root of German
means of a sledgehammer attack on Belgium and France. aggression. Determined to hold on to power and fright-
Why Germany was so aggressive in 1914 is less certain. ened by the rising socialist movement, the German ruling
Diplomatic historians stress that German leaders lost class was willing to gamble on diplomatic victory and even
control of the international system after Bismarck’s resig- on war as the means of rallying the masses to its side and
nation in 1890. They felt increasingly that Germany’s sta- preserving its privileged position. Historians have also dis-
tus as a world power was declining, while that of Britain, cerned similar, if less clear-cut, behavior in Great Britain,
France, Russia, and the United States was growing. In- where leaders faced civil war in northern Ireland, and in
deed, the powers of what officially became in August 1914 Russia, where the revolution of 1905 had brought tsar-
the Triple Entente—Great Britain, France, and Russia— dom to its knees.
were checking Germany’s vague but real aspirations as well This debate over social tensions and domestic political
as working to strangle Austria-Hungary, Germany’s only factors correctly suggests that the triumph of nationalism
real ally. Germany’s aggression in 1914 reflected the failure was a crucial underlying precondition of the Great War.
of all European leaders, not just those in Germany, to incor- Nationalism was at the heart of the Balkan wars, in the
porate Bismarck’s mighty empire permanently and peace- form of Serbian aspirations and the grandiose pan-German
fully into the international system. versus pan-Slavic racism of some fanatics. Nationalism also
A more controversial interpretation argues that domes- drove the spiraling arms race. Broad popular commitment
886
Triple Entente and its Allies
FINLAND
Central Powers
Neutral nations Petrograd
Helsinki (St. Petersburg)
Farthest German-Austrian advance NORWAY SWEDEN
Battle lines ESTONIA
Major battles kade line

British bloc LATVIA Moscow
Sea
CO
Riga
ltic
U
RL
AN
D
Ba
Jutland LITHUANIA
1916 DENMARK
N o rt h Farthest Russian
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk,
March 1918
IRELAND S ea Advance, 1914
Masurian Lakes
Kiel E. PRUSSIA1914 R U SSIA
Elb Tannenberg
e
AT L ANTI C GREAT 1914
BRITAIN Berlin
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Warsaw
Vi sM
Brest-Litovsk
OC EA N NETHERLANDS GERMANY tul
a
Kiev
London
A Y 19
Od POLAND Dnieper
Louvain er Armistice line,
Rh i
15
Western
BELGIUM December, 1917
Front
ne
0 150 300 Km. GALICIA
Se
UKRAINE
ine
0 150 300 Mi. LUXEMBOURG
FRANCE Paris
Vienna
0 25 50 Km.
NETHERLANDS Loire uhr
R AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
0 25 50 Mi. G. 1917
AU TRANSYLVANIA
Rh
Ostend Antwerp SWITZERLAND

in
Dover MA Caporetto
Cologne
e
FLANDERS 191 R. 1917

8 ROMANIA
Passchendaele Ghent ` Black Sea
nel
Brussels Bordeaux Bucharest

Danube
han
de
Calais Ypres
Rhône
el
Sc
h BELGIUM Liege Italian
Coblenz
English C
Front
use Sarajevo
Me SERBIA
ITALY BULGARIA
Arras
elle
Som ARDENNES O Constantinople

os
me Dardanelles T
M MONTENEGRO T
LUXEMBOURG Rome 1918 O
Amiens GERMANY 17– M
St. Quentin 19 1915 Gallipoli AN
Sedan ALBANIA
16 1915 EM
ne aa 19 PIRE
S
A is ARGONNE r
Compiènge FOREST
Reims Verdun LORRAINE Balkan GREECE
Se Front
ine
Châlons-
Paris sur-Marne Nancy Strasbourg
Chateau–Thierry
AL
FRANCE
M euse
Marn e
S AC
Germany, 1914 Epinal

E
German offensive, 1914 German offensive,

Farthest German advance, Summer 1918 Mulhouse
Mediterran ea n Sea
September 1914 Armistice line,
Front at beginning of 1915 November 1918 Basel
MAP 27.3 The First World War in Europe Trench warfare on the western front was concentrated
in Belgium and northern France, while the war in the east encompassed an enormous territory.
Stalemate and Slaughter

When the Germans invaded Belgium in August 1914,
they and everyone else believed that the war would be
short, for urban society rested on the food and raw ma-
terials of the world economy: “The boys will be home by
Christmas.” The Belgian army heroically defended its
homeland, however, and fell back in good order to join
a rapidly landed British army corps near the Franco-Belgian
border. Instead of quickly capturing Paris in a vast encir-
cling movement, by the end of August dead-tired Ger-
man soldiers were advancing along an enormous front in
the scorching summer heat.
On September 6 the French attacked a gap in the Ger-
man line at the Battle of the Marne. For three days,
France threw everything into the attack. At one point,
the French government desperately requisitioned all the
taxis of Paris to rush reserves to the troops at the front.
Finally, the Germans fell back. Paris and France had been
miraculously saved (see Map 27.3).
Soon, with the armies stalled, both sides began to dig
trenches to protect themselves from machine-gun fire.
By November 1914, an unbroken line of trenches ex-
tended from the Belgian ports through northern France,
Apago PDF Enhancer past the fortress of Verdun, and on to the Swiss frontier.
In the face of this unexpected stalemate, slaughter on the
western front began in earnest. The defenders on both
sides dug in behind rows of trenches, mines, and barbed
wire. For days and even weeks, ceaseless shelling by heavy
artillery supposedly “softened up” the enemy in a given
area (and also signaled the coming attack). Then young
“Never Forget!” This 1915 French poster with its passion-
ate headline dramatizes Germany’s brutal invasion of Belgium draftees and their junior officers went “over the top” of
in 1914. Neutral Belgium is personified as a traumatized the trenches in frontal attacks on the enemy’s line.
mother, assaulted and ravished by savage outlaws. The “rape The cost in lives of this trench warfare was staggering,
of Belgium” featured prominently—and effectively—in anti- the gains in territory minuscule. The massive French and
German propaganda. (Mary Evans Picture Library) British offensives during 1915 never gained more than
3 miles of blood-soaked earth from the enemy. In the Bat-
tle of the Somme in the summer of 1916, the British and
to “my country right or wrong” weakened groups that French gained an insignificant 125 square miles at the cost
thought in terms of international communities and conse- of 600,000 dead or wounded, while the Germans lost
quences. In each country, the great majority of the popula- 500,000 men. In that same year the unsuccessful German
tion enthusiastically embraced the outbreak of war in campaign against Verdun cost 700,000 lives on both sides.
August 1914. In each country, people believed that their British poet Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) wrote of the
country had been wronged, and they rallied to defend it. Somme offensive, “I am staring at a sunlit picture of Hell.”
Patriotic nationalism brought unity in the short run. The year 1917 was equally terrible. The hero of Erich
In all of this, the wealthy governing classes certainly Remarque’s great novel All Quiet on the Western Front
underestimated the risk of war to themselves in 1914. (1929) describes one attack:
They had forgotten that great wars and great social revo-
lutions very often go hand in hand. Metternich’s alliance We see men living with their skulls blown open; we see sol-
of conservative forces in support of international peace and diers run with their two feet cut off. . . . Still the little piece of
the social status quo had become only a distant memory. convulsed earth in which we lie is held. We have yielded no
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The Tragic Absurdity of Trench Warfare Soldiers charge across a scarred battlefield and
overrun an enemy trench. The dead defender on the right will fire no more. But this is only
another futile charge that will yield much blood and little land. A whole generation is being
decimated by the slaughter. (By courtesy of the Trustees of the Imperial War Museum)
more than a few hundred yards of it as a prize to the enemy. “first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it
But on every yard there lies a dead man. the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces.”
Such was war on the western front.

Trench warfare shattered an entire generation of young
The Widening War
men. Millions who could have provided political creativity On the eastern front, slaughter did not degenerate into
and leadership after the war were forever missing. More- suicidal trench warfare. With the outbreak of the war, the
over, those who lived through the slaughter were maimed, “Russian steamroller” immediately moved into eastern
shell-shocked, embittered, and profoundly disillusioned. Germany. Very badly damaged by the Germans under
The young soldiers went to war believing in the world of Generals Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff at
their leaders and elders—the pre-1914 world of order, the Battles of Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes in
progress, and patriotism. Then, in Remarque’s words, the August and September 1914, Russia never threatened
Apago PDF Enhancer

The Armenian Atrocities When in 1915 some Armenians welcomed Russian armies as
liberators after years of persecution, the Ottoman government ordered a genocidal mass
deportation of its Armenian citizens from their homeland in the empire’s eastern provinces.
This photo, taken in Kharpert in 1915 by a German businessman from his hotel window,
shows Turkish guards marching Armenian men off to a prison, where they will be tortured
to death. A million Armenians died from murder, starvation, and disease during World War I.
(Courtesy of the Armenian Library, Watertown, Mass.)
Germany again. On the Austrian front, enormous armies ritory. In October 1914 the Ottoman Empire joined with
seesawed back and forth, suffering enormous losses. Austro- Austria and Germany, by then known as the Central Pow-
Hungarian armies were repulsed twice by Serbia in bitter ers. The following September Bulgaria decided to follow
fighting. But with the help of German forces, they re- the Ottoman Empire’s lead in order to settle old scores
versed the Russian advances of 1914 and forced the Rus- with Serbia. The Balkans, with the exception of Greece,
sians to retreat deep into their own territory in the eastern came to be occupied by the Central Powers.
campaign of 1915. A staggering 2.5 million Russians were The entry of the Ottoman Turks carried the war into
killed, wounded, or taken prisoner that year. the Middle East. Heavy fighting between the Ottomans
These changing tides of victory and hopes for territorial and the Russians saw battle lines seesawing back and
gains brought neutral countries into the war (see forth and enveloping the Armenians, who lived on both
Map 27.3). Italy, a member of the Triple Alliance since 1882, sides of the border and had experienced brutal repression
had declared its neutrality in 1914 on the grounds that by the Turks in 1909 (see Map 27.5 on page 906). When
Austria had launched a war of aggression. Then in May in 1915 some Armenians welcomed Russian armies as
1915, Italy joined the Triple Entente of Great Britain, liberators, the Ottoman government ordered a genocidal
France, and Russia in return for promises of Austrian ter- mass deportation of its Armenian citizens from their
homeland. A million Armenians died from murder, star- to strangle the Central Powers. No neutral ship was per-
vation, and disease during World War I. In 1915 British mitted to sail to Germany with any cargo. In early 1915
forces tried to take the Dardanelles and Constantinople Germany retaliated with a counter-blockade using the mur-
from the Ottomans but were badly defeated. derously effective submarine, a new weapon that violated
The British were more successful at inciting the Arabs traditional niceties of fair warning under international law.
to revolt against their Turkish overlords. They bargained In May 1915 a German submarine sank the British passen-
with the foremost Arab leader, Hussein ibn-Ali ger liner Lusitania, claiming more than 1,000 lives, among
(1856–1931), who was a direct descendant of the them 139 Americans. President Woodrow Wilson protested
prophet Muhammad and the chief magistrate (sharif) of vigorously. Germany was forced to relax its submarine war-
Mecca, the holiest city in the Muslim world. Controlling fare for almost two years; the alternative was almost certain
much of the Ottoman Empire’s territory along the Red war with the United States.
Sea, an area known as the Hejaz (see Map 27.5), Hussein Early in 1917, the German military command—confident
managed in 1915 to win vague British commitments for that improved submarines could starve Britain into submis-
an independent Arab kingdom. Thus in 1916 Hussein sion before the United States could come to its rescue—
revolted against the Turks, proclaiming himself king of resumed unrestricted submarine warfare. Like the invasion
the Arabs. He joined forces with the British under T. E. of Belgium, this was a reckless gamble. “German subma-
Lawrence, who in 1917 led Arab tribesmen and Indian rine warfare against commerce,” President Wilson had told
soldiers in a highly successful guerrilla war against the a sympathetic Congress and people, “is a warfare against
Turks on the Arabian peninsula. mankind.” Thus the last uncommitted great nation, as
Similar victories were eventually scored in the Ot- fresh and enthusiastic as Europe had been in 1914, entered
toman province of Iraq. Britain occupied the southern the world war in April 1917, almost three years after it be-
Iraqi city of Basra in 1914 and captured Baghdad in gan. Eventually the United States was to tip the balance in
1917. In September 1918 British armies and their Arab favor of the Triple Entente and its allies.
allies rolled into Syria. This offensive culminated in the
triumphal entry of Hussein’s son Faisal into Damascus.
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Throughout Syria and Iraq there was wild Arab rejoicing. The Home Front
Many patriots expected a large, unified Arab nation-state
to rise from the dust of the Ottoman collapse. Before looking at the last year of the Great War, let us
As world war engulfed and revolutionized the Middle turn our attention to the people on the home front. They
East, it also spread to some parts of East Asia and Africa. were tremendously involved in the titanic struggle. War’s
Instead of revolting as the Germans hoped, the colonial impact on them was no less massive than on the men
subjects of the British and French generally supported their crouched in the trenches.
foreign masters, providing crucial supplies and fighting in • What was the impact of total war on civilian populations?
Europe and the Ottoman Empire. They also helped local
British and French commanders seize Germany’s colonies
around the globe. The Japanese, allied in Asia with the
British since 1902, similarly used the war to grab German
Mobilizing for Total War
outposts in the Pacific Ocean and on the Chinese main- In August 1914, most people greeted the outbreak of
land, infuriating Chinese patriots and heightening long- hostilities enthusiastically. In every country, the masses be-
standing tensions between China and Japan. More than a lieved that their nation was in the right and defending it-
million Africans and Asians served in the various armies self from aggression. With the exception of a few extreme
of the warring powers; more than double that number left-wingers, even socialists supported the war. Everywhere
served as porters to carry equipment. The French, facing a the support of the masses and working class contributed
shortage of young men, made especially heavy use of colo- to national unity and an energetic war effort.
nial troops. By mid-October generals and politicians had begun to
In April 1917 the United States declared war on Ger- realize that more than patriotism would be needed to
many, another crucial development in the expanding win the war, whose end was not in sight. Each country
conflict. American intervention grew out of the war at experienced a relentless, desperate demand for men and
sea, sympathy for the Triple Entente, and the increasing weapons. In each country, economic life and organiza-
desperation of total war. At the beginning of the war, tion had to change and change fast to keep the war ma-
Britain and France had established a total naval blockade chine from sputtering to a stop. And change they did.
The Home Front • 891
In each country, a government of national unity began to

plan and control economic and social life in order to wage
total war. Free-market capitalism was abandoned, at least
“for the duration.” Instead, government planning boards
established priorities and decided what was to be produced
and consumed. Rationing, price and wage controls, and
even restrictions on workers’ freedom of movement were
imposed by government. Only through such regimenta-
tion could a country make the greatest possible military ef-
fort. Thus, though there were national variations, the great
nations all moved toward planned economies commanded
by the established political leadership.
The economy of total war blurred the old distinction be-
tween soldiers on the battlefield and civilians at home. The
war was a war of whole peoples and entire populations.
Based on tremendously productive industrial economies not
confined to a single nation, total war yielded an effective—
and therefore destructive—war effort on all sides.
However awful the war was, the ability of governments
to manage and control highly complicated economies
strengthened the cause of socialism. With the First World
War, state socialism became for the first time a realistic
economic blueprint rather than a utopian program. Ger-
many illustrates the general trend. It also went furthest in
developing a planned economy to wage total war.
Apago PDF Enhancer
As soon as war began, Walter Rathenau, the talented,
foresighted Jewish industrialist in charge of Germany’s
largest electric company, convinced the government to
set up the War Raw Materials Board to ration and
distribute raw materials. Under Rathenau’s direction,
every useful material from foreign oil to barnyard ma-
nure was inventoried and rationed. Moreover, the board Hair for the War Effort Blockaded and cut off from over-
launched successful attempts to produce substitutes such seas supplies, Germany mobilized effectively to find substitutes
at home. This poster calls on German women—especially
as synthetic rubber and synthetic nitrates, needed to make
young women with long flowing tresses—to donate their hair,
explosives and essential to the blockaded German war ma- which was used to make rope. Children were organized by
chine. An aggressive recycling campaign, including every- their teachers into garbage brigades to collect every scrap of
thing from fruit peels to women’s hair, augmented these useful material. (akg-images)
efforts.
Food was also rationed in accordance with physical
need. Men and women doing hard manual work were decreed the ultimate mobilization for total war. Germany,
given extra rations. During the last two years of the war, said Hindenburg, could win only “if all the treasures of
only children and expectant mothers received milk ra- our soil that agriculture and industry can produce are
tions. At the same time, Germany failed to tax the war used exclusively for the conduct of War. . . . All other
profits of private firms heavily enough. This failure con- considerations must come second.”3 Thus in December
tributed to massive deficit financing, inflation, the growth 1916, military leaders rammed through the Reichstag
of a black market, and the eventual re-emergence of class the Auxiliary Service Law, which required all males be-
conflict. tween seventeen and sixty to work only at jobs consid-
Following the terrible Battles of Verdun and the Somme ered critical to the war effort.
in 1916, Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg was driven from Although women and children were not specifically
office in 1917 by military leaders Hindenburg and Lu- mentioned, this forced-labor law was also aimed at them.
dendorff, who became the real rulers of Germany. They Many women already worked in war factories, mines, and
steel mills, where they labored, like men, at the heaviest national variations. The millions of men at the front and
and most dangerous jobs. With the passage of the Auxil- the insatiable needs of the military created a tremendous
iary Service Law, many more women followed. People demand for workers. Jobs were available for everyone. This
averaged little more than one thousand calories a day. situation—seldom, if ever, seen before 1914, when un-
Thus in Germany total war led to the establishment of employment and poverty had been facts of urban life—
history’s first “totalitarian” society, and war production brought about momentous changes.
increased while some people starved to death. One such change was greater power and prestige for la-
Great Britain mobilized for total war less rapidly and bor unions. Having proved their loyalty in August 1914,
less completely than Germany, for it could import materi- labor unions cooperated with war governments on work
als from its empire and from the United States. By 1915, rules, wages, and production schedules in return for real
however, a serious shortage of shells had led to the estab- participation in important decisions. This entry of labor
lishment of the Ministry of Munitions under David Lloyd leaders and unions into policymaking councils paralleled
George. The ministry organized private industry to pro- the entry of socialist leaders into the war governments.
duce for the war, controlled profits, allocated labor, fixed The role of women changed dramatically. In every
wage rates, and settled labor disputes. By December 1916, country, large numbers of women left home and domestic
when Lloyd George became prime minister, the British service to work in industry, transportation, and offices.
economy was largely planned and regulated. Great Britain Moreover, women became highly visible—not only as mu-
had followed successfully in Germany’s footsteps. nitions workers but as bank tellers, mail carriers, even po-
lice officers. Women also served as nurses and doctors at
the front. (See the feature “Individuals in Society: Vera
The Social Impact Brittain.”) In general, the war greatly expanded the range
The social impact of total war was no less profound than of women’s activities and changed attitudes toward
the economic impact, though again there were important women. As a direct result of women’s many-sided war ef-
Apago PDF Enhancer
Waging Total War A British war plant strains to meet the insatiable demand for trench-
smashing heavy artillery shells. Quite typically, many of these defense workers are women.
(By courtesy of the Trustees of the Imperial War Museum)
Individuals
in Society
Vera Brittain
Although the Great War upended millions of lives, it more victims. A few weeks
struck Europe’s young people with the greatest force. later brother Edward—her last
For Vera Brittain (1893–1970), as for so many in her hope—died in action. When
generation, the war became life’s defining experience, the war ended, she was, she
which she captured forever in her famous autobiogra- said, a “complete automaton,”
phy, Testament of Youth (1933). with “my deepest emotions
Brittain grew up in a wealthy business family in paralyzed if not dead.”
northern England, bristling at small-town conventions Returning to Oxford and
and discrimination against women. Very close to her finishing her studies, Brittain
brother Edward, two years her junior, Brittain read gradually recovered. She
voraciously and dreamed of being a successful writer. formed a deep, restorative Vera Brittain, marked forever by
Finishing boarding school and beating down her fa- friendship with another tal- her wartime experiences.
(Vera Brittain Archive, William Ready
ther’s objections, she prepared for Oxford’s rigorous ented woman writer, Winifred
Division of Archives and Research
entry exams and won a scholarship to its women’s col- Holtby, published novels and
Collections, McMaster University
lege. Brittain also fell in love with Roland Leighton, an articles, and became a leader in Library)
equally brilliant student from a literary family and her the feminist campaign for gen-
brother’s best friend. All three, along with two more der equality. She also married
close friends, Victor Richardson and Geoffrey Thurlow, and had children. But her wartime memories were al-
confidently prepared to enter Oxford in late 1914. ways there. Finally, Brittain succeeded in coming to grips
When war suddenly approached in July 1914, Brit- with them in Testament of Youth, her powerful antiwar
tain shared with millions of Europeans a thrilling surge autobiography. The unflinching narrative spoke to the
Apago PDF Enhancer
of patriotic support for her government, a pro-war experiences of an entire generation and became a run-
enthusiasm she later played down in her published away bestseller. Above all perhaps, Brittain captured the
writings. She wrote in her diary that her “great fear” ambivalent, contradictory character of the war, when
was that England would declare its neutrality and com- millions of young people found excitement, courage, and
mit the “grossest treachery” toward France.* She sec- common purpose but succeeded only in destroying their
onded Roland’s decision to enlist, agreeing with her lives with their superhuman efforts and futile sacrifices.
sweetheart’s glamorous view of war as “very ennobling Becoming ever more committed to pacifism, Brittain
and very beautiful.” Later, exchanging anxious letters opposed England’s entry into World War II.
in 1915 with Roland in France, Vera began to see the
conflict in personal, human terms. She wondered if any Questions for Analysis
victory or defeat could be worth Roland’s life.
Struggling to quell her doubts, Brittain redoubled 1. What were Brittain’s initial feelings toward the war?
her commitment to England’s cause and volunteered as How did they change as the conflict continued?
an army nurse. For the next three years she served with Why did they change?
distinction in military hospitals in London, Malta, and 2. Why did Brittain volunteer as a nurse, as many women
northern France, repeatedly torn between the vision of did? Judging from her account, how might wartime
noble sacrifice and the reality of human tragedy. She nursing have influenced women of her generation?
lost her sexual inhibitions caring for mangled male 3. In portraying the ambivalent, contradictory
bodies, and she longed to consummate her love with character of World War I for Europe’s youth, was
Roland. Awaiting his return on leave on Christmas Day Brittain describing the contradictory character of all
in 1915, she was greeted instead with a telegram: modern warfare?
Roland had been killed two days before.
Roland’s death was the first of the devastating blows *Quoted in the excellent study by P. Berry and M. Bostridge, Vera
that eventually overwhelmed Brittain’s idealistic patrio- Brittain: A Life (London: Virago Press, 2001), p. 59; additional
tism. In 1917, first Geoffrey and then Victor died from quotes are from pp. 80 and 136. This work is highly
recommended.
gruesome wounds. In early 1918, as the last great Ger-
man offensive covered the floors of her war-zone hospital
with maimed and dying German prisoners, the bone- Improve Your Grade
weary Vera felt a common humanity and saw only Going Beyond Individuals in Society
893
fort, Britain, Germany, and Austria granted women the the rebels were crushed and their leaders executed. On
right to vote immediately after the war. Women also May 1, 1916, several thousand demonstrators in Berlin
showed a growing spirit of independence during the war, heard the radical socialist leader Karl Liebknecht (1871–
as they started to bob their hair, shorten their skirts, and 1919) shout, “Down with the government! Down with
smoke in public. the war!” Liebknecht was immediately arrested and im-
prisoned, but his daring action electrified Europe’s far
Improve Your Grade
left. Strikes and protest marches over inadequate food
Primary Source: A British Feminist Analyzes the Impact
began to flare up on every home front.
of the War on Women
Soldiers’ morale also began to decline. Italian troops mu-
War promoted greater social equality, blurring class dis- tinied. Numerous French units refused to fight after the
tinctions and lessening the gap between rich and poor. This disastrous French offensive of May 1917. Only tough mili-
blurring was most apparent in Great Britain, where wartime tary justice for leaders and a tacit agreement with the troops
hardship was never extreme. In fact, the bottom third of the that there would be no more grand offensives enabled the
population generally lived better than they ever had, for the new general in chief, Henri Philippe Pétain, to restore or-
poorest gained most from the severe shortage of labor. In der. A rising tide of war-weariness and defeatism also swept
continental countries, greater equality was reflected in full France’s civilian population before Georges Clemenceau
employment, rationing according to physical needs, and a emerged as a ruthless and effective wartime leader in No-
sharing of hardships. There, too, society became more uni- vember 1917. Clemenceau (1841–1929) established a vir-
form and more egalitarian, in spite of some war profiteering. tual dictatorship, pouncing on strikers and jailing without
Finally, death itself had no respect for traditional social trial journalists and politicians who dared to suggest a com-
distinctions. It savagely decimated the young aristocratic promise peace with Germany.
officers who led the charge, and it fell heavily on the mass The strains were worse for the Central Powers. In Octo-
of drafted peasants and unskilled workers who followed. ber 1916, the chief minister of Austria was assassinated by
Yet death often spared the aristocrats of labor, the skilled a young socialist crying, “Down with Absolutism! We
workers and foremen. Their lives were too valuable to want peace!”4 The following month, when feeble old Em-
Apago PDF Enhancer
squander at the front, for they were needed to train the peror Francis Joseph died, a symbol of unity disappeared.
newly recruited women and older unskilled men laboring In spite of absolute censorship, political dissatisfaction and
valiantly in war plants at home. conflicts among nationalities grew. In April 1917, Austria’s
chief minister summed up the situation in the gloomiest
possible terms. The country and army were exhausted.
Growing Political Tensions Another winter of war would bring revolution and disinte-
During the first two years of war, most soldiers and civilians gration. Both Czech and Yugoslav leaders demanded au-
supported their governments. Belief in a just cause, patri- tonomous democratic states for their peoples. The British
otic nationalism, the planned economy, and a sharing of blockade kept tightening; people were starving.
burdens united peoples behind their various national The strain of total war and of the Auxiliary Service Law
leaders. was also evident in Germany. In the winter of 1916 to
Each government employed rigorous censorship to con- 1917, Germany’s military position appeared increasingly
trol public opinion, and each used both crude and subtle desperate. Stalemates and losses in the west were matched
propaganda to maintain popular support. German prop- by temporary Russian advances in the east: hence the mili-
aganda hysterically pictured black soldiers from France’s tary’s insistence on an all-or-nothing gamble of unrestricted
African empire raping German women, while German submarine warfare when the Triple Entente refused in De-
atrocities in Belgium and elsewhere were ceaselessly re- cember 1916 to consider peace on terms favorable to the
counted and exaggerated by the French and British. Patri- Central Powers.
otic posters and slogans, slanted news, and biased editorials Also, the national political unity of the first two years of
inflamed national hatreds and helped sustain superhu- war was collapsing as the social conflict of prewar Germany
man efforts. re-emerged. A growing minority of moderate socialists in
By the spring of 1916, however, people were begin- the Reichstag called for a compromise “peace without an-
ning to crack under the strain of total war. In April 1916, nexations or reparations.” Such a peace was unthinkable
Irish nationalists in Dublin tried to take advantage of this for conservatives and military leaders. So also was the surge
situation and rose up against British rule in their great in revolutionary agitation and strikes by war-weary work-
Easter Rebellion. A week of bitter fighting passed before ers that occurred in early 1917. When the bread ration was
The Russian Revolution • 895
further reduced in April, more than 200,000 workers 828–829), the tsar had retained complete control over
struck and demonstrated for a week in Berlin, returning to the bureaucracy and the army. Legislation proposed by
work only under the threat of prison and military discipline. the Duma, which was weighted in favor of the wealthy
Thus militaristic Germany, like its ally Austria-Hungary and conservative classes, was subject to the tsar’s veto.
(and its enemy France), was beginning to crack in 1917. Moreover, Nicholas II fervently wished to maintain the
Yet it was Russia that collapsed first and saved the Central sacred inheritance of supreme royal power. A kindly,
Powers—for a time. slightly stupid man, Nicholas failed to form a close part-
nership with his citizens in order to fight the war more ef-
fectively. He came to rely instead on the old bureaucratic
The Russian Revolution apparatus, distrusting the moderate Duma, rejecting pop-
ular involvement, and resisting calls to share power.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 was one of modern his- As a result, the Duma, the educated middle classes,
tory’s most momentous events. Directly related to the and the masses became increasingly critical of the tsar’s
growing tensions of World War I, it had a significance far leadership. In September 1915 parties ranging from con-
beyond the wartime agonies of a single European nation. servative to moderate socialist formed the Progressive
The Russian Revolution opened a new era. For some, it bloc, which called for a completely new government re-
was Marx’s socialist vision come true; for others, it was sponsible to the Duma instead of the tsar. In answer,
the triumph of dictatorship. To all, it presented a radi- Nicholas temporarily adjourned the Duma and an-
cally new prototype of state and society. nounced that he was traveling to the front in order to
• Why did World War I bring socialist revolution in Russia? lead and rally Russia’s armies.
His departure was a fatal turning point. With the tsar
in the field with the troops, control of the government
was taken over by the hysterical empress, Tsarina Alex-
The Fall of Imperial Russia andra, and a debauched adventurer and self-proclaimed
Like its allies and its enemies, Russia embraced war with
Apago PDF Enhancer holy man, Rasputin. Nicholas’s wife was a strong-willed
patriotic enthusiasm in 1914. At the Winter Palace, while woman with a hatred of parliaments. Having constantly
throngs of people knelt and sang, “God save the tsar,” Tsar urged her husband to rule absolutely, Alexandra tried
Nicholas II (r. 1894–1917) repeated the oath Alexander I to do so herself in his absence. She seated and un-
had sworn in 1812 and vowed never to make peace as long seated the top ministers. Her most trusted adviser was
as the enemy stood on Russian soil. Russia’s lower house, “our Friend Grigori,” an uneducated Siberian preacher
the Duma, voted war credits. Conservatives anticipated who was appropriately nicknamed “Rasputin”—the
expansion in the Balkans, while liberals and most socialists “Degenerate.”
believed alliance with Britain and France would bring dem- Rasputin’s influence rested on mysterious healing pow-
ocratic reforms. For a moment, Russia was united. ers. Alexis, Alexandra’s fifth child and heir to the throne,
Unprecedented artillery barrages used up Russia’s sup- suffered from the rare blood disease hemophilia, and only
plies of shells and ammunition, and better-equipped Ger- Rasputin could miraculously stop the bleeding, perhaps
man armies inflicted terrible losses. In 1915 substantial through hypnosis.
numbers of Russian soldiers were sent to the front with- In a desperate attempt to right the situation and end
out rifles; they were told to find their arms among the unfounded rumors that Rasputin was the empress’s
dead. There were 2 million Russian casualties in 1915 lover, three members of the high aristocracy murdered
alone. Nevertheless, Russia’s battered peasant army did Rasputin in December 1916. The empress went into
not collapse but continued to fight courageously, and semipermanent shock. Food shortages in the cities wors-
Russia moved toward full mobilization on the home front. ened; morale declined. On March 8, women calling for
The Duma and organs of local government took the lead, bread in Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg) started ri-
setting up special committees to coordinate defense, in- ots, which spontaneously spread to the factories and then
dustry, transportation, and agriculture. These efforts im- elsewhere throughout the city. From the front, the tsar
proved the military situation. Yet there were many failures, ordered troops to restore order, but discipline broke
and Russia mobilized less effectively for total war than down, and the soldiers joined the revolutionary crowd.
the other warring nations. The Duma responded by declaring a provisional gov-
The great problem was leadership. Under the consti- ernment on March 12, 1917. Three days later, Nicholas
tution resulting from the revolution of 1905 (see pages abdicated.
speech, and assembly; the right of unions to organize and

strike; and the rest of the classic liberal program.
Yet both liberal and moderate socialist leaders of the pro-
visional government rejected social revolution. The reorgan-
ized government formed in May 1917 included the fiery
agrarian socialist Alexander Kerensky, who became prime
minister in July. He refused to confiscate large landhold-
ings and give them to peasants, fearing that such drastic
action in the countryside would only complete the disinte-
gration of Russia’s peasant army. For the patriotic Keren-
sky, as for other moderate socialists, the continuation of
war was still the all-important national duty. Human suf-
fering and war-weariness grew, sapping the limited strength
of the provisional government.
From its first day, the provisional government had to
share power with a formidable rival—the Petrograd Soviet
(or council) of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. Modeled
on the revolutionary soviets of 1905, the Petrograd Soviet
was a huge, fluctuating mass meeting of two thousand to
three thousand workers, soldiers, and socialist intellectuals.
Seeing itself as a true grassroots revolutionary democracy,
this counter- or half-government suspiciously watched the
provisional government and issued its own radical orders,
further weakening the provisional government. Most
Apago PDF Enhancer famous of these was Army Order No. 1, issued to all
Russian military forces as the provisional government was
forming.
Army Order No. 1 stripped officers of their authority
and placed power in the hands of elected committees of
common soldiers. Designed primarily to protect the rev-
olution from some counter-revolutionary Bonaparte on
horseback, the order instead led to a total collapse of
“The Russian Ruling House” This wartime cartoon cap-
tures the ominous, spellbinding power of Rasputin over Tsar army discipline. Many an officer was hanged for his sins.
Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra. Rasputin’s manipulations Meanwhile, following the foolhardy summer offensive,
disgusted Russian public opinion and contributed to the masses of peasant soldiers began “voting with their feet,”
monarchy’s collapse. (Stock Montage) to use Lenin’s graphic phrase. That is, they began re-
turning to their villages to help their families get a share
of the land, which peasants were simply seizing as they
The Provisional Government settled old scores in a great agrarian upheaval. All across
The March revolution was the result of an unplanned up- the country, liberty was turning into anarchy in the sum-
rising of hungry, angry people in the capital, but it was joy- mer of 1917. It was an unparalleled opportunity for the
fully accepted throughout the country. The patriotic upper most radical and most talented of Russia’s many socialist
and middle classes rejoiced at the prospect of a more de- leaders, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924).
termined and effective war effort, while workers happily
anticipated better wages and more food. All classes and po-
litical parties called for liberty and democracy. They were
Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution
not disappointed. As Vladimir Lenin said, Russia became From his youth, Lenin’s whole life had been dedicated to
the freest country in the world. After generations of arbi- the cause of revolution. Born into the middle class, Lenin
trary authoritarianism, the provisional government quickly became an implacable enemy of imperial Russia when his
established equality before the law; freedom of religion, older brother was executed for plotting to kill the tsar in
The Russian Revolution
1914 Russia enthusiastically enters the First World War.

1915 Russia suffers 2 million casualties.
Progressive bloc calls for a new government responsible to the Duma rather than to
the tsar.
Tsar Nicholas adjourns the Duma and departs for the front; Alexandra and Rasputin
exert a strong influence on the government.
December 1916 Rasputin is murdered.
March 8, 1917 Bread riots take place in Petrograd (St. Petersburg).
March 12, 1917 Duma declares a provisional government.
March 15, 1917 Tsar Nicholas abdicates without protest.
April 3, 1917 Lenin returns from exile and denounces the provisional government.
May 1917 Reorganized provisional government, including Kerensky, continues the war.
Petrograd Soviet issues Army Order No. 1, granting military power to committees of
common soldiers.
Summer 1917 Agrarian upheavals: peasants seize estates; peasant soldiers desert the army to
participate.
October 1917 Bolsheviks gain a majority in the Petrograd Soviet.
November 6, 1917 Bolsheviks seize power; Lenin heads the new “provisional workers’ and peasants’
Apago PDF Enhancer
government.”
November 1917 Lenin accepts peasant seizure of land and worker control of factories; all banks are
nationalized.
January 1918 Lenin permanently disbands the Constituent Assembly.
February 1918 Lenin convinces the Bolshevik Central Committee to accept a humiliating peace with
Germany in order to safeguard the revolution.
March 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk: Russia loses one-third of its population.
Trotsky as war commissar begins to rebuild the Russian army.
Government moves from Petrograd to Moscow.
1918–1920 Great civil war takes place.
Summer 1918 Eighteen regional governments compete for power.
White armies oppose the Bolshevik Revolution.
1919 White armies are on the offensive but divided politically; they receive little benefit from
Allied intervention.
1920 Lenin and the Red Army are victorious, retaking Belorussia and Ukraine.
1887. As a law student, Lenin found a revolutionary faith tensity. After his release, this young priest of socialism
in Marxian socialism, which began to win converts then joined fellow socialists in western Europe and de-
among radical intellectuals as industrialization surged veloped his own revolutionary interpretations of the
forward in Russia in the 1890s. Exiled to Siberia for three body of Marxian thought.
years, Lenin studied Marxian doctrines with religious in- Three interrelated ideas were central for Lenin. First, like
other eastern European radical socialists after 1900, he peasants”; “Stop the war now.” Never a slave to Marxian
turned to the early fire-breathing Marx of 1848 and The determinism, the brilliant but not unduly intellectual Lenin
Communist Manifesto for inspiration. Thus Lenin stressed was a superb tactician. The moment was now.
that capitalism could be destroyed only by violent revolu- Yet Lenin almost overplayed his hand. An attempt by
tion. He tirelessly denounced all revisionist theories of a the Bolsheviks to seize power in July collapsed, and Lenin
peaceful evolution to socialism as betraying Marx’s message fled and went into hiding. He was charged with being a
of unending class conflict. Lenin’s second, more original German agent, and indeed he and the Bolsheviks were
idea was that under certain conditions a socialist revolution getting money from Germany.5 But no matter. Intrigue
was possible even in a relatively backward country like Rus- between Kerensky, who became prime minister in July,
sia. There the industrial working class was small, but peas- and his commander in chief, General Lavr Kornilov, re-
ants were poor and thus potential revolutionaries. sulted in Kornilov’s leading a feeble attack against the
Lenin believed that at a given moment revolution was provisional government in September. In the face of this
determined more by human leadership than by vast his- rightist “counter-revolutionary” threat, the Bolsheviks
torical laws. Thus was born his third basic idea: the were rearmed and redeemed. Kornilov’s forces disinte-
necessity of a highly disciplined workers’ party, strictly grated, but Kerensky lost all credit with the army, the only
controlled by a dedicated elite of intellectuals and full- force that might have saved him and democratic govern-
time revolutionaries like Lenin himself. Unlike ordinary ment in Russia.
workers and trade-union officials, this elite would never
be seduced by short-term gains. It would not stop until
revolution brought it to power.
Trotsky and the Seizure of Power
Lenin’s theories and methods did not go unchallenged Throughout the summer, the Bolsheviks had appealed
by other Russian Marxists. At meetings of the Russian very effectively to the workers and soldiers of Petrograd,
Social Democratic Labor Party in London in 1903, mat- markedly increasing their popular support. Party mem-
ters came to a head. Lenin demanded a small, disciplined, bership had soared from 50,000 to 240,000, and in Oc-
elitist party, while his opponents wanted a more democratic
Apago PDF Enhancer tober the Bolsheviks gained a fragile majority in the
party with mass membership. The Russian party of Marx- Petrograd Soviet. It was now Lenin’s supporter Leon
ian socialism promptly split into two rival factions. Lenin’s Trotsky (1879–1940), a spellbinding revolutionary ora-
camp was called Bolsheviks, or “majority group”; his op- tor and independent radical Marxist, who brilliantly exe-
ponents were Mensheviks, or “minority group.” Lenin’s ma- cuted the Bolshevik seizure of power.
jority did not last, but Lenin did not care. He kept the Painting a vivid but untruthful picture of German and
fine-sounding name Bolshevik and developed the party he counter-revolutionary plots, Trotsky first convinced the
wanted: tough, disciplined, revolutionary. Petrograd Soviet to form a special military-revolutionary
committee in October and make him its leader. Military
Improve Your Grade
power in the capital passed into Bolshevik hands. Then,
Primary Source: What Is to Be Done with Russia?
on the night of November 6, militants from Trotsky’s
Unlike most other socialists, Lenin did not rally round committee joined with trusty Bolshevik soldiers to seize
the national flag in 1914. Observing events from neutral government buildings and pounce on members of the
Switzerland, he saw the war as a product of imperialistic ri- provisional government. Then they went on to the con-
valries and as a marvelous opportunity for class war and so- gress of soviets. There a Bolshevik majority—roughly
cialist upheaval. After the March revolution the German 390 of 650 turbulent delegates—declared that all power
government provided the impatient Lenin, his wife, and had passed to the soviets and named Lenin head of the
about twenty trusted colleagues with safe passage across new government.
Germany and back into Russia in April 1917. The Germans The Bolsheviks came to power for three key reasons.
hoped that Lenin would undermine the sagging war effort First, by late 1917 democracy had given way to anarchy:
of the world’s freest society. They were not disappointed. power was there for those who would take it. Second, in
Arriving triumphantly at Petrograd’s Finland Station Lenin and Trotsky the Bolsheviks had an utterly deter-
on April 3, Lenin attacked at once. To the great astonish- mined and truly superior leadership, which both the tsarist
ment of the local Bolsheviks, he rejected all cooperation government and the provisional government lacked. Third,
with the “bourgeois” provisional government of the lib- in 1917 the Bolsheviks succeeded in appealing to many
erals and moderate socialists. His slogans were radical in soldiers and urban workers, people who were exhausted
the extreme: “All power to the soviets”; “All land to the by war and eager for socialism. With time, many workers
would become bitterly disappointed, but for the moment

they had good reason to believe that they had won what
they wanted.
Dictatorship and Civil War

History is full of short-lived coups and unsuccessful rev-
olutions. The truly monumental accomplishment of Lenin,
Trotsky, and the rest of the Bolsheviks was not taking
power but keeping it. In the next four years, the Bolshe-
viks went on to conquer the chaos they had helped
create, and they began to build their kind of dictatorial
socialist society. The conspirators became conquerors. How
was this done?
Lenin had the genius to profit from developments over
which he and the Bolsheviks had no control. Since sum-
mer, a peasant revolution had been sweeping across Russia
as the tillers of the soil invaded and divided among them-
selves the estates of the landlords and the church. Peasant
seizure of the land—a Russian 1789—was not very Marx-
ian, but it was quite unstoppable in 1917. Thus Lenin’s
first law, which supposedly gave land to the peasants, actu-
ally merely approved what peasants were already doing.
Urban workers’ great demand in November was direct
control of individual factories by local workers commit-
Apago PDF Enhancer
tees. This, too, Lenin ratified with a decree in November.
Lenin Rallies Worker and Soldier Delegates At a mid-
Unlike many of his colleagues, Lenin acknowledged night meeting of the Petrograd Soviet, the Bolsheviks rise up
that Russia had lost the war with Germany and that the and seize power on November 6, 1917. This painting from
only realistic goal was peace at any price. That price was the 1940s idealizes Lenin, but his great talents as a revolution-
very high. Germany demanded in December 1917 that ary leader are undeniable. In this re-creation Stalin, who actu-
the Soviet government give up all its western territories. ally played only a small role in the uprising, is standing behind
Lenin, already his trusty right-hand man. (Sovfoto)
These areas were inhabited by Poles, Finns, Lithuanians,
and other non-Russians—all those people who had been
conquered by the tsars over three centuries and put into Constituent Assembly would draw up a new consti-
the “prisonhouse of nationalities,” as Lenin had earlier tution. But free elections produced a stunning setback
called the Russian empire. for the Bolsheviks, who won less than one-fourth of the
At first, Lenin’s fellow Bolsheviks would not accept such elected delegates. The Socialist Revolutionaries—the peas-
great territorial losses. But when German armies resumed ants’ party—had a clear majority. The Constituent Assem-
their unopposed march into Russia in February 1918, bly met for only one day, on January 18, 1918. It was then
Lenin had his way in a very close vote in the Central Com- permanently disbanded by Bolshevik soldiers acting under
mittee of the party. “Not even his greatest enemy can deny Lenin’s orders. Thus even before the peace with Germany,
that at this moment Lenin towered like a giant over his Lenin was forming a one-party government.
Bolshevik colleagues.”6 A third of old Russia’s population The destruction of the democratically elected Consti-
was sliced away by the German meat ax in the Treaty of tuent Assembly helped feed the flames of civil war. People
Brest-Litovsk in March 1918. With peace, Lenin had who had risen up for self-rule in November saw that once
escaped the certain disaster of continued war and could again they were getting dictatorship from the capital. For
pursue his goal of absolute political power for the the next three years, “Long live the [democratic] soviets;
Bolsheviks—now renamed Communists—within Russia. down with the Bolsheviks” was to be a popular slogan.
In November 1917, the Bolsheviks had cleverly pro- The officers of the old army took the lead in organizing
claimed their regime only a “provisional workers’ and the so-called White opposition to the Bolsheviks in south-
peasants’ government,” promising that a freely elected ern Russia, Ukraine, Siberia, and west of Petrograd. The
Lenin and the Bolsheviks won for several reasons. Strate-

gically, they controlled the center, while the Whites were
always on the fringes and disunited. Moreover, the poorly
defined political program of the Whites was vaguely con-
servative, and it did not unite all the foes of the Bolsheviks
under a progressive, democratic banner. Most important,
the Communists quickly developed a better army, an army
for which the divided Whites were no match.
Once again, Trotsky’s leadership was decisive. The Bol-
sheviks had preached democracy in the army and elected
officers in 1917. But beginning in March 1918, Trotsky as
war commissar re-established the draft and the most drastic
discipline for the newly formed Red Army. Soldiers desert-
ing or disobeying an order were summarily shot. More-
over, Trotsky made effective use of former tsarist army
officers, who were actively recruited and given unprece-
dented powers of discipline over their troops. In short,
Trotsky formed a disciplined and effective fighting force.
The Bolsheviks also mobilized the home front. Estab-
lishing war communism—the application of the total
war concept to a civil conflict—they seized grain from
peasants, introduced rationing, nationalized all banks and
industry, and required everyone to work. Although these
measures contributed to a breakdown of normal eco-
Apago PDF Enhancer nomic activity, they also served to maintain labor disci-
pline and to keep the Red Army supplied.
“Revolutionary terror” also contributed to the Commu-
nist victory. The old tsarist secret police was re-established
“You! Have You Volunteered?” A Red Army soldier
as the Cheka, which hunted down and executed thousands
makes a compelling direct appeal to the ordinary citizen and of real or supposed foes, such as the tsar and his family
demands all-out support for the Bolshevik cause in this 1920 and other “class enemies.” Moreover, people were shot or
poster by Dmitri Moor, a popular Soviet artist. Lenin recog- threatened with being shot for minor nonpolitical failures.
nized the importance of visual propaganda in a vast country The terror caused by the secret police became a tool of the
with limited literacy, and mass-produced posters like this one
were everywhere during the civil war of 1918–1920. (Stephen
government. The Cheka sowed fear, and fear silenced
White, University of Glasgow) opposition.
Finally, foreign military intervention in the civil war ended
up helping the Communists. After Lenin made peace with
Whites came from many social groups and were united Germany, the Allies (United States, Britain, Japan) sent
only by their hatred of the Bolsheviks—the Reds. troops to Archangel and Vladivostok to prevent war ma-
By the summer of 1918, fully eighteen self-proclaimed teriel they had sent the provisional government from being
regional governments—several of which represented mi- captured by the Germans. After the Soviet government na-
nority nationalities—were competing with Lenin’s Bol- tionalized all foreign-owned factories without compensa-
sheviks in Moscow. By the end of the year, White armies tion and refused to pay all of Russia’s foreign debts,
were on the attack. In October 1919, it appeared they Western governments, particularly France, began to sup-
might triumph, as they closed in on Lenin’s government port White armies in the south and west. Yet these efforts
from three sides. Yet they did not. By the spring of 1920, were small and halfhearted. In 1919 Western peoples were
the White armies had been almost completely defeated, sick of war, and few Western politicians believed in a mili-
and the Bolshevik Red Army had retaken Belorussia and tary crusade against the Bolsheviks. Thus Allied interven-
Ukraine. The following year, the Communists also re- tion in the civil war did not aid the Whites effectively,
conquered the independent nationalist governments of though it did permit the Communists to appeal to the pa-
the Caucasus. The civil war was over; Lenin had won. triotic nationalism of ethnic Russians, in particular former
tsarist army officers. Allied intervention was both too little exploited the collapse of Russian armies, winning great
and too much. concessions in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918.
Together, the Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik tri- With victory in the east quieting German moderates,
umph were one of the reasons the First World War was General Ludendorff and company fell on France once more
such a great turning point in modern history. A radically in the great spring offensive of 1918. For a time, German
new government, based on socialism and one-party dicta- armies pushed forward, coming within thirty-five miles
torship, came to power in a great European state, main- of Paris. But Ludendorff’s exhausted, overextended forces
tained power, and eagerly encouraged worldwide revolution. never broke through. They were decisively stopped in
Although halfhearted constitutional monarchy in Russia July at the second Battle of the Marne, where 140,000
was undoubtedly headed for some kind of political crisis fresh American soldiers saw action. Adding 2 million
before 1914, it is hard to imagine the triumph of the most men in arms to the war effort by August, the late but
radical proponents of change and reform except in a situ- massive American intervention decisively tipped the scales
ation of total collapse. That was precisely what happened in favor of Allied victory.
to Russia in the First World War. By September British, French, and American armies were
advancing steadily on all fronts, and a panicky General Lu-
dendorff realized that Germany had lost the war. Yet he in-
The Peace Settlement solently insisted that moderate politicians shoulder the
shame of defeat, and on October 4 the emperor formed a
Victory over revolutionary Russia boosted sagging German new, more liberal German government to sue for peace. As
morale, and in the spring of 1918 the Germans launched negotiations over an armistice dragged on, an angry and
their last major attack against France. Yet this offensive frustrated German people finally rose up. On November 3,
failed, just as those before it had. With breathtaking rapid- sailors in Kiel mutinied, and throughout northern Germany
ity, the United States, Great Britain, and France decisively soldiers and workers began to establish revolutionary coun-
defeated Germany militarily. The guns of world war finally cils on the Russian soviet model. The same day, Austria-
fell silent. Then as civil war spread in Russia and as chaos
Apago PDF Enhancer Hungary surrendered to the Allies and began breaking
engulfed much of eastern Europe, the victorious Western apart. Revolution broke out in Germany, and masses of
Allies came together in Paris to establish a lasting peace. workers demonstrated for peace in Berlin. With army disci-
Expectations were high; optimism was almost unlim- pline collapsing, the emperor abdicated and fled to Holland.
ited. The Allies labored intensively and soon worked out Socialist leaders in Berlin proclaimed a German republic on
terms for peace with Germany and for the creation of November 9 and simultaneously agreed to tough Allied
the peacekeeping League of Nations. Nevertheless, the terms of surrender. The armistice went into effect on No-
hopes of peoples and politicians were soon disappointed, vember 11, 1918. The war was over.
for the peace settlement of 1919 turned out to be a fail-
ure. Rather than creating conditions for peace, it sowed
the seeds of another war. Surely this was the ultimate
Revolution in Germany
tragedy of the Great War, a war that directly and indirectly Military defeat brought political revolution to Germany
cost $332 billion and left 10 million dead and another and Austria-Hungary, as it had to Russia. In Austria-
20 million wounded. Hungary the revolution was primarily nationalistic and re-
• How did the Allies fashion a peace settlement, and why publican in character. Having started the war to preserve
was it unsuccessful? an antinationalistic dynastic state, the Habsburg empire
had perished in the attempt. In its place, independent
Austrian, Hungarian, and Czechoslovakian republics were
proclaimed, while a greatly expanded Serbian monarchy
The End of the War united the South Slavs and took the name Yugoslavia. The
In early 1917, the strain of total war was showing every- prospect of firmly establishing the new national states over-
where. After the Russian Revolution in March, there were rode class considerations for most people in east-central
major strikes in Germany. In July a coalition of moderates Europe.
passed a “peace resolution” in the Reichstag, calling for The German Revolution of November 1918 resembled
peace without territorial annexations. To counter this mod- the Russian Revolution of March 1917. In both cases, a
eration born of war-weariness, the German military estab- genuine popular uprising welled up from below, toppled
lished a virtual dictatorship. The military also aggressively an authoritarian monarchy, and brought the establishment
of a liberal provisional republic. In both countries, liberals shuffled populations; now “we believed in nationalism, we
and moderate socialists took control of the central gov- believed in the self-determination of peoples.” Indeed,
ernment, while workers’ and soldiers’ councils formed a “we were journeying to Paris . . . to found a new order in
counter-government. In Germany, however, the moder- Europe. We were preparing not Peace only, but Eternal
ate socialists and their liberal allies won, and the Lenin-like Peace.”7 This general optimism and idealism had been
radical revolutionaries in the councils lost. In communist greatly strengthened by President Wilson’s January 1918
terms, the liberal, republican revolution in Germany in peace proposal, the Fourteen Points, which stressed na-
1918 was only half a revolution: a bourgeois political rev- tional self-determination and the rights of small countries.
olution without a communist second installment. It was
Improve Your Grade
Russia without Lenin’s Bolshevik triumph.
Primary Source: A New Diplomacy: The Fourteen
There were several reasons for the German outcome. Points
The great majority of Marxian socialist leaders in the
Social Democratic Party were, as before the war, really The real powers at the conference were the United
pink and not red. They wanted to establish real political States, Great Britain, and France, for Germany was not
democracy and civil liberties, and they favored the grad- allowed to participate and Russia was locked in civil war
ual elimination of capitalism. They were also German and did not attend. Italy was considered part of the Big
nationalists, appalled by the prospect of civil war and rev- Four, but its role was quite limited. Almost immediately
olutionary terror. Moreover, there was less popular sup- the three great Allies began to quarrel. President Wilson,
port among workers, soldiers, and peasants. who was wildly cheered by European crowds as the
Of crucial importance was the fact that the moderate spokesman for a new idealistic and democratic interna-
German Social Democrats, unlike Kerensky and company, tional cooperation, was almost obsessed with creating the
accepted defeat and ended the war the day they took power. League of Nations. Wilson insisted that this question
This act ended the decline in morale among soldiers and come first, for he passionately believed that only a per-
prevented the regular army, with its conservative officer manent international organization could protect mem-
corps, from disintegrating. When radicals headed by Karl
Apago PDF Enhancer ber states from aggression and avert future wars. Wilson
Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg and their supporters in had his way, although Lloyd George of Great Britain and
the councils tried to seize control of the government in especially Clemenceau of France were unenthusiastic.
Berlin in January, the moderate socialists called on the army They were primarily concerned with punishing Germany.
to crush the uprising. Liebknecht and Luxemburg were ar- Playing on British nationalism, Lloyd George had al-
rested and then brutally murdered by army leaders. Their ready won a smashing electoral victory in December on
murders, widely believed to have had government support, the popular platform of making Germany pay for the war.
caused many working-class activists in the Social Democra- “We shall,” he promised, “squeeze the orange until the
tic Party to break away in anger and join the pro-Lenin pips squeak.” Personally inclined to make a somewhat
German Communist Party that Liebknecht’s group had moderate peace with Germany, Lloyd George was to a
just founded. Finally, even if the moderate socialists had considerable extent a captive of demands for a total vic-
followed Liebknecht and Luxemburg on the Leninist path, tory worthy of the sacrifices of total war against a totally
it is very unlikely they would have succeeded. Civil war in depraved enemy. As Kipling summed up the general British
Germany would certainly have followed. And the Allies, feeling at the end of the war, the Germans were “a people
who were already occupying western Germany according with the heart of beasts.”8
to the terms of the armistice, would have marched on to France’s Georges Clemenceau, “the Tiger” who had
Berlin and ruled Germany directly. broken wartime defeatism and led his country to victory,
wholeheartedly agreed. Like most French people, Clemen-
ceau wanted old-fashioned revenge. He also wanted lasting
The Treaty of Versailles security for France. This, he believed, required the creation
The peace conference opened in Paris in January 1919 of a buffer state between France and Germany, the perma-
with seventy delegates representing twenty-seven victori- nent demilitarization of Germany, and vast German repara-
ous nations. There were great expectations. A young tions. He feared that sooner or later Germany with its
British diplomat later wrote that the victors “were con- 60 million people would attack France with its 40 million un-
vinced that they would never commit the blunders and in- less the Germans were permanently weakened. Moreover,
iquities of the Congress of Vienna [of 1815].” Then the France had no English Channel (or Atlantic Ocean) as
“misguided, reactionary, pathetic aristocrats” had cynically a reassuring barrier against German aggression. Wilson,
supported by Lloyd George, would hear none of this. signed the treaty in the Sun King’s Hall of Mirrors at
Clemenceau’s demands seemed vindictive, violating moral- Versailles, where Bismarck’s empire had been joyously
ity and the principle of national self-determination. By proclaimed almost fifty years before.
April the countries attending the conference were dead-
Improve Your Grade
locked on the German question, and Wilson packed his
Primary Source: A Defeated Germany Contemplates
bags to go home. the Peace Treaty
In the end, convinced that France could not afford to
face Germany alone in the future, Clemenceau agreed to Separate peace treaties were concluded with the other
a compromise. He gave up the French demand for a defeated European powers—Austria, Hungary, and Bul-
Rhineland buffer state in return for a formal defensive al- garia. For the most part, these treaties merely ratified the
liance with the United States and Great Britain. Under existing situation in east-central Europe following the
the terms of this alliance, both Wilson and Lloyd George breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Like Austria,
promised that their countries would come to France’s Hungary was a particularly big loser, as its “captive” na-
aid in the event of a German attack. Thus Clemenceau tionalities (and some interspersed Hungarians) were ceded
appeared to win his goal of French security, as Wilson to Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Yugoslavia. Italy
had won his of a permanent international organization. got some Austrian territory.
The Allies moved quickly to finish the settlement, believing
that any adjustments would later be possible within the
dual framework of a strong Western alliance and the The Peace Settlement
League of Nations (see Map 27.4).
The Treaty of Versailles between the Allies and Ger-
in the Middle East
many was the key to the settlement, and the terms were Although Allied leaders at Versailles focused mainly on
not unreasonable as a first step toward re-establishing in- European questions, they also imposed a political settle-
ternational order. Had Germany won, it seems certain ment on what had been the Ottoman Empire. This set-
that France and Belgium would have been treated with
Apago PDF Enhancer tlement brought radical changes to the Middle East, and
greater severity, as Russia had been at Brest-Litovsk. Ger- it became very controversial. Basically, the Ottoman Em-
many’s colonies were given to France, Britain, and Japan pire was broken up, Britain and France expanded their
as League of Nations mandates. Germany’s territorial power and influence in the Middle East, and Arab na-
losses within Europe were minor, thanks to Wilson. Alsace- tionalists felt cheated and betrayed.
Lorraine was returned to France. Parts of Germany The British government had encouraged the wartime
inhabited primarily by Poles were ceded to the new Pol- Arab revolt against the Ottoman Turks (see page 890)
ish state, in keeping with the principle of national self- and had even made vague promises of an independent
determination. Predominately German Danzig was also Arab kingdom. However, when the fighting stopped, the
placed within the Polish tariff lines, but as a self-governing British and the French chose instead to honor secret
city under League of Nations protection. Germany had wartime agreements to divide and rule the Ottoman
to limit its army to 100,000 men and agree to build no lands. Most important, in 1916 Britain and France had
military fortifications in the Rhineland. agreed that France would receive modern-day Lebanon
More harshly, the Allies declared that Germany (with and Syria, and much of southern Turkey, and Britain
Austria) was responsible for the war and had therefore to would receive Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq. This
pay reparations equal to all civilian damages caused by agreement contradicted British (and later Wilsonian)
the war. This unfortunate and much-criticized clause ex- promises concerning Arab independence after the war.
pressed inescapable popular demands for German blood, When Britain and France set about implementing their
but the actual figure was not set, and there was the clear secret plans after the armistice, Arab nationalists felt they
possibility that reparations might be set at a reasonable were being double-crossed.
level in the future when tempers had cooled. British plans for the old Ottoman province of Palestine
When presented with the treaty, the German govern- also angered Arab nationalists. The Balfour Declaration
ment protested vigorously. But there was no alternative, of November 1917, made by the British foreign secretary
especially considering that Germany was still starving Arthur Balfour, had declared that Britain favored a “Na-
because the Allies had not yet lifted their naval blockade. tional Home for the Jewish People” in Palestine, but
On June 28, 1919, German representatives of the rul- without prejudicing the civil and religious rights of the
ing moderate Social Democrats and the Catholic Party non-Jewish communities already living in Palestine.
NORWAY FINLAND
Helsinki
Oslo
Leningrad
Stockholm (St. Petersburg)
Tallinn
ESTONIA
SWEDEN
LATVIA
No r t h S e a Riga
IRELAND DENMARK Baltic
Copenhagen LITHUANIA
S ea
zi g
GREAT
an
Kiel Vilnius
BRITAIN D EAST RUSSIAN EMPIRE
E lb PRUSSIA
NETH. e
London
Amsterdam SH R
Berlin LI DO Vi s t
PO RRI u la
POLAND
Brussels RUHR
GERMANY CO
Cologne Warsaw
BELG.
Weimar Kiev
Paris LUX. Frankfurt
Versailles Prague
LORRAINE C ZE GALICIA
e CHO
n
Strasbourg SLOVA
Rhi
ATLANTIC ALSACE KIA Dn

Vienna BE i
es
S
OCEAN S
te
FRANCE Budapest
r
A
SWITZ. AUSTRIA
RA
BI
Geneva S. HUNGARY
A
TYROL
ROMANIA
Milan Trieste
Venice Zagreb
CROATIA
Bucharest
Belgrade
YUGOSLAVIA B l a ck S ea
SPAIN ITALY SERBIA
BULGARIA
Medit e r r a n e a n S e a
Corsica
Apago PDF Enhancer
Rome
MONTENEGRO
(to Yugoslavia,
Sofia
1921) Istanbul (Constantinople)
Boundaries of German, Naples ALBANIA
Russian, and Austro-Hungarian
Empires in 1914 Sardinia
GREECE TURKEY
Demilitarized zone
Areas lost by Austro-Hungarian Empire
Athens
Areas lost by Russian Empire Sicily
Areas lost by German Empire
Areas lost by Bulgaria 0 200 400 Km.
Crete
Boundaries of 1926 0 200 400 Mi.
Mapping the Past

MAP 27.4 Shattered Empires and Territorial Changes After World War I The Great War brought
tremendous changes in eastern Europe. New nations and new boundaries were established, generally on the
principle of national self-determination. A dangerous power vacuum was created by the new, usually small
••
states established between Germany and Soviet Russia. 1 Identify the boundaries of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and
Russia in 1914, and note carefully the changes caused by the war. 2 What territory did Germany lose, and why did France,
Poland, and even Denmark receive it? Why was Austria sometimes called a head without a body in the 1920s? 3 What new
independent states (excluding disputed Bessarabia) were formed from the old Russian empire, and what nationalities lived in
these states?
•
Some members of the British cabinet believed the decla- jaz (see page 890) was allowed to send his son Faisal
ration would appeal to German, Austrian, and American (1885–1933) as his representative to the Versailles Peace
Jews and thus help the British war effort. Others sin- Conference. Yet Hussein’s efforts to secure Arab inde-
cerely supported the Zionist vision of a Jewish homeland pendence came to nothing. President Wilson wanted to
(pages 838–839), which they hoped would also help give the Arab case serious consideration, but the British
Britain maintain control of the Suez Canal. In any event, and the French were determined to rule Syria, Iraq,
Palestinian Arabs were dismayed. Transjordan, and Palestine as League of Nations man-
In 1914 Jews accounted for about 11 percent of the dates, and they confirmed only the independence of
predominately Arab population in the three Ottoman ad- Hussein’s kingdom of Hejaz (see Map 27.5). In response
ministrative units that would subsequently be lumped to- Arab nationalists came together in Damascus as the Gen-
gether by the British to form Palestine. The “National eral Syrian Congress in 1919 and unsuccessfully called
Home for the Jewish People” mentioned in the Balfour again for political independence. (See the feature “Lis-
Declaration implied to the Arabs—and to the Zionist tening to the Past: Arab Political Aspirations in 1919” on
Jews as well—the establishment of some kind of Jewish pages 910–911.) Brushing aside Arab opposition, the
state that would be incompatible with majority rule. British mandate in Palestine formally incorporated the
Moreover, a state founded on religious and ethnic exclu- Balfour Declaration and its commitment to a Jewish na-
sivity was out of keeping with both Islamic and Ottoman tional home. When Faisal returned to Syria, his followers
tradition, which had historically been more tolerant of repudiated the agreement he had reluctantly accepted. In
religious diversity and minorities than had the Christian March 1920 they met as the Syrian National Congress
monarchs or nation-states in Europe. and proclaimed Syria independent, with Faisal as king. A
Despite strong French objections, Hussein of the He- similar congress declared Iraq an independent kingdom.
Prince Faisal at the Ver-

Apago PDF Enhancer sailles Peace Conference,
1919 Standing in front,
Faisal is supported by his
allies and black slave. Nur-as-
Said, an officer in the Ot-
toman army who joined the
Arab revolt, is second from
the left, and the British officer
T. E. Lawrence—popularly
known as Lawrence of Ara-
bia—is fourth from the left in
back. Faisal failed to win
political independence for
the Arabs, as the British
backed away from the vague
promises they had made
during the war. (Courtesy of
the Trustees of the Imperial War
Museum)
BULGARIA Black Sea SOVIET UNION

Istanbul
(Constantinople) Batum Ceded by Soviet Union
in 1921
Ca
spi
NIS
Dardanelles Kars Baku
Ankara S
AN
an
NI
Aeg
JA
GREECE A RME
Sea
AI
TURKEY B
e an S
Izmir
ER
(Smyrna) AZ
ea
Tabriz
KU
RD
S
Crete Dodecanese Aleppo E
(Italy) uph
ra Teheran
tes
Cyprus SYRIA
Tig
(Gr. Br.) (French Mandate)
ris
PERSIA
Beirut
Mediterranea n LEBANON Damascus Baghdad
(IRAN)
(French Mandate, 1922)
Sea Jordan
IRAQ
PALESTINE (British Mandate) Kut el Amara
(British Mandate) Amman
Jerusalem
EGYPT Suez TRANSJORDAN

Canal (British Mandate) Basra
(Occupied 1882;
independent 1922) Cairo
Ni l e
KUWAIT
Pe
Ottoman Empire in 1914
NEUTRAL si
r
British protectorate in 1914 ZONE NEUTRAL
an
Gu
(In
ZONE
de
Area controlled under mandates lf

pe
from the League of Nations, 1920

nd
H E 6; t
e nt
BAHRAIN
Red
1 91
J A o Nejd
Boun
International boundaries, 1923

Apago PDF Enhancer
NEJD QATAR
Z
dary
0 250 500 Km. (SAUDI ARABIA) TRUCIAL

un
Se
OMAN
de
192
Riyadh
fin
a
0 250 500 Mi.

ed
)
Medina
MAP 27.5 The Partition of the Ottoman Empire, 1914–1923 By 1914 the Ottoman
Turks had been pushed out of the Balkans, and their Arab provinces were on the edge of
revolt. That revolt, in alliance with the British, erupted in the First World War and con-
tributed greatly to the Ottomans’ defeat. Refusing to grant independence to the Arabs, the
Allies established League of Nations mandates and replaced Ottoman rulers in Syria, Iraq,
Transjordan, and Palestine.
Western reaction to events in Syria and Iraq was swift modern Greek empire modeled on long-dead Christian
and decisive. A French army stationed in Lebanon attacked Byzantium. In 1919 Greek armies carried by British ships
Syria, taking Damascus in July 1920. Faisal fled, and the landed on the Turkish coast at Smyrna and advanced un-
French took over. Meanwhile, the British put down an up- opposed into the interior. Turkey seemed finished.
rising in Iraq with bloody fighting and established effective But Turkey produced a great leader and revived to be-
control there. Western imperialism, in the form of League come an inspiration for many modernizing reformers.
of Nations mandates, appeared to have replaced Ottoman Mustafa Kemal (1881–1938), later known as Atatürk,
rule in the Arab Middle East (see Map 27.5). which means “father of the Turks,” was a military man
The Allies sought to impose even harsher terms on the who had directed the successful defense of the Dar-
defeated Turks than on the “liberated” Arabs. A treaty danelles against British attack. Watching the Allies’ ag-
forced on the helpless Ottoman sultan dismembered the gression and the sultan’s cowardice after the armistice, in
Turkish heartland. Great Britain and France occupied early 1919 he moved to central Turkey and gradually
parts of modern-day Turkey, and Italy and Greece also unified the Turkish resistance. Refusing to acknowledge
claimed shares. There was a sizable Greek minority in the Allied dismemberment of their country, the Turks
western Turkey, and Greek nationalists wanted to build a battled on through 1920 despite staggering defeats. The
self elected president, and created a one-party system—

partly inspired by the Bolshevik example—in order to
transform his country. The most radical reforms per-
tained to religion and culture. For centuries most of the
intellectual and social activities of believers had been reg-
ulated by Islamic religious authorities. Profoundly influ-
enced by the example of western Europe, Mustafa Kemal
set out to limit the place of religion and religious leaders
in daily affairs. He decreed a revolutionary separation of
church and state, promulgated law codes inspired by Eu-
ropean models, and established a secular public school
system. Women received rights that they never had be-
fore. By the time of his death in 1938, Mustafa Kemal
had implemented successfully much of his revolutionary
program. He had moved Turkey much closer to Europe,
foretelling current efforts by Turkey to join the Euro-
pean Union as full-fledged member.
American Rejection of
the Versailles Treaty
The rapidly concluded Versailles treaty of early 1919 was
not perfect, but within the context of war-shattered Eu-
Apago PDF Enhancer rope it was an acceptable beginning. The principle of na-
tional self-determination, which had played such a large
role in starting the war, was accepted for Europe and
served as an organizing framework. Germany had been
punished but not dismembered. A new world organiza-
tion complemented a traditional defensive alliance of sat-
Mustafa Kemal Surnamed Atatürk, meaning “father of the isfied powers. The serious remaining problems could be
Turks,” Mustafa Kemal and his supporters imposed revolu-
tionary changes aimed at modernizing and westernizing worked out in the future. Moreover, Allied leaders had
Turkish society and the new Turkish government. Dancing seen speed as essential for another reason: they detested
here with his adopted daughter at her high-society wedding, Lenin and feared that his Bolshevik Revolution might
Atatürk often appeared in public in elegant European dress— spread. They realized that their best answer to Lenin’s
a vivid symbol for the Turkish people of his radical break unending calls for worldwide upheaval was peace and
with traditional Islamic teaching and custom. (Hulton
Archive/Getty Images) tranquillity for war-weary peoples.
There were, however, two great interrelated obstacles to
such peace: Germany and the United States. Plagued by
next year they won a great victory in central Turkey, and communist uprisings, reactionary plots, and popular disil-
the Greeks and their British allies sued for peace. After lusionment with losing the war at the last minute, Ger-
long negotiations, the resulting Treaty of Lausanne many’s moderate socialists and their liberal and Catholic
(1923) solemnly abolished the hated Capitulations, supporters faced an enormous challenge. Like French re-
which the European powers had imposed over the cen- publicans after 1871, they needed time (and luck) if they
turies to give their citizens special privileges in the Ot- were to establish firmly a peaceful and democratic repub-
toman Empire, and recognized the territorial integrity of lic. Progress in this direction required understanding but
a truly independent Turkey. Turkey lost only its former firm treatment of Germany by the victorious Western Al-
Arab provinces. lies, particularly by the United States.
Mustafa Kemal, a nationalist without religious faith, However, the U.S. Senate and, to a lesser extent, the
believed that Turkey should modernize and secularize American people rejected Wilson’s handiwork. Republican
along Western lines. He established a republic, had him- senators led by Henry Cabot Lodge refused to ratify the
Treaty of Versailles without changes in the articles creating The Wilson-Lodge fiasco and the newfound gospel of
the League of Nations. The key issue was the League’s isolationism represented a tragic and cowardly renuncia-
power—more apparent than real—to require member states tion of America’s responsibility. Using America’s action as
to take collective action against aggression. Lodge and oth- an excuse, Great Britain, too, refused to ratify its defensive
ers believed that this requirement gave away Congress’s alliance with France. Bitterly betrayed by its allies, France
constitutional right to declare war. In failing health, Wil- stood alone. Very shortly France was to take actions against
son, with narrow-minded self-righteousness, rejected all Germany that would feed the fires of German resentment
attempts at compromise. In doing so, he ensured that the and seriously undermine democratic forces in the new re-
treaty would never be ratified by the United States in any public. The great hopes of early 1919 had turned to ashes
form and that the United States would never join the by the end of the year. The Western alliance had collapsed,
League of Nations. Moreover, the Senate refused to ratify and a grandiose plan for permanent peace had given way to
Wilson’s treaties forming a defensive alliance with France a fragile truce. For this and for what came later, the United
and Great Britain. America turned its back on Europe. States must share a large part of the guilt.
ACE the Test

Chapter Summary
ern borderlands. Except in Ireland and parts of Soviet Rus-
sia (and the Arab Middle East), the revolutionary dream of
• What caused the Great War, and why did it have such national unity, born of the French Revolution, had finally
revolutionary consequences?
come true.
Apago PDF Enhancer
• What was the impact of total war on civilian Two other revolutions were products of the war. In Rus-
populations? sia the Bolsheviks established a radical regime, smashed
• Why did World War I bring socialist revolution in existing capitalist institutions, and stayed in power with a
Russia? new kind of authoritarian rule. Whether the new Russian
• How did the Allies fashion a peace settlement, and regime was truly Marxian or socialist was questionable, but
why was it unsuccessful? it indisputably posed a powerful, ongoing revolutionary
challenge to Europe and its colonial empires.
More subtle but quite universal in its impact was an ad-
World War I had truly revolutionary consequences because, ministrative revolution. This revolution, born of the need
first and foremost, it was a war of committed peoples. In to mobilize entire societies and economies for total war,
France, Britain, and Germany in particular, governments greatly increased the power of government. Freewheeling
drew on genuine popular support. This support reflected in market capitalism and a well-integrated world economy
part the diplomatic origins of the war, which citizens saw as were among the many casualties of the administrative rev-
growing out of an unwanted crisis in the Balkans and an in- olution, and greater social equality was everywhere one of
flexible alliance system of opposing blocs. More impor- its results. Thus even in European countries where a com-
tantly, popular support reflected the way western European munist takeover never came close to occurring, society
society had been unified under the nationalist banner in the still experienced a great revolution.
later nineteenth century, despite the fears that the growing Finally, the “war to end war” did not bring peace—
socialist movement aroused in conservatives. only a fragile truce. In the West, the Allies failed to maintain
The relentlessness of total war helps explain why so many their wartime solidarity. Germany remained unrepentant
died, why so many were crippled physically and psycholog- and would soon have more grievances to nurse. Moreover,
ically, and why Western civilization would in so many ways the victory of national self-determination in eastern Eu-
never be the same again. More concretely, the war swept rope created small, weak states and thus a power vacuum
away monarchs and multinational empires. National self- between a still-powerful Germany and a potentially mighty
determination apparently triumphed across Europe, not communist Russia. A vast area lay open to military ag-
only in Austria-Hungary but also in many of Russia’s west- gression from two sides.
Key Terms by a famous historian, with a good discussion of war

and revolution.
Three Emperors’ Bolsheviks
Howard, Michael. The First World War: A Very Short Intro-
League Constituent
duction. 2007. A fine brief introduction.
Triple Entente Assembly
trench warfare war communism Macmillan, Margaret. Paris, 1919: Six Months That
Lusitania Cheka Changed the World. 2001. A comprehensive, exciting ac-
total war League of Nations count of all aspects of the peace conference.
War Raw Materials Treaty of Versailles Neiberg, Michael S. Fighting the Great War: A Global His-
Board Balfour tory. 2006. A lively and up-to-date account.
Petrograd Soviet Declaration
Read, Christopher. From Tsar to Soviets: The Russian Peo-
Army Order No. 1 Atatürk
ple and Their Revolution, 1917–1921. 1996. A highly rec-
ommended account of the Russian Revolution.
Improve Your Grade Flashcards Remarque, Erich Maria. All Quiet on the Western Front.
Originally published in 1928, this novel remains one of
the most moving fictional treatments of World War I.
Suggested Reading Tucker, Jonathan. War of Nerves: Chemical Warfare from
Davis, Belinda J. Home Fires Burning: Food, Politics, and World War I to Al-Qaeda. 2007. A comprehensive and
Everyday Life in Berlin in World War I. 2000. A moving informative survey of chemical warfare.
account of women struggling to feed their families.
Winter, J. M. The Experience of World War I. 1988. A
Eksteins, Modris. Rites of Spring: The Great War and the striking illustrated history of the war.
Birth of the Modern Age. 1989. An imaginative cultural
Zuckerman, Larry. The Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story
investigation that has won critical acclaim.
of World War I. 2004. A poignant examination of Ger-
Apago PDF Enhancer
Fromkin, David. A Peace to End All Peace. 2001. A bril- man atrocities.
liant reconsideration of the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire and its division by the Allies.
Gatrell, Peter. Russia’s First World War: A Social and Eco-
nomic History. 2005. An excellent resource for students
Notes
and specialists. 1. M. Beloff, quoted in U.S. News & World Report, March 8, 1976, p. 53.
2. Quoted in J. Remak, The Origins of World War I (New York: Holt,
Herwig, Holger H. The First World War: Germany and Rinehart & Winston, 1967), p. 84.
Austria, 1914–1918. 1997. Ably follows the hard road to 3. Quoted in F. P. Chambers, The War Behind the War, 1914–1918
defeat and collapse. (London: Faber & Faber, 1939), p. 168.
4. Quoted in R. O. Paxton, Europe in the Twentieth Century (New
Higonnet, Margaret R., Jane Jenson, Sonya Michel, and York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), p. 109.
Margaret Collins Weitz, eds. Behind the Lines: Gender 5. A. B. Ulam, The Bolsheviks (New York: Collier Books, 1968), p. 349.
and the Two World Wars. 1989. Examines the changes 6. Ibid., p. 405.
7. H. Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919 (New York: Grosset & Dunlap
that the war brought for women and for relations be- Universal Library, 1965), pp. 8, 31–32.
tween the sexes. 8. Quoted ibid., p. 24.
Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Extremes: A History of the
World, 1914–1991. 1996. A provocative interpretation
Arab Political Aspirations in 1919
G reat Britain and France had agreed to divide

up the Arab lands, and the British also had made
decentralization principles, safeguarding the rights
of minorities, and that the King be the Emir
conflicting promises to Arab and Jewish nationalists. Faisal, who carried on a glorious struggle in the
However, President Wilson insisted at Versailles that cause of our liberation and merited our full
the right of self-determination should be applied to confidence and entire reliance.
the conquered Ottoman territories, and he sent an 3. Considering the fact that the Arabs
American commission of inquiry to Syria, even inhabiting the Syrian area are not naturally less
though the British and French refused to participate. gifted than other more advanced races and that
The commission canvassed political views throughout they are by no means less developed than the
greater Syria, and its long report with many Bulgarians, Serbians, Greeks, and Roumanians at
documents reflected public opinion in the region the beginning of their independence, we protest
in 1919. against Article 22 of the Covenant of the League
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To present their view to the Americans, Arab of Nations, placing us among the nations in their
nationalists from present-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, middle stage of development which stand in need
and Jordan came together in Damascus as the of a mandatory power.
General Syrian Congress, and they passed the 4. In the event of the rejection by the Peace
following resolution on July 2, 1919. In addition to Conference of this just protest for certain
the Arab call for political independence, the considerations that we may not understand, we,
delegates addressed the possibility of French rule relying on the declarations of President Wilson
under a League of Nations mandate and the that his object in waging war was to put an end to
establishment of a Jewish national home. the ambition of conquest and colonization, can
only regard the mandate mentioned in the
We the undersigned members of the General Covenant of the League of Nations as equivalent
Syrian Congress, meeting in Damascus on to the rendering of economical and technical
Wednesday, July 2nd, 1919, . . . provided with assistance that does not prejudice our complete
credentials and authorizations by the inhabitants independence. And desiring that our country
of our various districts, Moslems, Christians, and should not fall a prey to colonization and
Jews, have agreed upon the following statement believing that the American Nation is farthest
of the desires of the people of the country who from any thought of colonization and has no
have elected us to present them to the American political ambition in our country, we will seek the
Section of the International Commission; the fifth technical and economical assistance from the
article was passed by a very large majority; all the United States of America, provided that such
other articles were accepted unanimously. assistance does not exceed 20 years.
1. We ask absolutely complete political 5. In the event of America not finding herself in
independence for Syria within these boundaries. a position to accept our desire for assistance, we
[Describes the area including the present-day will seek this assistance from Great Britain, also
states of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan.] provided that such assistance does not infringe the
2. We ask that the Government of this Syrian complete independence and unity of our country
country should be a democratic civil and that the duration of such assistance does not
constitutional Monarchy on broad exceed that mentioned in the previous article.
910
Palestinian Arabs protest against
large-scale Jewish migration
into Palestine. (Roger-Viollet/
Getty Images)
6. We do not acknowledge any right claimed by the decisive factor in determining our future; and
the French Government in any part whatever of that President Wilson and the free American people
our Syrian country and refuse that she should will be our supporters for the realization of our
assist us or have a hand in our country under any hopes, thereby proving their sincerity and noble
circumstances and in any place. sympathy with the aspiration of the weaker nations
7. We oppose the pretensions of the Zionists to in general and our Arab people in particular.
create a Jewish commonwealth in the southern We also have the fullest confidence that the
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part of Syria, known as Palestine, and oppose
Zionist migration to any part of our country; for
Peace Conference will realize that we would not
have risen against the Turks, with whom we had
we do not acknowledge their title but consider participated in all civil, political, and
them a grave peril to our people from the representative privileges, but for their violation of
national, economical, and political points of view. our national rights, and so will grant us our
Our Jewish compatriots shall enjoy our common desires in full in order that our political rights may
rights and assume the common responsibilities. not be less after the war than they were before,
8. We ask that there should be no separation of since we have shed so much blood in the cause of
the southern part of Syria, known as Palestine, nor our liberty and independence.
of the littoral western zone, which includes We request to be allowed to send a delegation to
Lebanon, from the Syrian country. We desire that represent us at the Peace Conference to defend our
the unity of the country should be guaranteed rights and secure the realization of our aspirations.
against partition under whatever circumstances.
9. We ask complete independence for
emancipated Mesopotamia [today’s Iraq] and that
there should be no economical barriers between
the two countries.
1. What kind of state did the delegates want?
10. The fundamental principles laid down by
President Wilson in condemnation of secret 2. How did the delegates want to modify an
treaties impel us to protest most emphatically unwanted League of Nations mandate to make
against any treaty that stipulates the partition of it less objectionable?
our Syria country and against any private 3. Did the delegates view their “Jewish
engagement aiming at the establishment of compatriots” and the Zionists in different
Zionism in the southern part of Syria; therefore ways? Why?
we ask the complete annulment of these
conventions and agreements. Source: “Resolution of the General Syrian Congress at
The noble principles enunciated by President Damascus, 2 July 1919,” from the King-Crane
Wilson strengthen our confidence that our desires Commission Report, in Foreign Relations of the United
emanating from the depths of our hearts, shall be States: Paris Peace Conference, 1919, 12: 780–781.
911
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This detail of George Grosz’s Draussen und Drinnen (Outside and Inside) captures the uncertainty and
anxiety of the 1920s. (akg-images)
c h a p t e r
The Age of Anxiety,

28 ca 1900–1940
chapter preview
Uncertainty in Modern Thought

• In what ways did new and
disturbing ideas in philosophy, physics,
W hen Allied diplomats met in Paris in early 1919 with their opti-
mistic plans for building a lasting peace, most people looked for-
ward to happier times. They hoped that life would return to normal after
psychology, and literature reflect the the terrible trauma of total war. They hoped that once again life would
general crisis in Western thought? make sense in the familiar prewar terms of peace, prosperity, and prog-
ress. These hopes were in vain. The Great Break—the First World War
Modern Art and Music
and the Russian Revolution—had mangled too many things beyond repair.
• How did modernism revolutionize Life would no longer fit neatly into the old molds.
architecture, painting, and music? Instead, great numbers of men and women felt themselves increasingly
Movies and Radio adrift in a strange, uncertain, and uncontrollable world. They saw them-
• In what ways did movies and radio selves living in an age of anxiety, an age of continual crisis (this age lasted
become mainstays of popular culture? Apago PDF Enhancer
until at least the early 1950s). In almost every area of human experience,
people went searching for ways to put meaning back into life.
The Search for Peace and
Political Stability
• How did the democratic leaders of
the 1920s deal with deep-seated
Uncertainty in Modern Thought
instability and try to establish real A complex revolution in thought and ideas was under way before the
peace and prosperity? First World War, but only small, unusual groups were aware of it. After
The Great Depression, 1929–1939 the war, these new and upsetting ideas began to spread through the en-
tire population. Western society as a whole began to question and even
• What caused the Great Depression, abandon many cherished values and beliefs that had guided it since the
and how did the Western democracies
eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the nineteenth-century triumph
respond to this challenge? of industrial development, scientific advances, and evolutionary thought.
• In what ways did new and disturbing ideas in philosophy, physics,
psychology, and literature reflect the general crisis in Western thought?
The “Cruelly Injured Mind”

Before 1914 most people still believed in progress, reason, and the rights
of the individual. Progress was a daily reality, apparent in the rising stan-
dard of living, the taming of the city, and the steady increase in popular
913
914 CHAPTER 28 • T H E A G E O F A N X I E T Y, C A 1 9 0 0 – 1 9 4 0
education. Such developments also encouraged the com- acute in the 1930s, when the rapid rise of harsh dictator-
forting belief in the logical universe of Newtonian physics ships and the Great Depression transformed old certain-
as well as faith in the ability of a rational human mind to ties into bitter illusions, as we shall see in Chapter 29.
understand that universe through intellectual investiga- No one expressed this state of uncertainty better than
tion. And just as there were laws of science, so were there French poet and critic Paul Valéry (1871–1945) in the
laws of society that rational human beings could discover early 1920s. Speaking of the “crisis of the mind,” Valéry
and then wisely act on. At the same time, the rights of the noted that Europe was looking at its future with dark
individual were not just taken for granted; they were ac- foreboding:
tually increasing. Well-established political rights were
4HESTORMHASDIEDAWAY ANDSTILLWEARERESTLESS UNEASY AS
gradually spreading to women and workers, and new “so-
IFTHESTORMWEREABOUTTOBREAK!LMOSTALLTHEAFFAIRSOFMEN
cial rights,” such as old-age pensions, were emerging. In
REMAININATERRIBLEUNCERTAINTY7ETHINKOFWHATHASDISAP
short, before World War I most Europeans had a moder-
PEARED ANDWEAREALMOSTDESTROYEDBYWHATHASBEENDE
ately optimistic view of the world, and with good reason.
STROYEDWEDONOTKNOWWHATWILLBEBORN ANDWEFEARTHE
Nevertheless, since the 1880s, a small band of serious
FUTURE NOTWITHOUTREASON $OUBTANDDISORDERAREINUS
thinkers and creative writers had been attacking these well-
ANDWITHUS 4HEREISNOTHINKINGMAN HOWEVERSHREWDOR
worn optimistic ideas. These critics rejected the general
LEARNEDHEMAYBE WHOCANHOPETODOMINATETHISANXIETY TO
faith in progress and the power of the rational human
ESCAPEFROMTHISIMPRESSIONOFDARKNESS1
mind. An expanding chorus of thinkers echoed and en-
larged their views after the experience of history’s most In the midst of economic, political, and social disrup-
destructive war—a war that suggested to many that human tions, Valéry saw the “cruelly injured mind,” besieged by
beings were a pack of violent, irrational animals quite doubts and suffering from anxieties. This was the general
capable of tearing the individual and his or her rights intellectual crisis of the twentieth century, which touched
to shreds. Disorientation and pessimism were particularly almost every field of thought. The implications of new
Kollwitz: The Grieving Parents After

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the renowned German artist Kathe Koll-
witz learned in October 1914 that her son
Peter had died in battle, the heartbroken
mother conceived of a sculpture to honor
his memory. Yet her efforts were repeatedly
overwhelmed by sorrow. Only in 1931
could she complete this graveside memorial
in a military cemetery, a telling indication
of the war’s ongoing devastation for mil-
lions. The grieving father and mother are
finally reunited with their son, and they beg
forgiveness for the mad war their genera-
tion inflicted on its children. *OHN0ARKER
PHOTOGRAPHER © !RTISTS2IGHTS3OCIETY
;!23= .EW9ORK6'"ILD +UNST "ONN
Uncertainty in Modern Thought • 915
ideas and discoveries in philosophy, physics, psychology, Chronology

and literature played a central role in this crisis, disturb-
ing “thinking people” everywhere. 1919 Treaty of Versailles; Freudian psychology gains
popular attention; Keynes, Economic Consequences of
the Peace; Rutherford splits the atom
Modern Philosophy
1920s Existentialism gains prominence
Among the small band of thinkers in the late nineteenth
century who challenged the belief in progress and the gen- 1920s–1930s Dadaism and surrealism (artistic
eral faith in the rational human mind, German philosopher movements)
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was particularly influen-
1922 Eliot, The Waste Land; Joyce, Ulysses; Woolf,
tial. The son of a Lutheran minister, Nietzsche rejected
Jacob’s Room; Wittgenstein writes on logical empiricism
Christianity and became a professor of classical languages
until ill health forced him to retire at an early age. Never a 1923 French and Belgian armies occupy the Ruhr
systematic philosopher, Nietzsche wrote as a prophet in
1924 Dawes Plan
a provocative and poetic style. His first great work in
1872 argued that ever since classical Athens, the West had 1925 Berg’s opera Wozzeck first performed; Kafka,
overemphasized rationality and stifled the passion and ani- The Trial
mal instinct that drive human activity and true creativity. 1926 Germany joins League of Nations
Nietzsche went on to question all values. He claimed
that Christianity embodied a “slave morality” that glorified 1927 Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty
weakness, envy, and mediocrity. In Nietzsche’s most fa- 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact
mous line, a wise fool proclaims that “God is dead,” dead
because he has been murdered by lackadaisical modern 1929 Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Christians who no longer really believe in him. Nietzsche 1929–1939 Great Depression
viewed the pillars of conventional morality—reason, de-
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1930 Van der Rohe becomes director of Bauhaus
mocracy, progress, respectability—as outworn social and
psychological constructs whose influence was suffocating 1932 Franklin Roosevelt elected U.S. president
self-realization and excellence.
1934 Riefenstahl’s documentary film The Triumph of
Improve Your Grade the Will
Primary Source: God Is Dead, the Victim of Science
1935 Creation of WPA as part of New Deal
Nietzsche painted a dark world, foreshadowing perhaps
his loss of sanity in 1889. The West was in decline; false 1936 Formation of Popular Front in France
values had triumphed. The death of God left people dis-
oriented and depressed. The only hope for the individual
was to accept the meaninglessness of human existence (1859–1941) convinced many young people through his
and then make that very meaninglessness a source of self- writing that immediate experience and intuition were as
defined personal integrity and hence liberation. This would important as rational and scientific thinking for under-
at least be possible for a few superior individuals who standing reality. Indeed, according to Bergson, a religious
could free themselves from the humdrum thinking of the experience or a mystical poem was often more accessible
masses and become true heroes. Little read during his ac- to human comprehension than a scientific law or a math-
tive years, Nietzsche attracted growing attention in the ematical equation.
early twentieth century, especially from German radicals Another thinker who agreed about the limits of rational
who found inspiration in Nietzsche’s ferocious assault on thinking was French socialist Georges Sorel (1847–1922).
the conventions of pre-1914 imperial Germany. Subse- Sorel frankly characterized Marxian socialism as an in-
quent generations have each discovered new Nietzsches, spiring but unprovable religion rather than a rational sci-
and his influence remains enormous to this day. entific truth. Socialism would come to power, he believed,
This growing dissatisfaction with established ideas be- through a great, general strike of all working people, which
fore 1914 was apparent in other important thinkers. In would shatter capitalist society. Sorel rejected democracy
the 1890s, French philosophy professor Henri Bergson and believed that the masses of the new socialist society
0HILOSOPHICUS (Essay on Logical Philosophy) in 1922 that

philosophy is only the logical clarification of thoughts,
and therefore it becomes the study of language, which
expresses thoughts. The great philosophical issues of the
ages—God, freedom, morality, and so on—are quite lit-
erally senseless, a great waste of time, for statements
about them can be neither tested by scientific experi-
ments nor demonstrated by the logic of mathematics.
Statements about such matters reflect only the personal
preferences of a given individual. As Wittgenstein put it
in the famous last sentence of his work, “Of what one
cannot speak, of that one must keep silent.” Logical em-
piricism, which has remained dominant in England and
the United States to this day, drastically reduced the scope
of philosophical inquiry. Anxious people could find few,
if any, answers in this direction.
Some looked for answers in existentialism. Highly di-
verse and even contradictory, existential thinkers were
loosely united in a courageous search for moral values in
a world of terror and uncertainty. Theirs were true voices
of the age of anxiety.
Most existential thinkers in the twentieth century were
atheists. Often inspired by Nietzsche, who had already
proclaimed the death of God and called for new values,
Apago PDF Enhancer they did not believe a supreme being had established hu-
manity’s fundamental nature and given life its meaning.
In the words of the famous French existentialist Jean-Paul
Sartre (1905–1980), human beings simply exist: “They
turn up, appear on the scene.” Only after they “turn up”
Friedrich Nietzsche This colored photograph of the do they seek to define themselves. Honest human beings
German philosopher was taken in 1882, when he was at the
height of his creative powers. A brilliant iconoclast, Nietzsche are terribly alone, for there is no God to help them. They
debunked European values and challenged the optimistic faith are hounded by despair and the meaninglessness of life.
in human rationality before World War I. AKG IMAGES The crisis of the existential thinker epitomized the mod-
ern intellectual crisis—the shattering of beliefs in God,
would have to be tightly controlled by a small revolution- reason, and progress.
ary elite. Existentialists did recognize that human beings, unless
The First World War accelerated the revolt against es- they kill themselves, must act. Indeed, in the words of
tablished certainties in philosophy, but that revolt went Sartre, “man is condemned to be free.” There is therefore
in two very different directions. In English-speaking coun- the possibility—indeed, the necessity—of giving meaning
tries, the main development was the acceptance of logical to life through actions, of defining oneself through choices.
empiricism (or logical positivism) in university circles. In To do so, individuals must become “engaged” and choose
continental countries, the primary development in philos- their own actions courageously and consistently and in full
ophy was existentialism. awareness of their inescapable responsibility for their own
Logical empiricism was truly revolutionary. It quite behavior. In the end, existentialists argued, human beings
simply rejected most of the concerns of traditional phi- can overcome life’s absurdity.
losophy, from the existence of God to the meaning of Modern existentialism first attained prominence in Ger-
happiness, as nonsense and hot air. This outlook began many in the 1920s when philosophers Martin Heidegger
primarily with Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgen- and Karl Jaspers found a sympathetic audience among dis-
stein (1889–1951), who later immigrated to England, illusioned postwar university students. But it was in France
where he trained numerous disciples. during and immediately after World War II that existen-
Wittgenstein argued in his pugnacious 4RACTATUS,OGICO tialism came of age. The terrible conditions of the war
(see Chapter 29) reinforced the existential view of and word and the supernatural revelation of Jesus Christ with
approach to life. On the one hand, the armies of the Ger- awe, trust, and obedience. Lowly mortals should not ex-
man dictator Hitler had conquered most of Europe and pect to “reason out” God and his ways.
unleashed a hideous reign of barbarism. On the other, Among Catholics, the leading existential Christian
men and women had more than ever to define them- thinker was Gabriel Marcel (1887–1973). Born into a
selves by their actions. Specifically, each individual had to cultivated French family, where his atheistic father was
choose whether to join the resistance against Hitler or “gratefully aware of all that . . . art owed to Catholicism
accept and even abet tyranny. The writings of Sartre, who but regarded Catholic thought itself as obsolete and tainted
along with Albert Camus (1913–1960) was the leading with absurd superstitions,”2 Marcel found in the Catholic
French existentialist, became enormously influential. Him- Church an answer to what he called the postwar “broken
self active in the French resistance, Sartre and his colleagues world.” Catholicism and religious belief provided the
offered a powerful answer to profound moral issues and hope, humanity, honesty, and piety for which he hun-
the contemporary crisis. gered. Flexible and gentle, Marcel and his countryman
Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) denounced anti-Semitism
and supported closer ties with non-Catholics.
The Revival of Christianity After 1914 religion became much more relevant and
The loss of faith in human reason and in continual progress meaningful to thinking people than it had been before
also led to a renewed interest in the Christian view of the the war. In addition to Marcel and Maritain, many other
world. Christianity and religion in general had been on illustrious individuals turned to religion between about
the defensive in intellectual circles since the Enlightenment. 1920 and 1950. Poets T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden, nov-
In the years before 1914, some theologians, especially elists Evelyn Waugh and Aldous Huxley, historian Arnold
Protestant ones, had felt the need to interpret Christian Toynbee, Oxford professor C. S. Lewis, psychoanalyst
doctrine and the Bible so that they did not seem to con- Karl Stern, physicist Max Planck, and philosopher Cyril
tradict science, evolution, and common sense. Christ was Joad were all either converted to religion or attracted to
therefore seen primarily as the greatest moral teacher, and
Apago PDF Enhancer it for the first time. Religion, often of a despairing, exis-
the “supernatural” aspects of his divinity were strenuously tential variety, was one meaningful answer to terror and
played down. Indeed, some modern theologians were em- anxiety. In the words of a famous Roman Catholic con-
barrassed by the miraculous, unscientific aspects of Chris- vert, English novelist Graham Greene, “One began to
tianity and turned away from them. believe in heaven because one believed in hell.”3
Especially after World War I, a number of thinkers and
theologians began to revitalize the fundamentals of Chris-
tianity. Sometimes described as Christian existentialists
The New Physics
because they shared the loneliness and despair of atheistic Ever since the scientific revolution of the seventeenth cen-
existentialists, they stressed human beings’ sinful nature, tury, scientific advances and their implications had greatly
the need for faith, and the mystery of God’s forgiveness. influenced the beliefs of thinking people. By the late
The revival of fundamental Christian belief after World nineteenth century, science was one of the main pillars
War I was fed by rediscovery of the work of nineteenth- supporting Western society’s optimistic and rationalistic
century Danish religious philosopher Søren Kierkegaard view of the world. The Darwinian concept of evolution
(1813–1855), whose ideas became extremely influential. had been accepted and assimilated in most intellectual
Having rejected formalistic religion, Kierkegaard had even- circles. Progressive minds believed that science, unlike
tually resolved his personal anguish over his imperfect na- religion and philosophical speculation, was based on hard
ture by making a total religious commitment to a remote facts and controlled experiments. Science seemed to have
and majestic God. achieved an unerring and almost complete picture of
Similar ideas were brilliantly developed by Swiss Protes- reality. Unchanging natural laws seemed to determine
tant theologian Karl Barth (1886–1968), whose many physical processes and permit useful solutions to more
influential writings after 1920 sought to re-create the re- and more problems. All this was comforting, especially
ligious intensity of the Reformation. For Barth, the basic to people who were no longer committed to traditional
fact about human beings is that they are imperfect, sinful religious beliefs. And all this was challenged by the
creatures whose reason and will are hopelessly flawed. new physics.
Religious truth is therefore made known to human beings An important first step toward the new physics was the
only through God’s grace. People have to accept God’s discovery at the end of the nineteenth century that atoms
were not like hard, permanent little billiard balls. They that subatomic energy is emitted in uneven little spurts,
were actually composed of many far-smaller, fast-moving which Planck called “quanta,” and not in a steady stream,
particles, such as electrons and protons. Polish-born physi- as previously believed. Planck’s discovery called into ques-
cist Marie Curie (1867–1934) and her French husband, tion the old sharp distinction between matter and energy;
Pierre, discovered that radium constantly emits subatomic the implication was that matter and energy might be dif-
particles and thus does not have a constant atomic ferent forms of the same thing. The old view of atoms as the
weight. Building on this and other work in radiation, Ger- stable, basic building blocks of nature, with a different
man physicist Max Planck (1858–1947) showed in 1900 kind of unbreakable atom for each of the ninety-two
chemical elements, was badly shaken.
In 1905 the German-Jewish ge-
nius Albert Einstein (1879–1955)
went further than the Curies and
Planck in undermining Newtonian
physics. His famous theory of spe-
cial relativity postulated that time
and space are relative to the view-
point of the observer and that only
the speed of light is constant for all
frames of reference in the universe.
In order to make his revolutionary
and paradoxical idea somewhat
comprehensible to the nonmathe-
matical layperson, Einstein later used
analogies involving moving trains.
Apago PDF Enhancer For example, if a woman in the
middle of a moving car got up and
walked forward to the door, she
had gone, relative to the train, a
half car length. But relative to an
observer on the embankment, she
had gone farther. The closed frame-
work of Newtonian physics was
quite limited compared to that of
Einsteinian physics, which unified an
apparently infinite universe with
the incredibly small, fast-moving
subatomic world. Moreover, Ein-
stein’s theory stated clearly that
matter and energy are interchange-
able and that even a particle of mat-
ter contains enormous levels of
potential energy.
The 1920s opened the “heroic
age of physics,” in the apt words of
one of its leading pioneers, Ernest
Rutherford (1871–1937). Break-
Unlocking the Power of the Atom Many of the fanciful visions of science fiction through followed breakthrough. In
came true in the twentieth century, although not exactly as first imagined. This 1927 1919 Rutherford showed that the
cartoon satirizes a professor who has split the atom and unwittingly destroyed his
building and neighborhood in the process. In the Second World War the professors atom could be split. By 1944 seven
harnessed the atom in bombs and decimated faraway cities and foreign civilians. -ARY subatomic particles had been identi-
%VANS0ICTURE,IBRARY fied, of which the most important
was the neutron. The neutron’s capacity to pass

through other atoms allowed for even more in-
tense experimental bombardment of matter, lead-
ing to chain reactions of unbelievable force. This
was the road to the atomic bomb.
Although few nonscientists understood this
revolution in physics, the implications of the new
theories and discoveries, as presented by newspa-
pers and popular writers, were disturbing to mil-
lions of men and women in the 1920s and
1930s. The new universe was strange and trou-
bling. It lacked any absolute objective reality.
Everything was “relative,” that is, dependent on
the observer’s frame of reference. Moreover, the
universe was uncertain and undetermined, with-
out stable building blocks. In 1927 German
physicist Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) for-
mulated the “principle of uncertainty,” which
postulates that because it is impossible to know
the position and speed of an individual electron,
it is therefore impossible to predict its behavior.
Instead of Newton’s dependable, rational laws,
there seemed to be only tendencies and probabil-
ities in an extraordinarily complex and uncertain
universe. Apago PDF Enhancer
Moreover, a universe described by abstract
mathematical symbols seemed to have little to do
with human experience and human problems.
When, for example, Planck was asked what sci- Giorgio de Chirico: The Song of Love De Chirico strongly influ-
ence could contribute to resolving conflicts of enced the surrealist painters of the 1920s and 1930s, who saw civiliza-
values, his response was simple: “Science is not tion in crisis and found inspiration in Freudian theories of human
qualified to speak to this question.” Physics, the thought and action. In this 1914 painting De Chirico tightly groups
queen of the sciences, no longer provided people unrelated images—a classical head, a glove, a ball, a building—in a
fantastic, dreamlike combination that fascinates and puzzles. What
easy, optimistic answers—for that matter, it did mysterious significance, if any, lies behind this reordering of everyday
not provide any answers at all. reality? $IGITALIMAGE© 4HE-USEUMOF-ODERN!RT,ICENSEDBY3CALA!RT
2ESOURCE .9© !RTISTS2IGHTS3OCIETY;!23= .EW9ORK3)!% 2OME
Freudian Psychology
With physics presenting an uncertain universe so unre- and of hysteria, Freud developed a very different view of
lated to ordinary human experience, questions regarding the human psyche beginning in the late 1880s.
the power and potential of the human mind assumed According to Freud, human behavior is basically ir-
special significance. The findings and speculations of lead- rational. The key to understanding the mind is the primi-
ing psychologist Sigmund Freud (see page 804) were tive, irrational unconscious, which he called the id. The
particularly disturbing. unconscious is driven by sexual, aggressive, and pleasure-
Before Freud, poets and mystics had probed the uncon- seeking desires and is locked in a constant battle with
scious and irrational aspects of human behavior. But most the other parts of the mind: the rationalizing conscious
professional, “scientific” psychologists assumed that a sin- (the ego), which mediates what a person CAN do, and
gle, unified conscious mind processed sense experiences in ingrained moral values (the superego), which specify what
a rational and logical way. Human behavior in turn was the a person SHOULD do. Human behavior is a product of a frag-
result of rational calculation—of “thinking”—by the con- ile compromise between instinctual drives and the controls
scious mind. Basing his insights on the analysis of dreams of rational thinking and moral values. Since the instinctual
drives are extremely powerful, the ever-present danger for in 4HE3OUNDANDTHE&URY (1929), much of whose intense
individuals and whole societies is that unacknowledged drama is confusedly seen through the eyes of an idiot.
drives will overwhelm the control mechanisms in a violent, The most famous stream-of-consciousness novel—and
distorted way. Yet Freud also agreed with Nietzsche that surely the most disturbing novel of its generation—is
the mechanisms of rational thinking and traditional moral 5LYSSES which Irish novelist James Joyce (1882–1941)
values can be too strong. They can repress sexual desires published in 1922. Into an account of an ordinary day
too effectively, crippling individuals and entire peoples in the life of an ordinary man, Joyce weaves an ex-
with guilt and neurotic fears. tended ironic parallel between his hero’s aimless wander-
Freudian psychology and clinical psychiatry had beings through the streets and pubs of Dublin and the
come an international movement by 1910, but only after adventures of Homer’s hero Ulysses on his way home
1918 did they receive popular attention, especially in the from Troy. Abandoning conventional grammar and blend-
Protestant countries of northern Europe and in the United ing foreign words, puns, bits of knowledge, and scraps of
States. Many opponents and even some enthusiasts inter- memory together in bewildering confusion, the language
preted Freud as saying that the first requirement for men- of 5LYSSES is intended to mirror modern life itself: a gi-
tal health is an uninhibited sex life. Thus after the First gantic riddle waiting to be unraveled.
World War, the popular interpretation of Freud reflected As creative writers turned their attention from society
and encouraged growing sexual experimentation, partic- to the individual and from realism to psychological rela-
ularly among middle-class women. For more serious stu- tivity, they rejected the idea of progress. Some even de-
dents, the psychology of Freud and his followers drastically scribed “anti-utopias,” nightmare visions of things to
undermined the old, easy optimism about the rational and come. In 1918 an obscure German high school teacher
progressive nature of the human mind. named Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) published 4HE$E
CLINEOFTHE 7EST which quickly became an international
sensation. According to Spengler, every culture experi-
Twentieth-Century Literature ences a life cycle of growth and decline. Western civiliza-
The general intellectual climate of pessimism, relativism,
Apago PDF Enhancer tion, in Spengler’s opinion, was in its old age, and death
and alienation was also articulated in literature. Novelists was approaching in the form of conquest by the yellow
developed new techniques to express new realities. The race. T. S. Eliot (1888–1965), in his famous poem 4HE
great nineteenth-century novelists had typically written 7ASTE,AND (1922), depicts a world of growing desola-
as all-knowing narrators, describing realistic characters tion, although after his conversion to Anglo-Catholicism
and their relationship to an understandable, if sometimes in 1927, Eliot came to hope cautiously for humanity’s
harsh, society. In the twentieth century, most major writ- salvation. No such hope appears in the work of Franz
ers adopted the limited, often confused viewpoint of a Kafka (1883–1924), whose novels 4HE4RIAL (1925) and
single individual. Like Freud, these novelists focused their 4HE#ASTLE(1926), as well as several of his greatest short
attention on the complexity and irrationality of the hu- stories, portray helpless individuals crushed by inexplica-
man mind, where feelings, memories, and desires are for- bly hostile forces. The German-Jewish Kafka died young,
ever scrambled. The great French novelist Marcel Proust at forty-one, and so did not see the world of his night-
(1871–1922), in his semi-autobiographical 2EMEMBRANCE mares materialize in the Nazi state.
OF4HINGS0AST (1913–1927), recalled bittersweet memo- Englishman George Orwell (1903–1950), however, had
ries of childhood and youthful love and tried to discover seen both that reality and its Stalinist counterpart by 1949,
their innermost meaning. To do so, Proust lived like a when he wrote perhaps the ultimate in anti-utopian liter-
hermit in a soundproof Paris apartment for ten years, with- ature: Orwell set the action in the future, in 1984.
drawing from the present to dwell on the past. Big Brother—the dictator—and his totalitarian state use a
Serious novelists also used the stream-of-consciousness new kind of language, sophisticated technology, and psy-
technique to explore the psyche. In *ACOBS2OOM (1922), chological terror to strip a weak individual of his last shred
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) created a novel made up of human dignity. The supremely self-confident chief of
of a series of internal monologues, in which ideas and the Thought Police tells the tortured, broken, and framed
emotions from different periods of time bubble up as Winston Smith, “If you want a picture of the future, imag-
randomly as from a patient on a psychoanalyst’s couch. ine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”4 A phe-
William Faulkner (1897–1962), perhaps America’s great- nomenal bestseller, spoke to millions of people in
est twentieth-century novelist, used the same technique the closing years of the age of anxiety.
Modern Art and Music • 921
old forms and old values. Modernism in art and music

meant constant experimentation and a search for new kinds
of expression. And though many people find the numer-
ous and varied modern visions of the arts strange, dis-
turbing, and even ugly, the first half of the twentieth
century, so dismal in many respects, will probably stand
as one of Western civilization’s great artistic eras.
• How did modernism revolutionize architecture, painting,
and music?
Architecture and Design

Modernism in the arts was loosely unified by a revolution
in architecture. This revolution intended nothing less
than a transformation of the physical framework of ur-
ban society according to a new principle: functionalism.
Buildings, like industrial products, should be useful and
“functional”—that is, they should serve, as well as pos-
sible, the purpose for which they were made. Thus archi-
tects and designers had to work with engineers, town
planners, and even sanitation experts. Moreover, they had
to throw away useless ornamentation and find beauty and
aesthetic pleasure in the clean lines of practical construc-
Apago PDF Enhancer tions and efficient machinery. Franco-Swiss genius Le Cor-
busier (1887–1965) insisted that “a house is a machine
for living in.”5
The United States, with its rapid urban growth and lack
of rigid building traditions, pioneered in the new archi-
tecture. In the 1890s, the Chicago school of architects,
led by Louis H. Sullivan (1856–1924), used cheap steel,
reinforced concrete, and electric elevators to build sky-
scrapers and office buildings lacking almost any exterior
1984 This intriguing cover for an early edition of Orwell’s ornamentation. In the first decade of the twentieth cen-
brilliant novel hints at the tragic love affair between Winston tury, Sullivan’s student Frank Lloyd Wright (1869–1959)
and Julia. Considered a crime in Orwell’s totalitarian dictator- built a series of radically new and truly modern houses fea-
ship of the future, the love affair leads to the couple’s arrest,
torture, and betrayal. No one can escape the scrutiny of Big turing low lines, open interiors, and mass-produced
Brother and the Thought Police. 3IGNET"OOKS.EW!MERICAN building materials. Europeans were inspired by these and
,IBRARYPHOTO other American examples of functional construction, like
the massive, unadorned grain elevators of the Midwest.
In Europe architectural leadership centered in German-
speaking countries until Hitler took power in 1933. In
1911 twenty-eight-year-old Walter Gropius (1883–1969)
Modern Art and Music broke sharply with the past in his design of the Fagus
shoe factory at Alfeld, Germany—a clean, light, elegant
Throughout the twentieth century, there was consider- building of glass and iron. After the First World War,
able unity in the arts. Even today the “modernism” of the Gropius merged the schools of fine and applied arts at
immediate prewar years and the 1920s still seems strik- Weimar into a single, interdisciplinary school, the Bauhaus.
ingly modern. Like the scientists and creative artists who The Bauhaus brought together many leading modern ar-
were partaking of the same culture, creative artists rejected chitects, designers, and theatrical innovators. Working as
Apago PDF Enhancer

Walter Gropius: The Fagus Shoe Factory, 1911 The factory’s sleek exterior is inspired by
the revolutionary principles of functionalism. The striking glass façade creates a feeling of
lightness and eliminates the traditional separation between interior and exterior. The glass
façade also provides workers with healthy natural light—a practical, “functional” concern.
6ANNI!RT2ESOURCE .9
an effective, inspired team, they combined the study of as Claude Monet (1840–1926), Pierre Auguste Renoir
fine art, such as painting and sculpture, with the study of (1841–1919), and Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) was, in
applied art in the crafts of printing, weaving, and furni- part, a kind of “superrealism.” Leaving exact copying of
ture making. Throughout the 1920s, the Bauhaus, with objects to photography, these artists sought to capture
its stress on functionalism and good design for everyday the momentary overall feeling, or impression, of light
life, attracted enthusiastic students from all over the falling on a real-life scene before their eyes. By 1890,
world. It had a great and continuing impact. when impressionism was finally established, a few artists
Another leader in the “international” style, Ludwig known as POSTIMPRESSIONISTS or sometimes as EXPRESSION
Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969), followed Gropius as di- ISTS were already striking out in new directions. After
rector of the Bauhaus in 1930 and immigrated to the 1905 art increasingly took on a nonrepresentational, ab-
United States in 1937. His classic Lake Shore Apartments stract character, a development that reached its high point
in Chicago, built between 1948 and 1951, symbolized the after World War II.
triumph of steel-frame and glass-wall modern architecture Though individualistic in their styles, postimpressionists
in the great building boom after the Second World War. were united in their desire to know and depict worlds other
than the visible world of fact. Like the early-nineteenth-
century romantics, they wanted to portray unseen, inner
Modern Painting worlds of emotion and imagination. Like modern novelists,
Modern painting grew out of a revolt against French im- they wanted to express a complicated psychological view of
pressionism. The IMPRESSIONISM of such French painters reality as well as an overwhelming emotional intensity. In
Modern Art and Music • 923
4HE3TARRY.IGHT (1889), for example, the great Dutch acteristic of postimpressionism and expressionism. Paul
expressionist Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) painted the Cézanne (1839–1906), who had a profound influence
moving vision of his mind’s eye (see the illustration be- on twentieth-century painting, was particularly commit-
low). Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), the French stockbroker- ted to form and ordered design. He told a young painter,
turned-painter, pioneered in expressionist techniques, “You must see in nature the cylinder, the sphere, and the
though he used them to infuse his work with tranquillity cone.”6 As Cézanne’s later work became increasingly ab-
and mysticism. In 1891 he fled to the South Pacific in stract and nonrepresentational, it also moved away from
search of unspoiled beauty and a primitive way of life. Gau- the traditional three-dimensional perspective toward the
guin believed that the form and design of a picture were two-dimensional plane, which has characterized so much
important in themselves and that the painter need not try of modern art. The expressionism of a group of painters
to represent objects on canvas as the eye actually saw them. led by Henri Matisse (1869–1954) was so extreme that
Fascination with form, as opposed to light, was char- an exhibition of their work in Paris in 1905 prompted
Apago PDF Enhancer
Van Gogh: The Starry Night Van Gogh absorbed impressionism in Paris, but under the
burning sun of southern France he went beyond the portrayal of external reality. In 4HE3TARRY
.IGHT (1889) flaming cypress trees, exploding stars, and a comet-like Milky Way swirl together
in one great cosmic rhythm. Painting an inner world of intense emotion and wild imagina-
tion, van Gogh contributed greatly to the rise of expressionism in modern art. $IGITALIMAGE©
4HE-USEUMOF-ODERN!RT,ICENSEDBY3CALA!RT2ESOURCE .9
Images in Society
Pablo Picasso and Modern Art
P ablo Picasso (1881–1973) was probably the most

significant artist of the early twentieth century. For more
you see the magical violence of a pictorial
breakthrough or a grotesque, ugly departure?
than seventy years, he personified the individuality, free- Picasso extended his revolutionary experiments, and
dom, and revolutionary creativity of the modern artist. after 1910 he was joined by others. A critic called the
Born at Málaga in southern Spain, Picasso quickly new school cubism because these artists used many
demonstrated a precocious talent. At nineteen he headed geometric forms in intersecting planes. Objects,
for Paris, Europe’s art capital. Suffering from poverty viewed from many shifting viewpoints, often emerged
and falling into depression, he painted the weak and the as purely abstract designs.
poor in somber blue and purple tones. These pessimistic 4HREE-USICIANS (Image 2), painted in 1921, repre-
paintings of Picasso’s “Blue Period” (1901–1904) are sents mature cubism. Many people believe that it marks
masterpieces in the tradition of Spanish realism. the culmination of Picasso’s cubist style. What similari-
Yet the young Picasso soon sought a new visual real- ties and differences do you see between this picture and
ity. In 1907 his arduous struggle to create a new style Image 1? Notice the limited number of viewpoints,
resulted in ,ES$EMOISELLESD!VIGNON (Image 1), a with the white clown, the harlequin, the monk, their
painting originating in memories
of a brothel scene in Barcelona.
This work was considered a revolu- Apago PDF Enhancer
tionary upheaval in art. Since the
Renaissance, artists had been ex-
pected to follow established rules,
seeing objects in an orderly per-
spective from a single viewpoint
and creating “beauty” and unified
human forms. Do the faces of the
central figures in this work con-
form to these rules? Regard the
figures on either side, who were
painted later. Notice how the light
fails to combine with the shadow
to create bodies with continuous,
three-dimensional contours. The
figures appear broken into large,
flat planes with heads that are
twisted, fractured dislocations. Do
Image 1 Les Demoiselles d’Avignon

(1907). $IGITALIMAGE© 4HE-USEUMOF
-ODERN!RT,ICENSEDBY3CALA!RT2ESOURCE
.9© %STATEOF0ABLO0ICASSO!RTISTS
2IGHTS3OCIETY;!23= .EW9ORK
924
instruments, and the table in front cut up into rectan-
gular shapes and reassembled in recognizable form on a
shallow series of planes. What is the effect of the bright
primary colors and the harmonious, decorative order?
Picasso had been making the sets for Sergei Diaghilev’s
famous Russian dance company in Paris, and these
three jagged figures from traditional Italian comedy
seem to convey the atmosphere of the theater and the
dissonant, syncopated rhythm of modern music. Pi-
casso always drew back from pure abstraction because
he began with real objects and used models.
Picasso’s passionate involvement in his times infuses
his immense painting 'UERNICA (Image 3), often con-
sidered his greatest work. Painted for the Spanish pavil-
ion at the Paris International Exhibition in 1937, this
mural, with its mournful white, black, and blue colors,
was inspired by the Spanish civil war and the deadly
terror bombing of Guernica by fascist planes in a single
night. In this complex work, a shrieking woman falls
from a burning house on the far right. On the left, a Image 2 Three Musicians (1921). $IGITALIMAGE© 4HE-USEUM
woman holds a dead child, while toward the center are OF-ODERN!RT,ICENSEDBY3CALA!RT2ESOURCE .9© %STATEOF0ABLO
fragments of a warrior and a screaming horse pierced 0ICASSO!RTISTS2IGHTS3OCIETY;!23= .EW9ORK
by a spear. Do cubist techniques heighten the effect?
Picasso also draws on other aspects of the modernist
revolution here. Compare 'UERNICA with the expres- present here? Picasso wanted his painting to be an un-
sionist work on page 923. Surrealists were fascinated forgettable attack on “brutality and darkness.” Did he
Apago PDF Enhancer
with grotesque subject matter and apparently unrelated succeed? How do the works presented here enhance
objects in surprising situations. Are these elements also your understanding of modern art?
Image 3 Guernica (1937). "RIDGEMAN 'IRAUDON!RT2ESOURCE .9© %STATEOF0ABLO0ICASSO!RTISTS2IGHTS3OCIETY;!23= .EW9ORK
Improve Your Grade

Going Beyond Images in Society
925
shocked critics to call them LESFAUVES—“the wild beasts.” After the experience of the First World War, when irra-
Matisse and his followers still painted real objects, but tionality and violence seemed to pervade the human ex-
their primary concern was the arrangement of color, line, perience, expressionism in opera and ballet flourished.
and form as an end in itself. One of the most famous and powerful examples was the
In 1907 a young Spaniard in Paris, Pablo Picasso (1881– opera 7OZZECK by Alban Berg (1885–1935), first per-
1973), founded another movement—CUBISM. (See the fea- formed in Berlin in 1925. Blending a half-sung, half-
ture “Images in Society: Pablo Picasso and Modern Art” spoken kind of dialogue with harsh, atonal music, 7OZZECK
on pages 924–925.) Cubism concentrated on a complex is a gruesome tale of a soldier driven by Kafka-like inner
geometry of zigzagging lines and sharply angled, over- terrors and vague suspicions of unfaithfulness to murder
lapping planes. About three years later came the ultimate his mistress.
stage in the development of abstract, nonrepresentational Some composers turned their backs on long-established
art. Artists such as the Russian-born Wassily Kandinsky musical conventions. As abstract painters arranged lines
(1866–1944) turned away from nature completely. “The and color but did not draw identifiable objects, so mod-
observer,” said Kandinsky, “must learn to look at [my] ern composers arranged sounds without creating recog-
pictures . . . as form and color combinations . . . as a rep- nizable harmonies. Led by Viennese composer Arnold
resentation of mood and not as a representation of OB Schönberg (1874–1951), they abandoned traditional har-
JECTS”7 On the eve of the First World War, extreme mony and tonality. The musical notes in a given piece
expressionism and abstract painting were developing rap- were no longer united and organized by a key; instead
idly not only in Paris but also in Russia and Germany. they were independent and unrelated. Schönberg’s twelve-
Modern art had become international. tone music of the 1920s arranged all twelve notes of the
In the 1920s and 1930s, the artistic movements of the scale in an abstract, mathematical pattern, or “tone row.”
prewar years were extended and consolidated. The most This pattern sounded like no pattern at all to the ordinary
notable new developments were DADAISM and SURREALISM listener and could be detected only by a highly trained
Dadaism attacked all accepted standards of art and be- eye studying the musical score. Accustomed to the har-
havior, delighting in outrageous conduct. Its name, from
Apago PDF Enhancer monies of classical and romantic music, audiences gener-
the French word DADA meaning “hobbyhorse,” is delib- ally resisted modern atonal music. Only after the Second
erately nonsensical. A famous example of dadaism is a re- World War did it begin to win acceptance.
production of Leonardo da Vinci’s -ONA,ISA in which
the famous woman with the mysterious smile sports a
mustache and is ridiculed with an obscene inscription. Movies and Radio
After 1924 many dadaists were attracted to surrealism,
which became very influential in art in the late 1920s and • In what ways did movies and radio become mainstays of
1930s. Surrealists painted a fantastic world of wild dreams popular culture?
and complex symbols, where watches melted and giant
metronomes beat time in precisely drawn but impossible Until after World War II at the earliest, these revolution-
alien landscapes. Refusing to depict ordinary visual real- ary changes in art and music appealed mainly to a mi-
ity, surrealist painters made powerful statements about nority of “highbrows” and not to the general public.
the age of anxiety. That public was primarily and enthusiastically wrapped
up in movies and radio. The long-declining traditional
arts and amusements of people in villages and small towns
Modern Music almost vanished, replaced by standardized, commercial
Developments in modern music were strikingly parallel to entertainment.
those in painting. Composers, too, were attracted by the Moving pictures were first shown as a popular nov-
emotional intensity of expressionism. The ballet 4HE2ITEOF elty in naughty peepshows—“What the Butler Saw”—and
3PRING by composer Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) practi- penny arcades in the 1890s, especially in Paris. The first
cally caused a riot when it was first performed in Paris in movie houses date from an experiment in Los Angeles in
1913 by Sergei Diaghilev’s famous Russian dance company. 1902. They quickly attracted large audiences and led to
The combination of pulsating, dissonant rhythms from the the production of short, silent action films such as the
orchestra pit and an earthy representation of lovemaking by eight-minute 'REAT4RAIN2OBBERY of 1903. American di-
the dancers on the stage seemed a shocking, almost porno- rectors and business people then set up “movie factories,”
graphic enactment of a primitive fertility rite. at first in the New York area and then after 1910 in Los
Movies and Radio • 927
Angeles. These factories churned out two short films each

week. On the eve of the First World War, full-length fea-
ture films such as the Italian 1UO6ADIS and the American
"IRTHOFA.ATION coupled with improvements in the qual-
ity of pictures, suggested the screen’s vast possibilities.
During the First World War, the United States became
the dominant force in the rapidly expanding silent-film in-
dustry. In the 1920s, Mack Sennett (1884–1960) and his
zany Keystone Kops specialized in short, slapstick comedies
noted for frantic automobile chases, custard-pie battles, and
gorgeous bathing beauties. Screen stars such as Mary
Pickford and Lillian Gish, Douglas Fairbanks and Rudolf
Valentino, became household names, with their own “fan
clubs.” Yet Charlie Chaplin (1889–1978), a funny little
Englishman working in Hollywood, was unquestionably
the king of the “silver screen” in the 1920s. In his enor-
mously popular role as the lonely Little Tramp, complete
with baggy trousers, battered derby, and an awkward, shuf-
fling walk, Chaplin symbolized the “gay spirit of laughter
in a cruel, crazy world.”8 Chaplin also demonstrated that in
the hands of a genius, the new medium could combine
mass entertainment and artistic accomplishment.
The early 1920s were also the great age of German
films. Protected and developed during the war, the large
German studios excelled in bizarre expressionist dramas,
Apago PDF Enhancer
beginning with 4HE#ABINETOF$R#ALIGARI in 1919. Unfor-
tunately, their period of creativity was short-lived. By 1926
American money was drawing the leading German talents
to Hollywood and consolidating America’s international
domination. Film making was big business, and European
theater owners were forced to book whole blocks of Amer-
ican films to get the few pictures they really wanted. This The Great Dictator In 1940 the renowned actor and direc-
system put European producers at a great disadvantage tor Charlie Chaplin abandoned the Little Tramp role to sati-
until “talkies” permitted a revival of national film industries rize the “great dictator,” Adolf Hitler. Chaplin had strong
in the 1930s, particularly in France. political views and made a number of films with political
themes as the escapist fare of the Great Depression gave way
Whether foreign or domestic, motion pictures became to the reality of the Second World War. 4HE-USEUMOF-ODERN
the main entertainment of the masses until after the Second !RT3TILL&ILM!RCHIVES
World War. In Great Britain one in every four adults went
to the movies twice a week in the late 1930s, and two in five
went at least once a week. Continental countries had simi- But only in 1920 were the first major public broadcasts of
lar figures. The greatest appeal of motion pictures was that special events made in Great Britain and the United States.
they offered ordinary people a temporary escape from the Lord Northcliffe, who had pioneered in journalism with
hard realities of everyday life. The appeal of escapist enter- the inexpensive, mass-circulation $AILY-AIL sponsored a
tainment was especially strong during the Great Depression. broadcast of “only one artist . . . the world’s very best, the
Millions flocked to musical comedies featuring glittering soprano Nellie Melba.”9 Singing from London in English,
stars such as Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire and to the fan- Italian, and French, Melba was heard simultaneously all
ciful cartoons of Mickey Mouse and his friends. over Europe on June 16, 1920. This historic event cap-
Radio became possible with the transatlantic “wireless” tured the public’s imagination. The meteoric career of ra-
communication of Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937) in dio was launched.
1901 and the development of the vacuum tube in 1904, Every major country quickly established national broad-
which permitted the transmission of speech and music. casting networks. In the United States such networks
were privately owned and financed by advertising. In Great The pursuit of real and lasting peace proved difficult for
Britain Parliament set up an independent, public corpo- many reasons. Germany hated the Treaty of Versailles.
ration, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), sup- France was fearful and isolated. Britain was undependable,
ported by licensing fees. Elsewhere in Europe the typical and the United States had turned its back on European
pattern was direct control by the government. problems. Eastern Europe was in ferment, and no one
Whatever the institutional framework, radio became could predict the future of communist Russia. Moreover,
popular and influential. By the late 1930s, more than the international economic situation was poor and greatly
three out of every four households in both democratic complicated by war debts and disrupted patterns of trade.
Great Britain and dictatorial Germany had at least one Yet for a time, from 1925 to late 1929, it appeared that
cheap, mass-produced radio. peace and stability were within reach. When the subse-
Radio in unscrupulous hands was particularly well suited quent collapse of the 1930s mocked these hopes and
for political propaganda. Dictators such as Mussolini and brought the rise of brutal dictators, the disillusionment of
Hitler controlled the airwaves and could reach enor- liberals in the democracies was intensified.
mous national audiences with their frequent, dramatic • How did the democratic leaders of the 1920s deal with
speeches. In democratic countries, politicians such as Pres- deep-seated instability and try to establish real peace and
ident Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Stanley Bald- prosperity?
win effectively used informal “fireside chats” to bolster their
support.
Motion pictures also became powerful tools of indoc-
trination, especially in countries with dictatorial regimes.
Germany and the Western Powers
Lenin himself encouraged the development of Soviet film Germany was the key to lasting peace. Yet to Germans of
making, believing that the new medium was essential to all political parties, the Treaty of Versailles represented a
the social and ideological transformation of the country. harsh, dictated peace, to be revised or repudiated as soon
Beginning in the mid-1920s, a series of epic films, the as possible. The treaty had neither broken nor reduced
most famous of which were directed by Sergei Eisenstein
Apago PDF Enhancer Germany, which was potentially still the strongest coun-
(1898–1948), brilliantly dramatized the communist view try in Europe. Thus the treaty had fallen between two
of Russian history. stools: too harsh for a peace of reconciliation, too soft for
In Germany Hitler turned to a young and immensely tal- a peace of conquest.
ented woman film maker, Leni Riefenstahl (1902–2003), Moreover, with ominous implications for the future,
for a masterpiece of documentary propaganda, 4HE4RIUMPH France and Great Britain did not see eye to eye on Ger-
OFTHE7ILL based on the Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg in many. By the end of 1919, France wanted to stress the
1934. Riefenstahl combined stunning aerial photography, harsh elements in the Treaty of Versailles. Most of the war
joyful crowds welcoming Hitler, and mass processions of in the west had been fought on French soil, and the ex-
young Nazi fanatics. Her film was a brilliant and all-too- pected costs of reconstruction, as well as repaying war
powerful documentary of Germany’s “Nazi rebirth.” The debts to the United States, were staggering. Thus French
new media of mass culture were potentially dangerous in- politicians believed that massive reparations from Ger-
struments of political manipulation. many were a vital economic necessity. Also, having com-
promised with President Wilson only to be betrayed by
America’s failure to ratify the treaty, many French leaders
The Search for Peace and saw strict implementation of all provisions of the Treaty of
Political Stability Versailles as France’s last best hope. Large reparation pay-
ments could hold Germany down indefinitely, and France
As established patterns of thought and culture were chal- would realize its goal of security.
lenged and mangled by the ferocious impact of World The British soon felt differently. Prewar Germany had
War I, so also was the political fabric stretched and torn been Great Britain’s second-best market in the entire world,
by the consequences of the great conflict. The Versailles and after the war a healthy, prosperous Germany appeared
settlement had established a shaky truce, not a solid peace. to be essential to the British economy. Indeed, many Eng-
Thus national leaders faced a gigantic task as they strug- lish people agreed with the analysis of the young English
gled with uncertainty and sought to create a stable inter- economist John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), who elo-
national order within the general context of intellectual quently denounced the Treaty of Versailles in his famous
crisis and revolutionary artistic experimentation. %CONOMIC#ONSEQUENCESOFTHE0EACE (1919). According to
The Search for Peace and Political Stability • 929
Keynes’s interpretation, astronomical reparations and harsh impossible, France would use occupation to paralyze Ger-
economic measures would impoverish Germany and also many and force it to accept the Treaty of Versailles.
increase economic hardship in all countries. Only a com- Strengthened by a wave of patriotism, the German gov-
plete revision of the foolish treaty could save Germany— ernment ordered the people of the Ruhr to stop working
and Europe. Keynes’s attack exploded like a bombshell and start passively resisting the French occupation. The
and became very influential. It stirred deep guilt feelings coal mines and steel mills of the Ruhr grew silent, leaving
about Germany in the English-speaking world, feelings that 10 percent of Germany’s total population in need of re-
often paralyzed English and American leaders in their rela- lief. The French answer to passive resistance was to seal off
tions with Germany and its leaders between the First and the Ruhr and the entire Rhineland from the rest of Ger-
Second World Wars. many, letting in only enough food to prevent starvation.
By the summer of 1923, France and Germany were en-
Improve Your Grade
gaged in a great test of wills. French armies could not
Primary Source: An Economist Analyzes the Versailles
Treaty and Finds It Lacking
collect reparations from striking workers at gunpoint.
But French occupation was indeed paralyzing Germany
The British were also suspicious of France’s army—the and its economy and had turned rapid German inflation
largest in Europe, and authorized at Versailles to occupy
the German Rhineland until 1935—and France’s foreign
policy. Ever since 1890, France had looked to Russia as a
powerful ally against Germany. But with Russia hostile and
communist, and with Britain and the United States un-
willing to make any firm commitments, France turned to
the newly formed states of eastern Europe for diplomatic
support. In 1921 France signed a mutual defense pact
with Poland and associated itself closely with the so-
called Little Entente, an alliance that joined Czechoslo-
Apago PDF Enhancer
vakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia against defeated and bitter
Hungary.
While French and British leaders drifted in different di-
rections, the Allied reparations commission completed its
work. In April 1921, it announced that Germany had to
pay the enormous sum of 132 billion gold marks ($33 bil-
lion) in annual installments of 2.5 billion gold marks.
Facing possible occupation of more of its territory, the
young German republic—generally known as the Weimar
Republic—made its first payment in 1921. Then in 1922,
wracked by rapid inflation and political assassinations and
motivated by hostility and arrogance as well, the Weimar
Republic announced its inability to pay more. It proposed
a moratorium on reparations for three years, with the
clear implication that thereafter reparations would be ei-
ther drastically reduced or eliminated entirely.
The British were willing to accept a moratorium on repa-
rations, but the French were not. Led by their tough-
minded prime minister, Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934),
they decided they had to either call Germany’s bluff or see
the entire peace settlement dissolve to France’s great disad-
vantage. So, despite strong British protests, in early January
1923, armies of France and its ally Belgium moved out of “Hands Off the Ruhr” The French occupation of the Ruhr
to collect reparations payments raised a storm of patriotic
the Rhineland and began to occupy the Ruhr district, the protest in Germany. This anti-French poster of 1923 turns
heartland of industrial Germany, creating the most serious Marianne, the personification of French republican virtue, into
international crisis of the 1920s. If forcible collection proved a vicious harpy. )NTERNATIONAL)NSTITUUTVOOR3OCIALE 'ESCHIEDENIS
into runaway inflation. Faced with the need to support This circular flow of international payments was com-
the striking Ruhr workers and their employers, the Ger- plicated and risky, but for a while it worked. The German
man government began to print money to pay its bills. republic experienced a spectacular economic recovery.
Prices soared. People went to the store with a big bag of With prosperity and large, continual inflows of American
paper money; they returned home with a handful of gro- capital, Germany easily paid about $1.3 billion in repara-
ceries. German money rapidly lost all value. tions in 1927 and 1928, enabling France and Britain to
Runaway inflation brought about a social revolution. pay the United States. In this way the Americans belat-
The accumulated savings of many retired and middle- edly played a part in the general economic settlement
class people were wiped out. Catastrophic inflation cruelly that, though far from ideal, facilitated the worldwide re-
mocked the old middle-class virtues of thrift, caution, and covery of the late 1920s.
self-reliance. Many Germans felt betrayed. They hated This economic settlement was matched by a politi-
and blamed the Western governments, their own govern- cal settlement. In 1925 the leaders of Europe signed
ment, big business, the Jews, the workers, and the com- a number of agreements at Locarno, Switzerland. Ger-
munists for their misfortune. They were psychologically many and France solemnly pledged to accept their com-
prepared to follow radical leaders in a crisis. mon border, and both Britain and Italy agreed to fight
In August 1923, as the mark fell and political unrest either France or Germany if one invaded the other. Strese-
grew throughout Germany, Gustav Stresemann (1878– mann also agreed to settle boundary disputes with Po-
1929) assumed leadership of the government. Stresemann land and Czechoslovakia by peaceful means, and France
adopted a compromising attitude. He called off passive promised those countries military aid if Germany attacked
resistance in the Ruhr and in October agreed in principle them. For years, a “spirit of Locarno” gave Europeans
to pay reparations but asked for a re-examination of a sense of growing security and stability in international
Germany’s ability to pay. Poincaré accepted. His hard affairs.
line was becoming increasingly unpopular with French Other developments also strengthened hopes. In 1926
citizens, and it was hated in Britain and the United Germany joined the League of Nations, where Stresemann
States. (See the feature “Individuals in Society: Gustav
Apago PDF Enhancer continued his “peace offensive.” In 1928 fifteen countries
Stresemann.”) signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, initiated by French prime
More generally, in both Germany and France, power minister Aristide Briand and U.S. secretary of state Frank
was finally passing to the moderates, who realized that B. Kellogg. This multinational pact “condemned and re-
continued confrontation was a destructive, no-win situa- nounced war as an instrument of national policy.” The
tion. Thus after five long years of hostility and tension, signing states agreed to settle international disputes peace-
culminating in a kind of undeclared war in the Ruhr in fully. Often seen as idealistic nonsense because it made no
1923, Germany and France decided to give compromise provisions for action in case war actually occurred, the pact
and cooperation a try. The British, and even the Ameri- was still a positive step. It fostered the cautious optimism
cans, were willing to help. The first step was a reasonable of the late 1920s and also encouraged the hope that the
agreement on the reparations question. United States would accept its responsibilities as a great
world power and contribute to European stability.
Hope in Foreign Affairs, 1924–1929
The reparations commission appointed an international
Hope in Democratic Government
committee of financial experts headed by American banker Domestic politics also offered reason to hope. During
Charles G. Dawes to re-examine reparations from a broad the occupation of the Ruhr and the great inflation, re-
perspective. The resulting Dawes Plan (1924) was ac- publican government in Germany had appeared on the
cepted by France, Germany, and Britain. Germany’s yearly verge of collapse. In 1923 communists momentarily en-
reparations were reduced and depended on the level of tered provincial governments, and in November an ob-
German economic prosperity. Germany would also re- scure nobody named Adolf Hitler leaped onto a table in
ceive large loans from the United States to promote Ger- a beer hall in Munich and proclaimed a “national social-
man recovery. In short, Germany would get private loans ist revolution.” But Hitler’s plot to seize control of the
from the United States and pay reparations to France and government was poorly organized and easily crushed, and
Britain, thus enabling those countries to repay the large Hitler was sentenced to prison, where he outlined his the-
sums they owed the United States. ories and program in his book Mein Kampf (My Strug-
Individuals
in Society
Gustav Stresemann
The German foreign minister Gustav Stresemann additional progress in

(1878–1929) is a controversial historical figure. Hailed achieving international
by many as a hero of peace, he was denounced as a reconciliation and sov-
traitor by radical German nationalists and then by ereign equality for
Hitler’s Nazis. After World War II, revisionist historians Germany.
stressed Stresemann’s persistent nationalism and cast Stresemann was no
doubt on his peaceful intentions. Weimar Germany’s fuzzy pacifist. Histori-
most renowned leader is a fascinating example of the ans debunking his “leg-
restless quest for convincing historical interpretation. end” are right in seeing
Stresemann’s origins were modest. His parents were an enduring love of
Berlin innkeepers and retailers of bottled beer, and only nation in his defense of Foreign Minister Gustav Strese-
Gustav of their five children was able to attend high German interests. But mann of Germany (right) leaves a
school. Attracted first to literature and history, Strese- Stresemann, like his meeting with Aristide Briand, his
mann later turned to economics, earned a doctoral de- French counterpart French counterpart.
gree, and quickly reached the top as a manager and Aristide Briand, was a (Corbis)
director of German trade associations. A highly intelli- statesman of goodwill
gent extrovert with a knack for negotiation, Stresemann who wanted peace through mutually advantageous
entered the Reichstag in 1907 as a business-oriented compromise. A realist trained by business and politics
liberal and nationalist. When World War I erupted, he in the art of the possible, Stresemann also reasoned
believed, like most Germans, that Germany had acted that Germany had to be a satisfied and equal partner if
Apago PDF Enhancer
defensively and was not at fault. He emerged as a strident peace was to be secure. His unwillingness to guarantee
nationalist and urged German annexation of conquered Germany’s eastern borders (see Map 27.4 on page
foreign territories. Germany’s collapse in defeat and 904), which is often criticized, reflects his conviction
revolution devastated Stresemann. He seemed a prime that keeping some Germans under Polish and
candidate for the hateful extremism of the far right. Czechoslovak rule created a ticking time bomb in Eu-
Yet although Stresemann opposed the Treaty of rope. Stresemann was no less convinced that war on
Versailles as an unjust and unrealistic imposition, he Poland would almost certainly re-create the Allied
turned back toward the center. He accepted the new coalition that had crushed Germany in 1918.* His
Weimar Republic and played a growing role in the insistence on the necessity of peace in the east as well
Reichstag as the leader of his own small probusiness as the west was prophetic. Hitler’s 1939 invasion of
party. His hour came in the Ruhr crisis, when French Poland resulted in an even mightier coalition that al-
and Belgian troops occupied the district. Named chan- most annihilated Germany in 1945.
cellor in August 1923, he called off passive resistance
and began talks with the French. His government also Questions for Analysis
quelled communist uprisings; put down rebellions in
Bavaria, including Hitler’s attempted coup; and ended 1. What did Gustav Stresemann do to promote
runaway inflation with a new currency. Stresemann reconciliation in Europe? How did his policy toward
fought to preserve German unity, and he succeeded. France differ from that toward Poland and
Voted out as chancellor in November 1923, Strese- Czechoslovakia?
mann remained as foreign minister in every government 2. What is your interpretation of Stresemann? Does he
until his death in 1929. Proclaiming a policy of peace arouse your sympathy or your suspicion and
and agreeing to pay reparations, he achieved his greatest hostility? Why?
triumph in the Locarno agreements of 1925 (see page
*Robert Grathwol, “Stresemann: Reflections on His Foreign
930). But the interlocking guarantees of existing French
Policy,” *OURNALOF-ODERN(ISTORY 45 (March 1973): 52–70.
and German borders (and the related agreements to
resolve peacefully all disputes with Poland and Czecho-
slovakia) did not lead the French to make any further
concessions that might have disarmed Stresemann’s Improve Your Grade
extremist foes. Working himself to death, he made little Going Beyond Individuals in Society
931
gle). Throughout the 1920s, Hitler’s National Socialist until his death in 1929. Elections were held regularly, and
Party attracted support only from a few fanatical anti- republican democracy appeared to have growing support
Semites, ultranationalists, and disgruntled ex-servicemen. among a majority of Germans.
In 1928 his party had an insignificant twelve seats in There were, however, sharp political divisions in the
the Reichstag. Indeed, after 1923 democracy seemed to country. Many unrepentant nationalists and monarchists
take root in Weimar Germany. A new currency was estab- populated the right and the army. Members of Germany’s
lished, and the economy boomed. recently formed Communist Party were noisy and active on
The moderate businessmen who tended to dominate the left. The Communists, directed from Moscow, reserved
the various German coalition governments were convinced their greatest hatred and sharpest barbs for their cousins
that economic prosperity demanded good relations with the Social Democrats, whom they endlessly accused of
the Western Powers, and they supported parliamentary betraying the revolution. The working classes were divided
government at home. Stresemann himself was a man of politically, but a majority supported the nonrevolutionary
this class, and he was the key figure in every government but socialist Social Democrats.
The situation in France had numerous similarities to
that in Germany. Communists and Socialists battled for
the support of the workers. After 1924 the democratically
elected government rested mainly in the hands of co-
alitions of moderates, and business interests were well
represented. France’s great accomplishment was rapid re-
building of its war-torn northern region. The expense of
this undertaking led, however, to a large deficit and sub-
stantial inflation. By early 1926, the franc had fallen to 10
percent of its prewar value, causing a severe crisis. Poincaré
was recalled to office, while Briand remained minister for
Apago PDF Enhancer foreign affairs. The Poincaré government proceeded to
slash spending and raise taxes, restoring confidence in the
economy. The franc was “saved,” stabilized at about one-
fifth of its prewar value. Good times prevailed until 1930.
Despite political shortcomings, France attracted artists
and writers from all over the world in the 1920s. Much
of the intellectual and artistic ferment of the times flour-
ished in Paris. As writer Gertrude Stein (1874–1946), a
leader of the large colony of American expatriates living
in Paris, later recalled, “Paris was where the twentieth
century was.”10 More generally, France appealed to for-
eigners and the French as a harmonious combination of
small businesses and family farms, of bold innovation and
solid traditions.
Britain, too, faced challenges after 1920. The wartime
trend toward greater social equality continued, however,
helping maintain social harmony. The great problem was
unemployment. Many of Britain’s best markets had been
lost during the war. In June 1921, almost 2.2 million
people—23 percent of the labor force—were out of work,
American Jazz in Paris This woodcut from a 1928 French and throughout the 1920s unemployment hovered
book on cafés and nightclubs suggests how black musicians around 12 percent. Yet the state provided unemployment
took Europe by storm, although the blacks are represented benefits of equal size to all those without jobs and supple-
stereotypically. One French critic concluded that American
blacks had attained a “pre-eminent” place in music since the mented those payments with subsidized housing, medical
war, “for they have impressed the entire world with their aid, and increased old-age pensions. These and other meas-
vibrating or melancholy rhythms.” AKG IMAGES ures kept living standards from seriously declining, defused
The Great Depression, 1929–1939 • 933
class tensions, and pointed the way toward the welfare rections in art and ideas (see Map 28.1). In desperation,
state Britain established after World War II. people looked for leaders who would “do something.”
Relative social harmony was accompanied by the rise of • What caused the Great Depression, and how did the
the Labour Party as a determined champion of the work- Western democracies respond to this challenge?
ing classes and of greater social equality. Committed to
the kind of moderate, “revisionist” socialism that had
emerged before World War I (see pages 840–842), the
Labour Party replaced the Liberal Party as the main op-
The Economic Crisis
position to the Conservatives. The new prominence of the There is no agreement among historians and economists
Labour Party reflected the decline of old liberal ideals of about why the Great Depression was so deep and lasted
competitive capitalism, limited government control, and so long. Thus it is best to trace the course of the great
individual responsibility. In 1924 and 1929, the Labour collapse before trying to identify what caused it.
Party under Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) governed Though economic activity was already declining mod-
the country with the support of the smaller Liberal Party. erately in many countries by early 1929, the crash of the
Yet Labour moved toward socialism gradually and demo- stock market in the United States in October of that year
cratically, so that the middle classes were not overly fright- triggered the collapse into the Great Depression. The
ened as the working classes won new benefits. American economy had prospered in the late 1920s, but
The Conservatives under Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) there were large inequalities in income and a serious im-
showed the same compromising spirit on social issues. The balance between “real” investment and stock market
last line of Baldwin’s greatest speech in March 1925 sum- speculation. Thus net investment—in factories, farms,
marized his international and domestic programs: “Give us equipment, and the like—actually fell from $3.5 billion
peace in our time, O Lord.” In spite of such conflicts as the in 1925 to $3.2 billion in 1929. In the same years, as
1926 strike by hard-pressed coal miners, which ended in money flooded into stocks, the value of shares traded on
an unsuccessful general strike, social unrest in Britain was the exchanges soared from $27 billion to $87 billion. As
limited in the 1920s and in the 1930s as well. In 1922
Apago PDF Enhancer a financial historian concluded in an important study, “It
Britain granted southern, Catholic Ireland full autonomy should have been clear to everybody concerned that a
after a bitter guerrilla war, thereby removing another crash was inevitable under such conditions.”11 Of course
source of prewar friction. Thus developments in both in- it was not. Irving Fisher, one of America’s most brilliant
ternational relations and the domestic politics of the lead- economists, was highly optimistic in 1929 and fully in-
ing democracies gave cause for optimism in the late 1920s. vested in stocks. He then lost his entire fortune and would
have been forced from his house if his university had not
bought it and rented it to him.
The Great Depression – The American stock market boom was built on bor-
rowed money. Many wealthy investors, speculators, and
Like the Great War, the Great Depression must be spelled people of modest means had bought stocks by paying
with capital letters. Economic depression was nothing new. only a small fraction of the total purchase price and bor-
Depressions occurred throughout the nineteenth century rowing the remainder from their stockbrokers. Such buy-
with predictable regularity, as they recur in the form of ing “on margin” was extremely dangerous. When prices
recessions and slumps to this day. What was new about started falling, the hard-pressed margin buyers either had
this depression was its severity and duration. It struck the to put up more money, which was often impossible, or
entire world with ever-greater intensity from 1929 to sell their shares to pay off their brokers. Thus thousands
1933, and recovery was uneven and slow. Only with the of people started selling all at once. The result was a fi-
Second World War did the depression disappear in much nancial panic. Countless investors and speculators were
of the world. wiped out in a matter of days or weeks.
The social and political consequences of prolonged The general economic consequences were swift and se-
economic collapse were enormous. The depression shat- vere. Stripped of wealth and confidence, battered investors
tered the fragile optimism of political leaders in the late and their fellow citizens started buying fewer goods. Prices
1920s. Mass unemployment and failing farms made inse- fell, production began to slow down, and unemployment
curity a reality for millions of ordinary people, who had began to rise. Soon the entire American economy was
paid little attention to the intellectual crisis or to new di- caught in a spiraling decline.
934
WASHINGTON
MONTANA NORTH MAINE

DAKOTA
OREGON MINN. VT.
IDAHO N.H.
SOUTH WIS. MASS.
DAKOTA MICH. NEW YORK
WYOMING
R.I.
CONN.
NEBRASKA IOWA PENN.
N.J.
NEVADA UTAH
OHIO
COLORADO ILL. IND. DEL.
W.VA. MD.
KANSAS VA.
KY.
MISSOURI
CALIFORNIA NORTH
TENNESSEE CAROLINA
DUST BOWL Percent of total
ARIZONA
OKLAHOMA population receiving
NEW MEXICO ARK. S.C.
unemployment relief, 1934
GEORGIA 25–41
MISS. ALA.
TEXAS 15–24
LA. 8–14
FL. Locations of major
strikes, 1932–1937
Main migration
movements of workers
Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States 1935
Apago PDF Enhancer

ICELAND
Percent of insured
Percent unemployed,
workers of insured 1932 Percent of workers unemployed, 1932
workers unemployed, 1932
More than 35 25–32
More than 35
25–35 15–24
25–35 FINLAND
15–24 No comparable data available
15–24
Less than 15 NORWAY
Less than 15
SWEDEN
ESTONIA
LATVIA
IRELAND LITH. SOVIET

UNITED UNION
KINGDOM GER.
NETH.
POLAND
BEL. GERMANY
LUX. CZECH.
FRANCE AUS.
SWITZ. HUNG.
ROMANIA
PORT. YUGOSLAVIA
ITALY BULG.
SPAIN
ALB.
GREECE
Source: European Historical Statistics, 1790–1970

Source: Historical Atlas of Britain, 1981 Monthly Labor Review, U.S. Dept. of Labor, 1934, vol. 39
The financial panic in the United States triggered a Although opinions differ, two factors probably best ex-
worldwide financial crisis. Throughout the 1920s, Ameri- plain the relentless slide to the bottom from 1929 to
can bankers and investors had lent large amounts of early 1933. First, the international economy lacked a
capital to many countries. Many of these loans were short- leadership able to maintain stability when the crisis came.
term, and once panic broke, New York bankers began re- Specifically, as a noted American economic historian con-
calling them. Gold reserves thus began to flow out of cluded, the seriously weakened British, the traditional
European countries, particularly Germany and Austria, leaders of the world economy, “couldn’t and the United
toward the United States. It became very hard for Euro- States wouldn’t” stabilize the international economic
pean business people to borrow money, and the panicky system in 1929.12 The United States, which had momen-
public began to withdraw its savings from the banks. These tarily played a positive role after the occupation of the
banking problems eventually led to the crash of the largest Ruhr, cut back its international lending and erected high
bank in Austria in 1931 and then to general financial tariffs.
chaos. The recall of private loans by American bankers The second factor was poor national economic policy
also accelerated the collapse in world prices, as business in almost every country. Governments generally cut their
people around the world dumped industrial goods and budgets and reduced spending when they should have run
agricultural commodities in a frantic attempt to get cash large deficits in an attempt to stimulate their economies.
to pay what they owed. After World War II, such a “counter-cyclical policy,” advo-
The financial crisis led to a general crisis of production: cated by John Maynard Keynes, became a well-established
between 1929 and 1933, world output of goods fell by weapon against downturn and depression. But in the
an estimated 38 percent. As this happened, each country 1930s, Keynes’s prescription was generally regarded with
turned inward and tried to go it alone. In 1931, for exam- horror by orthodox economists.
ple, Britain went off the gold standard, refusing to convert
bank notes into gold, and reduced the value of its money.
Britain’s goal was to make its goods cheaper and therefore
more salable in the world market. But because more than
Mass Unemployment
Apago PDF Enhancer
The need for large-scale government spending was tied
twenty nations, including the United States in 1934, also
went off the gold standard, few countries gained a real ad- to mass unemployment. As the financial crisis led to
vantage. Similarly, country after country followed the exam- cuts in production, workers lost their jobs and had little
ple of the United States when in 1930 it raised protective money to buy goods. In Britain unemployment had av-
tariffs to their highest levels ever and tried to seal off eraged 12 percent in the 1920s; between 1930 and 1935,
shrinking national markets for American producers only. it averaged more than 18 percent. Far worse was the case
Within this context of fragmented and destructive eco- of the United States, where unemployment had averaged
nomic nationalism, recovery finally began in 1933. only 5 percent in the 1920s. In 1932 unemployment
soared to about 33 percent of the entire labor force: 14
million people were out of work (see Map 28.1). Only by
pumping new money into the economy could the gov-
Mapping the Past ernment increase demand and break the vicious cycle
MAP 28.1 The Great Depression in the United States, of decline.
Britain, and Europe These maps show that unemploy- Along with economic effects, mass unemployment posed
ment was high almost everywhere, but that national and a great social problem. Poverty increased dramatically, al-
regional differences were also substantial. With this in
•
mind: 1 In the United States, what in 1934 were the main channels
•
of migration for workers? 2 In Britain, why do you think unemploy-
ment was higher in south Wales than in the greater London area?
though in most countries unemployed workers generally
received some kind of meager unemployment benefits or
public aid that prevented starvation. (See the feature “Lis-
(Hints: First locate both regions on Map 22.1 on page 718; assume that tening to the Past: Life on the Dole in Great Britain” on
Map 22.2 on page 725 provides clues regarding the kinds of work that pages 942–943.) Millions of people lost their spirit, con-
might be available in 1932; and integrate this information with the
discussion in the text on Britain’s changing economy in the 1920s and
demned to an apparently hopeless search for work or to idle
•
1930s.) 3 Which European countries in 1932 had the highest rate of
unemployment (usually considered a good indicator of the level of
economic hardship)?
boredom. Homes and ways of life were disrupted in mil-
lions of personal tragedies. Young people postponed mar-
riages, and birthrates fell sharply. There was an increase
in suicide and mental illness. Poverty or the threat of
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Isaac Soyer: Employment Agency (1937) The frustration and agony of looking for
work against long odds are painfully evident in this American masterpiece. The time-
killing, pensive resignation and dejection seen in the three figures are only aspects of the
larger problem. One of three talented brothers born in Russia and trained as artists in
New York, Isaac Soyer worked in the tradition of American realism and concentrated on
people and the influence of their environment. /ILONCANVAS b × IN7HITNEY-USEUM
OF !MERICAN!RT .EW9ORK0URCHASE#OURTESY %STATEOFARTIST )SAAC3OYER
poverty became a grinding reality. In 1932 the workers of IMAGINETHATTHISCOLOSSALTRAGEDYOFUNEMPLOYMENTISGOING

Manchester, England, appealed to their city officials—a ONENDLESSLYWITHOUTSOMEFATEFULCATASTR OPHE(UNGRYMEN
typical plea echoed throughout the Western world: AREANGRYMEN13
7ETELLYOUTHATTHOUSANDSOFPEOPL E ARE IN DESPERATE Only strong government action could deal with mass un-
STRAITS7ETELLYOUTHATMEN WOMEN ANDCHILDRENAREGOING employment, a social powder keg preparing to explode.
HUNGRY 7E TELLYOUTHATGR EATNUMBER SAR EBEINGR EN
DEREDDISTRAUGHTTHROUGHTHESTRESSANDWORRYOFTRYINGTOEX
ISTWITHOUTWORK
The New Deal in the United States
)FYOUDONOTDOTHISIFYOUDONOTPROVIDEUSEFULWORKFOR Of all the major industrial countries, only Germany was
THEUNEMPLOYEDWHAT WEASK ISYOURALTERNATIVE$ONOT harder hit by the Great Depression, or reacted more rad-
ically to it, than the United States (see Chapter 29). The famous of these was the Works Progress Administration
depression was so traumatic in the United States because (WPA), set up in 1935. One-fifth of the entire labor force
the 1920s had been a period of complacent optimism. worked for the WPA at some point in the 1930s, con-
The Great Depression and the response to it marked a structing public buildings, bridges, and highways. The
major turning point in American history. WPA was enormously popular, and the hope of a govern-
President Herbert Hoover (1895–1972) and his ad- ment job helped check the threat of social revolution in
ministration initially reacted to the stock market crash the United States.
and economic decline with dogged optimism and limited Relief programs like the WPA were part of the New
action. But when the full force of the financial crisis Deal’s most fundamental commitment, the commitment
struck Europe in the summer of 1931 and boomeranged to use the federal government to provide for the welfare
back to the United States, people’s worst fears became of all Americans. This commitment marked a profound
reality. Banks failed; unemployment soared. Between shift from the traditional stress on family support and
1929 and 1932, industrial production fell by about 50 community responsibility. Embraced by a large majority
percent. in the 1930s, this shift in attitudes proved to be one of
In these tragic circumstances, Franklin Delano Roosevelt the New Deal’s most enduring legacies.
(1882–1945), an inspiring wheelchair-bound aristocrat Other social measures aimed in the same direction.
previously crippled by polio, won a landslide electoral vic- Following the path blazed by Germany’s Bismarck in the
tory in 1932 with grand but vague promises of a “New 1880s, the U.S. government in 1935 established a na-
Deal for the forgotten man.” tional social security system, with old-age pensions and
Roosevelt’s basic goal was to reform capitalism in order unemployment benefits, to protect many workers against
to preserve it. Roosevelt rejected socialism and govern- some of life’s uncertainties. The National Labor Rela-
ment ownership of industry in 1933. To right the situations Act of 1935 gave union organizers the green light
tion, he chose forceful government intervention in the by declaring collective bargaining to be the policy of the
economy. In this choice, Roosevelt was flexible, prag- United States. Union membership more than doubled,
matic, and willing to experiment. He and his “brain trust”
Apago PDF Enhancer from 4 million in 1935 to 9 million in 1940. In general,
of advisers adopted policies echoing the American experi- between 1935 and 1938 government rulings and social
ence in World War I, when the American economy had reforms chipped away at the privileges of the wealthy and
been thoroughly planned and regulated. tried to help ordinary people.
Innovative programs promoted agricultural recovery, a Yet despite undeniable accomplishments in social re-
top priority. Almost half of the American population still form, the New Deal was only partly successful as a re-
lived in rural areas, and American farmers were hard hit sponse to the Great Depression. At the height of the
by the depression. Roosevelt’s decision to leave the gold recovery in May 1937, 7 million workers were still un-
standard and devalue the dollar was designed to raise Amer- employed, as opposed to a high of 15 million in 1933.
ican prices and rescue farmers. The Agricultural Adjust- The economic situation then worsened seriously in the
ment Act of 1933 also aimed at raising prices and farm recession of 1937 and 1938, and unemployment was still
income by limiting production. These planning measures a staggering 10 million when war broke out in Europe in
worked for a while, and farmers repaid Roosevelt in 1936 September 1939. The New Deal never did pull the United
with overwhelming support. States out of the depression.
The most ambitious attempt to control and plan the
economy was the National Recovery Administration
(NRA). Intended to reduce competition and fix prices The Scandinavian Response
and wages for everyone’s benefit, the NRA broke with
the cherished American tradition of free competition and
to the Depression
aroused conflicts among business people, consumers, and Of all the Western democracies, the Scandinavian coun-
bureaucrats. It did not work well and was declared un- tries under Social Democratic leadership responded most
constitutional in 1935. successfully to the challenge of the Great Depression.
Roosevelt and his advisers then attacked the key prob- Having grown steadily in number in the late nineteenth
lem of mass unemployment directly. The federal govern- century, the Social Democrats became the largest po-
ment accepted the responsibility of employing directly as litical party in Sweden and then in Norway after the
many people as financially possible. New agencies were First World War. In the 1920s, they passed important
created to undertake a vast range of projects. The most social reform legislation for both peasants and workers,
gained practical administrative experience, and devel-

oped a unique kind of socialism. Flexible and nonrevolu- Recovery and Reform
tionary, Scandinavian socialism grew out of a strong
tradition of cooperative community action. Even before
in Britain and France
1900, Scandinavian agricultural cooperatives had shown In Britain MacDonald’s Labour government and then, af-
how individual peasant families could join together for ter 1931, the Conservative-dominated coalition govern-
everyone’s benefit. Labor leaders and capitalists were also ment followed orthodox economic theory. The budget
inclined to work together. was balanced, but unemployed workers received barely
When the economic crisis struck in 1929, socialist gov- enough welfare to live. Despite government lethargy,
ernments in Scandinavia built on this pattern of coop- the economy recovered considerably after 1932. By 1937
erative social action. Sweden in particular pioneered in total production was about 20 percent higher than in
the use of large-scale deficits to finance public works and 1929. In fact, for Britain the years after 1932 were actu-
thereby maintain production and employment. Scandi- ally somewhat better than the 1920s had been, quite the
navian governments also increased social welfare benefits, opposite of the situation in the United States and France.
from old-age pensions and unemployment insurance to sub- This good but by no means brilliant performance re-
sidized housing and maternity allowances. All this spend- flected the gradual reorientation of the British economy.
ing required a large bureaucracy and high taxes, first on After going off the gold standard in 1931 and establish-
the rich and then on practically everyone. Yet both pri- ing protective tariffs in 1932, Britain concentrated in-
vate and cooperative enterprise thrived, as did democ- creasingly on the national, rather than the international,
racy. Some observers saw Scandinavia’s welfare socialism market. The old export industries of the Industrial Revo-
as an appealing “middle way” between sick capitalism and lution, such as textiles and coal, continued to decline, but
cruel communism or fascism. new industries, such as automobiles and electrical appli-
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Oslo Breakfast Scandinavian socialism championed cooperation and practical welfare meas-
ures, playing down strident rhetoric and theories of class conflict. The Oslo Breakfast exem-
plified the Scandinavian approach. It provided every schoolchild in the Norwegian capital
with a good breakfast free of charge. #OURTESY $IRECTORATEFOR(EALTHAND3OCIAL!FFAIRS /SLO
ances, grew in response to British home demand. More- Frightened by the growing strength of the fascists at
over, low interest rates encouraged a housing boom. By home and abroad, the Communists, the Socialists, and
the end of the decade, there were highly visible differ- the Radicals formed an alliance—the Popular Front—for
ences between the old, depressed industrial areas of the the national elections of May 1936. Their clear victory
north and the new, growing areas of the south. These de- reflected the trend toward polarization. The number of
velopments encouraged Britain to look inward and avoid Communists in the parliament jumped dramatically from
unpleasant foreign questions. 10 to 72, while the Socialists, led by Léon Blum, became
the strongest party in France, with 146 seats. The really
Improve Your Grade
quite moderate Radicals slipped badly, and the conserv-
Primary Source: The Great Depression in Britain: The
atives lost ground to the semifascists.
“Special Areas”
In the next few months, Blum’s Popular Front gov-
Because France was relatively less industrialized and ernment made the first and only real attempt to deal
more isolated from the world economy, the Great De- with the social and economic problems of the 1930s in
pression came late. But once the depression hit France, it France. Inspired by Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Popular
stayed and stayed. Decline was steady until 1935, and a Front encouraged the union movement and launched a
short-lived recovery never brought production or em- far-reaching program of social reform, complete with paid
ployment back up to predepression levels. Economic stag- vacations and a forty-hour workweek. Popular with workers
nation both reflected and heightened an ongoing political and the lower middle class, these measures were quickly
crisis. There was no stability in government. As before sabotaged by rapid inflation and cries of revolution from
1914, the French parliament was made up of many polit- fascists and frightened conservatives. Wealthy people
ical parties, which could never cooperate for very long. In sneaked their money out of the country, labor unrest grew,
1933, for example, five coalition cabinets formed and fell and France entered a severe financial crisis. Blum was
in rapid succession. forced to announce a “breathing spell” in social reform.
The French lost the underlying unity that had made The fires of political dissension were also fanned by
government instability bearable before 1914. Fascist-type
Apago PDF Enhancer civil war in Spain. Communists demanded that France
organizations agitated against parliamentary democracy support the Spanish republicans, while many French con-
and looked to Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany for servatives would gladly have joined Hitler and Mussolini
inspiration (see Chapter 29). In February 1934, French in aiding the attack of Spanish fascists. Extremism grew,
fascists and semifascists rioted and threatened to overturn and France itself was within sight of civil war. Blum was
the republic. At the same time, the Communist Party and forced to resign in June 1937, and the Popular Front
many workers opposed to the existing system were look- quickly collapsed. An anxious and divided France drifted
ing to Stalin’s Russia for guidance. The vital center of aimlessly once again, preoccupied by Hitler and German
moderate republicanism was sapped from both sides. rearmament.
• In what ways did new and disturbing ideas in central and eastern Europe, these ideas were abandoned
philosophy, physics, psychology, and literature reflect completely, as we shall see in the next chapter.
the general crisis in Western thought?
• How did modernism revolutionize architecture,
painting, and music? Key Terms
• In what ways did movies and radio become logical empiricism Bauhaus
mainstays of popular culture?
existentialism dadaism
• How did the democratic leaders of the 1920s deal neutron Dawes Plan
with deep-seated instability and try to establish real id, ego, and Mein Kampf
peace and prosperity? superego Great Depression
• What caused the Great Depression, and how did the stream-of- New Deal
Western democracies respond to this challenge? consciousness WPA
technique Social Democrats
functionalism Popular Front
After the First World War, Western society entered a com-
plex and difficult era—truly an age of anxiety. Intellectual Improve Your Grade Flashcards
life underwent a crisis marked by pessimism, uncertainty,
Apago PDF Enhancer
and fascination with irrational forces. Ceaseless experimen-
tation and rejection of old forms characterized art and
music, while motion pictures and radio provided new,
standardized entertainment for the masses. Intellectual and Suggested Reading
artistic developments that had been confined to small avant- Berend, Ivan T. $ECADESOF#RISIS #ENTRALAND%ASTERN
garde groups before 1914, along with the insecure state of %UROPE"EFORE7ORLD7AR)). 2001. An up-to-date study
mind they expressed, gained wider currency. of this complex region.
Politics and economics were similarly disrupted. In the Berghahn, Volker R. %UROPEINTHE%RAOF4WO7ORLD7ARS
1920s, political leaders groped to create an enduring &ROM-ILITARISMAND'ENOCIDETO#IVIL3OCIETY . 2006. A
peace and rebuild the prewar prosperity, and for a brief short and stimulating account.
period late in the decade, they even seemed to have suc-
ceeded. Then the Great Depression, growing out of the Bullock, Alan, ed. 4HE4WENTIETH#ENTURY !0ROMETHEAN
complicated international financial system and the specu- !GE1971. Particularly noteworthy because it is a lavish
lative boom and bust in the U.S. stock market, shattered visual feast combined with penetrating essays on major
that fragile stability. Uncertainty returned with redoubled developments.
force in the 1930s. The international economy collapsed, Burrow, J. W. 4HE#RISISOF2EASON %UROPEAN 4HOUGHT
and unemployment struck millions worldwide. The n2002. A rewarding intellectual history.
democracies turned inward as they sought to cope with Cawood, Ian. "RITAININTHE 4WENTIETH#ENTURY 2003. A
massive domestic problems and widespread disillusion- useful national survey.
ment. Generally speaking, they were not very successful,
although relief measures and social concern eased distress Crossman, Richard, ed. 4HE'OD4HAT&AILED 1950. Fea-
and prevented revolutions in the leading Western nations. tures famous Western writers telling why they were at-
The old liberal ideals of individual rights and responsibili- tracted to and later repelled by communism.
ties, elected government, and economic freedom declined Jules-Rossette, Bennetta. *OSEPHINE"AKERIN!RTAND,IFE
and seemed outmoded to many. And in many countries of 4HE)CONANDTHE)MAGE. 2007. Tells the fascinating story
of the African American dancer who won fame and for- 2. Quoted in S. Hughes, 4HE/BSTRUCTED0ATH &RENCH3OCIAL4HOUGHT
tune in Paris. INTHE9EARSOF$ESPERATION n (New York: Harper & Row,
1967), p. 82.
Kertzer, David I., and Marzio Barbagli, eds. 4HE(ISTORY 3. G. Greene, !NOTHER-EXICO (New York: Viking Press, 1939), p. 3.
OFTHE%UROPEAN&AMILY Vol. 3: &AMILY,IFEINTHE4WENTI 4. G. Orwell, (New York: New American Library, 1950),
ETH#ENTURY2003. A distinguished collection of essays p. 220.
5. C. E. Jeanneret-Gris (Le Corbusier), 4OWARDSA.E W!RCHITECTURE
by experts. (London: J. Rodker, 1931), p. 15.
McMillan, James F. 4WENTIETH #ENTURY& RANCE 0OLITICS 6. Quoted in A. H. Barr Jr., 7HAT)S-ODERN0AINTING 9th ed. (New
AND3OCIETY n. 1992. A recommended national York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966), p. 27.
survey. 8. R. Graves and A. Hodge, 4HE,ONG7EEK%ND !3OCIAL(ISTORYOF
Paxton, Robert O. %UROPEINTHE4WENTIETH#ENTURY 2004. 'REAT"RITAIN n (New York: Macmillan, 1941), p. 131.
An excellent account of contemporary history with a 9. Quoted in A. Briggs, 4HE"IRTHOF"R OADCASTING vol. 1 (London:
Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 47.
liberal viewpoint. 10. Quoted in R. J. Sontag, !"ROKEN7ORLD n (New York:
Winders, James A. %UROPEAN#ULTUR E3INCE &ROM Harper & Row, 1971), p. 129.
-ODERNISMTO0OSTMODERNAND"EYOND1998. A lively and 11. Dietmar Rothermund, 4HE'LOBAL)MPACTOFTHE'R EAT$EPRESSION
n (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 50.
accessible account. 12. C. P. Kindleberger, 4HE7ORLDIN$EPRESSION n (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1973), p. 292.
13. Quoted in S. B. Clough et al., eds., %CONOMIC(ISTORYOF%UR OPE
4WENTIETH#ENTURY (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), pp.
Notes 243–245.
1. P. Valéry, 6ARIETY trans. M. Cowley (New York: Harcourt Brace,

1927), pp. 27–28.
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Life on the Dole in Great Britain
P ERIODICSURGESINUNEMPLOYMENTWEREANOLD
STORYINCAPITALISTECONOMIES BUTTHELONG TERM
JOBLESSNESSOFMILLIONSINTHE'REAT$EPRESSIONWAS
SOMETHINGNEWANDUNEXPECTED)N"RITAINESPECIALLY
WHERETHEDEPRESSIONFOLLOWEDAWEAKPOSTWAR
RECOVERY LARGENUMBERSSUFFEREDINVOLUNTARYIDLENESS
FORYEARSATATIME7HOLEFAMILIESLIVEDhONTHE
DOLEv THEWEEKLYWELFAREBENElTSPAIDBYTHE
GOVERNMENT
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to Wigan Pier ANEXCERPTOFWHICHFOLLOWS!N
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MOSTFAMOUSWORK 1984
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permissions issues. Regrettably, we cannot make
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942
Poster used in the election campaign
of 1931, when unemployment rose to a
new record high. #ONSERVATIVE2ESEARCH
$EPARTMENT4HE"RIDGEMAN!RT,IBRARY
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from your CourseSmart eBook due to electronic
permissions issues. Regrettably, we cannot make
this piece available to you in a digital format.

1. According to Orwell, “extreme poverty” was
less visible in the northern industrial towns
than in London. Were family relations
important in this regard?
2. What were the consequences of long-term
unemployment for English workers? Were
some of the consequences surprising?
3. Judging from Orwell’s description, did radical
revolution seem likely in England in the Great
Depression? Why?
3OURCE Excerpts from Chapter V in 4HE2OADTO7IGAN
0IER by George Orwell, copyright © 1958 and renewed
1986 by the Estate of Sonia B. Orwell. Reprinted by
permission of Harcourt, Inc.
943
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Hugo Jager’s photograph of a crowd of enthusiastic Hitler supporters. (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
c h a p t e r
29
Dictatorships and
the Second World
War, 1919–1945
chapter preview
Authoritarian States
• What was the nature of radical
totalitarian dictatorship, and how did
T he era of anxiety and economic depression was also a time of grow-
ing strength for political dictatorship. Popularly elected govern-
ments and basic civil liberties declined drastically in Europe. On the eve
it differ from conservative of the Second World War, liberal democratic governments were surviving
authoritarianism? only in Great Britain, France, the Low Countries, the Scandinavian na-
tions, and Switzerland. Elsewhere in Europe, various kinds of “strong-
Stalin’s Soviet Union
men” ruled. Dictatorship seemed the wave of the future. Thus the
• How did Stalin and the Communist intellectual and economic crisis discussed in Chapter 28 and the decline
Party build a modern totalitarian state in liberal political institutions and rise of dictatorship to be considered in
in the Soviet Union? this chapter were interrelated elements in the general crisis of European
Mussolini and Fascism in Italy civilization.
• How did Mussolini’s dictatorshipApago PDF Enhancer
The era of dictatorship is a highly disturbing chapter in the history of
come to power and govern in Italy? Western civilization. The key development was not only the resurgence
of authoritarian rule but also the rise of a particularly ruthless and dy-
Hitler and Nazism in Germany namic tyranny. This new kind of tyranny reached its full realization in the
• How did Hitler gain power, what Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Stalin and Hitler mobi-
policies did totalitarian Nazi Germany lized their peoples for enormous undertakings and ruled with unprece-
pursue, and why did they lead to World dented severity. Hitler’s mobilization was ultimately directed toward
War II? racial aggression and territorial expansion, and his sudden attack on
Poland in 1939 started World War II.
The Second World War
Nazi armies were defeated by a great coalition, and today we want to
• How did Germany and Japan create believe that the era of totalitarian dictatorship was a terrible accident, that
enormous empires that were defeated Stalin’s slave-labor camps and Hitler’s gas chambers “can’t happen
by the Allies—Britain, the Soviet again.” Yet the cruel truth is that horrible atrocities continue to plague
Union, and the United States? the world in our time. The Khmer Rouge inflicted genocide on its people
in Kampuchea, and civil war in Bosnia and in Rwanda led to racially mo-
tivated atrocities recalling the horrors of World War II. And there are
other examples. Thus it is all the more vital that we understand Europe’s
era of brutal and aggressive dictatorship in order to guard against the pos-
sibility of its recurrence in the future.
945
946 CHAPTER 29 • D I C TAT O R S H I P S A N D T H E S E C O N D W O R L D W A R , 1 9 1 9 – 1 9 4 5
as a way to repress such tensions and preserve national

Authoritarian States unity. Large landowners and the church were still power-
ful forces in these largely agrarian areas, and they often
Both conservative and radical dictatorships swept through looked to dictators to save them from progressive land
Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. Although these two types reform or communist agrarian upheaval. So did some mem-
of dictatorship shared some characteristics and sometimes bers of the middle class, which was small and weak in
overlapped in practice, they were in essence profoundly eastern Europe. Finally, though some kind of democracy
different. Conservative authoritarian regimes were an old managed to stagger through the 1920s in Austria, Bul-
story in Europe. Radical, totalitarian dictatorships were a garia, Romania, Greece, Estonia, and Latvia, the Great
new and frightening development. Depression delivered the final blow to those countries
• What was the nature of radical totalitarian dictatorship, by 1936.
and how did it differ from conservative authoritarianism? Although some of the conservative authoritarian regimes
adopted certain Hitlerian and fascist characteristics in the
1930s, their general aims were limited. They were con-
cerned more with maintaining the status quo than with
Conservative Authoritarianism forcing society into rapid change or war. This tradition
The traditional form of antidemocratic government in continued into the twenty-first century, especially in
European history was conservative authoritarianism. Like some of the military dictatorships that ruled in Latin
Catherine the Great in Russia and Metternich in Austria, America until the late 1980s.
the leaders of such governments tried to prevent major
changes that would undermine the existing social order.
To do so, they relied on obedient bureaucracies, vigilant
Radical Totalitarian Dictatorships
police departments, and trustworthy armies. Popular par- Conservative authoritarianism predominated in the smaller
ticipation in government was forbidden or limited to such states of central and eastern Europe by the mid-1930s,
natural allies as landlords, bureaucrats, and high church
Apago PDF Enhancer but a new kind of radical dictatorship emerged in the
officials. Liberals, democrats, and socialists were perse- Soviet Union, Germany, and, to a lesser extent, Italy. Al-
cuted as subversive radicals, often finding themselves in most all scholars agree that the leaders of these radical
jail or exile. dictatorships violently rejected parliamentary restraint and
Yet old-fashioned authoritarian governments were lim- liberal values. Scholars also agree that these dictator-
ited in their power and in their objectives. They had nei- ships exercised unprecedented control over the masses and
ther the ability nor the desire to control many aspects of sought to mobilize them for action. However, there has
their subjects’ lives. Nor did they wish to do so. Preoccu- always been controversy over the interpretation of these
pied with the goal of mere survival, these governments regimes.
largely limited their demands to taxes, army recruits, and One extremely useful approach relates the radical dicta-
passive acceptance. As long as the people did not try to torships to the rise of modern totalitarianism. The con-
change the system, they often had considerable personal cept of totalitarianism emerged in the 1920s and 1930s,
independence. although it is frequently and mistakenly seen as develop-
After the First World War, this kind of authoritarian ing only after 1945 as part of anti-Soviet propaganda dur-
government revived, especially in the less-developed east- ing the cold war. In 1924 Benito Mussolini spoke of the
ern part of Europe. There the parliamentary regimes that “fierce totalitarian will” of his movement in Italy. In the
had been founded on the wreckage of empires in 1918 1930s more and more British, American, and German ex-
fell one by one. By early 1938, only economically and soiled writers used the concept of totalitarianism to describe
cially advanced Czechoslovakia remained true to liberal what they saw happening before their eyes. They linked
political ideals. Conservative dictators also took over in Italian and especially German fascism with Soviet commu-
Spain and Portugal. nism in “a ‘new kind of state’ that could be called totali-
There were several reasons for this development. tarian.” With the alliance between Hitler and Stalin in
These lands lacked a strong tradition of self-government, 1939, “all doubts” about the totalitarian nature of both
with its necessary restraint and compromise. Moreover, dictatorships “were swept away for most Americans.”1
many of these new states, such as Yugoslavia, were torn Early writers believed that modern totalitarian dicta-
by ethnic conflicts that threatened their very existence. torship burst on the scene with the revolutionary total
Dictatorship appealed to nationalists and military leaders war effort of 1914–1918. The war called forth a ten-
Authoritarian States • 947
dency to subordinate all institutions and all classes to the Chronology

state in order to achieve one supreme objective: victory.
As the French thinker Elie Halévy put it in 1936 in his 1921 New Economic Policy (NEP) in U.S.S.R.
influential The Era of Tyrannies, the varieties of modern
totalitarian tyranny—fascism, Nazism, and communism— 1922 Mussolini seizes power in Italy
could be thought of as “feuding brothers” with a common 1924–1929 Buildup of Nazi Party in Germany
father: the nature of modern war.2
Writers such as Halévy believed that the crucial experi- 1927 Stalin comes to power in U.S.S.R.
ence of World War I was carried further by Lenin and the 1928 Stalin’s first five-year plan
Bolsheviks during the Russian civil war. Lenin showed how
a dedicated minority could achieve victory over a less de- 1929 Lateran Agreement; start of collectivization in
termined majority and subordinate institutions and human Soviet Union
rights to the needs of a single group—the Communist 1929–1939 Great Depression
Party—and its leader. Providing a model for single-party
dictatorship, Lenin inspired imitators, including Adolf 1932–1933 Famine in Ukraine
Hitler. The modern totalitarian state reached maturity in 1933 Hitler appointed chancellor in Germany; Nazis
the 1930s in the Stalinist U.S.S.R. and Nazi Germany. begin to control intellectual life and blacklist authors
Embellishing on early insights, numerous Western po-
1934 Sergei Kirov, Stalin’s number-two man, murdered
litical scientists and historians argued in the 1950s and
1960s that the totalitarian state used modern technology 1935 Mussolini invades Ethiopia
and communications to exercise complete political power.
1936 Start of great purges under Stalin; Halévy, The
But it did not stop there. Increasingly, the state took over
Era of Tyrannies, analyzes totalitarianism
and tried to control just as completely the economic, so-
cial, intellectual, and cultural aspects of people’s lives. De- 1939 Germany occupies Czech lands; Germany
viation from the norm, even in art or family behavior, invades Poland; Britain and France declare war on
could become a crime.
Apago PDF Enhancer Germany
This vision of total state represented a radical revolt 1941 SS stops Jewish emigration from Europe; Ger-
against liberalism. Classical liberalism (see page 753) sought many invades Soviet Union; bombing of Pearl Harbor;
to limit the power of the state and protect the rights of the U.S. enters war
individual. Moreover, liberals stood for rationality, peaceful
progress, economic freedom, and a strong middle class. All 1941–1945 Six million Jews killed in death camps
of that disgusted totalitarians as sentimental slop. They be- 1944 Allied invasion at Normandy
lieved in willpower, preached conflict, and worshiped vio-
lence. The individual was infinitely less valuable than the 1945 Atomic bombs dropped on Japan; end of war
state.
Unlike old-fashioned authoritarianism, modern totali-
tarianism was based not on an elite but on people who the state and crushed the middle classes. Nazi Germany,
had already become engaged in the political process, most growing out of extreme nationalism and racism, criti-
notably through commitment to nationalism and social- cized big landowners and industrialists, but both private
ism. Thus totalitarian societies were fully mobilized soci- property and the middle classes survived. This difference
eties moving toward some goal and possessing boundless in property and class relations led some scholars to speak
dynamism. As soon as one goal was achieved at the cost of of “totalitarianism of the left”—Stalinist Russia—and
enormous sacrifice, another arose at the leader’s com- “totalitarianism of the right”—Nazi Germany.
mand to take its place. Thus totalitarianism was a perma- A second group of writers in the 1930s approached
nent revolution, an unfinished revolution, in which rapid, radical dictatorships outside the Soviet Union through
profound change imposed from on high went on forever. the concept of fascism. A term of pride for Mussolini and
In developing the concept of totalitarianism, scholars Hitler, who used it to describe the supposedly “total”
recognized that there were major differences between and revolutionary character of their movements, fascism
Stalin’s communist U.S.S.R. and Hitler’s Nazi Germany. was severely criticized by these writers and linked to de-
Soviet communism, growing out of Marxian socialism, caying capitalism and domestic class conflict. Orthodox
seized all private property (except personal property) for Marxists, generally sympathetic to the Soviet Union and
Apago PDF Enhancer
Nazi Mass Rally, 1936 This picture captures the essence of the totalitarian interpreta-
tion of dynamic modern dictatorship. The uniformed members of the Nazi Party have
willingly merged themselves into a single force and await the command of the godlike
leader. (AP/Wide World Photos)
the socialism it established, argued that fascism was the a third approach, emphasizing the uniqueness of devel-
way powerful capitalists sought to create a mass move- opments in each country. This is especially true for
ment capable of destroying the revolutionary working Hitler’s Germany, where some elements of the totalitar-
class and thus protect their enormous profits. ian interpretation have been nuanced and revised, as we
Scholarly interest in fascism declined in the 1950s but shall see. A similar revaluation of Stalin’s U.S.S.R. began
revived thereafter. Comparative studies of fascist move- after the fall of communism opened the former Soviet
ments all across Europe showed that they shared many Union’s archives to new research. For many of today’s
characteristics, including extreme, often expansionist na- historians, the differences within broad historical pat-
tionalism; an antisocialism aimed at destroying working- terns often seem more important than the similarities.
class movements; alliances with powerful capitalists and In summary, these conclusions seem appropriate. First,
landowners; a dynamic and violent leader; and glorifica- although the concept of totalitarianism has been ques-
tion of war and the military. Yet these studies also high- tioned, it remains a valuable tool for historical understand-
lighted how fascist movements generally failed to gain ing. It correctly highlights that both Hitler’s Germany and
political power. Stalin’s Soviet Union made an unprecedented “total claim”
In recent years, many historians have tended to adopt on the belief and behavior of their respective citizens, as a
Stalin’s Soviet Union • 949
noted scholar has recently concluded.3 Second, antidemo- Bolshevik sailors at Kronstadt, the tough but ever-flexible
cratic, antisocialist fascist movements sprang up all over Lenin changed course. In March 1921, he announced
Europe, but only in Italy and Germany (and some would the New Economic Policy (NEP), which re-established
say Spain) were they able to take power. Studies of fascist limited economic freedom in an attempt to rebuild agricul-
movements seeking to gain power locate important com- ture and industry. During the civil war, the Bolsheviks had
mon elements, but they do not explain what fascist gov- simply seized grain without payment. Now peasant pro-
ernments in Italy and Germany actually did. Finally, it ducers were permitted to sell their surpluses in free mar-
is important to remember that the problem of Europe’s kets, and private traders and small handicraft manufacturers
radical dictatorships is complex and that there are few easy were allowed to reappear. Heavy industry, railroads, and
answers. banks, however, remained wholly nationalized.
The NEP was shrewd and successful both politically
and economically. Politically, it was a necessary but tem-
Stalin’s Soviet Union porary compromise with the Soviet Union’s overwhelm-
ing peasant majority. Realizing that his government was not
Lenin’s harshest critics claim that he established the basic strong enough to take land from the peasants and turn
outlines of a modern totalitarian dictatorship after the them into state workers, Lenin made a deal with the only
Bolshevik Revolution and during the Russian civil war. If force capable of overturning his government. Economi-
this is so, then Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) certainly fin- cally, the NEP brought rapid recovery. In 1926 industrial
ished the job. A master of political infighting, Stalin cau- output surpassed the level of 1913, and Soviet peasants
tiously consolidated his power and eliminated his enemies were producing almost as much grain as before the war.
in the mid-1920s. Then in 1928, as undisputed leader of As the economy recovered and the government par-
the ruling Communist Party, he launched the first five- tially relaxed its censorship and repression, an intense
year plan—the “revolution from above,” as he so aptly struggle for power began in the inner circles of the Com-
termed it. munist Party, for Lenin had left no chosen successor
Apago PDF Enhancer
The five-year plans were extremely ambitious. Often in- when he died in 1924. The principal contenders were the
correctly considered a mere set of economic measures stolid Stalin and the flamboyant Trotsky.
to speed up the Soviet Union’s industrial development, The son of a shoemaker, Joseph Dzhugashvili—later
the five-year plans actually marked the beginning of a re- known as Stalin—studied for the priesthood but was ex-
newed attempt to mobilize and transform Soviet society pelled from his theological seminary, probably for rude
along socialist lines. The ultimate goal of the plans was to rebelliousness. By 1903 he was a Bolshevik revolutionary
generate new attitudes, new loyalties, and a new socialist in southern Russia.
humanity. The means Stalin and the small Communist Stalin was a good organizer but a poor speaker and
Party elite chose in order to do so were constant propa- writer, with no experience outside of Russia. Trotsky, a
ganda, enormous sacrifice by the people, and the concen- great and inspiring leader who had planned the 1917
tration of all power in party hands. Thus the Soviet Union takeover (see page 898) and then created the victorious
in the 1930s became a dynamic, modern totalitarian state. Red Army, appeared to have all the advantages. Yet it was
• How did Stalin and the Communist Party build a modern Stalin who succeeded Lenin. Stalin won because he was
totalitarian state in the Soviet Union?
more effective at gaining the all-important support of the
party, the only genuine source of power in the one-party
state. Rising to general secretary of the party’s Central
Committee just before Lenin’s first stroke in 1922, Stalin
From Lenin to Stalin used his office to win friends and allies with jobs and
By spring 1921, Lenin and the Bolsheviks had won the promises.
civil war, but they ruled a shattered and devastated land. The practical Stalin also won because he appeared bet-
Many farms were in ruins, and food supplies were ex- ter able than the brilliant Trotsky to relate Marxian teach-
hausted. In southern Russia, drought combined with the ing to Soviet realities in the 1920s. Stalin developed a
ravages of war to produce the worst famine in generations. theory of “socialism in one country” that was more ap-
Industrial production also broke down completely. The pealing to the majority of communists than Trotsky’s
Bolsheviks had destroyed the economy as well as their foes. doctrine of “permanent revolution.” Stalin argued that
In the face of economic disintegration, riots by peasants the Russian-dominated Soviet Union had the ability to
and workers, and an open rebellion by previously pro- build socialism on its own. Trotsky maintained that
against his allies, the moderates, and

destroyed them as well. Stalin’s final
triumph came at the party congress
of December 1927, which con-
demned all “deviation from the gen-
eral party line” formulated by Stalin.
The dictator and his followers were
then ready to launch the revolution
from above—the real revolution for
millions of ordinary citizens.
The Five-Year Plans

The party congress of 1927, which rat-
ified Stalin’s consolidation of power,
marked the end of the NEP and
the beginning of the era of socialist
five-year plans. Building on plan-
ning models developed by Soviet
economists in the 1920s, the first
five-year plan had staggering eco-
nomic objectives. In just five years,
total industrial output was to in-
crease by 250 percent. Heavy indus-
Apago PDF Enhancer try, the preferred sector, was to
grow even faster. Agricultural pro-
duction was slated to increase by 150
percent, and one-fifth of the peasants
in the Soviet Union were scheduled
Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism, ca 1917 Russian artists occupied a prominent to give up their private plots and
position in the international avant-garde in the early twentieth century, and the join socialist collective farms. By
Ukrainian-born Malevich is widely recognized as a leading figure in the development
of modern abstract art. Malevich originated the theory of suprematism, whereby he
1930 economic and social change was
abandoned images from nature and painted pure forms that were beautiful in them- sweeping the country.
selves, as in this outstanding example. When the Bolsheviks condemned abstraction Stalin unleashed his “second revo-
and demanded “socialist realism,” Malevich returned to more recognizable forms lution” for a variety of interrelated
and taught design. (Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY) reasons. There were, first of all, ideo-
logical considerations. Like Lenin, Stalin
socialism in the Soviet Union could succeed only if revo- and his militant supporters were deeply committed to so-
lution occurred quickly throughout Europe. To many cialism as they understood it. They feared a gradual
Russian communists, Trotsky’s views seemed to sell restoration of capitalism, and they burned to stamp out
their country short and to promise risky conflicts with the NEP’s private traders, independent artisans, and prop-
capitalist countries by recklessly encouraging revolution- erty-owning peasants. Purely economic motivations were
ary movements around the world. Stalin’s willingness to also important. Although the economy had recovered, it
break with the NEP and “build socialism” at home ap- seemed to have stalled in 1927 and 1928. A new socialist
pealed to young militants in the party, who detested the offensive seemed necessary if industry and agriculture were
capitalist-appearing NEP. to grow rapidly.
With cunning skill, Stalin gradually achieved supreme Political considerations were most important. Interna-
power between 1922 and 1927. First, he allied with Trot- tionally, there was the old problem, remaining from pre-
sky’s personal enemies to crush Trotsky, and then he revolutionary times, of catching up with the advanced
aligned with the moderates to suppress Trotsky’s radical and presumably hostile capitalist nations of the West.
followers. Third, having defeated all the radicals, he turned Stalin said in 1931, when he pressed for ever-greater
speed and sacrifice, “We are fifty or a hundred years be- tion of individual peasant farms into large, state-controlled
hind the advanced countries. We must make good this enterprises. Beginning in 1929, peasants all over the So-
distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall go un- viet Union were ordered to give up their land and ani-
der.” (See the feature “Listening to the Past: Stalin Justi- mals and become members of collective farms, although
fies the Five-Year Plan” on pages 978–979.) they continued to live in their own homes. As for the
Domestically, there was the problem of the peasants. kulaks, the better-off peasants, Stalin instructed party
For centuries the peasants had wanted to own the land, workers to “liquidate them as a class.” Stripped of land
and finally they had it. Sooner or later, the communists and livestock, the kulaks were generally not even permit-
reasoned, the peasants would become conservative little ted to join the collective farms. Many starved or were de-
capitalists and pose a threat to the regime. At the same ported to forced-labor camps for “re-education.”
time, the mainly urban communists believed that the Since almost all peasants were in fact poor, the term
feared and despised “class enemy” in the villages could kulak soon meant any peasant who opposed the new
be squeezed to provide the enormous sums needed for system. Whole villages were often attacked. One conscience-
all-out industrialization. Thus Stalin decided on a war stricken colonel in the secret police confessed to a foreign
against the peasantry in order to bring it under the con- journalist,
trol of the state and to make it pay the costs of the new
socialist offensive. I am an old Bolshevik. I worked in the underground against
That war was collectivization—the forcible consolida- the Tsar and then I fought in the Civil War. Did I do all that
Apago PDF Enhancer
Life in a Forced-Labor Camp This rare photo from about 1933 shows the reality of de-
ported peasants and other political prisoners building the Stalin–White Sea Canal in far north-
ern Russia, with their bare hands and under the most dehumanizing conditions. In books and
plays Stalin’s followers praised the project as a model for the regeneration of “reactionaries”
and “kulak exploiters” through the joys of socialist work. (David King Collection)
in order that I should now surround villages with machine cent of all Soviet agricultural produce on only 4 percent
guns and order my men to fire indiscriminately into crowds of all cultivated land.
of peasants? Oh, no, no!4 The industrial side of the five-year plans was more
successful—indeed, quite spectacular. Soviet industry pro-
Forced collectivization of the peasants led to economic duced about four times as much in 1937 as it had in
and human disaster. Large numbers of peasants slaugh- 1928. No other major country had ever achieved such
tered their animals and burned their crops in sullen, rapid industrial growth. Heavy industry led the way; con-
hopeless protest. Between 1929 and 1933, the number sumer industry grew quite slowly. A new heavy industrial
of horses, cattle, sheep, and goats in the Soviet Union complex was built almost from scratch in western Siberia.
fell by at least half. Nor were the state-controlled collec- Industrial growth also went hand in hand with urban de-
tive farms more productive. The output of grain barely velopment, and more than 25 million people migrated to
increased between 1928 and 1938. Collectivized agricul- cities during the 1930s.
ture was unable to make any substantial financial con- The great industrialization drive, concentrated between
tribution to Soviet industrial development in the first 1928 and 1937, was an awe-inspiring achievement pur-
five-year plan. chased at enormous sacrifice. The sudden creation of dozens
The human dimension of the tragedy was absolutely of new factories required a great increase in total invest-
staggering. As one leading historian writes in outrage, ment. The money for investment was collected from the
“The number dying in Stalin’s war against the peasants people by means of heavy, hidden sales taxes.
was higher than the total deaths of all the countries in Two other factors contributed importantly to rapid in-
World War I.” Yet, he notes, in Stalin’s war only one side dustrialization: firm labor discipline and foreign engineers.
was armed and the other side bore almost all the casual- Between 1930 and 1932, trade unions lost most of their
ties, many of whom were women, children, and the old.5 power. The government could assign workers to any job
anywhere in the country, and individuals could not move
Improve Your Grade
without the permission of the police. When factory man-
Primary Source: Stalinist Interrogation Techniques
Revealed Apago PDF Enhancer agers needed more hands, they called on their counter-
parts on the collective farms, who sent them millions of
In Ukraine the drive against peasants snowballed into “unneeded” peasants over the years.
a general assault on Ukrainians as reactionary nationalists Foreign engineers were hired to plan and construct
and enemies of socialism. Thus in 1932, as collectiviza- many of the new factories. Highly skilled American engi-
tion and deportations continued, Stalin and his associates neers, hungry for work in the depression years, were par-
set levels of grain deliveries for the Ukrainian collective at ticularly important until newly trained Soviet experts began
excessively high levels, and they refused to relax those to replace them after 1932. The gigantic mills of the new
quotas or even allow food relief when Ukrainian commu- Siberian steel industry were modeled on America’s best.
nist leaders reported that starvation was occurring. The Thus Stalin’s planners harnessed even the skill and tech-
result was a terrible man-made famine in Ukraine in nology of capitalist countries to promote the surge of so-
1932 and 1933, which probably claimed 6 million lives. cialist industry.
Collectivization, justly called the “second serfdom,”
was a cruel but real victory for communist ideologues. By
the end of 1932, fully 60 percent of peasant families had
Life and Culture in Soviet Society
been herded onto collective farms; by 1938, 93 percent. The aim of Stalin’s five-year plans was to create a new
Regimented as employees of the state and dependent on kind of society and human personality as well as a strong
the state-owned tractor stations, the collectivized peas- industrial economy and a powerful army. Stalin and his
ants were no longer even a potential political threat to helpers were good Marxian economic determinists. Once
Stalin and the Communist Party. everything was owned by the state, they believed, a so-
Peasants fought back with indirect daily opposition cialist society and a new kind of human being would in-
and forced the supposedly all-powerful state to make evitably emerge. Their utopian vision of a new humanity
modest compromises. Peasants secured the right to limit floundered, but they did build a new society, whose broad
a family’s labor on the state-run farms and to cultivate outlines existed into the mid-1980s. Life in this society
tiny family plots, which provided them with much of had both good and bad aspects.
their food. In 1938 these family plots produced 22 per- Because consumption was reduced to pay for invest-
ment, there was no improvement in the average standard

of living. Indeed, the most careful studies show that the
average nonfarm wage apparently purchased only about
half as many goods in 1932 as in 1928. After 1932 real
wages rose slowly, so that in 1937 workers could buy
about 60 percent of what they had bought in 1928
and less than in 1913. Collectivized peasants experienced
greater declines.
Life was hard in Stalin’s Soviet Union. The masses of
people lived primarily on black bread and wore old, shabby
clothing. There were constant shortages in the stores, al-
though very heavily taxed vodka was always readily avail-
able. A shortage of housing was a particularly serious
problem. Millions were moving into the cities, but the
government built few new apartments. A relatively lucky
family received one room for all its members and shared
both a kitchen and a toilet with others on the floor.
Life was hard but by no means hopeless. Idealism and
ideology had real appeal for many communists, who saw
themselves heroically building the world’s first socialist
society while capitalism crumbled in a worldwide depres-
sion and degenerated into fascism in the West. This opti-
mistic belief in the future of the Soviet Union also
attracted many disillusioned Westerners to communism
in the 1930s. Apago PDF Enhancer
On a more practical level, Soviet workers did receive
some important social benefits, such as old-age pensions,
free medical services, free education, and day-care centers
for children. Unemployment was almost unknown. Fi-
nally, there was the possibility of personal advancement. “Let’s All Get to Work, Comrades!” Art in the Stalinist
The keys to improving one’s position were specialized era generally followed the official doctrine of socialist realism,
representing objects in a literal style and celebrating Soviet
skills and technical education. Rapid industrialization re- achievements. Characteristically, this poster glorifies the work-
quired massive numbers of trained experts, such as skilled ing class, women’s equality (in hard labor at least), mammoth
workers, engineers, and plant managers. Thus the Stalin- factories, and the Communist Party (represented by the ham-
ist state broke with the egalitarian policies of the 1920s mer and sickle by the woman’s foot). Assailed by propaganda,
and provided tremendous incentives to those who could Soviet citizens often found refuge in personal relations and
deep friendships. (From Art of the October Revolution, Mikhail
serve its needs. It paid the mass of unskilled workers and Guerman [Aurora Publishers, Leningrad]. Reproduced by permission
collective farmers very low wages, but it dangled high of Mikhail Guerman)
salaries and many special privileges before its growing
technical and managerial elite. This elite joined with the
political and artistic elites in a new upper class, whose liberate themselves sexually. The most prominent Bolshevik
members were rich, powerful, and insecure. Thus millions feminist, Alexandra Kollontai, went so far as to declare that
struggled for an education. the sex act had no more significance than “drinking a glass
The radical transformation of Soviet society had a proof water.”6 After Stalin came to power, sexual and familial
found impact on women’s lives. Marxists had traditionally liberation was played down, and the most lasting changes
believed that both capitalism and the middle-class husband for women involved work and education.
exploited women. The Russian Revolution of 1917 imme- Young women were constantly told that they had to be
diately proclaimed complete equality of rights for women. fully equal to men. Peasant women continued to work on
In the 1920s, divorce and abortion were made easily avail- farms, and millions of women now toiled in factories and
able, and women were urged to work outside the home and in heavy construction, building dams, roads, and steel
mills in summer heat and winter frost. Determined of the people and the horrible famine in Ukraine. Stalin
women pursued their studies and entered the ranks of the showered her with insults, and she died that same night,
better-paid specialists in industry and science. Medicine apparently by her own hand. In late 1934, Stalin’s number-
practically became a woman’s profession. By 1950, 75 two man, Sergei Kirov, was suddenly and mysteriously
percent of all doctors in the Soviet Union were women. murdered. Although Stalin himself probably ordered
Soviet society also demanded great sacrifices from Kirov’s murder, he used the incident to launch a reign
women. The vast majority of women simply had to work of terror.
outside the home. Wages were so low that it was almost In August 1936, sixteen prominent Old Bolsheviks
impossible for a family or couple to live only on the hus- confessed to all manner of plots against Stalin in spectac-
band’s earnings. Men continued to dominate the very ular public trials in Moscow. Then in 1937 the secret
best jobs. Finally, rapid change and economic hardship police arrested a mass of lesser party officials and newer
led to many broken families, creating further physical and members, also torturing them and extracting more con-
emotional strains for women. In any event, the massive fessions for more show trials. In addition to the party
mobilization of women was a striking characteristic of faithful, union officials, managers, intellectuals, army of-
the Soviet state. ficers, and countless ordinary citizens were struck down.
Culture lost its autonomy in the 1930s and became In all, at least 8 million people were probably arrested,
thoroughly politicized through constant propaganda and and millions of these were executed or never returned
indoctrination. Party activists lectured workers in facto- from prisons and forced-labor camps.
ries and peasants on collective farms, while newspapers, Stalin and the remaining party leadership recruited 1.5
films, and radio broadcasts endlessly recounted socialist million new members to take the place of those purged.
achievements and capitalist plots. Whereas the 1920s had Thus more than half of all Communist Party members in
seen considerable experimentation in modern art and the- 1941 had joined since the purges. “These new men were
ater, intellectuals were ordered by Stalin to become “en- ‘thirty-something’ products of the Second Revolution of
gineers of human minds.” Writers and artists who could the 1930s, Stalin’s upwardly mobile yuppies, so to speak.”7
effectively combine genuine creativity and political prop-
Apago PDF Enhancer Often sons (and daughters) of workers, they had usually
aganda became the darlings of the regime. It became in- studied in the new technical schools, and they soon proved
creasingly important for the successful writer and artist to capable of managing the government and large-scale pro-
glorify Russian nationalism. Russian history was rewrit- duction. A product of the great purges, this new genera-
ten so that early tsars such as Ivan the Terrible and Peter tion of Stalin-formed communists would serve the leader
the Great became worthy forerunners of the greatest Rus- effectively until his death in 1953, and they would govern
sian leader of all—Stalin. the Soviet Union until the early 1980s.
Stalin seldom appeared in public, but his presence was Stalin’s mass purges remain baffling, for almost all his-
everywhere—in portraits, statues, books, and quotations torians believe that those purged posed no threat and
from his “sacred” writings. Although the government confessed to crimes they had not committed. Certainly
persecuted religion and turned churches into “museums the highly publicized purges sent a warning to the people:
of atheism,” the state had both an earthly religion and a no one was secure; everyone had to serve the party and its
high priest—Marxism-Leninism and Joseph Stalin. leader with redoubled devotion. Some Western scholars
have also argued that the terror reflected a fully developed
totalitarian state, which must always be fighting real or
Stalinist Terror and the Great Purges imaginary enemies.
In the mid-1930s, the great offensive to build The long-standing Western interpretation that puts the
socialism and a new socialist personality culminated in blame for the great purges on Stalin, which became very
ruthless police terror and a massive purging of the Com- popular in Russia after the fall of communism, has never-
munist Party. First used by the Bolsheviks in the civil war theless been challenged. Some historians argue that Stalin’s
to maintain their power, terror as state policy was revived fears were exaggerated but real. Moreover, these fears and
in the collectivization drive against the peasants. The suspicions were shared by many in the party and in the
top members of the party and government publicly sup- general population. Bombarded with ideology and politi-
ported Stalin’s initiatives, but there was some grumbling cal slogans, the population responded energetically to
in the party. At a small gathering in November 1932, Stalin’s directives. Investigations and trials snowballed into
even Stalin’s wife complained bitterly about the misery a mass hysteria, a new witch-hunt that claimed millions of
Mussolini and Fascism in Italy • 955
victims.8 In short, in this view of the 1930s, a deluded est gains at Versailles. Workers and peasants also felt cheated:
Stalin found large numbers of willing collaborators for to win their support during the war, the government had
crime as well as for achievement. promised social and land reform, which it did not deliver
after the war.
The Russian Revolution inspired and energized Italy’s
Mussolini and Fascism in Italy revolutionary socialist movement. The Socialist Party
quickly lined up with the Bolsheviks, and radical workers
Mussolini’s movement and his seizure of power in 1922 and peasants began occupying factories and seizing land
were important steps in the rise of dictatorships in Europe in 1920. These actions scared and mobilized the prop-
between the two world wars. Like all the future dictators, erty-owning classes. Moreover, after the war the pope
the young Mussolini hated liberalism and wanted to de- lifted his ban on participation by Catholics in Italian poli-
stroy it in Italy. But although Mussolini began as a revolu- tics, and a strong Catholic party quickly emerged. Thus
tionary socialist, like Stalin, he turned against the working by 1921 revolutionary socialists, antiliberal conservatives,
class and successfully sought the support of conservatives. and frightened property owners were all opposed—
At the same time, Mussolini and his supporters were the though for different reasons—to the liberal parliamen-
first to call themselves “fascists”—revolutionaries deter- tary government.
mined to create a certain kind of totalitarian state. Yet few Into these crosscurrents of unrest and fear stepped
scholars today would argue that Mussolini succeeded. His the blustering, bullying Benito Mussolini (1883–1945).
dictatorship was brutal and theatrical, but it remained a Son of a village schoolteacher and a poor blacksmith,
halfway house between conservative authoritarianism and Mussolini began his political career as a Socialist Party
dynamic totalitarianism. leader and radical newspaper editor before World War I.
• How did Mussolini’s dictatorship come to power and In 1914, powerfully influenced by antidemocratic cults
govern in Italy? of violent action, the young Mussolini urged that Italy
join the Allies, a stand for which he was expelled from
Apago PDF Enhancer the Italian Socialist Party. Later Mussolini fought at the
front and was wounded in 1917. Returning home, he be-
The Seizure of Power gan organizing bitter war veterans like himself into a
In the early twentieth century, Italy was a liberal state with band of fascists—from the Italian word for “a union of
civil rights and a constitutional monarchy. On the eve forces.”
of the First World War, the parliamentary regime finally At first Mussolini’s program was a radical combination
granted universal male suffrage, and Italy appeared to be of nationalist and socialist demands, including territorial
moving toward democracy. But there were serious prob- expansion, benefits for workers, and land reform for peas-
lems. Much of the Italian population was still poor, and ants. As such, it competed directly with the well-organized
many peasants were more attached to their villages and Socialist Party and failed to get off the ground. When
local interests than to the national state. Moreover, the pa- Mussolini saw that his violent verbal assaults on rival So-
pacy, many devout Catholics, conservatives, and landown- cialists won him growing support from conservatives and
ers remained strongly opposed to liberal institutions and the frightened middle classes, he shifted gears in 1920. In
to the heirs of Cavour and Garibaldi—the middle-class thought and action, Mussolini was a striking example of
lawyers and politicians who ran the country largely for their the turbulent uncertainty of the age of anxiety.
own benefit. Relations between church and state were of- Mussolini and his growing private army of Black Shirts
ten tense. Class differences were also extreme, and a pow- began to grow violent. Typically, a band of fascist toughs
erful revolutionary socialist movement had developed. Only would roar off in trucks at night and swoop down on a
in Italy among the main European countries did the radical few isolated Socialist organizers, beating them up and
left wing of the Socialist Party gain the leadership as early as force-feeding them almost deadly doses of castor oil. Few
1912, and only in Italy did the Socialist Party unanimously people were killed, but socialist newspapers, union halls,
oppose the war from the very beginning.9 and local Socialist Party headquarters were destroyed. Mus-
The war worsened the political situation. Having fought solini’s toughs pushed Socialists out of the city govern-
on the side of the Allies almost exclusively for purposes ments of northern Italy.
of territorial expansion, the parliamentary government A skillful politician, Mussolini allowed his followers to
bitterly disappointed Italian nationalists with Italy’s mod- convince themselves that they were not just opposing the
“Reds” but also making a real revolution of their own,

forging a strong, dynamic movement that would help the
The Regime in Action
little people against the established interests. With the gov- Mussolini became dictator on the strength of Italians’ re-
ernment breaking down in 1922, largely because of the jection of parliamentary government coupled with fears
chaos created by his direct-action bands, Mussolini stepped of Soviet-style revolution. Yet what he intended to do
forward as the savior of order and property. Striking a con- with his power was by no means clear until 1924. Some
servative note in his speeches and gaining the sympathetic of his dedicated supporters pressed for a “second rev-
neutrality of army leaders, Mussolini demanded the resigna- olution.” Mussolini’s ministers, however, included old
tion of the existing government and his own appointment conservatives, moderates, and even two reform-minded
by the king. In October 1922, to force matters, a large Socialists. A new electoral law was passed giving two-
group of fascists marched on Rome to threaten the king thirds of the representatives in the parliament to the
and force him to call on Mussolini. The threat worked. party that won the most votes, a change that allowed the
Victor Emmanuel III (r. 1900–1946), who had no love for Fascist Party and its allies to win an overwhelming major-
the old liberal politicians, asked Mussolini to form a new ity in 1924. Shortly thereafter, five of Mussolini’s thugs
cabinet. Thus, after widespread violence and a threat of kidnapped and murdered Giacomo Matteotti, the leader
armed uprising, Mussolini seized power “legally.” He was of the Socialists in the parliament. In the face of this out-
immediately granted dictatorial authority for one year by rage, the opposition demanded that Mussolini’s armed
the king and the parliament. squads be dissolved and all violence be banned.
Apago PDF Enhancer
Hitler and Mussolini in Italy, May 1938 At first Mussolini distrusted Hitler, but Mussolini’s
conquest of Ethiopia in 1936 and Hitler’s occupation of the Rhineland brought the two dicta-
tors together in a close alliance. State visits by Mussolini to Berlin in 1937 and by Hitler to
Rome in 1938 included gigantic military reviews, which were filmed to impress the whole
world. Uniformed Italian fascists accompany this motorcade. (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
Hitler and Nazism in Germany • 957
Although Mussolini may or may not have ordered Only twenty-three political prisoners were condemned
Matteotti’s murder, he stood at the crossroads of a severe to death between 1926 and 1944. In spite of much pom-
political crisis. After some hesitation, he charged for- pous posing by the chauvinist leader and in spite of mass
ward. Declaring his desire to “make the nation Fascist,” meetings, salutes, and a certain copying of Hitler’s ag-
he imposed a series of repressive measures. Freedom of gression in foreign policy after 1933, Mussolini’s fascist
the press was abolished, elections were fixed, and the Italy, though repressive and undemocratic, was never really
government ruled by decree. Mussolini arrested his polit- totalitarian.
ical opponents, disbanded all independent labor unions,
and put dedicated Fascists in control of Italy’s schools.
Moreover, he created a fascist youth movement, fascist Hitler and Nazism in Germany
labor unions, and many other fascist organizations. Mus-
solini trumpeted his goal in a famous slogan of 1926: The most frightening dictatorship developed in Nazi Ger-
“Everything in the state, nothing outside the state, noth- many. A product of Hitler’s evil genius as well as of Ger-
ing against the state.” By the end of that year, Italy was many’s social and political situation and the general attack
a one-party dictatorship under Mussolini’s unquestioned on liberalism and rationality in the age of anxiety, the Nazi
leadership. movement shared some of the characteristics of Mus-
Mussolini, however, did not complete the establish- solini’s Italian model and was a form of fascism. But Nazi
ment of a modern totalitarian state. His Fascist Party never dictatorship smashed or took over most independent or-
became all-powerful. It never destroyed the old power ganizations, mobilized the economy, and violently perse-
structure, as the Communists did in the Soviet Union, or cuted the Jewish population. Thus Nazism asserted an
succeeded in dominating it, as the Nazis did in Germany. unlimited claim over German society and proclaimed the
Membership in the Fascist Party was more a sign of an ultimate power of its endlessly aggressive leader—Adolf
Italian’s respectability than a commitment to radical change. Hitler. Truly totalitarian in its aspirations, the dynamism
Interested primarily in personal power, Mussolini was con- of Hitler and the Nazi elite was ultimately directed to war,
tent to compromise with the old conservative classes that
Apago PDF Enhancer territorial expansion, and racial aggression.
controlled the army, the economy, and the state. He never • How did Hitler gain power, what policies did totalitarian
tried to purge these classes or even move very vigorously Nazi Germany pursue, and why did they lead to World War II?
against them. He controlled and propagandized labor but
left big business to regulate itself, profitably and securely.
There was no land reform.
Mussolini also drew increasing support from the Catholic
The Roots of Nazism
Church. In the Lateran Agreement of 1929, he recog- Nazism grew out of many complex developments, of
nized the Vatican as a tiny independent state, and he agreed which the most influential were extreme nationalism and
to give the church heavy financial support. The pope ex- racism. These two ideas captured the mind of the young
pressed his satisfaction and urged Italians to support Mus- Hitler, and it was he who dominated Nazism for as long
solini’s government. as it lasted.
Nothing better illustrates Mussolini’s unwillingness to Born the fourth child of a successful Austrian customs
harness everyone and everything for dynamic action than official and an indulgent mother, Adolf Hitler (1889–
his treatment of women. He abolished divorce and told 1945) spent his childhood in small towns in Austria. A
women to stay at home and produce children. To pro- good student in grade school, Hitler did poorly on reach-
mote that goal, he decreed a special tax on bachelors in ing high school and dropped out at age fourteen follow-
1934. In 1938 women were limited by law to a maxi- ing the death of his father. After four years of unfocused
mum of 10 percent of the better-paying jobs in industry loafing, Hitler finally left for Vienna, where he lived a
and government. Italian women appear not to have comfortable, lazy life on his generous orphan’s pension
changed their attitudes or behavior in any important way and found most of the perverted beliefs that guided
under fascist rule. his life.
Mussolini’s government did not pass racial laws until In Vienna Hitler soaked up extreme German national-
1938 and did not persecute Jews savagely until late in the ism, which was particularly strong there. Austro-German
Second World War, when Italy was under Nazi control. nationalists believed Germans to be a superior people
Nor did Mussolini establish a truly ruthless police state. and the natural rulers of central Europe. They often
advocated union with Germany and violent expulsion of

“inferior” peoples as the means of maintaining German
Hitler’s Road to Power
domination of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At his trial, Hitler violently denounced the Weimar Re-
Hitler was deeply impressed by Vienna’s mayor, Karl public, and he gained enormous publicity and attention.
Lueger (1844–1910). With the help of the Catholic trade Moreover, he learned from his unsuccessful revolt. Hitler
unions, Lueger had succeeded in winning the support of concluded that he had to undermine, rather than over-
the little people of Vienna, and he showed Hitler the enor- throw, the government and come to power legally through
mous potential of anticapitalist and antiliberal propaganda. electoral competition. He forced his more violent sup-
From Lueger and others, Hitler eagerly absorbed virulent porters to accept his new strategy. He also used his brief
anti-Semitism, racism, and hatred of Slavs. He developed prison term to dictate Mein Kampf. There he expounded
an unshakable belief in the crudest, most exaggerated dis- on his basic themes: “race,” with a stress on anti-Semitism;
tortions of the Darwinian theory of survival, the superiority “living space,” with a sweeping vision of war and con-
of Germanic races, and the inevitability of racial conflict. quered territory; and the leader-dictator (Führer), with
Thus anti-Semitism and racism became Hitler’s most pas- unlimited, arbitrary power.
sionate convictions, his explanation for everything. The In the years of prosperity and relative stability between
Jews, he claimed, directed an international conspiracy of fi- 1924 and 1929, Hitler concentrated on building his Na-
nance capitalism and Marxian socialism against German tional Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi Party. By
culture, German unity, and the German race. Hitler’s belief 1928 the party had 100,000 highly disciplined members
was totally irrational, but he never doubted it. under Hitler’s absolute control. To appeal to the middle-
Although he moved to Munich in 1913 to avoid being class voters, Hitler de-emphasized the anticapitalist
drafted in the Austrian army, the lonely Hitler greeted the elements of national socialism and vowed to fight Bol-
outbreak of the First World War as a salvation. He later shevism. Yet the Nazis remained a small splinter group in
wrote in his autobiography, Mein Kampf, that, “overcome 1928, when they received only 2.6 percent of the vote
by passionate enthusiasm, I fell to my knees and thanked in the general elections and twelve seats in the Reichstag.
heaven out of an overflowing heart.” The struggle and
Apago PDF Enhancer There the Nazi deputies pursued the legal strategy of us-
discipline of war gave life meaning, and Hitler served ing democracy to destroy democracy.
bravely as a dispatch carrier on the western front. The Great Depression, shattering economic prosperity
When Germany was suddenly defeated in 1918, Hitler’s from 1929 on, presented Hitler with a fabulous opportu-
world was shattered. Not only was he a fanatical nation- nity. Unemployment jumped from 1.3 million in 1929 to
alist, but war was also his reason for living. Convinced 5 million in 1930. By the end of 1932, an incredible 43
that Jews and Marxists had “stabbed Germany in the percent of the labor force was unemployed. Industrial
back,” he vowed to fight on. production fell by one-half between 1929 and 1932. No
In late 1919, Hitler joined a tiny extremist group in factor contributed more to Hitler’s success than the eco-
Munich called the German Workers’ Party. In addition to nomic crisis. Never very interested in economics before,
denouncing Jews, Marxists, and democrats, the German Hitler began promising German voters economic as well
Workers’ Party promised unity under a uniquely German as political and international salvation.
“national socialism” that would abolish the injustices of Above all, Hitler rejected free-market capitalism and
capitalism and create a mighty “people’s community.” By advocated government programs to bring recovery. Hitler
1921 Hitler had gained absolute control of this small but pitched his speeches especially to middle- and lower-
growing party. He was already a master of mass propa- middle-class groups—small business people, officework-
ganda and political showmanship. His most effective tool ers, artisans, and peasants—as well as to skilled workers
was the mass rally, where he often worked his audience striving for middle-class status. Seized by panic as bank-
into a frenzy with wild, demagogic attacks on the Ver- ruptcies increased, unemployment soared, and the Com-
sailles treaty, the Jews, the war profiteers, and Germany’s munists made dramatic election gains, great numbers
Weimar Republic. of middle- and lower-middle-class people “voted their
Party membership multiplied tenfold after early 1922. pocketbooks”10 and deserted the conservative and mod-
In late 1923, the Weimar Republic seemed on the verge erate parties for the Nazis. In the election of 1930, the
of collapse, and Hitler, inspired by Mussolini’s recent Nazis won 6.5 million votes and 107 seats, and in July
easy victory, decided on an armed uprising in Munich. 1932 they gained 14.5 million votes—38 percent of the
Despite the failure of the poorly organized plot and Hitler’s total—and became the largest party in the Reichstag.
arrest, Nazism had been born. The appeal to pocketbook interests was particularly
Apago PDF Enhancer

The Great Depression in Germany As unemployment increased almost fourfold
from 1929 to 1930, millions of Germans felt the lash of poverty and hunger. This
soup kitchen, operated by the Salvation Army in Berlin in 1930, is serving up free
meals to a broad cross section of society—young and old, weak and able-bodied.
(Ullstein Bilderdienst/The Granger Collection, New York)
effective in the early 1930s because Hitler appeared mass movement of young Germans. Hitler himself was
more mainstream, playing down his anti-Jewish hatred only forty in 1929, and he and most of his top aides were
and racist nationalism. A master of mass propaganda and much younger than other leading German politicians.
psychology, he had written in Mein Kampf that the masses “National Socialism is the organized will of the youth,”
were the “driving force of the most important changes proclaimed the official Nazi slogan, and the battle cry of
in this world” and were themselves driven by fanaticism Gregor Strasser, a leading Nazi organizer, was “Make
and not by knowledge. To arouse such hysterical fanati- way, you old ones.”11 In 1931 almost 40 percent of Nazi
cism, he believed that all propaganda had to be limited party members were under thirty, compared with 20 per-
to a few simple, endlessly repeated slogans. But now when cent of Social Democrats. National recovery, exciting and
he harangued vast audiences with wild oratory and simple rapid change, and personal advancement were the ap-
slogans, he featured “national rebirth” and the “crimes” peals of Nazism to millions of German youths.
of the Versailles treaty. And many uncertain individuals, Another reason Hitler came to power was that normal
surrounded by thousands of enthralled listeners, found a democratic government broke down as early as May
sense of belonging as well as hope for better times. 1930. Unable to gain the support of a majority in the
Reichstag, Chancellor (chief minister) Heinrich Brüning
Improve Your Grade
convinced the president, the aging war hero General
Primary Source: The Art of Propaganda: A Master
Reveals His Secrets (Hitler, 1924)
Hindenburg, to authorize rule by decree. Intending to
use this emergency measure indefinitely, Brüning was de-
Hitler and the Nazis also appealed strongly to German termined to overcome the economic crisis by cutting
youth. Indeed, in some ways the Nazi movement was a back government spending and ruthlessly forcing down
prices and wages. Brüning’s ultra-orthodox policies not capitalism and that a communist revolution would soon
only intensified the economic collapse in Germany but follow his taking power. Disunity on the left was undoubt-
also convinced many voters that the country’s republican edly another nail in the republic’s coffin.
leaders were stupid and corrupt, thereby adding to Finally, Hitler excelled in the dirty, backroom politics
Hitler’s appeal. of the decaying Weimar Republic. That, in fact, brought
The continuation of the struggle between the Social Dem- him to power. In complicated infighting in 1932, he
ocrats and the Communists, right up until the moment cleverly succeeded in gaining additional support from
Hitler took power, was another aspect of the breakdown of key people in the army and big business. These people
democratic government. The Communists refused to co- thought they could use Hitler for their own advantage to
operate with the Social Democrats, even though the two get increased military spending, fat contracts, and tough
parties together outnumbered the Nazis in the Reichstag, measures against workers. Many conservative and nation-
even after the elections of 1932. German Communists alistic politicians thought similarly. They thus accepted
(and the still complacent Stalin) were blinded by hatred of Hitler’s demand to join the government only if he be-
socialists and by ideology: the Communists believed that came chancellor. There would be only two other Na-
Hitler’s fascism represented the last agonies of monopoly tional Socialists and nine solid conservatives as ministers,
and in such a coalition government, they reasoned, Hitler
could be used and controlled. On January 30, 1933, Adolf
Hitler, leader of the largest party in Germany, was legally
appointed chancellor by Hindenburg.
The Nazi State and Society

Hitler moved rapidly and skillfully to establish an unshak-
able dictatorship. Continuing to maintain legal appear-
Apago PDF Enhancer ances, he immediately called for new elections. In the
midst of a violent electoral campaign, the Reichstag
building was partly destroyed by fire. Hitler screamed
that the Communist Party was responsible, and he con-
vinced President Hindenburg to sign dictatorial emer-
gency acts that practically abolished freedom of speech
and assembly as well as most personal liberties.
When the Nazis won only 44 percent of the vote in the
elections, Hitler immediately outlawed the Communist
Party and arrested its parliamentary representatives. Then
on March 23, 1933, the Nazis pushed through the Reich-
stag the so-called Enabling Act, which gave Hitler absolute
dictatorial power for four years. Armed with the Enabling
Act, Hitler and the Nazis moved to smash or control all in-
dependent organizations. Their deceitful stress on legality,
coupled with divide-and-conquer techniques, disarmed the
opposition until it was too late for effective resistance.
Germany soon became a one-party state. Only the Nazi
Party was legal. Elections were farces. The Reichstag was
jokingly referred to as the most expensive glee club in the
Reaching a National Audience This poster ad promotes country, for its only function was to sing hymns of praise to
the VE-301 receiver, “the world’s cheapest radio,” and claims the Führer. Hitler and the Nazis took over the government
that “All Germany listens to the Führer on the people’s bureaucracy intact, installing many Nazis in top positions.
receiver.” Constantly broadcasting official views and attitudes, At the same time, they created a series of overlapping Nazi
the state-controlled media also put the Nazis’ favorite enter-
tainment—gigantic mass meetings that climaxed with Hitler’s Party organizations responsible solely to Hitler.
violent theatrical speeches—on an invisible stage for millions. As research in recent years shows, the resulting system
(Bundesarchiv Koblenz Plak 003-022-025) of dual government was riddled with rivalries, contradic-
tions, and inefficiencies. Thus the Nazi state was sloppy

Improve Your Grade
and often disorganized, lacking the all-encompassing unity
Primary Source: The Centerpiece of Nazi Racial Legis-
that its propagandists claimed. Yet this fractured system
lation: The Nuremberg Laws
suited Hitler and his purposes. He could play the estab-
lished bureaucracy against his private, personal “party In late 1938, the attack on the Jews accelerated. A well-
government” and maintain his freedom of action. Hitler organized wave of violence, known to history as “Kristall-
could concentrate on general principles and the big deci- nacht,” smashed windows, looted shops, and destroyed
sions, which he always made. homes and synagogues. German Jews were then rounded
In the economic sphere, one big decision outlawed strikes up and made to pay for the damage. Another 150,000 Jews
and abolished independent labor unions, which were re- fled Germany. Some Germans privately opposed these out-
placed by the Nazi Labor Front. Professional people— rages, but most went along or looked the other way. This
doctors and lawyers, teachers and engineers—also saw lack of opposition reflected anti-Semitism to a degree still
their previously independent organizations swallowed up being debated by historians, but it certainly reflected the
by Nazi associations. Publishing houses were put under strong popular support Hitler’s government enjoyed.
Nazi control, and universities and writers were quickly
brought into line. Democratic, socialist, and Jewish litera-
ture was put on ever-growing blacklists. Passionate stu-
Hitler’s Popularity
dents and pitiful professors burned forbidden books in Hitler had promised the masses economic recovery—“work
public squares. Modern art and architecture were ruth- and bread”—and he delivered. Breaking with Brüning’s
lessly prohibited. Life became violently anti-intellectual. do-nothing policies, Hitler launched a large public works
By 1934 a brutal dictatorship characterized by frightening program to help pull Germany out of the depression. Work
dynamism and obedience to Hitler was already largely in began on superhighways, offices, gigantic sports stadiums,
place. and public housing. Hitler also appointed as Germany’s
Only the army retained independence, and Hitler moved central banker a well-known conservative named Hjalmar
brutally and skillfully to establish his control there, too.
Apago PDF Enhancer Schacht, who skillfully restored credit and business. In
The Nazi storm troopers (the SA), the quasi-military band 1936 an openly aggressive Hitler broke with Schacht, and
of 3 million toughs in brown shirts who had fought com- Germany turned decisively toward rearmament and prep-
munists and beaten up Jews before the Nazis took power, aration for war. As a result of these policies (and plain good
expected top positions in the army and even talked of a luck), unemployment dropped steadily, from 6 million in
“second revolution” against capitalism. Hitler decided that January 1933 to about 1 million in late 1936. By 1938
the SA leaders had to be eliminated. Needing to preserve there was a shortage of workers, as unemployment fell to 2
good relations with the army as well as with big business, percent, and women began to take jobs previously denied
he struck on the night of June 30, 1934. Hitler’s elite them by the antifeminist Nazis. Thus between 1932 and
personal guard—the SS—arrested and shot without trial 1938, the standard of living for the average employed
roughly a thousand SA leaders and assorted political ene- worker increased moderately. The profits of business rose
mies. Shortly thereafter army leaders swore a binding oath sharply. For millions of people, economic recovery was tan-
of “unquestioning obedience . . . to the Leader of the Ger- gible evidence that Nazi promises were more than show
man State and People, Adolf Hitler.” The SS grew rapidly. and propaganda.
Under its methodical, inhuman leader, Heinrich Himmler For the masses of ordinary German citizens who were
(1900–1945), the SS joined with the political police, the not Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, commu-
Gestapo, to expand its network of special courts and con- nists, or homosexuals, Hitler’s government meant greater
centration camps. Nobody was safe. equality and more opportunities. In 1933 the position
From the beginning, Jews were a special object of Nazi of the traditional German elites—the landed aristocracy,
persecution. By the end of 1934, most Jewish lawyers, doc- the wealthy capitalists, and the well-educated professional
tors, professors, civil servants, and musicians had lost their classes—was still very strong. Barriers between classes were
jobs and the right to practice their professions. In 1935 the generally high. Hitler’s rule introduced changes that low-
infamous Nuremberg Laws classified as Jewish anyone hav- ered these barriers. For example, stiff educational require-
ing one or more Jewish grandparents and deprived Jews of ments, which favored the well-to-do, were relaxed. The
all rights of citizenship. By 1938 roughly 150,000 of Ger- new Nazi elite included many young and poorly educated
many’s half a million Jews had emigrated, sacrificing almost dropouts, rootless lower-middle-class people like Hitler
all their property in order to leave Germany. who rose to the top with breathtaking speed. More
generally, the Nazis tolerated privilege and wealth only as ing and unique concepts of Nazism remained space and
long as they served the needs of the party. Even big busi- race—the territorial expansion of the superior German
ness was constantly ordered around. race. As we shall see, German expansion was facilitated by
Yet few historians today believe that Hitler and the the uncertain and divided Western democracies, which
Nazis brought about a real social revolution, as an earlier tried to buy off Hitler to avoid war.
generation of scholars often argued. Millions of modest Hitler realized that his aggressive policies had to be
middle-class and lower-middle-class people felt that Ger- carefully camouflaged at first, for Germany’s army was
many was becoming more open and equal, as Nazi propa- limited by the Treaty of Versailles to only one hundred
gandists constantly claimed. But quantitative studies show thousand men. As he told a group of army commanders
that the well-educated classes held on to most of their ad- in February 1933, the early stages of his policy of “con-
vantages and that only a modest social leveling occurred quest of new living space in the East and its ruthless Ger-
in the Nazi years. It is significant that the Nazis shared manization” had serious dangers. If France had real
with the Italian fascists the stereotypic view of women as leaders, Hitler said, it would “not give us time but attack
housewives and mothers. Only under the relentless pres- us, presumably with its eastern satellites.”12 Thus, al-
sure of war did they reluctantly mobilize large numbers of though Hitler loudly proclaimed his peaceful intentions,
German women for work in offices and factories. Germany’s withdrawal from the League of Nations in
Hitler’s rabid nationalism, which had helped him gain October 1933 indicated that Gustav Stresemann’s policy
power, continued to appeal to Germans after 1933. Ever of peaceful cooperation (see pages 930–932) was dead.
since the wars against Napoleon, many Germans had be- Following this action, Hitler sought to incorporate
lieved in a special mission for a superior German nation. independent Austria into a greater Germany. But a wor-
The successes of Bismarck had furthered such feelings, ried Mussolini threatened to fight, and Hitler backed
and near-victory in World War I made nationalists eager down. When in March 1935 Hitler established a general
for renewed expansion in the 1920s. Thus when Hitler military draft and declared the “unequal” disarmament
went from one foreign triumph to another and a great clauses of the Treaty of Versailles null and void, other coun-
German Empire seemed within reach, as we shall see, the
Apago PDF Enhancer tries appeared to understand the danger. With France
majority of the population was delighted and kept prais- taking the lead, Italy and Great Britain protested strongly
ing the Führer’s actions well into World War II. and warned against future aggressive actions.
Not all Germans supported Hitler, however, and a num- Yet the emerging united front against Hitler quickly
ber of German groups actively resisted him after 1933. collapsed. Of crucial importance, Britain adopted a pol-
Tens of thousands of political enemies were imprisoned, icy of appeasement, granting Hitler everything he could
and thousands were executed. But opponents of the Nazis reasonably want (and more) in order to avoid war. The
pursued various goals, and they were never unified, a fact first step was an Anglo-German naval agreement in June
that helps account for their ultimate lack of success. In 1935 that broke Germany’s isolation. The second step
the first years of Hitler’s rule, the principal resisters were the came in March 1936 when Hitler suddenly marched his
communists and the socialists in the trade unions. But armies into the demilitarized Rhineland, brazenly violat-
the expansion of the SS system of terror after 1935 smashed ing the Treaties of Versailles and Locarno. This was the
most of these leftists. A second group of opponents arose last good chance to stop the Nazis, but an uncertain
in the Catholic and Protestant churches. However, their ef- France would not move without British support, and
forts were directed primarily at preserving genuine reli- Britain refused to act (Map 29.1).
gious life, not at overthrowing Hitler. Finally in 1938 (and British appeasement, which practically dictated French
again in 1942–1944), some high-ranking army officers, policy, lasted far into 1939. It was motivated by British feel-
who feared the consequences of Hitler’s reckless aggres- ings of guilt toward Germany and the pacifism of a popula-
sion, plotted against him, unsuccessfully. tion still horrified by the memory of the First World War. As
in Germany, many powerful conservatives in Britain under-
estimated Hitler. They believed that Soviet communism
Aggression and Appeasement, was the real danger and that Hitler could be used to stop it.
Such strong anticommunist feelings made an alliance be-
1933–1939 tween the Western Powers and Stalin unlikely.
Although economic recovery and somewhat greater op- As Britain and France opted for appeasement and the
portunity for social advancement won Hitler support, Soviet Union watched all developments suspiciously,
they were only byproducts of the Nazi regime. The guid- Hitler found powerful allies. In 1935 the bombastic
International boundaries,
1936 Tallinn
Germany in 1933
ESTONIA
Remilitarized in 1936
Annexed in 1938
Satellite states, March 1939

Conquered by Germany in SWEDEN Riga
September 1939
LATVIA
a
Annexed by Germany,
Se
Annexed by Soviet Union in DENMARK March 1939
September 1939 c SOVIET
l ti Memel LITHUANIA
Ba Vilnius UNION
North Sea Minsk
EAST
Danzig
PRUSSIA
Hamburg WHITE RUSSIA
Bremen Elb
e
Vistu
la Pinsk
NETHERLANDS Berlin Warsaw
Oder Brest-Litovsk
RUHR
POLAND
GERMANY
We
Dunkirk Cologne
se
BELGIUM
r
Rhi
e
n
AND
NL
RHINELAND TE Prague
DE
SU
Dn
LUXEMBOURG
BOHEMIA SUDETENLAND ies
ter
Nuremberg
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
SAAR
MORAVIA
Da n u b e
Gained by plebiscite,
1935 SLOVAKIA
RUTHENIA
Munich
To Hungary
FRANCE Apago PDF Enhancer Vienna

March 1939
Budapest
AUSTRIA
HUNGARY
SWITZERLAND
ROMANIA
ITALY
YUGOSLAVIA D an u b e
Ad
ri
at
ic
0 100 200 Km.

ea
S
0 100 200 Mi.
MAP 29.1 The Growth of Nazi Germany, 1933–1939 Until March 1939, Hitler
brought ethnic Germans into the Nazi state; then he turned on the Slavic peoples he had
always hated. He stripped Czechoslovakia of its independence and prepared for an attack on
Poland in September 1939.
Mussolini attacked the independent African kingdom of At the same time, Germany and Italy intervened in
Ethiopia. The Western Powers and the League of Na- the Spanish civil war (1936–1939), which broke out in
tions piously condemned Italian aggression, but Hitler July 1936. Their support eventually helped General
supported Italy energetically and overcame Mussolini’s Francisco Franco’s fascist movement defeat republican
lingering doubts about the Nazis. The result in late 1936 Spain. Spain’s only official aid came from the Soviet
was an agreement on close cooperation between Italy Union, for public opinion in Britain and especially in
and Germany, the so-called Rome-Berlin Axis. Japan, France was hopelessly divided on the Spanish question.
which had been expanding into Manchuria since 1931, In late 1937 Hitler moved forward with plans to crush
soon joined the Axis alliance. Austria and Czechoslovakia at the earliest possible moment
Events Leading to World War II
1919 Treaty of Versailles is signed; J. M. Keynes publishes Economic Consequences of the

Peace.
1919–1920 U.S. Senate rejects the Treaty of Versailles.
1921 Germany is billed $33 billion in reparations.
1922 Mussolini seizes power in Italy; Germany proposes a moratorium on reparations.
January 1923 France and Belgium occupy the Ruhr; Germany orders passive resistance to the
occupation.
October 1923 Stresemann agrees to reparations based on Germany’s ability to pay.
1924 Dawes Plan: German reparations are reduced and put on a sliding scale. Large U.S.
loans to Germany are recommended to promote German recovery; Adolf Hitler
dictates Mein Kampf.
1924–1929 Spectacular German economic recovery occurs; circular flow of international funds
enables sizable reparations payments.
1925 Treaties of Locarno promote European security and stability.
1926 Germany joins the League of Nations.
1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact renounces war as an instrument of international affairs.
1929 U.S. stock market crashes and triggers worldwide financial crisis.
1929–1939 Great Depression rages.
1931
Apago PDF Enhancer
Japan invades Manchuria.
1932 Nazis become the largest party in the Reichstag.
January 1933 Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany.
March 1933 Reichstag passes the Enabling Act, granting Hitler absolute dictatorial power.
October 1933 Germany withdraws from the League of Nations.
1935 Nuremberg Laws deprive Jews of all rights of citizenship.
March 1935 Hitler announces German rearmament.
June 1935 Anglo-German naval agreement is signed.
October 1935 Mussolini invades Ethiopia and receives Hitler’s support.
March 1936 German armies move unopposed into the demilitarized Rhineland.
July 1936 Civil war breaks out in Spain.
1937 Japan invades China; Rome-Berlin Axis in effect.
March 1938 Germany annexes Austria.
September 1938 Munich Conference: Britain and France agree to German seizure of the Sudetenland
from Czechoslovakia.
March 1939 Germany occupies the rest of Czechoslovakia; appeasement ends in Britain.
August 1939 Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact is signed.
September 1, 1939 Germany invades Poland.
September 3, 1939 Britain and France declare war on Germany.
Hitler’s Success with Aggression

This biting criticism of appeasing
leaders by the cartoonist David Low
appeared shortly after Hitler remili-
tarized the Rhineland. Appeasement
also appealed to millions of ordinary
citizens in Britain and France, who
wanted to avoid at any cost another
great war. (Solo Syndication/Associated
Newspapers)
as the first step in his long-contemplated drive to the east

lands in March 1939. The effect on Western public opin-
Apago PDF Enhancer
for living space. By threatening Austria with invasion,
ion was electrifying. For the first time, there was no pos-
Hitler forced the Austrian chancellor in March 1938 to sible rationale of self-determination for Nazi aggression
put local Nazis in control of the government. The next since Hitler was seizing Czechs and Slovaks as captive
day, German armies moved in unopposed, and Austria peoples. Thus when Hitler used the question of German
became two more provinces of Greater Germany (see minorities in Danzig as a pretext to confront Poland, a
Map 29.1). suddenly militant Chamberlain declared that Britain and
Simultaneously, Hitler began demanding that the pro- France would fight if Hitler attacked his eastern neigh-
Nazi, German-speaking minority of western Czechoslo- bor. Hitler did not take these warnings seriously and de-
vakia—the Sudetenland—be turned over to Germany. cided to press on.
Yet democratic Czechoslovakia was prepared to defend In an about-face that stunned the world, Hitler offered
itself. Moreover, France had been Czechoslovakia’s ally and Stalin signed a ten-year Nazi-Soviet nonaggression
since 1924; and if France fought, the Soviet Union was pact in August 1939. Each dictator promised to remain
pledged to help. War appeared inevitable, but appease- neutral if the other became involved in war. An attached
ment triumphed again. In September 1938, Chamber- secret protocol, which became known only after the war,
lain flew to Germany three times in fourteen days. In ruthlessly divided eastern Europe into German and So-
these negotiations, to which the U.S.S.R. was deliber- viet zones, “in the event of a political territorial reorgan-
ately not invited, Chamberlain and the French agreed ization.” The nonaggression pact itself was enough to
with Hitler that the Sudetenland should be ceded to Ger- make Britain and France cry treachery, for they, too, had
many immediately. Returning to London from the Mu- been negotiating with Stalin. But Stalin had remained
nich Conference, Chamberlain told cheering crowds that distrustful of Western intentions, and Hitler had offered
he had secured “peace with honor . . . peace for our immediate territorial gain.
time.” Sold out by the Western Powers, Czechoslovakia For Hitler, everything was set. He told his generals on
gave in. the day of the nonaggression pact, “My only fear is that
Confirmed once again in his opinion of the Western at the last moment some dirty dog will come up with a
democracies as weak and racially degenerate, Hitler ac- mediation plan.” On September 1, 1939, German armies
celerated his aggression. His armies occupied the Czech and warplanes smashed into Poland from three sides.
Two days later, Britain and France, finally true to their

word, declared war on Germany. The Second World War
Hitler’s Empire, 1939–1942
had begun. Using planes, tanks, and trucks in the first example of a
blitzkrieg, or “lightning war,” Hitler’s armies crushed
Poland in four weeks. While the Soviet Union quickly
The Second World War took its part of the booty—the eastern half of Poland and
the independent Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia, and
War broke out in both western and eastern Europe be- Latvia—French and British armies dug in in the west.
cause Hitler’s ambitions were essentially unlimited. On They expected another war of attrition and economic
both war fronts, Nazi soldiers scored enormous successes blockade.
until late 1942, establishing a vast empire of death and In spring 1940, the lightning war struck again. After
destruction. Hitler’s victories increased tensions in Asia occupying Denmark, Norway, and Holland, German
between Japan and the United States and prompted motorized columns broke through southern Belgium,
Japan to attack the United States and overrun much split the Franco-British forces, and trapped the entire
of Southeast Asia. Yet reckless aggression by Germany British army on the beaches of Dunkirk. By heroic ef-
and Japan also raised a mighty coalition determined to forts, the British withdrew their troops but not their
smash the aggressors. Led by Britain, the United States, equipment.
and the Soviet Union, the Grand Alliance—to use Win- France was taken by the Nazis. Aging Marshal Henri-
ston Churchill’s favorite name for it—functioned quite Philippe Pétain formed a new French government—the
effectively in military terms. Thus the Nazi and Japanese so-called Vichy government—to accept defeat, and Ger-
empires proved short-lived. man armies occupied most of France. By July 1940, Hitler
ruled practically all of western continental Europe; Italy
• How did Germany and Japan create enormous empires was an ally, and the Soviet Union and Spain were friendly
that were defeated by the Allies—Britain, the Soviet Union, neutrals. Only Britain, led by the uncompromising Win-
and the United States? ston Churchill (1874–1965), remained unconquered.
Apago PDF Enhancer
London, 1940 Hitler be-
lieved that his relentless terror
bombing of London—the
“blitz”––could break the will
of the British people. He was
wrong. The blitz caused enor-
mous destruction, but Lon-
doners went about their
business with courage and
calm determination, as this
unforgettable image of a milk-
man in the rubble suggests.
(Corbis)
The Second World War • 967
lands. But he needed countless helpers and many ambi-

Improve Your Grade
tious initiators to turn his dreams into reality. These ac-
Primary Source: “This Was Their Finest Hour”
complices came forth. Himmler and the elite corps of SS
Germany sought to gain control of the air, the neces- volunteers shared Hitler’s ideology of barbarous racial
sary first step toward an amphibious invasion of Britain. imperialism, and they rarely wavered in their efforts to
In the Battle of Britain, up to a thousand German planes realize his goals.13 Supported (or condoned) by military
attacked British airfields and key factories in a single day, commanders and German policemen in the occupied ter-
dueling with British defenders high in the skies. Losses ritories, the SS corps pressed relentlessly to implement
were heavy on both sides. Then in September Hitler an- the program of destruction and to create a “mass settle-
grily turned from military objectives to indiscriminate ment space” for Germans. Many Poles, captured com-
bombing of British cities in an attempt to break British munists, Gypsies, and Jehovah’s Witnesses were
morale. British aircraft factories increased production, murdered in cold blood.
and the heavily bombed people of London defiantly dug
in. In September and October 1940, Britain was beating
Germany three to one in the air war. There was no possi-
The Holocaust
bility of an immediate German invasion of Britain. The ultimate abomination of Nazi racism was the con-
Turning from Britain and moving into the Balkans by demnation of all European Jews to extermination in the
April 1941, Hitler now allowed his lifetime obsession Holocaust. After the fall of Warsaw, the Nazis stepped up
with a vast eastern European empire for the “master their expulsion campaign and began deporting all Ger-
race” to dictate policy. In June 1941, German armies man Jews to occupied Poland. There they and Jews from
suddenly attacked the Soviet Union along a vast front all over Europe were concentrated in ghettos, compelled
(see Map 29.2). By October Leningrad was practically to wear the Jewish star, and turned into slave laborers.
surrounded, Moscow was besieged, and most of Ukraine
Improve Your Grade
had been conquered. But the Soviets did not collapse,
Primary Source: The Ghettoization of the Jews:
and when a severe winter struck German armies outfitted
Apago PDF Enhancer Prelude to the Final Solution
in summer uniforms, the invaders were stopped.
Stalled in Russia, Hitler ruled over a vast European In 1941, as part of the “war of annihilation” in the So-
empire stretching from the outskirts of Moscow to the viet Union, expulsion spiraled into extermination. On
English Channel. Hitler, the Nazi leadership, and the the Russian front, Himmler’s special SS killing squads
loyal German army were positioned to greatly accelerate and also regular army units forced Soviet Jews to dig gi-
construction of their “New Order” in Europe, and they ant pits, which became mass graves as the victims were
continued their efforts until their final collapse in 1945. lined up on the edge and cut down by machine guns.
In doing so, they showed what Nazi victory would have Then in late 1941, Hitler and the Nazi leadership, in
meant. some still-debated combination, ordered the SS to stop
Hitler’s New Order was based firmly on the guiding all Jewish emigration from Europe and speeded up plan-
principle of Nazi totalitarianism: racial imperialism. ning for mass murder. As one German diplomat put it,
Within this New Order, the Nordic peoples—the Dutch, “The Jewish Question must be resolved in the course of
Norwegians, and Danes—received preferential treatment, the war, for only so can it be solved without a worldwide
for they were racially related to the master race, the Ger- outcry.”14 The “final solution of the Jewish question”—
mans. The French, an “inferior” Latin people, occupied the murder of every single Jew—had begun. Jews were
a middle position. All the occupied territories of western systematically arrested, packed like cattle onto freight
and northern Europe were exploited with increasing in- trains, and dispatched to extermination camps. Many
tensity. Material shortages and both mental and physical Jews could hardly imagine the enormity of the crime that
suffering afflicted millions of people. lay before them.
Slavs in the conquered territories to the east were Arriving at their destination, small numbers of Jews
treated with harsh hatred as “subhumans.” At the height were sent to nearby slave labor camps, where they were
of his success in 1941 and 1942, Hitler set the tone. He starved and systematically worked to death. But most of
painted for his intimate circle the fantastic vision of a vast the victims were moved immediately to the death camps,
eastern colonial empire where Poles, Ukrainians, and where they were taken by force or deception to “shower
Russians would be enslaved and forced to die out, while rooms” that were actually gas chambers. These gas
Germanic peasants resettled the resulting abandoned chambers, first perfected in the quiet, efficient execution
968
Hitler's Greater Germany
FINLAND
Allied with Germany
Occupied by Germany and its allies NORWAY
Helsinki
Grand Alliance Leningrad
Oslo SWEDEN
Siege of Leningrad,
Neutral nations Stockholm Sept. 1941–Jan. 1944
Major battles
a
North Moscow SOVIET UNION
Se
NORTHERN
Riga
Sea DENMARK
lga
IRELAND
ic
Tula
t
Vo
Copenhagen l Smolensk
IRELAND GREAT
German surrender:
Reims, May 7, 1945 Ba Minsk Russian front, Nov. 1942
BRITAIN Berlin, May 8, 1945 Russian front,
El Spring 1944
Battle of Britain,
be
Fall 1940 V is D on
tu l Stalingrad
NETHERLANDS Posen a
ATLANTIC London Berlin Warsaw Russian front, Siege of Stalingrad,
Kiev Dec. 1941
Aug. 21, 1942–Jan. 31, 1943
Apago PDF Enhancer

Dunkirk
R hi n
OCEAN BELGIUM
GERMANY Russian front, Feb. 1945 Dn i e
per
e
Rhine Crossing, UKRAINE
Battle of March 7, 1945 Cracow
Invasion of Normandy, Paris the Bulge,
June 6, 1944 nube SLOVAKIA
Dec. 1944 Da
Western front, Feb. 1945 Vienna HUNGARY
Budapest
FRANCE SWITZERLAND
Vichy Baku
ROMANIA Yalta
VICHY FRANCE Po
Axis troops occupy
(occupied Nov. 1942) CROATIA
Bucharest Black Sea
Bologna
Vichy France, Danube
Nov. 10 and 11, 1942 YUGOSLAVIA
Italian front, SERBIA
Feb. 1945 BULGARIA
Eb
o Allies land in Provence,

Sofia
r
PORTUGAL Aug. 15, 1944

ITALY Monte Cassino,
Madrid
Lisbon Rome May 1944 ALBANIA TURKEY
SPAIN Ankara
Salerno,
Sept. 1943 GREECE
Allies invade
Sicily and Italy,
July–Sept. 1943
Athens SYRIA
GIBRALTAR (Gr. Br.)
SP. MOROCCO Sicily
Sicily, CYPRUS
Rommel defeated July 1943
Casablanca, in Tunisia; Axis
Nov. 1942 troops evacuated, MALTA
May 1943 (Gr. Br.) Me Crete
FRENCH ALGERIA dite
MOROCCO rranean
(Vichy France) TUNISIA Sea PALESTINE TRANS -
(Br. Mandate)
JORDAN
(Br. Mandate)
Suez
Canal
El Alamein, Cairo
0 200 400 Km.
Summer 1942
Nile
0 200 400 Mi. LIBYA EGYPT
Prelude to Murder This photo captures the terrible inhumanity of Nazi racism and the
Holocaust. Frightened and bewildered families from the soon-to-be-destroyed Warsaw
Apago PDF Enhancer
Ghetto are being forced out of their homes by German soldiers for deportation to concentra-
tion camps. There they face murder in the gas chambers. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
of seventy thousand mentally ill Germans between 1938 women, and children choking to death on poison gas.
and 1941, permitted rapid, hideous, and thoroughly Then, only silence. Special camp workers quickly yanked
bureaucratized mass murder. For fifteen to twenty min- the victims’ gold teeth from their jaws, and the bodies
utes came the terrible screams and gasping sobs of men, were then cremated or sometimes boiled for oil to make
soap. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most infamous of the
Nazi death factories, as many as twelve thousand human
Mapping the Past beings were slaughtered each day. The extermination of
European Jews was the ultimate monstrosity of Nazi
MAP 29.2 World War II in Europe The map shows the
racism and racial imperialism. By 1945, 6 million Jews
extent of Hitler’s empire before the Battle of Stalingrad in late
1942 and the subsequent advances of the Allies until Germany had been murdered. (See the feature “Individuals in So-
surrendered on May 7, 1945. This map, combined with Map ciety: Primo Levi.”)
29.1 on page 963, can be used to trace the rise and fall of the Who was responsible for this terrible crime? An older
•
Nazi empire over time. 1 First, using Map 29.1, what was the first
country to be conquered by Hitler (and divided with the Soviet
generation of historians usually laid most of the guilt on
•
Union)? 2 Second, locate Germany’s advance and retreat on the
Russian front at different dates: December 1941, November 1942, Spring
1944, and February 1945. Locate the position of British and American
Hitler and the Nazi leadership. Ordinary Germans had
little knowledge of the extermination camps, it was ar-
gued, and those who cooperated had no alternative given
forces on the battlefield at similar points in time, and then compare the the brutality of Nazi terror and totalitarian control. But
respective Russian and British-American positions. What implications in recent years, many studies have revealed a much
might the battle lines on February 1945 have for the postwar settlement
broader participation of German people in the Holocaust
in Europe?
and popular indifference (or worse) to the fate of the
Jews. Yet exactly why so many perpetrated or condoned
Improve Your Grade Interactive Map: Nazi crimes has remained unclear.
WWII in Europe In a controversial work, the American historian Daniel
Goldhagen reignited discussion of Nazi crimes by argu- Japanese, and they refused. The United States responded
ing that, above all, the extreme anti-Semitism of “ordi- with strong action, cutting off the sale of U.S. oil to
nary Germans” led them to respond to Hitler and to Japan and thereby reducing Japan’s oil supplies by 90
become his “willing executioners” in World War II.15 Yet percent. Japanese leaders believed increasingly that war
in most occupied countries, local non-German officials with the United States was inevitable, for Japan’s battle
also cooperated in the arrest and deportation of Jews to a fleet would run out of fuel in eighteen months, and its in-
large extent. As in Germany, only a few exceptional by- dustry would be crippled. After much debate and almost
standers did not turn a blind eye. Thus some scholars in desperation, Japanese leaders decided to launch a sur-
have concluded that the key for most Germans (and most prise attack on the United States. They hoped to cripple
people in occupied countries) was that they felt no per- their Pacific rival, gain time to build a defensible Asian
sonal responsibility for Jews and therefore were not pre- empire, and eventually win an ill-defined compromise
pared to help them. This meant that many individuals, peace.
conditioned by Nazi racist propaganda but also influ- The Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl
enced by peer pressure and brutalizing wartime violence, Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands was a complete surprise
were psychologically prepared to join the SS ideologues but a limited success. On December 7, 1941, the Japan-
and perpetrate ever-greater crimes. They were ready to ese sank or crippled every American battleship, but by
plumb the depths of evil and to spiral downward from chance all the all-important American aircraft carriers
mistreatment to arrest to mass murder. were at sea and escaped unharmed. More important,
Pearl Harbor humiliated Americans and brought them
together in a spirit of anger and revenge.
Japan’s Empire in Asia Hitler immediately declared war on the United States.
By late 1938, 1.5 million Japanese troops were bogged Simultaneously, Japanese armies successfully attacked Eu-
down in China, holding a great swath of territory but un- ropean and American colonies in Southeast Asia. Japan-
able to defeat the Nationalists and the Communists (see ese armies were small (because most soldiers remained
Map 29.3). Nor had Japan succeeded in building a large,
Apago PDF Enhancer in China), but they were well trained, highly motivated,
self-sufficient Asian economic zone, for it still depended and very successful. By May 1942 Japan held a vast
on oil and scrap metal from the Netherlands East Indies empire in Southeast Asia and the western Pacific (see
and the United States. Thus Japanese leaders followed Map 29.3).
events in Europe closely, looking for alliances and actions The Japanese claimed that they were freeing Asians
that might improve their position in Asia. At home they from Western imperialism, and they called their empire
gave free rein to the anti-Western ultranationalism that the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere. Some—
had risen in the 1920s and 1930s. In speeches, schools, perhaps many—Japanese army officers and officials sin-
and newspapers ultranationalists proclaimed Japan’s lib- cerely believed that they were creating a mutually ad-
erating mission in Asia, glorified the warrior virtues of vantageous union for the long-term development of
honor and sacrifice, and demanded absolute devotion to Asia. Initially they tapped currents of nationalist senti-
the semidivine emperor. ment, and most local populations were glad to see the
The outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 and Hitler’s Western Powers go. But Asian faith in “co-prosperity”
early victories opened up opportunities for the Japanese and support for Japan steadily declined as the war went
in Southeast Asia, where European empires appeared on. Why was this so?
vulnerable. Expanding the war in China, the Japanese First of all, although the Japanese set up anticolonial
also pressured the Dutch to surrender control of the governments and promised genuine independence, real
Netherlands East Indies and its rich oil fields, but Dutch power always rested with Japanese military commanders
colonial officials, backed by the British and the Ameri- and their superiors in Tokyo. The “independent” gov-
cans, refused. The United States had repeatedly con- ernments were basically shams. Second, the Japanese
demned Japanese aggression in China, and it now feared never really delivered on their promises because they
that embattled Britain would collapse if it lost the sup- were constantly improvising a frantic defense of their far-
port of its Asian colonies. flung conquests from relentless attack by a determined
Japan’s invasion of southern Indochina in July 1941 foe with vastly superior resources. Thus, as living stan-
further worsened relations with the United States. Presi- dards plummeted in Japan and heavy industry sputtered,
dent Franklin Roosevelt demanded that Japan withdraw the Japanese occupiers exploited local peoples for Japan’s
from China, which was completely unacceptable to the wartime needs. Finally, the Japanese often exhibited
Individuals
in Society
Primo Levi
M ost Jews deported to Auschwitz were murdered as fession. Interviewed by a

soon as they arrived, but the Nazis made some prison- German technocrat for
ers into slave laborers and a few of these survived. the camp’s synthetic
Primo Levi (1919–1987), an Italian Jew, became one of rubber program, Levi
the most influential witnesses to the Holocaust and its performed brilliantly in
death camps. scientific German and
Like much of Italy’s small Jewish community, Levi’s savored his triumph as a
family belonged to the urban professional classes. The Jew over Nazi racism.
young Primo graduated in 1941 from the University of Work in the warm camp
Turin with highest honors in chemistry. But since 1938, laboratory offered Levi
Primo Levi, who never stopped
when Italy introduced racial laws, he had faced growing opportunities to pilfer
thinking, writing, and speaking
discrimination, and two years after graduation he equipment that could about the Holocaust.
joined the antifascist resistance movement. Quickly then be traded for food (Giansanti/Corbis Sygma)
captured, he was deported to Auschwitz with 650 Ital- and necessities with other
ian Jews in February 1944. Stone-faced SS men picked prisoners. Levi also gained
only ninety-six men and twenty-nine women to work in critical support from three saintly prisoners, who refused to
their respective labor camps. Primo was one of them. do wicked and hateful acts. And he counted “luck” as es-
Nothing prepared Levi for what he encountered. sential for his survival: in the camp infirmary with scarlet
The Jewish prisoners were kicked, punched, stripped, fever in February 1945 as advancing Russian armies pre-
branded with tattoos, crammed into huts, and worked pared to liberate the camp, Levi was not evacuated by the
Apago PDF Enhancer
unmercifully. Hoping for some sign of prisoner solidar- Nazis and shot to death like most Jewish prisoners.
ity in this terrible environment, Levi found only a des- After the war Primo Levi was forever haunted by the
perate struggle of each against all and enormous status nightmare that the Holocaust would be ignored or
differences among prisoners. Many stunned and bewil- forgotten. Always ashamed that so many people whom
dered newcomers, beaten and demoralized by their he considered better than himself had perished, he
bosses—the most privileged prisoners—simply col- wrote and lectured tirelessly to preserve the memory of
lapsed and died. Others struggled to secure their own Jewish victims and guilty Nazis. Wanting the world to
privileges, however small, because food rations and understand the Jewish genocide in all its complexity so
working conditions were so abominable that ordinary that never again would people tolerate such atrocities,
Jewish prisoners perished in two to three months. he grappled tirelessly with his vision of individual choice
Sensitive and noncombative, Levi found himself sink- and moral compromise in a hell designed to make the
ing into oblivion. But instead of joining the mass of the victims collaborate and persecute each other.
“drowned,” he became one of the “saved”—a compli-
cated surprise with moral implications that he would Questions for Analysis
ponder all his life. As Levi explained in Survival in
Auschwitz (1947), the usual road to salvation in the 1. Describe Levi’s experience at Auschwitz. How did
camps was some kind of collaboration with German camp prisoners treat each other? Why?
power.* Savage German criminals were released from 2. What does Levi mean by the “gray zone”? How is
prison to become brutal camp guards; non-Jewish politi- this concept central to his thinking?
cal prisoners competed for jobs entitling them to better 3. Will a vivid historical memory of the Holocaust help
conditions, and, especially troubling for Levi, a small to prevent future genocide?
number of Jewish men plotted and struggled for the *Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity,
power of life and death over other Jewish prisoners. rev. ed. 1958 (London: Collier Books, 1961), pp. 79–84, and
Though not one of these Jewish bosses, Levi believed The Drowned and the Saved (New York: Summit Books, 1988).
that he himself, like almost all survivors, had entered the These powerful testimonies are highly recommended.
“gray zone” of moral compromise. Only a very few supe-
rior individuals, “the stuff of saints and martyrs,” survived
the death camps without shifting their moral stance. Improve Your Grade
For Levi, compromise and salvation came from his pro- Going Beyond Individuals in Society
971
SOVIET UNION
.)
(U.S
5
194
5
Sakhalin
Aleutian Is.
194 Island Attu I.
19
1943
45
5
194
.
Is
MONGOLIA 1945 M ANCHURIA ril
Ku
er
nd
Beijing
rre
su
KOREA JAPAN
at
ry
to
Tokyo NORTH
rri
CHINA
te
se
Hiroshima
PACIFIC
ne
pa
Nagasaki Ja
OCEAN
Bonin Is.
19
45 Okinawa Midway I.
INDIA June 3, 1942
19
Iwo Marcus I.
45
(Gr. Br.) Jima Hawaiian Is.

45 (U.S.)
BURMA Hong 19
(Gr. Br.) Kong 19
45 Mariana Is. Wake I. Pearl
194
1943 Harbor
5
PHILIPPINE
THAILAND ISLANDS
1944 43
FRENCH (U.S.) 19
INDOCHINA Leyte 1944 Guam
19
45
BRUNEI Caroline Is. Marshall
MALAYA (Gr. Br.) N. BORNEO Is.
(Gr. Br.) SARAWAK (Gr. Br.) 194
(Gr. Br.) 4
Singapore
0° Borneo Equator
New Guinea
NETHERLANDS EAST INDIES SOUTH PACIFIC
Solomon Is.
OCEAN
Apago PDF Enhancer
Port Moresby
Coral Sea
Guadalcanal
Samoa Is.
May 4, 1942 19
42
INDIAN OCEAN Farthest advance of
Japanese conquests, 1942
1943
Allied-controlled territory
AUSTRALIA Allied advances

Territory gained by Allies
before Japanese surrender
Japanese-controlled territory
0 500 1000 Km. at surrender, August 14, 1945
0 500 1000 Mi. Major battles
MAP 29.3 World War II in the Pacific Japanese forces overran an enormous amount of
territory in 1942, which the Allies slowly recaptured in a long, bitter struggle. As this map
shows, Japan still held a large Asian empire in August 1945, when the unprecedented devasta-
tion of atomic warfare suddenly forced it to surrender.
Improve Your Grade Interactive Map: WWII in the Pacific
great cruelty toward prisoners of war and civilians, as than choice, had brought them together. Stalin had been
they had toward the Chinese since 1937. Recurring cruel cooperating fully with Hitler between August 1939 and
behavior aroused local populations against the invaders. June 1941, and only the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
in December 1941 had overwhelmed powerful isolation-
ism in the United States.
The Grand Alliance As a first step toward building an unshakable alliance,
While the Nazis and the Japanese built their savage em- U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt accepted the con-
pires, the Allies faced the hard fact that chance, rather tention of British prime minister Winston Churchill that
the United States should agree on a policy of Europe of patriots, Christians, and agents sent by governments-
first. Only after Hitler was defeated would the Allies turn in-exile in London.
toward the Pacific for an all-out attack on Japan, the
lesser threat. The Allies also put immediate military
needs first, postponing until after the war tough political
The War in Europe, 1942–1945
questions relating to the eventual peace settlement that Barely halted at the gates of Moscow and Leningrad in
might have split the alliance. 1941, the Germans renewed their offensive against the
To further encourage mutual trust, the Allies adopted Soviet Union in July 1942, driving toward the southern
the principle of the “unconditional surrender” of Ger- city of Stalingrad and occupying most of the city in a
many and Japan. This policy cemented the Grand Al- month of incredibly savage house-to-house fighting.
liance because it denied Hitler any hope of dividing his Then, in November 1942, Soviet armies counterat-
foes. It also meant that victorious Soviet and Anglo- tacked. They rolled over Romanian and Italian troops to
American armies would almost certainly come together the north and south of Stalingrad, quickly closing the
to divide all of Germany, and that Japan would fight to trap and surrounding the entire German Sixth Army of
the bitter end. 300,000 men. The surrounded Germans were systemati-
The military resources of the Grand Alliance were awe- cally destroyed, until by the end of January 1943 only
some. The strengths of the United States were its mighty 123,000 soldiers were left to surrender. Hitler, who had
industry, its large population, and its national unity. refused to allow a retreat, had suffered a catastrophic de-
Gearing up rapidly for all-out war in 1942, the United feat. In summer 1943, the larger, better-equipped Soviet
States acquired a unique capacity to wage global war. In armies took the offensive and began moving forward (see
1943 it outproduced not only Germany, Italy, and Japan Map 29.2).
but also all of the rest of the world combined. Not yet prepared to attack Germany directly through
Britain continued to make a great contribution as well. France, the Western Allies saw heavy fighting in North
The British economy was totally and effectively mobi- Africa from 1940 onward (see Map 29.2). In May 1942,
lized, and the sharing of burdens through rationing and
Apago PDF Enhancer combined German and Italian armies were finally de-
heavy taxes on war profits maintained social harmony. By feated by British forces only seventy miles from Alexan-
early 1943 the Americans and the British were combining dria at the Battle of El Alamein. Almost immediately
small aircraft carriers with radar-guided bombers to rid thereafter, an Anglo-American force landed in Morocco
the Atlantic of German submarines. Britain, the impreg- and Algeria. These French possessions, which were under
nable floating fortress, became a gigantic frontline staging the control of Pétain’s Vichy government, quickly went
area for the decisive blow to the heart of Germany. over to the side of the Allies.
As for the Soviet Union, so great was its strength that Having driven the Axis powers from North Africa by
it might well have defeated Germany without Western spring 1943, Allied forces maintained the initiative by in-
help. In the face of the German advance, whole factories vading Sicily and then mainland Italy. Mussolini was
and populations were successfully evacuated to eastern deposed by a war-weary people, and the new Italian gov-
Russia and Siberia. There war production was reorgan- ernment publicly accepted unconditional surrender in
ized and expanded, and the Red Army was increasingly September 1943. Italy, it seemed, was liberated. Yet Ger-
well supplied and well led. Above all, Stalin drew on the man commandos rescued Mussolini in a daring raid and
massive support and heroic determination of the Soviet put him at the head of a puppet government. German
people, especially those in the central Russian heartland. armies seized Rome and all of northern Italy. Fighting
Broad-based Russian nationalism, as opposed to narrow continued in Italy.
communist ideology, became the powerful unifying force Indeed, bitter fighting continued in Europe for almost
in what the Soviet people appropriately called the “Great two years. Germany, less fully mobilized for war than
Patriotic War of the Fatherland.” Britain in 1941, applied itself to total war in 1942 and
Finally, the United States, Britain, and the Soviet enlisted millions of German women and millions of pris-
Union had the resources of much of the world at their oners of war and slave laborers from all across occupied
command. They were also aided by a growing resistance Europe in that effort. Between early 1942 and July 1944,
movement against the Nazis throughout Europe, even in German war production actually tripled in spite of heavy
Germany. After the Soviet Union was invaded in June bombing by the British and American air forces. German
1941, communists throughout Europe took the lead in resistance against Hitler also failed. After an unsuccessful
the underground resistance, joined by a growing number attempt on Hitler’s life in July 1944, SS fanatics brutally
liquidated thousands of Germans. Terrorized at home

and frightened by the prospect of unconditional surren-
The War in the Pacific, 1942–1945
der, the Germans fought on with suicidal stoicism. In Asia, as gigantic armies clashed in Europe, the greatest
On June 6, 1944, American and British forces under naval battles in history decided the fate of warring na-
General Dwight Eisenhower landed on the beaches of tions. First, in the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942, an
Normandy, France, in history’s greatest naval invasion. American carrier force fought its Japanese counterpart to
In a hundred dramatic days, more than 2 million men a draw, thereby stopping the Japanese advance on Port
and almost half a million vehicles pushed inland and Moresby and relieving Australia from the threat of inva-
broke through German lines. Rejecting proposals to sion. This engagement was followed in June 1942 by the
strike straight at Berlin in a massive attack, Eisenhower Battle of Midway, in which American carrier-based pilots
moved forward cautiously on a broad front. Not until sank all four of the attacking Japanese aircraft carriers and
March 1945 did American troops cross the Rhine and established overall naval equality with Japan in the Pacific.
enter Germany. In August 1942 American marines attacked and took
The Soviets, who had been advancing steadily since July Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in heavy fighting.
1943, reached the outskirts of Warsaw by August 1944. Hampered by the policy of “Europe first,” the United
For the next six months, they moved southward into Ro- States gradually won control of the sea and air as it
mania, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. In January 1945, the geared up massive production of aircraft carriers, sub-
Red Army again moved westward through Poland, and on marines, and fighter planes. By 1943 the United States
April 26 it met American forces on the Elbe River. The Al- was producing one hundred thousand aircraft a year, al-
lies had closed their vise on Nazi Germany and overrun most twice as many as Japan produced in the entire war.
Europe. As Soviet forces fought their way into Berlin, In July 1943 the Americans and their Australian allies
Hitler committed suicide in his bunker, and on May 7 the opened an “island hopping” campaign toward Japan.
remaining German commanders capitulated. Pounding Japanese forces on a given island with satura-
Apago PDF Enhancer
“Follow Me!” This painting by Charles McBarron, Jr., shows the action at Red Beach on
October 20, 1944, in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippine Islands. It captures the danger
and courage of U.S. troops, which had to storm well-fortified Japanese positions again and
again in their long island-hopping campaign. The officer exhorts his men, and death is all
around. (The Granger Collection, New York)
tion bombing, American army and marine units would In spite of all their defeats, Japanese troops continued
then hit the beaches with rifles and flame throwers and to fight with enormous courage and determination. In-
secure victory in hand-to-hand combat. Many islands deed, the bloodiest battles of the Pacific war took place
were bypassed, and their Japanese defenders were block- on Iwo Jima in February 1945 and on Okinawa in June
aded and left to starve. 1945. American commanders believed the conquest of
The war in the Pacific was extremely brutal—a “war Japan might cost a million American casualties and claim
without mercy,” in the words of a leading American 10 to 20 million Japanese lives. In fact, Japan was almost
scholar—and atrocities were committed on both sides.16 helpless, its industry and dense, fragile wooden cities
Knowing of Japanese atrocities in China and the Philip- largely destroyed by incendiary bombing and uncontrol-
pines, the U.S. Marines and Army troops seldom took lable hurricanes of fire. Yet the Japanese seemed deter-
Japanese prisoners after the Battle of Guadalcanal, killing mined to fight on, ever ready to die for a hopeless cause.
even those rare Japanese soldiers who offered to surren- On August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States dropped
der. A product of spiraling violence, mutual hatred, and atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
dehumanizing racial stereotypes, the war without mercy Mass bombing of cities and civilians, one of the terrible
intensified as it moved toward Japan. new practices of World War II, had ended in the final
In June 1944 giant U.S. bombers began a relentless nightmare—unprecedented human destruction in a sin-
bombing campaign that intensified steadily until the end gle blinding flash. On August 14, 1945, the Japanese an-
of the war. In October 1944, as Allied advances in the nounced their surrender. The Second World War, which
Pacific paralleled those in Europe, American forces won a had claimed the lives of more than 50 million soldiers
great victory in the four-day Battle of Leyte Gulf, the and civilians, was over.
greatest battle in naval history, with 282 ships involved.
The Japanese navy was practically finished.
Apago PDF Enhancer
• What was the nature of radical totalitarian The Second World War marked the climax of the tremen-
dictatorship, and how did it differ from conservative dous practical and spiritual maladies of the age of anxiety,
authoritarianism? which led in many lands to the rise of dictatorships. Many
• How did Stalin and the Communist Party build a of these dictatorships were variations on conservative au-
modern totalitarian state in the Soviet Union? thoritarianism, but there was also a fateful innovation—a
• How did Mussolini’s dictatorship come to power and new kind of totalitarian dictatorship that was dynamic
govern in Italy? and theoretically unlimited in its actions. Liberals espe-
cially have fastened on the violent, profoundly antiliberal,
• How did Hitler gain power, what policies did and apparently totalitarian character of these brutal new
totalitarian Nazi Germany pursue, and why did they
dictatorships, linking the one-party socialism of Lenin
lead to World War II?
and Stalin with the one-party fascism of Mussolini and
• How did Germany and Japan create enormous Hitler.
empires that were defeated by the Allies—Britain, the Surely Stalin’s Soviet Union asserted a total claim on
Soviet Union, and the United States? the lives of its citizens. It posed ambitious goals in the
form of rapid state-directed industrialization and savage Suggested Reading

collectivization of agriculture. And it found enthusiastic
supporters who believed that Stalin and the Communist Applebaum, Anne. Gulag: A History. 2004. An excellent
Party were building their kind of socialism and a new so- study of Soviet police terror.
cialist personality at home. As for Mussolini’s Italy, it also Bosworth, R. J. B. Mussolini’s Italy: Life Under the Fascist
proclaimed its revolutionary, “totalitarian” character, but Dictatorship, 1915–1945. 2007. An outstanding study of
it retained many elements of conservative authoritarian- Italy under Mussolini.
ism, such as compromising with the Catholic Church Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police
and keeping women in traditional roles. Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, 2d ed.
Coming to power legally with cunning skill, Hitler also 2001. A carefully researched, unnerving account of
quickly established a one-party totalitarian regime with Polish police atrocities during World War II.
ambitious goals and widespread popular support. But
whereas Stalin concentrated on building socialism at Bullock, Alan. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. 1998. A
home, Hitler and the Nazi elite aimed at unlimited terri- fascinating comparison by a master biographer.
torial and racial aggression on behalf of a master race. Burleigh, Michael. The Third Reich: A New History. 2001.
Economic recovery was only a means to that heinous end. A splendid accomplishment that includes a refurbishing
Nazi racism and unlimited aggression made war in- of the concept of totalitarianism.
evitable, first with the western European democracies, Conquest, Robert. The Great Terror: A Reassessment. 1991.
then with hated eastern neighbors, and finally with the An excellent account of Stalin’s purges of the 1930s.
United States. Joined by Japan after Pearl Harbor, Hitler’s
forces overran much of western and eastern Europe, an- Frank, Anne. The Diary of Anne Frank. A remarkable first-
nihilated millions of Jews, and plunged Europe into the person account by a Jewish girl in hiding during the
ultimate nightmare. But unlimited aggression unwit- Nazi occupation of Holland.
tingly forged a mighty coalition led by Britain, the Soviet Friedrich, Jorg. The Fire: The Bombing of Germany,
Union, and the United States. This Grand Alliance held 1940–1945. 2006. Presents the Allied fire bombing in
Apago PDF Enhancer
together and smashed the racist Nazi empire and its harrowing detail.
leader. The United States also destroyed Japan’s vast, Marrus, Michael R. The Holocaust in History. 1989. An
overextended empire in the Pacific, thus bringing to a excellent interpretive survey.
close history’s most destructive war.
Merridale, Catherine. Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the
Red Army, 1939–1945. 2007. A moving account of ordi-
nary Soviet soldiers.
Key Terms
Ransel, David L. Village Mothers: Three Generations of
totalitarianism Lateran Agreement Change in Russia and Tataria. 2005. A pathbreaking
fascism Nazism study based on oral histories made in the 1990s.
five-year plan Führer
New Economic Enabling Act Service, Robert. Lenin: A Biography. 2002. A major work
Policy (NEP) appeasement using recently available sources.
collectivization blitzkrieg Weinberg, Gerhard L. World at Arms: A Global History of
kulaks New Order World War II, new ed. 2005. A masterful interconnected
Black Shirts Europe first overview.

Notes 9. R. Vivarelli, “Interpretations on the Origins of Fascism,” Journal

of Modern History 63 (March 1991): 41.
1. A. Gleason, Totalitarianism: The Inner History of the World War 10. W. Brustein, The Logic of Evil: The Social Origins of the Nazi Party,
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 50. 1925–1933 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996),
2. E. Halévy, The Era of Tyrannies (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, pp. 52, 182.
1965), pp. 265–316, esp. p. 300. 11. Quoted in K. D. Bracher, The German Dictatorship: The Origins,
3. I. Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of In- Structure and Effects of National Socialism (New York: Praeger,
terpretation, 2d ed. (London: Edward Arnold, 1989), p. 34. 1970), pp. 146–147.
4. Quoted in I. Deutscher, Stalin: A Political Biography, 2d ed. (New 12. Quoted ibid., p. 289.
York: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 325. 13. R. Allen, The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, and the
5. R. Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Concentration Camps (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Terror-Famine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 4, 303. Press, 2002), pp. 270–285.
6. Quoted in B. Rosenthal, “Women in the Russian Revolution and Af- 14. Quoted in M. Marrus, The Holocaust in History (Hanover, N.H.:
ter,” in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, ed. R. Briden- University Press of New England, 1987), p. 28.
thal and C. Koonz (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), p. 383. 15. D. Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and
7. M. Malia, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia (New the Holocaust (New York: Vintage Books, 1997).
York: Free Press, 1994), p. 248. 16. J. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War
8. R. Thurston, Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, 1934–1941 (New (New York: Pantheon, 1986).
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996), esp. pp. 16–106; also
Malia, The Soviet Tragedy, pp. 227–270.
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Stalin Justifies the Five-Year Plan
O n February 4, 1931, Joseph Stalin delivered

the following address, entitled “No Slowdown in
backwardness, cultural backwardness, political
backwardness, industrial backwardness,
Tempo!” to the First Conference of Soviet Industrial agricultural backwardness. They beat her because
Managers. Published the following day in Pravda, to do so was profitable and could be done with
the newspaper of the Communist Party, and widely impunity. . . . Such is the law of the exploiters—to
publicized at home and abroad, Stalin’s speech beat the backward and the weak. It is the jungle
reaffirmed the leader’s commitment to the breakneck law of capitalism. You are backward, you are
pace of industrialization and collectivization set forth weak—therefore you are wrong; hence you can be
in the first five-year plan. Arguing that more beaten and enslaved. You are mighty—therefore
sacrifices were necessary, Stalin sought to rally the you are right; hence we must be wary of you.
people and generate support for the party’s program. That is why we must no longer lag behind.
His address captures the spirit of Soviet public In the past we had no fatherland, nor could we
Apago PDF Enhancer
discourse in the early 1930s. have had one. But now that we have overthrown
Stalin’s concluding idea, that Bolsheviks needed to capitalism and power is in our hands, in the hands
master technology and industrial management, of the people, we have a fatherland, and we will
reflected another major development. The Soviet uphold its independence. Do you want our socialist
Union was training a new class of communist fatherland to be beaten and to lose its indepen-
engineers and technicians, who were beginning to dence? If you do not want this, you must put an
replace foreign engineers and “bourgeois end to its backwardness in the shortest possible time
specialists,” Russian engineers trained in tsarist and develop a genuine Bolshevik tempo in building
times who were grudgingly tolerated after the up its socialist economy. There is no other way. That
revolution. is why Lenin said on the eve of the October
Revolution: “Either perish, or overtake and outstrip
It is sometimes asked whether it is not possible to the advanced capitalist countries.”
slow down the tempo somewhat, to put a check on We are fifty or a hundred years behind the ad-
the movement. No, comrades, it is not possible! vanced countries. We must make good this distance
The tempo must not be reduced! On the contrary, in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall go under.
we must increase it as much as is within our powers That is what our obligations to the workers and
and possibilities. This is dictated to us by our peasants of the U.S.S.R. dictate to us.
obligations to the workers and peasants of the But we have yet other, more serious and more
U.S.S.R. This is dictated to us by our obligations to important, obligations. They are our obligations to
the working class of the whole world. the world proletariat. . . . We achieved victory not
To slacken the tempo would mean falling solely through the efforts of the working class of
behind. And those who fall behind get beaten. the U.S.S.R., but also thanks to the support of the
But we do not want to be beaten. No, we refuse working class of the world. Without this support
to be beaten! One feature of the history of old we would have been torn to pieces long ago. . . .
Russia was the continual beatings she suffered Why does the international proletariat support us?
because of her backwardness. She was beaten by How did we merit this support? By the fact that we
the Mongol khans, . . . the Turkish beys, . . . and were the first to hurl ourselves into the battle
the Japanese barons. All beat her—because of her against capitalism, we were the first to establish
978
working-class state power, we were the first to
begin building socialism. By the fact that we are
engaged on a cause which, if successful, will
transform the whole world and free the entire
working class. But what is needed for success? The
elimination of our backwardness, the development
of a high Bolshevik tempo of construction. We
must march forward in such a way that the working
class of the whole world, looking at us, may say:
There you have my advanced detachment, my
shock brigade, my working-class state power, my
fatherland; they are engaged on their cause, our
cause, and they are working well; let us support
them against the capitalists and promote the cause
of the world revolution. Must we not justify the
hopes of the world’s working class, must we not
fulfill our obligations to them? Yes, we must if we
do not want to utterly disgrace ourselves.
Such are our obligations, internal and
international. “Our program is realistic,” Stalin
As you see, they dictate to us a Bolshevik tempo proclaims on this poster, “because it is
of development. you and me working together.”
(David King Collection)
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I will not say that we have accomplished
nothing in regard to management of production
during these years. In fact, we have accomplished much: to study technique, to master science. And
a good deal. . . . But we could have accomplished when we have done that we shall develop a tempo
still more if we had tried during this period really of which we dare not even dream at present.
to master production, the technique of And we shall do it if we really want to.
production, the financial and economic side of it.
In ten years at most we must make good the
distance that separates us from the advanced
capitalist countries. We have all the “objective” Questions for Analysis
possibilities for this. The only thing lacking is the
ability to make proper use of these possibilities. 1. What reasons does Stalin give to justify an
And that depends on us. Only on us! . . . If you unrelenting “Bolshevik” tempo of industrial
are a factory manager—interfere in all the affairs and social change? In the light of history,
of the factory, look into everything, let nothing which reason seems most convincing? Why?
escape you, learn and learn again. Bolsheviks must 2. Imagine that the year is 1931 and you are a
master technique. It is time Bolsheviks themselves Soviet student reading Stalin’s speech. Would
became experts. . . . Stalin’s determination inspire you, frighten
It is said that it is hard to master technique. you, or leave you cold? Why?
That is not true! There are no fortresses that
3. Some historians argue that Soviet socialism was
Bolsheviks cannot capture. We have solved a
a kind of utopianism—that zealots believed
number of most difficult problems. We have
that the economy, the society, and even human
overthrown capitalism. We have assumed power.
beings could be completely remade and
We have built up a huge socialist industry. We
perfected. What utopian elements do you see
have transferred the middle peasants on the path
in Stalin’s declaration?
of socialism. We have already accomplished what
is most important from the point of view of Source: Joseph Stalin, “No Slowdown in Tempo!,” Pravda,
construction. What remains to be done is not so February 5, 1931.
979
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The youth revolution. London, ca 1980. (Wellcome Photo Library/Anthea Seiveking)

c h a p t e r
30
Cold War
Conflicts and
Social
Transformations,
chapter preview
1945–1985
The Division of Europe
• What were the causes of the cold war?
The Western Renaissance,
1945–1968
• Why did western Europe recover so
successfully? How did colonial peoples
win political independence and
T he total defeat of the Nazis and their allies in 1945 laid the basis for
one of Western civilization’s most remarkable recoveries. A battered
western Europe dug itself out from under the rubble and fashioned a
American blacks triumph in the civil great renaissance, building strong democracies, vibrant economies, and
rights movement? new societies. The United States also made solid progress, and the Soviet
Union became more humane and less dictatorial. Yet there was also a
Soviet Eastern Europe, tragic setback. The Grand Alliance against Hitler gave way to an appar-
1945–1968 Apago PDF Enhancer
ently endless cold war in which tension between East and West threat-
• What was the pattern of postwar ened world peace.
rebuilding and development in the In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the postwar Western renaissance
Soviet Union and Communist eastern came to an end. First, as cold war competition again turned very hot in
Europe? Vietnam, postwar certainties such as domestic political stability and social
harmony evaporated, and several countries experienced major crises. Sec-
Postwar Social Transformations,
ond, the astonishing postwar economic advance came to a halt, and this
1945–1968
had serious social consequences. Third, new roles for women after World
• How did changing patterns in War II led to a powerful “second wave” of feminist thought and action
technology, class relations, women’s in the 1970s, resulting in major changes for women and gender rela-
work, and youth culture bring major tions. Thus the long cold war created an underlying unity for the years
social transformations? 1945–1985, but the first half of the cold war era was quite different from
Conflict and Challenge in the the second.
Late Cold War, 1968–1985
• What were the key aspects of
political conflict, economic stagnation, The Division of Europe
and the feminist movement in the late
In 1945 triumphant American and Russian soldiers came together and
cold war?
embraced on the banks of the Elbe River in the heart of vanquished Ger-
many. At home, in the United States and in the Soviet Union, the sol-
diers’ loved ones erupted in joyous celebration. Yet victory was flawed.
981
982 CHAPTER 30 • C O L D W A R C O N F L I C T S A N D S O C I A L T R A N S F O R M AT I O N S , 1 9 4 5 – 1 9 8 5
The Allies could not cooperate politically in peacemaking. war aims and the shape of the eventual peace settlement.
Motivated by different goals and hounded by misunder- Stalin received only a military alliance and no postwar
standings, the United States and the Soviet Union soon commitments. Yet the United States and Britain did not
found themselves at loggerheads. By the end of 1947, try to take advantage of the Soviet Union’s precarious
Europe was rigidly divided. It was West versus East in a position in 1942, because they feared that hard bargain-
cold war that was waged around the world for forty years. ing would encourage Stalin to consider making a sepa-
• What were the causes of the cold war? rate peace with Hitler. They focused instead on the policy
of unconditional surrender to solidify the alliance.
By late 1943, discussion about the shape of the post-
war world could no longer be postponed. The confer-
The Origins of the Cold War ence that Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill held in the
The most powerful allies in the wartime coalition—the Iranian capital of Teheran in November 1943 thus proved
Soviet Union and the United States—began to quarrel of crucial importance in determining subsequent events.
almost as soon as the unifying threat of Nazi Germany There, the Big Three jovially reaffirmed their determina-
disappeared. A tragic disappointment for millions of tion to crush Germany and searched for the appropriate
people, the hostility between the Eastern and Western military strategy. Churchill, fearful of the military dan-
superpowers was the sad but logical outgrowth of military gers of a direct attack, argued that American and Brit-
developments, wartime agreements, and long-standing ish forces should follow up their Italian campaign with
political and ideological differences. an indirect attack on Germany through the Balkans. Roo-
In the early phases of the Second World War, the Amer- sevelt, however, agreed with Stalin that an American-
icans and the British made military victory their highest British frontal assault through France would be better.
priority. They consistently avoided discussion of Stalin’s This agreement was part of Roosevelt’s general effort to
The Big Three In 1945

a triumphant Winston
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Churchill, an ailing Franklin
Roosevelt, and a determined
Joseph Stalin met at Yalta in
southern Russia to plan for
peace. Cooperation soon gave
way to bitter hostility.
(Franklin D. Roosevelt
Presidential Library)
The Division of Europe • 983
meet Stalin’s wartime demands whenever possible, and it Chronology

had momentous political implications. It meant that the
Soviet and the American-British armies would come to- 1945–1962 U.S. takes lead in Big Science
gether in defeated Germany along a north-south line and
that only Soviet troops would liberate eastern Europe. 1945–1960s Decolonization of Asia and Africa
Thus the basic shape of postwar Europe was emerging 1947 Truman Doctrine; Marshall Plan
even as the fighting continued.
When the Big Three met again in February 1945 at 1949 Formation of NATO; Stalin launches verbal
Yalta on the Black Sea in southern Russia, advancing So- attack on Soviet Jews; Beauvoir, The Second Sex
viet armies were within a hundred miles of Berlin. The 1950–1953 Korean War
Red Army had occupied not only Poland but also Bul-
garia, Romania, Hungary, part of Yugoslavia, and much 1953–1964 De-Stalinization of Soviet Union
of Czechoslovakia. The temporarily stalled American- 1956 Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
British forces had yet to cross the Rhine into Germany.
Moreover, the United States was far from defeating Japan. 1957 Formation of Common Market
In short, the Soviet Union’s position was strong and 1961 Building of Berlin Wall
America’s weak.
There was little the increasingly sick and apprehensive 1962 Cuban missile crisis; Solzhenitsyn, One Day in
the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Roosevelt could do but double his bet on Stalin’s peace-
ful intentions. It was agreed at Yalta that Germany would 1964 Civil Rights Act in the United States
be divided into zones of occupation and would pay heavy
1964–1973 U.S. involvement in Vietnam War
reparations to the Soviet Union. At American insistence,
Stalin agreed to declare war on Japan after Germany was 1966 Formation of National Organization for Women
defeated. As for Poland and eastern Europe—“that Pan- (NOW)
dora’s Box of infinite troubles,” according to American
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1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia; student
secretary of state Cordell Hull—the Big Three struggled
protests in Paris
to reach an ambiguous compromise at Yalta: eastern
European governments were to be freely elected but pro- 1969 First Apollo moon landing
Russian.
1972 Watergate break-in
The Yalta compromise over eastern Europe broke
down almost immediately. Even before the Yalta Confer- 1973 OPEC oil embargo
ence, Bulgaria and Poland were controlled by commu-
1979 Margaret Thatcher becomes British prime minister
nists who arrived home with the Red Army. Elsewhere in
eastern Europe, pro-Soviet “coalition” governments of
several parties were formed, but the key ministerial posts
were reserved for Moscow-trained communists. had lived through two enormously destructive German
At the postwar Potsdam Conference of July 1945, the invasions, wanted absolute military security from Germany
long-avoided differences over eastern Europe finally surged and its potential Eastern allies. Suspicious by nature, he
to the fore. The compromising Roosevelt had died believed that only communist states could be truly depend-
and been succeeded by the more determined President able allies, and he realized that free elections would result
Harry Truman, who demanded immediate free elections in independent and possibly hostile governments on his
throughout eastern Europe. Stalin refused point-blank. “A western border. Moreover, by the middle of 1945, there
freely elected government in any of these East European was no way short of war that the United States could de-
countries would be anti-Soviet,” he admitted simply, “and termine political developments in eastern Europe, and war
that we cannot allow.”1 was out of the question. Stalin was bound to have his way.
Here, then, is the key to the much-debated origins of
the cold war. American ideals, pumped up by the crusade
against Hitler, and American politics, heavily influenced
West Versus East
by millions of voters from eastern Europe, demanded free The American response to Stalin’s exaggerated conception
elections in Soviet-occupied eastern Europe. Stalin, who of security was to “get tough.” In May 1945, Truman
abruptly cut off all aid to the U.S.S.R. In October he de- nist expansion. Thus, when Stalin blocked all traffic
clared that the United States would never recognize any through the Soviet zone of Germany to Berlin, the
government established by force against the free will of former capital, which the occupying powers had also
its people. In March 1946, former British prime minister divided into sectors at the end of the war, the Western
Churchill ominously informed an American audience that allies acted firmly but not provocatively. Hundreds of
an “iron curtain” had fallen across the continent, dividing planes began flying over the Soviet roadblocks around
Germany and all of Europe into two antagonistic camps. the clock, supplying provisions to the people of West
Emotional, moralistic denunciations of Stalin and com- Berlin and thwarting Soviet efforts to swallow up the
munist Russia emerged as part of American political life. West Berliners. After 324 days, the Soviets backed down:
Yet the United States also responded to the popular de- containment seemed to work. In 1949, therefore, the
sire to “bring the boys home” and demobilized its troops United States formed an anti-Soviet military alliance of
with great speed. Some historians have argued that Western governments: the North Atlantic Treaty Organ-
American leaders believed that the atomic bomb gave the ization (NATO). Stalin countered by tightening his hold
United States all the power it needed, but “getting on his satellites, later united in the Warsaw Pact. Europe
tough” really meant “talking tough.” was divided into two hostile blocs.
Stalin’s agents quickly reheated what they viewed as In late 1949, the communists triumphed in China,
the “ideological struggle against capitalist imperialism.” frightening and angering many Americans, who saw new
The large, well-organized Communist Parties of France evidence of a powerful worldwide communist conspir-
and Italy obediently started to uncover “American plots” acy. When the Russian-backed communist army of North
to take over Europe and challenged their own govern- Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, President Tru-
ments with violent criticisms and large strikes. The Soviet man acted swiftly. American-led United Nations forces
Union also put pressure on Iran, Turkey, and Greece, under General Douglas MacArthur intervened. Initially,
while a bitter civil war raged in China. By the spring of the North Koreans almost conquered the entire penin-
1947, it appeared to many Americans that Stalin was de- sula, but the South Koreans and the Americans rallied
termined to export communism by subversion through-
Apago PDF Enhancer and advanced until China suddenly entered the war.
out Europe and around the world. The bitter, bloody contest then seesawed back and forth
The United States responded to this challenge with near where it had begun, as President Truman rejected
the Truman Doctrine, which was aimed at “contain- General MacArthur’s call to attack China and fired him
ing” communism to areas already occupied by the Red instead. In 1953 a fragile truce was negotiated, and the
Army. Truman told Congress in March 1947, “I believe fighting stopped. Thus the United States extended its
it must be the policy of the United States to support policy of containment to Asia but drew back from an
free people who are resisting attempted subjugation attack on communist China and possible nuclear war.
by armed minorities or by outside pressure.” To begin, The rapid descent from victorious Grand Alliance to
Truman asked Congress for military aid to Greece and bitter cold war was directly connected to the tragic fate
Turkey, countries that Britain, weakened by war and of eastern Europe. After 1933, when the eastern Euro-
financially overextended, could no longer protect. Then, pean power vacuum invited Nazi racist imperialism, the
in June, Secretary of State George C. Marshall offered appeasing Western democracies mistakenly did nothing.
Europe economic aid—the Marshall Plan—to help it They did, however, have one telling insight: how, they
rebuild. asked themselves, could they unite with Stalin to stop
Hitler without giving Stalin great gains on his western
Improve Your Grade
borders? After Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, the
Primary Source: An American Plan to Rebuild a
Western Powers preferred to ignore this question and
Shattered Europe
hope for the best. But when Stalin later began to claim
Stalin refused Marshall Plan assistance for all of eastern the spoils of victory, the United States began to protest
Europe. He purged the last remaining noncommunist el- and professed outrage. This belated opposition quite
ements from the coalition governments of eastern Eu- possibly encouraged even more aggressive measures by
rope and established Soviet-style, one-party communist the always-suspicious Stalin, and it helped explode the
dictatorships. The seizure of power in Czechoslovakia in quarrel over eastern Europe into a global confrontation.
February 1948 was particularly antidemocratic, and it Thus the Soviet-American confrontation became institu-
greatly strengthened Western fears of limitless commu- tionalized and formed the bedrock of the long cold war
The Western Renaissance, 1945–1968 • 985
The Berlin Airlift Standing in the rubble of their bombed-out city, a German crowd in the
American sector awaits the arrival of a U.S. transport plane flying in over the Soviet blockade in
1948. The crisis over Berlin was a dramatic indication of growing tensions among the Allies,
Apago PDF Enhancer
which resulted in the division of Europe into two hostile camps. (Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
era, which lasted until the mid-1980s despite intermit-

tent periods of relaxation.
The Postwar Challenge
After the war, economic conditions in western Europe
were terrible. Runaway inflation and black markets testi-
The Western Renaissance fied to severe shortages and hardships. Many people be-
– lieved that Europe was quite simply finished.
Suffering was most intense in defeated Germany. The
As the cold war divided Europe into two blocs, the future major territorial change of the war had moved the Soviet
appeared bleak on both sides of the iron curtain. Euro- Union’s border far to the west. Poland was in turn com-
pean economic conditions were the worst in generations, pensated for this loss to the Soviets with land taken from
and Europe was weak and divided, a battleground for Germany (see Map 30.1). To solidify these changes in
cold war ambitions. Moreover, western European empires boundaries, 13 million Germans were driven from their
were crumbling in the face of nationalism in Asia and homes and forced to resettle in a greatly reduced Ger-
Africa. Yet Europe recovered, and the nations of western many. The Russians were also seizing factories and equip-
Europe led the way. In less than a generation, western Eu- ment as reparations in their zone, even tearing up
rope achieved unprecedented economic prosperity and railroad tracks and sending the rails to the Soviet Union.
peaceful social transformation, while the United States In 1945 and 1946, conditions were not much better in
boomed and eventually experienced a wholesome social the Western zones, for the Western allies also treated the
revolution. It was an amazing rebirth—a true renaissance. German population with severity at first. Countless Ger-
mans sold prized possessions to American soldiers to buy
• Why did western Europe recover so successfully? How food. By the spring of 1947, refugee-clogged, hungry,
did colonial peoples win political independence and prostrate Germany was on the verge of total collapse and
American blacks triumph in the civil rights movement? threatening to drag down the rest of Europe. Yet western
986
EAST
GERMANY
FIN L A N D French
Sector
EAST
From Finland,
NOR WA Y 1940–1956 East GERMANY
British Sector Berlin
Oslo West
SWED E N Helsinki Leningrad Berlin Soviet
Sector
Stockholm ESTONIA
to U.S.S.R., U.S. Sector
1940
LATVIA SOVIET Potsdam

to U.S.S.R.,
North Sea 1940 UNION Berlin Wall (1961–1989)
ea
DENMARK
S 1917
Copenhagen
ti c LITHUANIA
IRELAND
B al to U.S.S.R.,
Postwar national boundaries, to 1989
1940
Incorporated into Allied occupation of Germany and Austria
GREAT U.S. Zone Gdansk U.S.S.R., 1945
1945–1955
BRITAIN (Danzig)
NETHERLANDS Soviet Zone Territory lost by Germany
Bremen
London Incorporated into Territory gained by Soviet Union
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Amsterdam Poland, 1945
Berlin
British Zone Warsaw
ATLANTIC 1945 Year communist control of government gained
BEL. EAST Brest
OCEAN Brussels Bonn GERMANY “Iron Curtain” to 1989
1949 POL A N D From Poland,
1940–1947
WEST 1947 Baltic
Paris GERMANY UKRAINE
LUX. Prague Czech
U.S. Zone From Czechoslovakia,
CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1945 –1947 Finns
French Soviet
Zone 1948
Munich
Zone Vienna B From Romania, Germans
FRANCE A U STR I A 1940–1947
Bern
ES
U.S.
French Zone Zone Poles
S
Budapest
AR
SWITZERLAND
British Zone
AB
HU N GA R Y Russians
IA
From Italy, 1949 R OMA N IA Peoples settled by International Refugee
1945 1947
Milan Organization
Yalta
Belgrade Bucharest
Y U GOSL A V IA Black Sea
SPAIN
Ad
1945 From Romania,

I T A LY BU LGA R I A 1940
ri
Corsica ti 1946
a
Madrid
(Fr.)
Rome c Sofia
Se
a Istanbul
Sardinia Tiranë
(Italy) ALBANIA TURKEY
1944
GREECE
Me
di Sicily
Athens
te
rr
0 200 400 Km. an
ea Cyprus
0 200 400 Mi.
n Sea
Crete
MAP 30.1 The Results of World War II in Europe Millions of refugees fled westward because of war and territorial
changes. The Soviet Union and Poland took land from Germany, which the Allies partitioned into occupation zones. Those
zones subsequently formed the basis of the East and West German states, as the iron curtain fell to divide both Germany and
Europe. Austria was detached from Germany, but the Soviets subsequently permitted Austria to reunify as a neutral state.
Europe was not finished. The Nazi occupation and the rope and the American nuclear umbrella. Thus the United
war had discredited old ideas and old leaders. All over States assumed the international responsibilities it had
Europe, many people were willing to change and experi- shunned after 1919.
ment, and new groups and new leaders were coming to As Marshall Plan aid poured in, the battered economies
the fore to guide these aspirations. Progressive Catholics of western Europe began to turn the corner in 1948. The
and revitalized Catholic political parties—the Christian outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 further stimulated
Democrats—were particularly influential. economic activity, and Europe entered a period of rapid
In Italy the Christian Democrats emerged as the lead- economic progress that lasted into the late 1960s. Never
ing party in the first postwar elections in 1946, and in before had the European economy grown so fast. There
early 1948 they won an absolute majority in the parlia- were many reasons for western Europe’s brilliant eco-
ment in a landslide victory. Their very able leader was nomic performance. American aid helped the process get
Alcide De Gasperi, a courageous antifascist firmly com- off to a fast start. Moreover, economic growth became a
mitted to political democracy, economic reconstruction, basic objective of all western European governments, for
and moderate social reform. In France, too, the Catholic leaders and voters were determined to avoid a return to
Party also provided some of the best postwar leaders af- the dangerous and demoralizing stagnation of the 1930s.
ter January 1946, when General Charles de Gaulle, the Thus governments generally accepted Keynesian eco-
inspiring wartime leader of the Free French, resigned af- nomics (see pages 928 and 935) and sought to stimulate
ter having re-established the free and democratic Fourth their economies. They also adopted a variety of imagina-
Republic. As Germany was partitioned by the cold war, a tive and successful strategies.
purified Federal Republic of Germany (as West Germany In postwar West Germany, Minister of Economy Lud-
was officially known) found new and able leadership wig Erhard, a roly-poly, cigar-smoking former professor,
among its Catholics. In 1949 Konrad Adenauer, the for- broke decisively with the straitjacketed Nazi economy.
mer mayor of Cologne and a long-time anti-Nazi, began Erhard bet on the free-market economy while maintain-
his long, highly successful democratic rule; the Christian ing the extensive social welfare network inherited from
Democrats became West Germany’s majority party for
Apago PDF Enhancer the Hitler era. He and his teachers believed not only that
a generation. In providing effective leadership for their capitalism was more efficient but also that political and
respective countries, the Christian Democrats were in- social freedom could thrive only if there were real eco-
spired and united by a common Christian and European nomic freedom. Erhard’s first step was to reform the cur-
heritage. They steadfastly rejected authoritarianism and rency and abolish rationing and price controls in 1948.
narrow nationalism and placed their faith in democracy He boldly declared, “The only ration coupon is the
and cooperation. Mark.”2 West Germany’s success renewed respect for
The socialists and the communists, active in the resis- free-market capitalism.
tance against Hitler, also emerged from the war with in- The French innovation was a new kind of planning. Un-
creased power and prestige, especially in France and Italy. der the guidance of Jean Monnet, an economic pragmatist
They, too, provided fresh leadership and pushed for so- and apostle of European unity, a planning commission set
cial change and economic reform. In the immediate post- ambitious but flexible goals for the French economy and
war years, welfare measures such as family allowances, used the nationalized banks to funnel money into key in-
health insurance, and increased public housing were en- dustries. Thus France combined flexible planning and a
acted throughout continental Europe. Britain followed “mixed” state and private economy to achieve the most
the same trend, as the newly elected socialist Labour rapid economic development in its long history.
Party established a “welfare state.” Many British indus- In most countries, there were many people ready to
tries were nationalized, and the government provided work hard for low wages and the hope of a better future.
free medical service. Thus all across Europe, social re- Moreover, although many consumer products had been
form complemented political transformation, creating invented or perfected since the late 1920s, few Euro-
solid foundations for a great European renaissance. peans had been able to buy them. In 1945 the electric re-
The United States also supplied strong and creative frigerator, the washing machine, and the automobile
leadership, providing western Europe with both massive were rare luxuries. There was a great potential demand,
economic aid and ongoing military protection. Eco- which the economic system moved to satisfy. Finally,
nomic aid was channeled through the Marshall Plan, and western European nations abandoned protectionism and
military security was provided through NATO, which gradually created a large unified market known as the
featured American troops stationed permanently in Eu- “Common Market.” This historic action, which certainly
988
Communist countries
NATO members to 1989 FINLAND
Nonallied Western countries
NORWAY
“Iron Curtain” to 1989
Helsinki
Original Common Market members Oslo SWEDEN a nd
Finl Leningrad
f of
Subsequent Common Market members to 1989 G ul
SCOTLAND Stockholm
ESTONIA
COMECON members
N. IRELAND Edinburgh LATVIA

Belfast
Other NATO members North Sea Riga Moscow
DENMARK
GREAT LITHUANIA
IRELAND Dublin BRITAIN
U.S.A. Copenhagen
CANADA SOVIET UNION
S
LE
ICELAND Minsk
A
W
ENGLAND Gdansk BELORUSSIA
S Hamburg
London Amsterdam ND
LA
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The Hague ER Berlin
TH
NE EAST Warsaw
Brussels GERMANY POLAND
BELGIUM Bonn
Kiev Kharkov
LUXEMBOURG WEST
GERMANY
ATLANTIC Paris C ZPrague
ECH UKRAINE
OCEAN O SL
OV A K
IA
Munich
FRANCE Vienna
Bern AUSTRIA Budapest
Geneva SWITZERLAND HUNGARY
ROMANIA Crimea
Milan Yalta
Belgrade Bucharest
Black Sea
AL
Marseille YUGOSLAVIA
UG
ITALY
RT
Lisbon Madrid BULGARIA Sinope

PO
Barcelona Corsica
SPAIN Sofia
Rome
Defense treaty with U.S.A., 1953
Istanbul
Tiranë
ALBANIA Ankara
Sardinia
GIBRALTAR M COMECON GREECE A e g e a n TURKEY

(Gr. Br.) ed member,
ite 1949–1961 Sea
rra Athens
ne Sicily
an
0 200 400 Km.
MALTA
Sea Nicosia
CYPRUS
0 200 400 Mi. Crete
stimulated the economy, was part of a larger search for Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg ac-
European unity. cepted the French idea in 1952; the British would have
none of it. The immediate economic goal—a single steel
and coal market without national tariffs or quotas—
Toward European Unity was rapidly realized. The more far-reaching political goal
Western Europe’s political recovery was spectacular in the was to bind the six member nations so closely together
generation after 1945. Republics were re-established in economically that war among them would eventually
France, West Germany, and Italy. Constitutional mon- become unthinkable and virtually impossible.
archs were restored in Belgium, Holland, and Norway. In 1957 the six nations of the Coal and Steel Commu-
Democratic governments, often within the framework of nity signed the Treaty of Rome, which created the Euro-
multiparty politics and shifting parliamentary coalitions, pean Economic Community, generally known as the
took root again and thrived. National self-determination Common Market (see Map 30.2). The first goal of the
was accompanied by civil liberties and individual freedom. treaty was a gradual reduction of all tariffs among the six
A similarly extraordinary achievement was the march in order to create a single market almost as large as that
toward a united Europe. The Christian Democrats, with of the United States. Other goals included the free move-
their shared Catholic heritage, were particularly commitment of capital and labor and common economic policies
ted to “building Europe,” and other groups shared their and institutions. The Common Market was a great suc-
dedication. Many Europeans believed that only unity in a cess, encouraging companies and regions to specialize in
new “European nation” could reassert western Europe’s what they did best.
influence in world affairs. The development of the Common Market fired imagi-
The close cooperation among European states re- nations and encouraged hopes of rapid progress toward
quired by the Americans for Marshall Plan aid led to the political as well as economic union. In the 1960s, how-
creation of both the Organization of European Eco- ever, these hopes were frustrated by a resurgence of more
nomic Cooperation (OEEC) and the Council of Europe traditional nationalism. France took the lead. Mired in a
in 1948. European federalists hoped that the Council of
Apago PDF Enhancer bitter colonial war in Algeria, the French turned in 1958
Europe would quickly evolve into a true European par- to General de Gaulle, who established the Fifth Republic
liament with sovereign rights, but this did not happen. and ruled as its president until 1969. De Gaulle was at
Britain, with its empire and its “special relationship” with heart a romantic nationalist, and he viewed the United
the United States, consistently opposed giving any real States as the main threat to genuine French (and Euro-
political power—any sovereignty—to the council. Many pean) independence. He withdrew all French military
continental nationalists and communists felt similarly. forces from the “American-controlled” NATO, devel-
Frustrated in the direct political approach, European oped France’s own nuclear weapons, and vetoed the
federalists turned toward economics as a way of working scheduled advent of majority rule within the Common
toward genuine unity. Two far-seeing French statesmen, Market. Thus throughout the 1960s, the Common Mar-
the planner Jean Monnet and Foreign Minister Robert ket thrived economically but remained a union of sover-
Schuman, took the lead in 1950 and called for a spe- eign states.
cial international organization to control and integrate
all European steel and coal production. West Germany,
Decolonization in East Asia
Mapping the Past In the postwar era, Europe’s long-standing overseas expan-
sion was dramatically reversed. Future generations will al-
MAP 30.2 European Alliance Systems, 1949–1989
most certainly see this rolling back of Western expansion as
After the cold war divided Europe into two hostile military
alliances, six western European countries formed the Common one of world history’s great turning points (see Map 30.3).
Market in 1957. The Common Market grew later to include The most basic cause of imperial collapse—what Euro-
most of western Europe. The communist states organized their peans called decolonization—was the rising demand of
•
own economic association—COMECON. 1 Identify the coun-
tries that were the original members of the Common Market. What do
Asian and African peoples for national self-determination,
•
they have in common? 2 Identify the members of COMECON. What
•
communist country or countries did not join COMECON? Why? 3
Which non-allied nations had joined the Common Market by 1989?
racial equality, and personal dignity. This demand spread
from intellectuals to the masses in nearly every colonial
territory after the First World War. As a result, colonial
empires had already been shaken by 1939, and the way
990
GREAT
BRITAIN
NETHERLANDS
BELGIUM
FRANCE
ITALY
PORTUGAL SPAIN NORTH KOREA

1948
SOUTH KOREA
From 1948 JAPAN
CYPRUS SYRIA Japan
TUNISIA MALTA 1964 1960 1944
1957 From Great Britain IRAQ
LEBANON 1944
MOROCCO ISRAEL 1948 1932
1956
JORDAN KUWAIT
Apago PDF Enhancer

ALGERIA LIBYA 1946 1961 PAKISTAN
WESTERN SAHARA 1962 EGYPT 1947
(Morocco)
1951 1922 BAHRAIN 1971 LAOS
1975 INDIA
From Spain QATAR 1971 1949
1947
UNITED ARAB OMAN 1971 MYANMAR
MAURITANIA MALI
EMIRATES 1971
PAKISTAN 1947,
(BURMA)
1947 NORTH VIETNAM
PACIFIC
1960 NIGER BANGLADESH 1973 1954
1960
1960
CHAD SUDAN Unified 1974
SENEGAL 1960 1960 1956
YEMEN P.D.R. OF YEMEN 1967 PHILIPPINES OCEAN
GAMBIA 1965 DJIBOUTI 1946
BURKINA FASO 1977 SOUTH VIETNAM
1960 BENIN 1960 1954
GUINEA-BISSAU GUINEA
1974 1958 NIGERIA ETHIOPIA
CÔTE 1960 SRI LANKA
SIERRA LEONE 1941
1961 D'IVOIRE (CEYLON) CAMBODIA BRUNEI 1984
1960 CENTRAL AFRICAN 1948 1954 From Great Britain
LIBERIA REPUBLIC 1960 SOMALIA
1820s TOGO
GHANA 1960
CAMEROON 1960 MALAYSIA 1963
1957 1960 UGANDA
EQUATORIAL GUINEA DEM. REP. 1962 KENYA SINGAPORE
1968 From Spain GABON OF CONGO 1963 1965
1960 1960
RWANDA
1962
REPUBLIC OF CONGO BURUNDI
1962 TANZANIA INDIAN OCEAN INDONESIA
1960 1964 1949
ANGOLA MALAWI
1975 1964
ZAMBIA
1964
ATLANTIC Date is year independence was achieved.
ZIMBABWE
1980
MADAGASCAR Shading indicates former ruler.
1960
OCEAN NAMIBIA 1985
MOZAMBIQUE MAURITIUS
From South Africa BOTSWANA
1966 1974 1968 Great Britain Belgium
From Great Britain
France Portugal
SWAZILAND
1968 Netherlands United States
SOUTH AFRICA
(Republic 1961) LESOTHO
1966 Italy
0 500 1000 1500 Km.
0 500 1000 1500 Mi.
MAP 30.3 The New States in Africa and Asia Divided primarily along religious lines into two
states, British India led the way to political independence in 1947. Most African territories achieved
statehood by the mid-1960s, as European empires passed away, unlamented.
Improve Your Grade Interactive Map: Decolonization and Independence
was prepared for the eventual triumph of independence Europeans had little taste for bloody colonial wars and
movements. wanted to concentrate on rebuilding at home.
European empires had been based on an enormous India, Britain’s oldest, largest, and most lucrative non-
power differential between the rulers and the ruled, a dif- white possession, played a key role in decolonization.
ference that had greatly declined by 1945. Not only was Nationalist opposition to British rule coalesced after the
western Europe poor and battered immediately after the First World War under the leadership of British-educated
war, but imperial rulers had been driven from large parts lawyer Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi (1869–1948),
of South Asia by the Japanese, and in these areas Euro- one of the twentieth century’s most significant and influ-
peans now faced strong nationalist movements that had ential figures. In the 1920s and 1930s Gandhi built a
developed under the Japanese occupation. mass movement preaching nonviolent “noncooperation”
Many Europeans also regarded their empires very with the British. In 1935 Gandhi wrested from the frus-
differently after 1945 than before 1914, or even before trated and unnerved British a new constitution that
1939. Empire had rested on self-confidence and self- was practically a blueprint for independence. When the
righteousness; Europeans had believed their superiority to Labour Party came to power in Great Britain in 1945, it
be not only technical and military but also spiritual and was ready to relinquish sovereignty. British socialists had
moral. The horrors of the Second World War destroyed always been critical of imperialism, and the heavy cost of
such complacent arrogance and gave opponents of impe- governing India had become a large financial burden.
rialism much greater influence in Europe. With their po- The obstacle to India’s independence posed by conflict
litical power and moral authority in tatters in 1945, many between India’s Hindu and Muslim populations was
Apago PDF Enhancer
Gandhi Arrives in Delhi, October 1939 A small frail man, Gandhi possessed enormous
courage and determination. His campaign of nonviolent resistance to British rule inspired the
Indian masses and nurtured national identity and self-confidence. Here he arrives for talks
with the British viceroy after the outbreak of World War II. (Corbis)
resolved in 1947 through the creation of two states, pre- In 1944 the French gave up their League of Nations
dominately Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. mandates in Syria and Lebanon. In British-mandated
If Indian nationalism drew on Western parliamentary Palestine, where after 1918 the British government es-
liberalism, Chinese nationalism developed and triumphed tablished a Jewish homeland alongside the Arab popula-
in the framework of Marxist-Leninist ideology. In the tur- tion, violence and terrorism mounted on both sides. In
bulent early 1920s, a broad alliance of nationalist forces 1947 the frustrated British decided to leave Palestine,
within the Soviet-supported Guomindang (Kuomintang, and the United Nations then voted in a nonbinding res-
or National People’s Party) was dedicated to unifying olution to divide Palestine into two states—one Arab and
China and abolishing European concessions. But in 1927 one Jewish, which became Israel. The Jews accepted the
Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975), successor to Sun Yat-sen plan but the Arabs did not, and in 1948 they attacked the
(see page 872) and leader of the Guomindang, broke with Jewish state as soon as it was proclaimed. The Israelis
his more radical communist allies, headed by Mao Zedong drove off the invaders and conquered more territory, as
(Mao Tse-tung), and tried to destroy them. roughly 900,000 Arabs fled or were expelled. Holocaust
In 1931, to escape Guomindang armies closing in for survivors from Europe streamed into Israel, as Theodor
the kill, Mao (1893–1976) led his followers on an in- Herzl’s Zionist dream came true (see page 839). The
credible 5,000-mile march to remote northern China next fifty years saw four more wars between the Israelis
and built up an independent power base there. Even war and the Arab states and innumerable clashes between the
could not force Mao and Chiang to cooperate. By late Israelis and the Palestinians.
1945 their long-standing quarrel had erupted in civil The Arab defeat in 1948 triggered a powerful nation-
war. Stalin gave Mao some aid, and the Americans gave alist revolution in Egypt in 1952, where a young army
Chiang much more. Winning the support of the peas- officer named Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918–1970) drove
antry by promising to expropriate the big landowners, out the pro-Western king. In 1956 Nasser abruptly na-
the tougher, better-organized communists forced the tionalized the foreign-owned Suez Canal Company, the
Nationalists to withdraw to the island of Taiwan in 1949. last symbol and substance of Western power in the Mid-
Mao and the communists united China’s 550 million
Apago PDF Enhancer dle East. Infuriated, the British and the French, along
inhabitants in a strong centralized state, expelled foreign- with the Israelis, invaded Egypt. This was, however, the
ers, and began building a new society along Soviet lines, dying gasp of traditional imperial power: the Americans
with mass arrests, forced-labor camps, and ceaseless propa- joined with the Soviets to force the British, French, and
ganda. The peasantry was collectivized, and the inevitable Israelis to withdraw. Nasser and anti-Western Egyptian
five-year plans concentrated successfully on the expansion nationalism triumphed.
of heavy industry. The failure of Britain and France to unseat Nasser in
Most Asian countries followed the pattern of either India 1956 encouraged Arab nationalists in Algeria. The coun-
or China. In 1946 the Philippines achieved independence try’s large French population considered colonial Algeria
peacefully from the United States. Britain quickly granted an integral part of France and was determined to stay in
Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and Burma independence in 1948. Algeria and continue dominating the Arab majority.
However, Indonesian nationalists had to beat off at- This settler determination made the Algerian war for
tempts by the Dutch to reconquer the Dutch East Indies independence long, bloody, and dirty, with systematic
before Indonesia emerged in 1949 as a sovereign state. torture and numerous atrocities on both sides. In the
The French also tried their best to re-establish colonial end, General de Gaulle, who had returned to power as
rule in Indochina, but despite American aid, they were part of the movement to keep Algeria French, accepted
defeated in 1954 by forces under the communist and na- the principle of Algerian self-determination. In 1962, af-
tionalist guerrilla leader Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969), who ter more than a century of French rule, Algeria became
was supported by the Soviet Union and China. But Indo- independent and its European population quickly fled to
china was not unified, and two independent Vietnamese France.
states came into being, which led to civil war and subse- In much of Africa south of the Sahara, decolonization
quent intervention by the United States (see page 1006). proceeded much more smoothly. Beginning in 1957,
Britain’s colonies achieved independence with little or
Decolonization in the no bloodshed and then entered a very loose association
with Britain as members of the British Commonwealth
Middle East and Africa of Nations. In 1958 the clever de Gaulle offered the lead-
In the Middle East, the movement toward political inde- ers of French black Africa the choice of a total break
pendence continued after World War II (see Map 30.3). with France or immediate independence within a kind of
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Nationalizing the Suez Canal Nasser’s 1956 takeover of the Suez Canal, cheered here by
a huge crowd in Cairo, was wildly popular throughout Egypt and the Arab world. Jubilation
quickly turned to humiliation as invading forces from Israel, Britain, and France crushed the
Egyptian army, and a shell-shocked Nasser offered to resign. But the Egyptian masses de-
manded he stay, enabling the charismatic Nasser to emerge triumphant with American sup-
port. (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)
French commonwealth. All but one of the new states Above all, they used the lure of special trading privileges
chose association with France. African leaders did so be- and heavy investment in French- and English-language
cause they identified with French culture and because education to enhance a powerful Western presence in
they wanted aid from France. The French were eager to the new African states. This situation led a variety of leaders
help—provided their former colonies would accept close and scholars to charge that western Europe (and the
ties with France on French terms. As in the past, the United States) had imposed a system of neocolonialism
French and their Common Market partners, who helped on the former colonies. According to this view, neo-
foot the bill, saw themselves as continuing their civilizing colonialism was a system designed to perpetuate Western
mission in sub-Saharan Africa. More important, they saw economic domination and undermine the promise of
in Africa untapped markets for their industrial goods, raw political independence, thereby extending to Africa
materials for their factories, outlets for profitable invest- (and much of Asia) the economic subordination that
ment, and good temporary jobs for their engineers and the United States had established in Latin America in
teachers. The British acted somewhat similarly. the nineteenth century. At the very least, enduring influ-
As a result, western European countries actually man- ence in sub-Saharan Africa testified to western Europe’s
aged to increase their economic and cultural ties with resurgent economic and political power in interna-
their former African colonies in the 1960s and 1970s. tional relations.
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The March on Washington, August 1963 The march marked a dramatic climax in the
civil rights struggle. More than 200,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to hear the
young Martin Luther King, Jr., deliver his greatest address, the “I have a dream” speech. (Time
Life Pictures/Getty Images)
ture, “We will not hate you, but we will not obey your
evil laws.”3
America’s Civil Rights Revolution In key northern states, African Americans used their
The Second World War cured the depression in the growing political power to gain the support of the liberal
United States and brought about an economic boom. wing of the Democratic Party. A liberal landslide elected
Despite fears that peace would bring renewed depres- Lyndon Johnson (1908–1973) president in 1964. The
sion, conversion to a peacetime economy went smoothly. Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination in
As in western Europe, the U.S. economy proceeded to public services and on the job; the Voting Rights Act of
advance fairly steadily for a long generation. 1965 guaranteed all blacks the right to vote. By the
Belatedly and reluctantly, postwar America did ex- 1970s, substantial numbers of blacks had been elected to
perience a genuine social revolution. After a long struggle, public and private office throughout the southern states,
African Americans (and their white supporters) threw proof positive that dramatic changes had occurred in
off a deeply entrenched system of segregation, discri- American race relations.
mination, and repression. Eloquent lawyers challenged President Johnson also declared “unconditional war
school segregation and in 1954 won a landmark decision on poverty,” and Congress and the administration cre-
in the Supreme Court, which ruled in Brown v. Board ated a host of antipoverty programs intended to aid all
of Education that “separate educational facilities are in- poor Americans and bring greater economic equality.
herently unequal.” Blacks effectively challenged insti- Thus the United States promoted in the mid-1960s the
tutionalized inequality with bus boycotts, sit-ins, and kind of fundamental social reform that western Europe
demonstrations. As civil rights leader Martin Luther had embraced immediately after the Second World War.
King, Jr. (1929–1968), told the white power struc- The United States became more of a welfare state, as
Soviet Eastern Europe, 1945–1968 • 995
government spending for social benefits rose dramatically ity of the Soviet people hoped in 1945 that a grateful
and approached European levels. party and government would grant greater freedom and
democracy. Such hopes were soon crushed.
Even before the war ended, Stalin was moving his
Soviet Eastern Europe country back toward rigid dictatorship. As early as 1944,
– the leading members of the Communist Party were be-
ing given a new motivating slogan: “The war on Fascism
While western Europe surged ahead economically after ends, the war on capitalism begins.”4 By early 1946,
the Second World War and increased its political power Stalin was publicly singing the old tune that war was in-
as American influence gradually waned, eastern Europe evitable as long as capitalism existed. Stalin’s new foreign
followed a different path. The Soviet Union first tightened foe in the West provided an excuse for re-establishing a
its grip on the “liberated” nations of eastern Europe un- harsh dictatorship. Many returning soldiers and ordinary
der Stalin and then refused to let go. Thus postwar eco- citizens were purged in 1945 and 1946, as Stalin revived
nomic recovery in eastern Europe proceeded along Soviet the terrible forced-labor camps of the 1930s.
lines, and political and social developments were strongly Culture and art were also purged in violent campaigns
influenced by changes in the Soviet Union. that reimposed rigid anti-Western ideological conform-
• What was the pattern of postwar rebuilding and ity. Many artists were denounced, including the com-
development in the Soviet Union and Communist eastern posers Sergei Prokofiev and Dimitri Shostakovich and the
Europe? film director Sergei Eisenstein. In 1949 Stalin launched a
savage verbal attack on Soviet Jews, accusing them of be-
ing pro-Western and antisocialist.
In the political realm, Stalin reasserted the Communist
Stalin’s Last Years, 1945–1953 Party’s complete control of the government and his
Americans were not the only ones who felt betrayed by absolute mastery of the party. Five-year plans were rein-
Stalin’s postwar actions. The “Great Patriotic War of the
Apago PDF Enhancer troduced to cope with the enormous task of economic re-
Fatherland” had fostered Russian nationalism and a reconstruction. Once again, heavy industry and the military
laxation of dictatorial terror. It also had produced a rare were given top priority, and consumer goods, housing,
but real unity between Soviet rulers and most Russian and collectivized agriculture were neglected. Everyday
people. Having made a heroic war effort, the vast major- life was very hard. In short, it was the 1930s all over
Sergei Eisenstein: Ivan the Terrible

Eisenstein’s final masterpiece—one of
the greatest films ever—was filmed
during the Second World War and
released in two parts in 1946. In this
chilling scene, the crafty paranoid
tyrant, who has saved Russia from
foreign invaders, invites the unsus-
pecting Prince Vladimir to a midnight
revel that will lead to his murder. The
increasingly demonic Ivan seemed to
resemble Stalin, and Eisenstein was
censored and purged. (David King
Collection)
again in the Soviet Union, although police terror was less scribed to the startled Communist delegates how Stalin
intense. had tortured and murdered thousands of loyal Commu-
Stalin’s prime postwar innovation was to export the nists, how he had trusted Hitler completely and bungled
Stalinist system to the countries of eastern Europe. The the country’s defense, and how he had “supported the
Communist Parties of eastern Europe had established glorification of his own person with all conceivable meth-
one-party states by 1948, thanks to the help of the Red ods.” Khrushchev’s “secret speech” was read at Commu-
Army and the Russian secret police. Rigid ideological in- nist Party meetings held throughout the country, and it
doctrination, attacks on religion, and a lack of civil liber- strengthened the reform movement.
ties were soon facts of life. Industry was nationalized, and The liberalization—or de-Stalinization, as it was called
the middle class was stripped of its possessions. Economic in the West—of the Soviet Union was genuine. The
life was then faithfully recast in the Stalinist mold. Forced Communist Party jealously maintained its monopoly on
industrialization lurched forward without regard for hu- political power, but Khrushchev shook up the party and
man costs. The collectivization of agriculture began. brought in new members. Some resources were shifted
Only Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980), the resistance leader from heavy industry and the military toward consumer
and Communist chief of Yugoslavia, was able to resist So- goods and agriculture, and Stalinist controls over work-
viet domination successfully. Tito stood up to Stalin in ers were relaxed. The Soviet Union’s very low standard
1948, and since there was no Russian army in Yugoslavia, of living finally began to improve and continued to rise
he got away with it. Yugoslavia prospered as a multi- substantially throughout the booming 1960s.
ethnic state until it began to break apart in the 1980s. De-Stalinization created great ferment among writers
Tito’s proclamation of independence infuriated Stalin. and intellectuals who hungered for cultural freedom. The
Popular Communist leaders who, like Tito, had led the re- poet Boris Pasternak (1890–1960) finished his great novel
sistance against Germany were purged as Stalin sought to Doctor Zhivago in 1956. Published in the West but not in
create absolutely obedient instruments of domination in Russia, Doctor Zhivago is both a literary masterpiece and a
eastern Europe. powerful challenge to communism. It tells the story of a
Apago PDF Enhancer prerevolutionary intellectual who rejects the violence and
brutality of the revolution of 1917 and the Stalinist years.
Reform and De-Stalinization, Even as he is destroyed, he triumphs because of his hu-
manity and Christian spirit. Pasternak was denounced—
1953–1964 but he was not shot. Other talented writers followed
In 1953 the aging Stalin finally died, and the dictatorship Pasternak’s lead, and courageous editors let the sparks fly.
that he had built began to change. Even as Stalin’s heirs The writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918) created a
struggled for power, they realized that reforms were nec- sensation when his One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
essary because of the widespread fear and hatred of was published in the Soviet Union in 1962. Solzhenit-
Stalin’s political terrorism. The power of the secret police syn’s novel portrays in grim detail life in a Stalinist con-
was curbed, and many of the forced-labor camps were centration camp—a life to which Solzhenitsyn himself
gradually closed. Change was also necessary for economic had been unjustly condemned—and is a damning indict-
reasons. Moreover, Stalin’s belligerent foreign policy had ment of the Stalinist past.
led directly to a strong Western alliance, which isolated
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the Soviet Union.
Primary Source: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
On the question of just how much change should be Describes the Stalinist Gulag
permitted in order to preserve the system, the Commu-
nist leadership was badly split. Conservatives wanted to Khrushchev also de-Stalinized Soviet foreign policy.
make as few changes as possible. Reformers, who were led “Peaceful coexistence” with capitalism was possible, he
by Nikita Khrushchev, argued for major innovations. argued, and great wars were not inevitable. Khrushchev
Khrushchev (1894–1971), who had joined the party as an even made concessions, agreeing in 1955 to real inde-
uneducated coal miner in 1918 and risen to a high-level pendence for a neutral Austria after ten long years of Al-
position in the 1930s, emerged as the new ruler in 1955. lied occupation. Thus there was considerable relaxation
To strengthen his position and that of his fellow re- of cold war tensions between 1955 and 1957. At the
formers within the party, Khrushchev launched an all-out same time, Khrushchev began wooing the new nations of
attack on Stalin and his crimes at a closed session of the Asia and Africa—even if they were not communist—with
Twentieth Party Congress in 1956. In gory detail, he de- promises and aid.
Soviet Eastern Europe, 1945–1968 • 997
De-Stalinization stimulated rebelliousness in the east- sis, Khrushchev agreed to remove the Soviet missiles in re-
ern European satellites. Having suffered in silence under turn for American pledges not to disturb Castro’s regime.
Stalin, communist reformers and the masses were quickly Khrushchev looked like a bumbling buffoon; his influence,
emboldened to seek much greater liberty and national already slipping, declined rapidly after the Cuban fiasco.
independence. Poland took the lead in 1956, when ex- In 1964, Brezhnev and his supporters took over. Al-
tensive rioting brought a new government that managed most immediately they started talking quietly of Stalin’s
to win greater autonomy. “good points” and ignoring his crimes. This change in-
Hungary experienced a real and tragic revolution. Led by formed Soviet citizens that further liberalization could
students and workers—the classic urban revolutionaries— not be expected at home. Soviet leaders, determined
the people of Budapest installed a liberal communist re- never to suffer Khrushchev’s humiliation in the face of
former as their new chief in October 1956. Soviet troops American nuclear superiority, also launched a massive
were forced to leave the country. But after the new gov- arms buildup. Yet Brezhnev and company proceeded cau-
ernment promised free elections and renounced Hun- tiously in the mid-1960s and avoided direct confrontation
gary’s military alliance with Moscow, the Russian leaders with the United States.
ordered an invasion and crushed the national and demo- In the wake of Khrushchev’s reforms, the 1960s brought
cratic revolution. Fighting was bitter until the end, for modest liberalization and more consumer goods to east-
the Hungarians hoped that the United States would ern Europe, as well as somewhat greater national auton-
come to their aid. When this did not occur, most people omy, especially in Poland and Romania. In January 1968,
in eastern Europe concluded that their only hope was to the reform elements in the Czechoslovak Communist
strive for small domestic gains while following Russia Party gained a majority and voted out the long-time Stal-
obediently in foreign affairs. inist leader in favor of Alexander Dubček (1921–1992),
whose new government launched dramatic reforms.
Educated in Moscow, Dubček was a dedicated Com-
The End of Reform munist. But he and his allies believed that they could
By late 1962, opposition in party circles to Khrushchev’s
Apago PDF Enhancer reconcile genuine socialism with personal freedom and
policies was strong, and in 1964 Khrushchev fell in a internal party democracy. Thus local decision making by
bloodless palace revolution. Under Leonid Brezhnev trade unions, managers, and consumers replaced rigid
(1906–1982), the Soviet Union began a period of stag- bureaucratic planning, and censorship was relaxed. The
nation and limited “re-Stalinization.” The basic reason reform program proved enormously popular.
for this development was that Khrushchev’s Communist Although Dubček remembered the lesson of the Hun-
colleagues saw de-Stalinization as a dangerous threat to garian revolution and constantly proclaimed his loyalty to
the dictatorial authority of the party. The party had to the Warsaw Pact, the determination of the Czechoslovak
tighten up considerably while there was still time. reformers to build what they called “socialism with a hu-
Khrushchev had to go. man face” frightened hard-line Communists. These fears
Another reason for conservative opposition was that were particularly strong in Poland and East Germany,
Khrushchev’s policy toward the West was erratic and ulti- where leaders knew full well that they lacked popular sup-
mately unsuccessful. In 1958 he ordered the Western allies port. Moreover, the Soviet Union feared that a liberalized
to evacuate West Berlin within six months. In response, Czechoslovakia would eventually be drawn to neutrality
the allies reaffirmed their unity in West Berlin, and or even to the democratic West. Thus the Eastern bloc
Khrushchev backed down. Then in 1961, as relations with countries launched a concerted campaign of intimidation
communist China deteriorated dramatically, Khrushchev against the Czechoslovak leaders, and in August 1968,
ordered the East Germans to build a wall between East 500,000 Russian and allied eastern European troops sud-
and West Berlin, thereby sealing off West Berlin in clear denly occupied Czechoslovakia. The Czechoslovaks made
violation of existing access agreements between the Great no attempt to resist militarily, and the arrested leaders sur-
Powers. The recently elected U.S. president, John F. rendered to Soviet demands. The reform program was
Kennedy, acquiesced to the construction of the Berlin abandoned, and the Czechoslovak experiment in human-
Wall. Emboldened and seeing a chance to change the bal- izing communism came to an end. Shortly after the inva-
ance of military power decisively, Khrushchev ordered mission of Czechoslovakia, Brezhnev declared the so-called
siles with nuclear warheads installed in Fidel Castro’s Brezhnev Doctrine, according to which the Soviet Union
communist Cuba in 1962. President Kennedy countered and its allies had the right to intervene in any socialist
with a naval blockade of Cuba. After a tense diplomatic cri- country whenever they saw the need.
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The Invasion of Czechoslovakia Armed with Czechoslovakian flags, courageous Czechs
in downtown Prague try to stop a Soviet tank and repel the invasion and occupation of their
country by the Soviet Union and its eastern European allies. This dramatic confrontation
marked a high point, because the Czechs and the Slovaks realized that military resistance
would be suicidal. (AP/ Wide World Photos)
The 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia was the crucial A slowly rising standard of living for ordinary people
event of the Brezhnev era, which really lasted beyond the contributed to the apparent stability in the Soviet Union,
aging leader’s death in 1982 until the emergence in 1985 although long lines and innumerable shortages persisted.
of Mikhail Gorbachev. The invasion demonstrated the de- Ambitious individuals had a tremendous incentive to do
termination of the ruling elite to maintain the status quo as the state wished in order to gain access to special, well-
throughout the Soviet bloc. Only in the 1980s, with Poland stocked stores, to attend special schools, and to travel
taking the lead, would a strong current of reform and abroad.
opposition develop again to challenge Communist rule. Another source of stability was the enduring nation-
alism of ordinary Great Russians. Party leaders success-
fully identified themselves with Russian patriotism,
The Soviet Union to 1985 stressing their role in saving the country during the Sec-
Determined to maintain firm control of eastern Europe, ond World War and protecting it now from foreign
Soviet leaders set the example at home. There was a cer- foes, including eastern European “counter-revolutionar-
tain re-Stalinization of the U.S.S.R., but now dictator- ies.” Moreover, the politically dominant Great Russians,
ship was collective rather than personal, and coercion who were concentrated in the central Russian heart-
replaced terror. This compromise seemed to suit the land, generally feared that greater freedom might re-
leaders and a majority of the people. sult in demands for autonomy and even independence
Postwar Social Transformations, 1945–1968 • 999
not only by eastern European nationalities but also by

the non-Russian nationalities within the Soviet Union Postwar Social Transformations
itself. –
The strength of the government was expressed in the
re-Stalinization of culture and art. Critical free expression While Europe staged its astonishing political and eco-
disappeared. Acts of open nonconformity and public nomic recovery from the Nazi nightmare, the patterns of
protest were severely punished, but by sophisticated, cun- everyday life and the structure of Western society were
ning methods. Most frequently, dissidents were black- changing no less rapidly and remarkably. Epoch-making
listed and thus rendered unable to find decent jobs since inventions and new technologies profoundly affected hu-
the government was the only employer. This fate was man existence. Important groups in society formulated
enough to keep most in line. More determined protesters new attitudes and demands, which were closely related to
were quietly imprisoned, while celebrated nonconformists the changing class structure and social reforms. The
such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn were permanently ex- structure of women’s lives changed dramatically. An in-
pelled from the country. Eliminating the worst aspects ternational youth culture took shape and rose to chal-
of Stalin’s dictatorship strengthened the regime, and al- lenge established lifestyles and even governments.
most all Western experts concluded that rule by a self- • How did changing patterns in technology, class relations,
perpetuating Communist Party elite in the Soviet women’s work, and youth culture bring major social
Union appeared to be quite solid in the 1970s and early transformations?
1980s.
Yet beneath the dreary immobility of political life in
the Brezhnev era, the Soviet Union was actually experi-
encing profound changes. Three of these changes, which
Science and Technology
were seldom appreciated by Western observers at the Ever since the scientific revolution of the seventeenth cen-
time, were particularly significant. tury and the Industrial Revolution at the end of the eigh-
First, the growth of the urban population, which had
Apago PDF Enhancer teenth century, scientific and technical developments had
raced forward at breakneck speed in the Stalin years, con- powerfully influenced attitudes, society, and everyday life.
tinued rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1985 two- Never was this influence stronger than after about 1940.
thirds of all Soviet citizens lived in cities, and one-quarter Science and technology proved so productive and influen-
lived in big cities. Of great significance, this expanding tial because, for the first time in history, “pure theoretical”
urban population lost its old peasant ways, exchanging science and “practical” technology (or “applied” science)
them for more education, better job skills, and greater were effectively joined together on a massive scale.
sophistication. With the advent of the Second World War, pure science
Second, the number of highly trained scientists, man- lost its impractical innocence. Most leading university sci-
agers, and specialists expanded prodigiously, increasing entists went to work on top-secret projects to help their
fourfold between 1960 and 1985. Thus the class of well- governments fight the war. The development by British
educated, pragmatic, and self-confident experts, which scientists of radar to detect enemy aircraft was a particu-
played such an important role in restructuring industrial larly important outcome of this new kind of sharply fo-
societies after World War II (see the discussion in the cused research. A radically improved radar system played
next section), continued to develop rapidly in the Soviet a key role in Britain’s victory in the battle for air su-
Union after 1968. premacy in 1940. The air war also greatly stimulated the
Third, education and freedom for experts in their spe- development of jet aircraft and spurred further research
cial areas helped foster the gradual growth of Soviet pub- on electronic computers, which calculated the complex
lic opinion. Educated people read, discussed, and formed mathematical relationships between fast-moving planes
definite ideas on important issues, many of which could and anti-aircraft shells to increase the likelihood of a hit.
be approached and debated in “nonpolitical” terms. De- The most spectacular result of directed scientific re-
veloping ideas on such questions as environmental pollu- search during the war was the atomic bomb. In August
tion and urban transportation, educated urban people 1939, physicist Albert Einstein wrote to President Franklin
increasingly saw themselves as worthy of having a voice Roosevelt that recent work in physics suggested that “it
in society’s decisions, even its political decisions. While may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in
Brezhnev and his aging colleagues slept, a revolution was a large mass of uranium” and to construct “extremely
in the making. powerful bombs of a new type.”5 This letter and ongoing
experiments by nuclear physicists led to the top-secret The rapid expansion of government-financed research
Manhattan Project, which ballooned into a mammoth in the United States attracted many of Europe’s best sci-
crash program. After three years of intensive effort, the entists during the 1950s and 1960s. Thoughtful Euro-
first atomic bomb was successfully tested in July 1945. In peans lamented this “brain drain” and feared that Europe
August 1945, two bombs were dropped on Hiroshima was falling hopelessly behind the United States in science
and Nagasaki, thereby ending the war with Japan. and technology. In fact, a revitalized Europe was already
responding to the American challenge, with countries
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pooling their efforts on such Big Science projects as the
Primary Source: Witness to the Birth of the Atomic Age
Concorde supersonic passenger airliner and the peaceful
The atomic bomb showed the world both the awesome uses of atomic energy.
power and the heavy moral responsibilities of modern sci- The rise of Big Science and of close ties between science
ence and its high priests. As one Los Alamos scientist ex- and technology greatly altered the lives of scientists. The
claimed as he watched the first mushroom cloud rise over scientific community grew much larger than ever before.
the American desert, “We are all sons-of-bitches now!”6 There were about four times as many scientists in Europe
The spectacular results of directed research during and North America in 1975 as in 1945. Scientists, tech-
World War II inspired a new model for science—Big Sci- nologists, engineers, and medical specialists were counted
ence. By combining theoretical work with sophisticated after 1945, in part because there were so many of them.
engineering in a large organization, Big Science could at- One consequence of the growth of science was its high
tack extremely difficult problems, from better products for degree of specialization, for no one could possibly master
consumers to new and improved weapons for the military. a broad field such as physics or medicine. Intense special-
Big Science was extremely expensive, requiring large-scale ization in new disciplines and subdisciplines increased the
financing from governments and large corporations. rates at which both basic knowledge was acquired and
Populous, victorious, and wealthy, the United States practical applications were made.
took the lead in Big Science after World War II. Between Highly specialized modern scientists and technologists
1945 and 1965, spending on scientific research and devel-
Apago PDF Enhancer normally had to work as members of a team, which com-
opment in the United States grew five times as fast as the pletely changed the work and lifestyle of modern scien-
national income, and by 1965 such spending took 3 per- tists. A great deal of work therefore went on in large
cent of all U.S. income. It was generally accepted that bureaucratic organizations, where the individual was very
government should finance science heavily in both the often a small cog in a great machine. The growth of large
“capitalist” United States and the “socialist” Soviet Union. scientific bureaucracies in government and private enter-
One reason for the parallel between the two countries prise suggested how scientists and technologists permeated
was that science was not demobilized in either country the entire society and many aspects of life.
after the war. Scientists remained a critical part of every Modern science became highly, even brutally, compet-
major military establishment, and a large portion of all itive. This competitiveness is well depicted in Nobel Prize
postwar scientific research went for “defense.” New wea- winner James Watson’s fascinating book The Double Helix,
pons such as rockets, nuclear submarines, and spy satel- which tells how in 1953 Watson and an Englishman,
lites demanded breakthroughs no less remarkable than Francis Crick, discovered the structure of DNA, the mol-
those of radar and the first atomic bomb. After 1945 ecule of heredity. A brash young American Ph.D. in his
roughly one-quarter of all men and women trained in sci- twenties, Watson seemed almost obsessed by the idea
ence and engineering in the West—and perhaps more in that some other research team would find the solution
the Soviet Union—were employed full-time in the pro- first and thereby deprive him of the fame and fortune he
duction of weapons to kill other humans. desperately wanted. With so many thousands of like-
Sophisticated science, lavish government spending, and minded researchers in the wealthy countries of the world,
military needs all came together in the space race of the scientific and technical knowledge rushed forward in the
1960s. In 1957 the Soviets used long-range rockets devel- postwar era.
oped in their nuclear weapons program to put a satellite in
orbit. In 1961 they sent the world’s first cosmonaut circling
the globe. Embarrassed by Soviet triumphs, the United
The Changing Class Structure
States made an all-out U.S. commitment to catch up with Rapid economic growth went a long way toward creating
the Soviets and landed a crewed spacecraft on the moon in a new society in Europe after the Second World War. Eu-
1969. Four more moon landings followed by 1972. ropean society became more mobile and more demo-
cratic. Old class barriers relaxed, and class distinctions many before the First World War (see page 833). Other
became fuzzier. programs were new, like comprehensive national health
Changes in the structure of the middle class were par- systems directed by the state. Most countries introduced
ticularly influential in the general drift toward a less rigid family allowances—direct government grants to parents
class structure. In the nineteenth and early twentieth to help them raise their children. These allowances
centuries, the model for the middle class had been the helped many poor families make ends meet. Most Euro-
independent, self-employed individual who owned a pean governments also gave maternity grants and built
business or practiced a liberal profession such as law or inexpensive public housing for low-income families and
medicine. Ownership of property—very often inherited individuals. These and other social reforms provided a
property—and strong family ties had often been the keys humane floor of well-being. Reforms also promoted
to wealth and standing within the middle class. After greater equality because they were expensive and were
1945 this pattern declined drastically in western Europe. paid for in part by higher taxes on the rich.
A new breed of managers and experts replaced traditional
property owners as the leaders of the middle class. Abil-
ity to serve the needs of a big organization largely replaced
inherited property and family connections in determin-
ing an individual’s social position in the middle and up-
per middle classes. At the same time, the middle class grew
massively and became harder to define.
There were several reasons for these developments.
Rapid industrial and technological expansion created in
large corporations and government agencies a powerful
demand for technologists and managers. Moreover, the
old propertied middle class lost control of many family-
owned businesses, and many small businesses (including
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family farms) simply passed out of existence as their for-
mer owners joined the ranks of salaried employees.
Top managers and ranking civil servants therefore
represented the model for a new middle class of salaried
specialists. Well paid and highly trained, often with back-
grounds in engineering or accounting, these experts in-
creasingly came from all social classes, even the working
class. Pragmatic and realistic, they were primarily con-
cerned with efficiency and practical solutions to concrete
problems. This new middle class was more open, demo-
cratic, and insecure than the old propertied middle class.
The structure of the lower classes also became more
flexible and open. There was a mass exodus from farms
and the countryside, as one of the most traditional and
least mobile groups in European society drastically de-
clined. Meanwhile, the industrial working class ceased to
expand and began to decline, while job opportunities for
white-collar and service employees grew rapidly. Such em-
ployees bore a greater resemblance to the new middle
class of salaried specialists than to industrial workers, who
were also better educated and more specialized. Consumers on the Move In the early postwar years the
European governments were reducing class tensions Italians had their motor scooters and the French their motor-
with a series of social security reforms. Many of these bikes. This ad promises young people that “sooner or later”
they will have a “Velo,” and it subtly assures housewives that
reforms—such as increased unemployment benefits and the bike is safe. In small towns and villages the slow-moving
more extensive old-age pensions—simply strengthened motorbike could be a godsend for errands and daily shopping.
social security measures first pioneered in Bismarck’s Ger- (Roger Perrin/The Bridgeman Art Library)
The rising standard of living and the spread of standard- demographic transition from high birthrates and death
ized consumer goods also worked to level Western society, rates to low birthrates and death rates.
as the percentage of income spent on food and drink These trends continued in the twentieth century. In the
declined substantially. For example, the European auto- 1950s and 1960s, the typical woman in the West married
mobile industry expanded phenomenally after lagging far early and bore her children quickly. The postwar baby
behind the United States since the 1920s. In 1948 there boom did make for larger families and a fairly rapid popu-
were only 5 million cars in western Europe, but in 1965 lation growth of 1 to 1.5 percent per year in many Euro-
there were 44 million. Car ownership was democratized pean countries. However, in the 1960s the long-term
and came within the range of better-paid workers. decline in birthrates resumed, and from the mid-1970s on
Europeans took great pleasure in the products of the in many European countries, the total population practi-
“gadget revolution” as well. Like Americans, Europeans cally stopped growing from natural increase, with limited
filled their houses and apartments with washing machines, subsequent growth coming mainly from immigation.
vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, dishwashers, radios, TVs, The postwar culmination of the trends toward early
and stereos. The purchase of consumer goods was greatly marriage, early childbearing, and small family size in
facilitated by installment purchasing, which allowed people wealthy urban societies had revolutionary implications
to buy on credit. With the expansion of social security for women. Above all, pregnancy and child care occupied
safeguards, reducing the need to accumulate savings for a much smaller portion of a woman’s life than in earlier
hard times and old age, ordinary people were increasingly times. By the early 1970s, about half of Western women
willing to take on debt. This change had far-reaching were having their last baby by the age of twenty-six or
consequences. twenty-seven. When the youngest child trooped off to
Leisure and recreation occupied an important place in kindergarten, the average mother had more than forty
consumer societies. The most astonishing leisure-time years of life in front of her.
development was the blossoming of mass travel and This was a momentous change. Throughout history
tourism. With month-long paid vacations required by male-dominated society insisted on defining most women
law in most European countries and widespread automo-
Apago PDF Enhancer as mothers or potential mothers, and motherhood was
bile ownership, beaches and ski resorts came within the very demanding. In the postwar years, however, mother-
reach of the middle class and much of the working class. hood no longer absorbed the energies of a lifetime, and
By the late 1960s, packaged tours with cheap group more and more married women looked for new roles in
flights and bargain hotel accommodations had made the world of work outside the family.
even distant lands easily accessible. A French company
grew rich building imitation Tahitian paradises around
the world. At Swedish nudist colonies on secluded West 27.5 50
African beaches, officeworkers from Stockholm fleetingly
Percentage of married working women

worshiped the sun in the middle of the long northern 25.0 45
Birthrate
winter. Truly, consumerism had come of age.
Births (per thousand)
22.5 40
New Roles for Women

20.0 35
A growing emancipation of women in Europe and North
America was unquestionably one of the most significant 17.5 30
transformations of the cold war era. This historic develop-
ment grew out of long-term changes in the basic patterns 15.0 Married working women 25
of motherhood and paid work outside the home. These
changing patterns altered women’s experiences and expec-
tations, preparing the way for the success of a new genera- 1952 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1979
tion of feminist thinkers and a militant women’s movement Note: Data for married working women includes only women
with husbands present.
in the 1970s and 1980s (see pages 1009–1010).
Before the Industrial Revolution, most Europeans mar-
ried late. Once a woman was married, however, she usually FIGURE 30.1 The Decline of the Birthrate and the
Increase of Married Working Women in the United
had children as long as she was fertile. By the late nine- States, 1952–1979 The challenge of working away from
teenth century, improved diet, higher incomes, and the home encouraged American wives to prefer fewer children and
use of contraception within marriage were producing the helped lower the birthrate.
For centuries before the Industrial

Revolution, ordinary women worked
hard and long on farms and in home in-
dustries while caring for their large fami-
lies. With the growth of modern industry
and much more rigid gender roles, few
middle-class women worked outside the
home for wages, although charity work
was socially acceptable. Young unmarried
women continued to work as wage earn-
ers, but poor married women typically
earned their money at home in low-paid
crafts as they looked after their children.
In the twentieth century and especially
after World War II, the ever-greater com-
plexity of the modern economy meant that
almost all women had to go outside the
home to find cash income. Three major
forces helped women searching for jobs.
First, the economy boomed from about
1950 to 1973 and created a strong de-
mand for labor. Second, the economy con-
tinued its gradual shift away from the old,
Celebrating Women’s History Judy Chicago’s multimedia creation The
male-dominated heavy industries, such as Dinner Party features thirty-nine handcrafted placemats and ceramic plates,
coal, steel, and shipbuilding, to the more
Apago PDF Enhancer
each embellished with a painted motif associated with the woman being hon-
dynamic, “white-collar” service industries, ored. Begun in 1974 and completed in 1978 with the participation of more
such as government, education, trade, and than one hundred women, The Dinner Party was intended to represent the
health care. Some women had always “historic struggle of women to participate in all the aspects of society.” It at-
tracted enormous crowds. (© 2007 Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society [ARS],
worked in these service fields. Third, New York)
young Western women shared fully in the
postwar education revolution and could
take advantage of the growing need for officeworkers and advancement, and occupational choice in comparison to
well-trained professionals. Thus more and more married men. Moreover, many women could find only part-time
women became full-time and part-time wage earners. work. As the divorce rate rose in the 1960s, part-time work,
The trend went the furthest in communist eastern Eu- with its low pay and scanty benefits, meant poverty for
rope, where women accounted for almost half of all em- many women with teenage children. Finally, in the best of
ployed persons. In noncommunist western Europe and circumstances, married working women still carried most
North America, there was a good deal of variation, with of the child-raising and housekeeping responsibilities. A
the percentage of married women in the workforce rising reason for many to accept part-time employment, this gen-
from a range of roughly 20 to 25 percent in 1950 to a dered imbalance meant an exhausting “double day”—on
range of 40 to 70 percent in the early 1980s. the job and at home—for the full-time worker.
Rising employment for married women went hand in The injustices that married women encountered as wage
hand with the decline of the birthrate (see Figure 30.1). earners contributed greatly to the subsequent movement
Women who worked outside the home had significantly for women’s equality and emancipation. A young unmar-
fewer children than women of the same age who did not. ried woman of a hundred years ago was more likely to ac-
Raising a family while holding down a full-time job was a cept such problems as temporary nuisances because she
tremendous challenge and often resulted in a woman’s looked forward to marriage and motherhood for fulfill-
being grossly overworked. The multiple demands of job, ment. In the postwar era, a married wage earner in her thir-
motherhood, and marriage became more manageable ties gradually developed a very different perspective. She
with fewer children. saw employment as a permanent condition within which
Married women entering (or re-entering) the labor force she, like her male counterpart, sought not only income but
faced widespread, long-established discrimination in pay, also psychological satisfaction. Sexism and discrimination in
the workplace—and in the home—grew loathsome and licized subculture that blended radical politics, unbridled
evoked the sense of injustice that drives revolutions and re- personal experimentation (with drugs and communal liv-
forms. When powerful voices arose to challenge the system, ing, for example), and new artistic styles. This subculture
they found widespread support among working women. quickly spread to major American and western European
cities. The young folksinger Bob Dylan summed up the
increasingly radical political and cultural aspirations of the
Youth and the Counterculture “younger generation” in lyrics that became a rallying cry,
Economic prosperity and a more democratic class struc- “the times they are a’changing.”7
ture had a powerful impact on youth throughout the Certainly the sexual behavior of young people ap-
Western world. The bulging cohort of youth born after peared to change dramatically in the 1960s and into the
World War II developed a distinctive and very interna- 1970s. More young people engaged in sexual inter-
tional youth culture, which eventually became a “counter- course, and they did so at an earlier age, in part because
culture” that rebelled against parents, authority figures, the discovery of safe and effective contraceptive pills
and the status quo. could eliminate the risk of unwanted pregnancy. A 1973
Young people in the United States took the lead. Amer- study reported that only 4.5 percent of West German
ican college students in the 1950s were often dismissed as youths born in 1945 and 1946 had experienced sexual
the “Silent Generation,” but by the late 1950s the “beat” relations before their seventeenth birthday but that 32
movement was stoking the fires of revolt in selected urban percent of those born in 1953 and 1954 had done so.8
enclaves, such as the Near North Side of Chicago. There Perhaps even more significant was the growing tendency
the young (and the not-so-young) fashioned a highly pub- of young unmarried people to live together in a separate
Apago PDF Enhancer
Woodstock, 1969 The brainchild of four young entrepreneurs, Woodstock snowballed

into the world’s biggest rock concert, a three-day bash in upstate New York that drew
450,000 guests and caused twenty-mile traffic jams. Standout performers included the gui-
tarist Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Joe Cocker. A high point for the youth culture, with
antiwar and free love overtones, Woodstock spawned many myths and conflicting interpreta-
tions. (© Lisa Law)
Student Rebellion in Paris These rock-throwing students in the Latin Quarter of Paris are
trying to force education reforms and even to topple de Gaulle’s government. Throughout
May 1968 students clashed repeatedly with France’s tough riot police in bloody street fight-
Apago PDF Enhancer
ing. De Gaulle remained in power, but a major reform of French education did follow. (Bruno
Barbey/Magnum Photos)
household on a semipermanent basis, with little thought the newly independent countries of Asia and Africa, or so
of getting married or having children. Thus many many young radicals believed. Thus the Vietnam War
youths, especially middle-class youths, defied social cus- took on special significance. Many politically active stu-
tom, claiming in effect that the long-standing monopoly dents believed that the older generation was fighting an
of married couples on legitimate sexual unions was dead. immoral and imperialistic war against a small and heroic
Several factors contributed to the emergence of the people. As the war in Vietnam intensified, so did world-
international youth culture in the 1960s. First, mass com- wide student opposition to it.
munications and youth travel linked countries and conti- Student protests in western Europe also highlighted
nents together. Second, the postwar baby boom meant more general problems of youth, education, and a soci-
that young people became an unusually large part of the ety of specialists. In contrast to the United States, high
population and could therefore exercise exceptional in- school and university educations in Europe had been lim-
fluence on society as a whole. Third, postwar prosperity ited for centuries to a small elite. Whereas 22 percent of
and greater equality gave young people more purchasing the American population was going on to some form of
power than ever before. This enabled them to set their higher education in 1950, only 3 to 4 percent of western
own trends and patterns of consumption, which fostered European youths were doing so. Then enrollments sky-
generational loyalty. Finally, prosperity meant that good rocketed. By 1960 at least three times as many students
jobs were readily available. Students and young job seek- were going to some kind of university as had attended
ers had little need to fear punishment from strait-laced before the war, and the number continued to rise sharply
employers for unconventional behavior. until the 1970s. Reflecting the development of a more
The youth culture practically fused with the counter- democratic class structure and a growing awareness that
culture in opposition to the established order in the late higher education was the key to success, European uni-
1960s. Student protesters embraced romanticism and versities gave more scholarships and opened their doors to
revolutionary idealism, dreaming of complete freedom more students from the lower middle and lower classes.
and simpler, purer societies. The materialistic West was The rapid expansion of higher education meant that
hopelessly rotten, but better societies were being built in classes were badly overcrowded. Competition for grades
became intense. Moreover, although more practical areas

of study were gradually added, many students felt that
The United States and Vietnam
they were not getting the kind of education they needed President Johnson wanted to go down in history as a
for jobs in the modern world. At the same time, some re- master reformer and a healer of old wounds. Instead, he
flective students feared that universities would soon do opened new ones with the Vietnam War.
nothing but turn out docile technocrats both to stock Although many student radicals believed that imperial-
and to serve “the establishment.” ism was the main cause, American involvement in Viet-
The many tensions within the exploding university nam was more clearly a product of the cold war and the
population came to a head in the late 1960s and early policy of containment (see page 984). From the late
1970s. As in the United States, European university stu- 1940s on, most Americans and their leaders viewed the
dents rose to challenge their university administrations world in terms of a constant struggle to stop the spread
and even their governments. The most far-reaching of of communism. As western Europe began to revive and
these revolts occurred in France in 1968. Students occu- China established a communist government in 1949, ef-
pied buildings and took over the University of Paris, forts to contain communism shifted to Asia. The bloody
which led to violent clashes with police. Rank-and-file Korean War (1950–1953) ended in stalemate, but the
workers ignored the advice of their cautious union offi- United States did succeed in preventing a communist
cials, and a more or less spontaneous general strike victory in South Korea. After the defeat of the French in
spread across France in May 1968. It seemed certain that Vietnam in 1954, the Eisenhower administration refused
President de Gaulle’s Fifth Republic would collapse. to sign the Geneva Accords that temporarily divided the
In fact, de Gaulle stiffened, like an old-fashioned irate country into two zones pending national unification by
father. He moved troops toward Paris and called for new means of free elections. President Eisenhower then ac-
elections. Thoroughly frightened by the student-sparked quiesced in the refusal of the anticommunist South Viet-
upheaval and fearing an eventual communist takeover, the namese government to accept the verdict of elections and
masses of France voted overwhelmingly for de Gaulle’s provided it with military aid. President Kennedy greatly
party and a return to law and order. Workers went back to
Apago PDF Enhancer increased the number of American “military advisers” to
work, and the mini-revolution collapsed. Yet the proud de sixteen thousand.
Gaulle and the postwar European renaissance that he rep- After winning the 1964 election on a peace platform,
resented had been shaken, and within a year he resigned. President Johnson greatly expanded the American role in
Growing out of the counterculture and youthful idealism, the Vietnam conflict. American strategy was to “escalate”
the student rebellion of 1968 signaled the end of an era the war sufficiently to break the will of the North Viet-
and the return of unrest and uncertainty in the 1970s and namese and their southern allies without resorting to
early 1980s. “overkill,” which might risk war with the entire Commu-
nist bloc. Thus South Vietnam received massive military
aid, American forces in the South gradually grew to half a
Conflict and Challenge in the million men, and the United States bombed North Viet-
Late Cold War – nam with ever-greater intensity. But there was no invasion
of the North or naval blockade. In the end, the American
Similar to but more important than the student upheaval strategy of limited warfare backfired. It was the American
in France and the crushing of socialist reform in Czecho- people who grew weary and the American leadership that
slovakia, the Vietnam War marked the beginning of a new cracked.
era of challenges and uncertainties in the late 1960s. The The undeclared war in Vietnam, fought nightly on
Vietnam War and its aftermath divided the people of the American television, eventually divided the nation. Ini-
United States, shook the ideology of containment, and tial support was strong. The politicians, the media, and
weakened the Western alliance. A second challenge affect- the population as a whole saw the war as part of a legiti-
ing the whole world appeared when the great postwar eco- mate defense against communist totalitarianism in all
nomic boom came to a close in 1973, opening a long poor countries. But an antiwar movement quickly
period of economic stagnation, widespread unemploy- emerged on college campuses, where the prospect of be-
ment, and social dislocation. ing drafted to fight savage battles in Asian jungles made
male stomachs churn. In October 1965, student protest-
• What were the key aspects of political conflict, ers joined forces with old-line socialists, New Left intel-
economic stagnation, and the feminist movement in lectuals, and pacifists in antiwar demonstrations in fifty
the late cold war? American cities. By 1967 a growing number of critics de-
Conflict and Challenge in the Late Cold War, 1968–1985 • 1007
nounced the war as a criminal intrusion into a complex

and distant civil war.
Criticism reached a crescendo after the Vietcong Tet
Offensive in January 1968. This, the communists’ first
comprehensive attack with conventional weapons on ma-
jor cities in South Vietnam, failed militarily: the Vietcong
suffered heavy losses, and the attack did not spark a mass
uprising. But Washington had been claiming that victory
in South Vietnam was in sight, and U.S. critics of the
Vietnam War quickly interpreted the bloody combat as
a decisive American defeat. America’s leaders lost heart.
In 1968, after a narrow victory in the New Hampshire
primary, President Johnson called for negotiations with
North Vietnam and announced that he would not stand
for re-election.
Elected by a razor-slim margin in 1968, President
Richard Nixon (1913–1994) sought to gradually disen-
gage America from Vietnam and the accompanying na-
tional crisis. Intensifying the continuous bombardment
of the enemy while simultaneously pursuing peace talks
with the North Vietnamese, Nixon suspended the draft,
so hated on college campuses, and cut American forces in
Vietnam from 550,000 to 24,000 in four years. The cost
of the war dropped dramatically. Moreover, President
Nixon launched a flank attack in diplomacy. He jour-
Apago PDF Enhancer
neyed to China in 1972 and reached a spectacular if lim-
ited reconciliation with the People’s Republic of China.
In doing so, Nixon took advantage of China’s growing Seymour Chwast: End Bad Breath Antiwar messages
fears of the Soviet Union and undermined North Viet- came in every shape and form as opposition to the Vietnam
nam’s position. War heated up. This vibrant poster assumes, quite reasonably,
Fortified by the overwhelming endorsement of the vot- that the American viewer is steeped in the popular culture of
ers in his 1972 electoral triumph, President Nixon and the mass media. It ridicules American military involvement
with a sarcastic parody of familiar television commercials.
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger finally reached a peace (Courtesy, Seymour Chwast/Push Pin Group)
agreement with North Vietnam. The agreement allowed
remaining American forces to complete their withdrawal,
and the United States reserved the right to resume bombing. In 1974 a beleaguered Nixon was forced to resign in
ing if the accords were broken. Fighting declined markedly disgrace.
in South Vietnam, where the South Vietnamese army ap- The consequences of renewed political crisis flowing
peared to hold its own against the Vietcong. The storm of from the Watergate affair were profound. First, Water-
crisis in the United States seemed to have passed. gate resulted in a major shift of power away from the
On the contrary, the country reaped the Watergate presidency and toward Congress, especially in foreign af-
whirlwind. Like some other recent American presidents, fairs. Therefore, as American aid to South Vietnam di-
Nixon authorized spying activities that went beyond the minished in 1973 and as an emboldened North Vietnam
law. Going further than his predecessors, he allowed launched a general invasion against South Vietnamese
special units to use various illegal means to stop the leak- armies in early 1974, Congress refused to permit any
ing of government documents to the press. One such American military response. A second consequence of
group broke into the Democratic Party headquarters in the U.S. crisis was that after more than thirty-five years of
Washington’s Watergate complex in June 1972 and was battle, the Vietnamese communists unified their country
promptly arrested. Nixon and many of his assistants then in 1975 as a harsh dictatorial state. Third, the belated fall
tried to hush up the bungled job, but the media and of South Vietnam in the wake of Watergate shook Amer-
the machinery of congressional investigation eventually ica’s postwar confidence and left the country divided and
exposed the administration’s web of lies and lawbreak- uncertain about its proper role in world affairs.
merous provisions guaranteeing the human rights and po-

Détente or Cold War? litical freedoms of their citizens.
One alternative to the badly damaged policy of contain-
Improve Your Grade
ing communism was the policy of détente, or the pro-
Primary Source: The Helsinki Final Act: Human Rights
gressive piecemeal relaxation of cold war tensions. Thus and Fundamental Freedoms Enunciated
while the cold war continued to rage outside Europe and
generally defined superpower relations between the So- Optimistic hopes for détente in international relations
viet Union and the United States, West Germany took a gradually faded in the later 1970s. Brezhnev’s Soviet Union
major step toward genuine peace in Europe. ignored the human rights provisions of the Helsinki agree-
West German chancellor Willy Brandt (1913–1992) ment, and East-West political competition remained very
took the lead when in December 1970 he flew to Poland much alive outside Europe. Many Americans became con-
for the signing of a historic treaty of reconciliation. In vinced that the Soviet Union was taking advantage of dé-
a dramatic moment rich in symbolism, Brandt laid a tente, steadily building up its military might and pushing
wreath at the tomb of the Polish unknown soldier and for political gains and revolutions in Africa, Asia, and Latin
another at the monument commemorating the armed America. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December
uprising of Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto against occupying 1979, which was designed to save an increasingly unpop-
Nazi armies. Standing before the ghetto memorial, a ular Marxist regime, was especially alarming. Many Ameri-
somber Brandt fell to his knees and knelt as if in prayer. cans feared that the oil-rich states of the Persian Gulf would
“I wanted,” Brandt said later, “to ask pardon in the name be next, and once again they looked to the Atlantic alliance
of our people for a million-fold crime which was com- and military might to thwart communist expansion.
mitted in the misused name of the Germans.”9 President Jimmy Carter (b. 1924), elected in 1976,
Brandt’s gesture at the Warsaw Ghetto memorial and tried to lead the Atlantic alliance beyond verbal condem-
the treaty with Poland were part of his policy of reconcili- nation and urged economic sanctions against the Soviet
ation with eastern Europe. Indeed, Brandt aimed at noth- Union. Yet only Great Britain among the European allies
ing less than a comprehensive peace settlement for central
Apago PDF Enhancer supported the American initiative. The alliance showed
Europe and the two German states established after 1945. the same lack of concerted action when the Solidarity
The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) had movement rose in Poland. Some observers concluded
long claimed that the communist German Democratic Re- that the alliance had lost the will to think and act deci-
public (East Germany) lacked free elections and hence any sively in dealing with the Soviet bloc.
legal or moral basis. West Germany also refused to accept The Atlantic alliance endured, however. The U.S. mil-
the loss of German territory taken by Poland and the So- itary buildup launched by Carter in his last years in office
viet Union after 1945. But Brandt, the popular socialist was greatly accelerated by President Ronald Reagan
mayor of West Berlin when the Berlin Wall was built in (1911–2004), who was swept into office in 1980 by a
1961, believed that the wall showed the painful limitations wave of patriotism and economic discontent. The new
of West Germany’s official hard line toward communist American leadership acted as if the military balance had
eastern Europe. A new foreign policy was needed. tipped in favor of the Soviet Union, which Reagan anath-
Winning the chancellorship in 1969, Brandt negoti- ematized as the “evil empire.” Increasing defense spend-
ated treaties with the Soviet Union, Poland, and Czecho- ing enormously, the Reagan administration concentrated
slovakia that formally accepted existing state boundaries on nuclear arms and an expanded navy as keys to Ameri-
in return for a mutual renunciation of force or the threat can power in the post-Vietnam age.
of force. Using the imaginative formula of “two German A broad swing in the historical pendulum toward
states within one German nation,” Brandt’s government greater conservatism in the 1980s gave Reagan invalu-
also broke decisively with the past and entered into direct able allies in western Europe. In Great Britain a strong-
relations with East Germany. He aimed for modest prac- willed Margaret Thatcher worked well with Reagan and
tical improvements rather than reunification, which at was a forceful advocate for a revitalized Atlantic alliance.
that point was completely impractical. After a strongly pro-American Helmut Kohl (b. 1930)
The policy of détente reached its high point when all came to power with the conservative Christian Demo-
European nations (except isolationist Albania), the United crats in 1982, West Germany and the United States once
States, and Canada signed the Final Act of the Helsinki again effectively coordinated military and political policy
Conference in 1975. The thirty-five nations participating toward the Soviet bloc.
agreed that Europe’s existing political frontiers could not Passing in the 1970s and early 1980s from détente
be changed by force. They also solemnly accepted nu- to confusion to regeneration, the Atlantic alliance bent,
but it did not break. In maintaining the alliance, the West- One such woman was Betty Friedan (b. 1924), who
ern nations gave indirect support to ongoing efforts to played a key role in reopening a serious discussion of
liberalize authoritarian communist eastern Europe and women’s issues in the United States. As a working wife
probably helped convince the Soviet Union’s Mikhail and the mother of three small children in the 1950s,
Gorbachev that endless cold war conflict was foolish and Friedan became acutely aware of the conflicting pressures
dangerous. of career and family. Conducting an in-depth survey of
her classmates at Smith College fifteen years after their
graduation, she concluded that many well-educated
The Women’s Movement women shared her growing dissatisfaction. In her path-
The 1970s marked the birth of a broad-based feminist breaking study The Feminine Mystique (1963), Friedan
movement devoted to securing genuine gender equality identified this dissatisfaction as the “problem that has no
and promoting the general interests of women. Three name.” According to Friedan, the cause of this nameless
basic reasons accounted for this major development. problem was a crisis of identity. Women were not per-
First, ongoing changes in underlying patterns of mother- mitted to become mature adults and genuine human be-
hood and paid work created novel conditions and new ings. Instead, they were expected to conform to a false,
demands (see pages 1002–1004). Second, a vanguard of infantile pattern of femininity and live (like Beauvoir’s
feminist intellectuals articulated a powerful critique of mother) for their husbands and children. In short,
gender relations, which stimulated many women to re- women faced what feminists would soon call sexism, a
think their assumptions and challenge the status quo. pervasive social problem that required drastic reforms.
Third, taking a lesson from the civil rights movement in When long-standing proposals to treat sex discrimina-
the United States and worldwide student protest against tion as seriously as race discrimination fell again on deaf
the Vietnam War, dissatisfied individuals recognized that ears, Friedan took the lead in 1966 in founding the
they had to band together if they were to influence poli- National Organization for Women (NOW) to press for
tics and secure fundamental reforms. women’s rights. NOW flourished, growing from seven
One of the most influential works produced by this
Apago PDF Enhancer hundred members in 1967 to forty thousand in 1974.
new feminist wave was The Second Sex (1949) by the Many other women’s organizations of varying persua-
French writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir sions rose to follow NOW in Europe and the United
(1908–1986). Characterizing herself as a “dutiful daugh- States. Throughout the 1970s, a proliferation of publica-
ter” of the bourgeoisie in childhood, the adolescent tions, conferences, and institutions devoted to women’s
Beauvoir came to see her pious and submissive mother as issues reinforced the emerging international movement.
foolishly renouncing any self-expression outside of home Although national peculiarities abounded, this move-
and marriage and showing Beauvoir the dangers of a life ment generally shared the common strategy of entering
she did not want. A brilliant university student, Beauvoir the political arena and changing laws regarding women.
began at the Sorbonne a complex relationship with Jean- First, advocates of women’s rights pushed for new
Paul Sartre, the future philosopher who became her life- statutes in the workplace: laws against discrimination,
long intellectual companion and sometime lover. “equal pay for equal work,” and measures such as mater-
Beauvoir analyzed the position of women within the nal leave and affordable day care designed to help women
framework of existential thought (see pages 916–917). combine careers and family responsibilities. Second, the
She argued that women—like all human beings—were in movement concentrated on gender and family questions,
essence free but that they had almost always been trapped including the right to divorce (in some Catholic coun-
by particularly inflexible and limiting conditions. (See tries), legalized abortion, the needs of single mothers,
the feature “Listening to the Past: A Feminist Critique of and protection from rape and physical violence. In almost
Marriage” on pages 1016–1017.) Only by means of coura- every country, the effort to decriminalize abortion served
geous action and self-assertive creativity could a woman as a catalyst in mobilizing an effective, self-conscious
become a completely free person and escape the role of women’s movement (and in creating an opposition to it,
the inferior “other” that men had constructed for her as in the United States).
gender. Drawing on history, philosophy, psychology, In countries that had long placed women in a subordi-
biology, and literature, Beauvoir’s massive investigation nate position, the legal changes were little less than revo-
inspired a generation of women intellectuals. lutionary. In Italy, for example, new laws abolished
restrictions on divorce and abortion, which had been
Improve Your Grade strengthened by Mussolini and defended energetically by
Primary Source: The Second Sex: Existential Feminism the Catholic Church in the postwar era. By 1988 divorce
and the expansion and redefinition of human liberty—

one of the great themes of modern Western and world
history—continued.
The Troubled Economy

For twenty years after 1945, most Europeans were pre-
occupied with the possibilities of economic progress and
consumerism. The more democratic class structure also
helped to reduce social tension, and ideological conflict
went out of style. In the late 1960s, sharp criticism and
social conflict re-emerged, however, marking the passing
of postwar stability.
Yet it was the reappearance of economic crisis in the
early 1970s that brought the most serious challenges for
the average person. The postwar international monetary
system was based on the American dollar, valued in gold
at $35 an ounce. Giving foreign aid and fighting foreign
wars, the United States sent billions abroad. By early
1971, it had only $11 billion in gold left, and Europe
had accumulated U.S. $50 billion. Foreigners then pan-
icked and raced to exchange their dollars for gold. Presi-
dent Richard Nixon responded by stopping the sale of
American gold. The value of the dollar fell sharply, and
Apago PDF Enhancer inflation accelerated worldwide. Fixed rates of exchange
were abandoned, and great uncertainty replaced postwar
predictability in international trade and finance.
Even more damaging was the dramatic reversal in the
price and availability of energy. The great postwar boom
was fueled by cheap oil from the Middle East, which per-
mitted energy-intensive industries—automobiles, chemi-
cals, and electric power—to expand rapidly and lead other
Italian Feminists These women demonstrate in Rome in
sectors of the economy forward. By 1971 the Arab-led
1981 for the passage of legislation legalizing abortion, which Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
the pope and the Catholic Church have steadfastly opposed. had watched the price of crude oil decline consistently
This woman’s provocative sign says that she does not want the compared with the rising price of manufactured goods
pope in her bed. (Giansanti/Corbis Sygma) and had decided to reverse that trend by presenting a
united front against the oil companies. The stage was set
and abortion were common in Italy, which had the low- for a revolution in energy prices during the fourth Arab-
est birthrate in Europe. More generally, the sharply fo- Israeli war in October 1973, when Egypt and Syria
cused women’s movement of the 1970s won new rights launched a surprise attack on Israel. OPEC then declared
for women. Subsequently, the movement became more an embargo on oil shipments to the United States, Israel’s
diffuse, a victim of both its successes and the resurgence ally, and within a year crude oil prices quadrupled. Western
of an antifeminist opposition. nations realized that the rapid price rise was econom-
The accomplishments of the women’s movement en- ically destructive, but they did nothing. Thus gov-
couraged mobilization by many other groups. Gay men ernments, industry, and individuals had no other choice
and lesbian women pressed their own demands, organiz- than to deal piecemeal with the so-called oil shock—a
ing politically and calling for an end to legal discrimination “shock” that turned out to be an earthquake.
and social harassment. People with physical disabilities Coming on the heels of upheaval in the international
joined together to promote their interests. Thus many monetary system, the revolution in energy prices plunged
subordinate groups challenged the dominant majorities, the world into its worst economic decline since the 1930s.
The energy-intensive industries that had driven the econ-

omy up in the 1950s and 1960s now dragged it down. 30
Unemployment rose; productivity and living standards de- EEC
clined. By 1976 a modest recovery was in progress. But
25
when a fundamentalist Islamic revolution struck Iran and
oil production collapsed in that country, the price of crude
oil doubled in 1979 and the world economy succumbed 20 United
to its second oil shock. Unemployment and inflation rose States
Percentage
dramatically before another uneven recovery began in
15
1982. In 1985 the unemployment rate in western Europe
rose to its highest level since the Great Depression. Nine-
teen million people were unemployed. 10
One telling measure of the troubled economy was the Japan
misery index, which combined rates of inflation and un-
employment in a single, powerfully emotional number. 5
Figure 30.2 shows a comparison of misery indexes for the
United States, Japan, and the Common Market countries
between 1970 and 1986. “Misery” increased on both 1970 1974 1978 1982 1986
sides of the Atlantic, but the increase was substantially Year
greater in western Europe, where these hard times were
often referred to simply as “the crisis.” Japan did better FIGURE 30.2 The Misery Index, 1970–1986 Combining
than both Europe and the United States in this period. rates of unemployment and inflation provided a simple but
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, anxious observers, effective measure of economic hardship. This particular index
represents the sum of two times the unemployment rate
recalling the disastrous consequences of the Great De- plus the inflation rate, reflecting the widespread belief that
pression, worried that the Common Market would disin-
Apago PDF Enhancer joblessness causes more suffering than higher prices. EEC =
tegrate in the face of severe economic dislocation and that European Economic Community, or Common Market coun-
economic nationalism would halt steps toward European tries. (Source: OECD data, as given in The Economist, June 15,
unity. Yet the Common Market—now officially known as 1985, p. 69.)
the European Economic Community—continued to at-
tract new members. In 1973 Denmark and Iceland, in ad-
dition to Britain, finally joined. Greece joined in 1981, through extended benefits for the unemployed, pensions
and Portugal and Spain entered in 1986. The nations of for the aged, free medical care and special allowances for
the European Economic Community also cooperated the needy, and a host of lesser supports. The responsive,
more closely in international undertakings, and the move- socially concerned national state undoubtedly contributed
ment toward unity for western Europe stayed alive. to the preservation of political stability and democracy in
the face of economic difficulties that might have brought
revolution and dictatorship in earlier times.
Society in a Time of Economic The energetic response of governments to social needs
helps explain the sharp increase in total government
Uncertainty spending in most countries during the 1970s and early
The most pervasive consequences of economic stagnation 1980s. In 1982 western European governments spent an
in the 1970s and early 1980s were probably psychological average of more than 50 percent of all national income,
and attitudinal. Optimism gave way to pessimism; romantic as compared to only 37 percent fifteen years earlier. In all
utopianism yielded to sober realism. This drastic change in countries, people were much more willing to see their
mood—a complete surprise only to those who had never governments increase spending than raise taxes. This im-
studied history—affected states, institutions, and individ- balance contributed to the rapid growth of budget
uals in countless ways. deficits, national debts, and inflation. By the late 1970s,
To be sure, there were heartbreaking human tragedies— a powerful reaction against government’s ever-increasing
lost jobs, bankruptcies, homelessness, and mental break- role had set in, however, and Western governments were
downs. But on the whole, the welfare system fashioned in gradually forced to introduce austerity measures to slow
the postwar era prevented mass suffering and degradation the growth of public spending and the welfare state.
Part of a broad cultural shift toward greater conserva- Individuals felt the impact of austerity at an early date,
tism, growing voter dissatisfaction with government and for unlike governments, they could not pay their bills by
government spending helped bring Margaret Thatcher printing money and going ever further into debt. The
(b. 1925) to power in Britain in 1979. Thatcher was de- energy crisis of the 1970s forced them to re-examine not
termined to scale back the role of government in Britain, only their fuel bills but also the whole pattern of self-
and in the 1980s—the “Thatcher years”—she pushed indulgent materialism in the postwar years. A growing
through a series of controversial “free-market” policies number of experts and citizens concluded that the world
that transformed postwar Britain. In one of its most was running out of resources and decried wasteful indus-
popular actions, Thatcher’s Conservative government trial practices and environmental pollution. In West Ger-
encouraged low- and moderate-income renters in state- many young activists known as the Greens in 1979
owned housing projects to buy their apartments at rock- founded a political party to fight for environmental causes.
bottom prices. This initiative, part of Thatcher’s broader The German Green movement elected some national
privatization campaign, created a whole new class of and local representatives, and similar parties developed
property owners, thereby eroding the electoral base of throughout Europe as environmentalism became a lead-
Britain’s socialist Labour Party. (See the feature “Indi- ing societal concern.
viduals in Society: Margaret Thatcher.”) Another consequence of austerity in both Europe and
President Ronald Reagan’s success in the United States North America was a leaner, tougher lifestyle in the 1970s
was more limited. With widespread popular support and and early 1980s, featuring more attention to nutrition
the agreement of most congressional Democrats as well as and a passion for exercise. Correspondingly, there was
Republicans, Reagan in 1981 pushed through major cuts less blind reliance on medical science for good health and
in income taxes all across the board. But Reagan and a growing awareness that individuals had to accept a
Congress failed to cut government spending, which in- large portion of the responsibility for illness and disease.
creased as a percentage of national income in the course More people began to realize that they could substantially
of his presidency. Reagan’s massive military buildup was increase their life spans simply by eating regular meals,
partly responsible, but spending on social programs also
Apago PDF Enhancer sleeping seven or eight hours each night, exercising two
grew rapidly. The harsh recession of the early 1980s re- or three times a week, maintaining moderate weight, for-
quired that the government spend more on unemploy- going smoking, and using alcohol only in moderation.
ment benefits, welfare benefits, and medical treatment for Economic troubles also strengthened the new trends
the poor. Moreover, Reagan’s antiwelfare rhetoric mobi- within the family. Men and women were encouraged to
lized the liberal opposition and eventually turned many postpone marriage until they had put their careers on a
moderates against him. Thus the budget deficit soared firm foundation, so the age of marriage rose sharply for
and the U.S. government debt tripled in a decade. both sexes in many Western countries. Indeed, the very
The most striking temporary exception to the general real threat of unemployment—or “underemployment”
trend toward greater frugality was François Mitterrand in a dead-end job—seemed to shape the outlook of a
(1916–1996) of France. After his election as president whole generation. College students of the 1980s were se-
in 1981, Mitterrand led his Socialist Party on a lurch rious, practical, and often conservative. As one young
to the left, launching a vast program of nationaliza- woman at a French university told a reporter in 1985,
tion and public investment designed to spend France “Jobs are the big worry now, so everyone wants to learn
out of economic stagnation. By 1983 this attempt had something practical.”10 In France as elsewhere, the shift
clearly failed. Mitterrand’s Socialist government was away from the romantic visions and the political activism
then compelled to impose a wide variety of austerity of the late 1960s was astonishing.
measures and to maintain those policies for the rest of the Harder times also help explain why ever more women
decade. entered or remained in the workforce after they did
When governments were forced to restrain spending, marry. Although attitudes related to personal fulfillment
large scientific projects were often singled out for cuts. were one reason for the continuing increase—especially
These reductions reinforced the ongoing computer revo- for well-educated, upper-middle-class women—many
lution, which increased the efficiency of small businesses wives in poor and middle-class families simply had to
and stimulated new ventures by young innovative entre- work outside the home because of economic necessity. As
preneurs. Big organizations lost some of their advantages in preindustrial Europe, the wife’s earnings provided the
over small firms. margin of survival for millions of hard-pressed families.
Individuals
in Society
Margaret Thatcher
M argaret Thatcher (b. 1925), the first woman elected More than fifty state-
to lead a major European state, stands as one of the most owned companies,
significant leaders of the late twentieth century. The ranging from the state
controversial “Iron Lady” attacked socialism, promoted tele-phone monopoly
capitalism, and changed the face of modern Britain. to the nationalized steel
Born Margaret Roberts in a small city in southeast- trust, were sold to
ern England, her father was a small shopkeeper who private investors. Small
instilled in his daughter the classic lower-middle-class investors were offered
virtues—hard work, personal responsibility, and practi- shares at bargain prices
cal education. A scholarship student at a local girls to promote “people’s
school, she entered Oxford in 1943 to study chemistry capitalism.” Thatcher
but soon found that politics was her passion. Elected also curbed the power Margaret Thatcher as prime
president of student Conservatives, she ran in 1950 for of British labor unions minister.
Parliament in a solidly Labour district to gain experi- with various laws and (AP Images/Staff-Caulkin)
ence. Articulate and attractive, she also gained the at- actions. Most spectacu-
tention of Denis Thatcher, a wealthy businessman who larly, when in 1984 the once-mighty coal miners re-
drove her to campaign appearances in his Jaguar. Mar- jected more mine closings and doggedly struck for a
ried a year later, the new Mrs. Thatcher abandoned year, Thatcher stood firm and beat them. This outcome
chemistry, went to law school, gave birth to twins, and had a profound psychological impact on the public.
practiced as a tax attorney. In 1959, she returned to Elected again in 1987, Thatcher became increasingly
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politics and won a seat in the Conservative triumph. stubborn, overconfident, and uncaring. Working well
For the next fifteen years Mrs. Thatcher served in with her ideological soul mate, U.S. president Ronald
Parliament and held various ministerial posts when the Reagan, she opposed greater political and economic
Conservatives governed. In 1974, as the economy soured unity within the European Community. This, coupled
and the Conservatives lost two close elections, a rebel- with an unpopular effort to assert financial control
lious Margaret Thatcher adroitly ran for the leadership over city governments, proved her undoing. In 1990, as
position of the Conservative Party and won. In the 1979 in 1974, party stalwarts suddenly revolted and elected
election, as the Labour government faced rampant infla- a new Conservative leader. Raised to the peerage by
tion and crippling strikes, Mrs. Thatcher promised to Queen Elizabeth II, the new Lady Thatcher then sat in
reduce union power, lower taxes, and promote free mar- the largely ceremonial House of Lords. The transfor-
kets. Attracting swing votes from skilled workers, she mational changes of the Thatcher years endured, con-
won and became prime minister. solidated by her Conservative successor and largely
A self-described “conviction politician,” Thatcher accepted by the “New Labour” prime minister, the
rejected postwar Keynesian efforts to manage the econ- moderate Tony Blair.
omy, arguing that governments had created inflation by
printing too much money. Thus her government reduced Questions for Analysis
the supply of money and credit, and it refused to retreat
as interest rates and unemployment soared. Her popu- 1. Why did Margaret Thatcher want to change Britain,
larity plummeted. But Thatcher was saved by good and how did she do it?
luck—and courage. In 1982, the generals ruling 2. Historians have often debated whether great leaders
Argentina suddenly seized the Falkland Islands off the determine the course of history, or whether they
Argentine coast, the home of 1,800 British citizens. Ever only ride successfully the major forces of their time.
a staunch nationalist, Thatcher detached a naval armada Which view of history is supported by Thatcher’s
that recaptured the Falklands without a hitch. Britain achievements? Why?
loved Thatcher’s determination, and the “Iron Lady”
was re-elected in 1983.
Thatcher’s second term was the high point of her
success and influence. Her whole-hearted commitment Improve Your Grade
to privatization changed the face of British industry. Going Beyond Individuals in Society
1013
German Greens Supporting

Poland’s Solidarity Best known
for its passionate commitment to
the environment, the German
Green Party has also supported
many progressive causes and cam-
paigned against militarism and
communism. These Greens are
protesting in 1982 against the
crackdown on Solidarity, the trade
union movement that challenged
Communist rule in Poland in the
1980s. The Greens are now Ger-
many’s third-largest political party,
and they exercise real influence.
(Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
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• What were the causes of the cold war? alism to decolonization proceeded rapidly, surprisingly
smoothly, and without serious damage to western Eu-
• Why did western Europe recover so successfully? rope. Genuine political democracy gained unprecedented
How did colonial peoples win political independence
strength in western Europe, and rapid economic progress
and American blacks triumph in the civil rights
marked a generation.
movement?
Fundamental social changes accompanied the political
• What was the pattern of postwar rebuilding and recovery and economic expansion after World War II.
development in the Soviet Union and Communist Pure science combined with applied technology to
eastern Europe? achieve remarkable success. The triumphs of applied sci-
• How did changing patterns in technology, class ence contributed not only to economic expansion but
relations, women’s work, and youth culture bring major also to a more fluid, less antagonistic class structure, in
social transformations? which specialized education was the high road to ad-
• What were the key aspects of political conflict, vancement for men and women. Married women entered
economic stagnation, and the feminist movement in the labor force in growing numbers.
the late cold war? Postwar developments in eastern Europe displayed both
similarities to and differences from developments in west-
ern Europe and North America. Perhaps the biggest dif-
The recovery of western Europe after World War II was ference was that Stalin imposed harsh one-party rule in the
one of the most striking chapters in the long, uneven lands occupied by his armies, which led to the bitter cold
course of Western civilization. Although the dangerous war. Nevertheless, the Soviet Union became less dictato-
tensions of the cold war frustrated hopes for a truly rial under Khrushchev, and the standard of living in the
peaceful international order, the transition from imperi- Soviet Union improved markedly in the 1950s and 1960s.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Europe and North tury. 2000. A powerful, partly autobiographical account
America entered a time of crisis. Many nations, from that is highly recommended.
France to Czechoslovakia to the United States, experienced Gillingham, John. European Integration, 1950–2003: Su-
major political difficulties, as cold war conflicts and ideo- perstate or New Market Economy? 2003. A brilliant in-
logical battles divided peoples and shook governments. terpretive history.
Beginning with the oil shocks of the 1970s, severe eco-
nomic problems added to the turmoil and brought real Hitchcock, William I. The Struggle for Europe: The Turbu-
hardship to millions of people. Yet in western Europe and lent History of a Divided Continent, 1945 to the Present.
North America, the welfare system held firm, and both 2004. A valuable general study with extensive bibli-
democracy and the movement toward European unity ographies.
successfully passed through the storm. The women’s Jaraush, Konrad. After Hitler: Recivilizing Germans,
movement also mobilized effectively and won expanded 1945–1995. 2006. A stimulating survey by a distin-
rights in the best tradition of Western civilization. Finally, guished historian.
efforts to achieve détente in central Europe while still Judt, Tony. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945.
maintaining a strong Atlantic alliance met some success. 2005. A masterful reconsideration, especially strong on
This modest progress helped lay the foundations for the smaller countries.
sudden end of the cold war and the opening of a new era.
Reitan, Earl. Tory Radicalism: Margaret Thatcher, John
Major, and the Transformation of Modern Britain,
1979–1997. 1997. Clear, concise, and very useful.
Key Terms Scott, Joan W. Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists
Big Three de-Stalinization and the Rights of Man. 1997. An important study of
Marshall Plan Brezhnev Doctrine French feminism.
NATO re-Stalinization Tipton, Frank B., and Robert Aldrich. An Economic and
cold war Big Science
Apago PDF Enhancer
Social History of Europe from 1939 to the Present. 1987.
Christian Democrats Watergate An interesting, wide-ranging account.
Common Market détente
decolonization OPEC Westad, Odd Arne. The Global Cold War: Third World In-
neocolonialism misery index terventions and the Making of Our Times. 2007. Up-to-
date study of the cold war’s global impact.
Notes
Suggested Reading 1. Quoted in N. Graebner, Cold War Diplomacy, 1945–1960 (Prince-
ton, N.J.: Van Nostrand, 1962), p. 17.
Bernstein, Serge. The Republic of de Gaulle, 1958–1969. 2. Quoted in J. Hennessy, Economic “Miracles” (London: Andre
2006. An outstanding work on France. Deutsch, 1964), p. 5.
3. Quoted in S. E. Morison et al., A Concise History of the American
Caute, David. The Year of the Barricades: A Journey Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 697.
Through 1968. 1990. A high-energy examination that 4. Quoted in D. Treadgold, Twentieth Century Russia, 5th ed. (Bos-
brings the 1968 upheavals to life. ton: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), p. 442.
5. Quoted in J. Ziman, The Force of Knowledge: The Scientific Dimension
Chamberlain, M. E. Decolonization: The Fall of European of Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 128.
Empires, 2d ed. 1999. A clear, up-to-date account. 6. Quoted in S. Toulmin, The Twentieth Century: A Promethean Age,
ed. A. Bullock (London: Thames & Hudson, 1971), p. 294.
de Grazia, Victoria. Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance 7. Quoted in N. Cantor, Twentieth-Century Culture: Modernism to De-
Through Twentieth-Century Europe. 2005. Lively, provoca- construction (New York: Peter Lang, 1988), p. 252.
tive account of Europe’s “Americanization.” 8. M. Mitterauer, The History of Youth (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1992), p. 40.
de Senarclens, Pierre. From Yalta to the Iron Curtain: The 9. Quoted in Kessing’s Research Report, Germany and East Europe
Great Powers and the Origins of the Cold War. 1995. A Since 1945: From the Potsdam Agreement to Chancellor Brandt’s “Ost-
valuable work on the cold war. politik” (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973), pp. 284–285.
10. Wall Street Journal, June 28, 1985, p. 1.
Eksteins, Modris. Walking Since Daybreak: A Story of
Eastern Europe, World War II, and the Heart of Our Cen-
A Feminist Critique of Marriage
H aving grown up in Paris in a middle-class

family and become a teacher, novelist, and
and provide for life in pure and unvarying
generality; she perpetuates the species without
intellectual, Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) turned change, she ensures the even rhythm of the days
increasingly to feminist concerns after World War II. and the continuity of the home, seeing to it that
Her most influential work was The Second Sex the doors are locked. But she is allowed no direct
(1949), a massive declaration of independence for influence upon the future nor upon the world; she
contemporary women. reaches out beyond herself toward the social
As an existentialist, Beauvoir believed that all group only through her husband as intermediary.
individuals must accept responsibility for their lives Marriage today still retains, for the most part,
and strive to overcome the tragic dilemmas they face. this traditional form. . . . The male is called upon
Studying the experience of women since antiquity, for action, his vocation is to produce, fight, create,
Beauvoir argued that men had generally used progress, to transcend himself toward the totality
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education and social conditioning to create a of the universe and the infinity of the future; but
dependent “other,” a negative nonman who was not traditional marriage does not invite woman to
permitted to grow and strive for freedom. transcend herself with him; it confines her in
Marriage—on men’s terms—was part of this unjust immanence, shuts her up within the circle of
and undesirable process. Beauvoir’s conclusion that herself. She can thus propose to do nothing more
some couples could establish free and equal unions than construct a life of stable equilibrium in which
was based in part on her experience with philosopher the present as a continuance of the past avoids the
Jean-Paul Sartre, Beauvoir’s encouraging companion menaces of tomorrow—that is, construct precisely
and sometime lover. a life of happiness. . . .
In domestic work, with or without the aid of
Every human existence involves transcendence servants, woman makes her home her own, finds
and immanence at the same time; to go forward, social justification, and provides herself with an
each existence must be maintained, for it to occupation, an activity, that deals usefully and
expand toward the future it must integrate the satisfyingly with material objects—shining stoves,
past, and while intercommunicating with others it fresh, clean clothes, bright copper, polished
should find self-confirmation. These two furniture—but provides no escape from
elements—maintenance and progression—are immanence and little affirmation of
implied in any living activity, and for man marriage individuality. . . . Few tasks are more like the
permits precisely a happy synthesis of the two. In torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its
his occupation and his political life he encounters endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the
change and progress, he senses his extension soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.
through time and the universe; and when he is The housewife wears herself out marking time:
tired of such roaming, he gets himself a home, a she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the
fixed location, and an anchorage in the world. At present. She never senses conquest of a positive
evening he restores his soul in the home, where Good, but rather indefinite struggle against
his wife takes care of his furnishings and children negative Evil. . . . Washing, ironing, sweeping,
and guards the things of the past that she keeps in ferreting out rolls of lint from under wardrobes—
store. But she has no other job than to maintain all this halting of decay is also the denial of life;
1016
for time simultaneously creates and destroys, and
only its negative aspect concerns the
housekeeper. . . .
Thus woman’s work within the home gives her
no autonomy; it is not directly useful to society, it
does not open out on the future, it produces
nothing. It takes on meaning and dignity only as
it is linked with existent beings who reach out
beyond themselves, transcend themselves, toward
society in production and action. That is, far from
freeing the matron, her occupation makes her
dependent upon husband and children; she is
justified through them; but in their lives she is
only an inessential intermediary. . . .
The tragedy of marriage is not that it fails to
assure woman the promised happiness—there is
no such thing as assurance in regard to
happiness—but that it mutilates her; it dooms her
to repetition and routine. The first twenty years of
woman’s life are extraordinarily rich, as we have
seen; she discovers the world and her destiny. At
Simone de Beauvoir as a teacher in 1947, when
twenty or thereabouts mistress of a home, bound she was writing The Second Sex.
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permanently to a man, a child in her arms, she
(Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)
stands with her life virtually finished forever. Real
activities, real work, are the prerogative of her
man: she has mere things to occupy her which are source of joy, richness, and power available to
sometimes tiring but never fully satisfying. . . . human beings.
Marriage should be a combining of two whole,
independent existences, not a retreat, an
annexation, a flight, a remedy. . . . The couple Questions for Analysis
should not be regarded as a unit, a close cell;
rather each individual should be integrated as such 1. How did Beauvoir analyze marriage and
in society at large, where each (whether male or marriage partners in terms of existential
female) could flourish without aid; then philosophy?
attachments could be formed in pure generosity
with another individual equally adapted to the 2. To what extent does a married woman benefit
group, attachments that would be founded upon from a “traditional” marriage, according to
the acknowledgment that both are free. Beauvoir? Why?
This balanced couple is not a utopian fancy: 3. What was Beauvoir’s solution to the situation
such couples do exist, sometimes even within the she described? Was her solution desirable?
frame of marriage, most often outside it. Some Realistic?
mates are united by a strong sexual love that
leaves them free in their friendships and in their 4. What have you learned about the history of
work; others are held together by a friendship that women that supports or challenges Beauvoir’s
does not preclude sexual liberty; more rare are analysis? Include developments since World
those who are at once lovers and friends but do War II and your own reflections.
not seek in each other their sole reasons for living. Source: Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H. M.
Many nuances are possible in the relations Parshley. Copyright © 1952 and renewed 1980 by Alfred
between a man and a woman: in comradeship, A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Used by
pleasure, trust, fondness, co-operation, and love, permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random
they can be for each other the most abundant House, Inc.
1017
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Italians protesting government economic policies gather in front of the Roman Coliseum during a nationwide strike in October
2003. (Philippe Desmazes/AFP/Getty Images)
c h a p t e r
31
Revolution,
Rebuilding, and
New Challenges:
1985 to the
chapter preview
Present
The Decline of Communism in
Eastern Europe
• In what ways did Solidarity confront
the communist system in Poland, and
how did Mikhail Gorbachev try to
reverse the decline of communism in
the Soviet Union?
I n the late twentieth century, massive changes swept through eastern
Europe and opened a new era in human history. In the 1980s a broad
movement to transform the communist system took root in Poland, and
The Revolutions of 1989 efforts to reform and revitalize the communist system in the Soviet
• How did anticommunist revolutions Union snowballed out of control. In 1989 revolutions swept away com-
sweep through eastern Europe in munist rule throughout the entire Soviet bloc. The cold war came to a
spectacular end, West Germany absorbed East Germany, and the Soviet
1989, and what were the immediate Apago PDF Enhancer
Union broke into fifteen independent countries. Thus after forty years of
consequences?
cold war division, Europe regained an underlying unity, as faith in dem-
Building a New Europe in the ocratic government and some kind of market economy became the com-
1990s mon European creed. In 1991 hopes for peaceful democratic progress
• How, in the 1990s, did the different throughout Europe were almost universal.
parts of a reunifying Europe meet the The post–cold war years saw the realization of some of these hopes, but
challenges of postcommunist the new era brought its own problems and tragedies. The cold war divi-
reconstruction, resurgent nationalism, sion of Europe had kept a lid on ethnic conflicts and nationalism, which
and economic union? suddenly burst into the open and led to a disastrous civil war in the for-
mer Yugoslavia. Moreover, most western European economies were
New Challenges in the Twenty- plagued by high unemployment and struggling to adapt to the wide-open
first Century global economy, which undermined cherished social benefits and compli-
• Why did the prospect of population cated the task of working together with the former communist states.
decline, the reality of large-scale Thus in eastern Europe, the process of rebuilding shattered societies was
immigration, and concern for human more difficult than optimists had envisioned in 1991, and in western Eu-
rights emerge as critical issues in rope, the road toward greater unity and eastward expansion proved
contemporary Europe? bumpy. Nevertheless, the will to undo the cold war division prevailed, and
in 2004 eight former communist countries as well as the islands of Cyprus
The West and the Islamic World and Malta joined the European Union—a historic achievement.
• How and why did relations between
the West and the Islamic world
deteriorate dramatically in the early
twenty-first century?
The Future in Perspective on the website college.hmco.com/pic/mckaywest9e
• What does the study of history have
to tell us about the future?
1019
1020 CHAPTER 31 • REVOLUTION, REBUILDING, AND NEW CHALLENGES: 1985 TO THE PRESENT
The new century brought a growing awareness of a Poland had been an unruly satellite from the beginning.
new set of fundamental challenges, which were related to Stalin said that introducing communism to Poland was like
the prospect of population decline, the reality of large- putting a saddle on a cow. Efforts to saddle the cow—
scale immigration, and the promotion of human rights. really a spirited stallion—led to widespread riots in 1956
These challenges promised to preoccupy Western society (see page 997). As a result, Polish Communists dropped
for years to come. their efforts to impose Soviet-style collectivization on
More dramatically, the old, often contentious question the peasants and to break the Roman Catholic Church.
of relations with the Islamic world suddenly re-emerged as Most agricultural land remained in private hands, and the
a critical issue after the attack on New York’s World Trade Catholic Church thrived. Thus the Communists failed to
Center and the Pentagon in 2001. After the West united monopolize society.
in a quick response against the Taliban in Afghanistan, They also failed to manage the economy effectively.
the subsequent war in Iraq divided western Europe and Even the booming 1960s saw little economic improve-
threatened the future of Western cooperation in world ment. In 1970 Poland’s working class rose again in angry
affairs. The war in Iraq also complicated the ongoing in- protest. A new Communist leader came to power, and
tegration of Europe’s rapidly growing Muslim population. he wagered that massive inflows of Western capital and
technology, especially from rich and now-friendly West
Germany (see page 1008), could produce a Polish “eco-
The Decline of Communism nomic miracle.” Instead, bureaucratic incompetence
in Eastern Europe and the first oil shock in 1973 put the economy into a
nosedive. Workers, intellectuals, and the church became
Following the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, the cru- increasingly restive. Then the real Polish miracle oc-
cial event of the Brezhnev era (pages 997–999), the So- curred: Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, archbishop of Cracow, was
viet Union repeatedly demonstrated that it remained a elected pope in 1978. In June 1979, he returned
harsh and aggressive dictatorship. It paid only lip service from Rome, preaching love of Christ and country and
to egalitarian ideology at home and was determined to
Apago PDF Enhancer the “inalienable rights of man.” Pope John Paul II drew
uphold its rule throughout eastern Europe. Thus the So- enormous crowds and electrified the Polish nation.
viet Union eventually crushed the Solidarity movement The economic crisis became a moral and spiritual crisis
in Poland, the powerful, peaceful challenge to Commu- as well.
nist rule in Poland in the early 1980s. Periodic efforts to In August 1980, the sixteen thousand workers at the
achieve fundamental political change were doomed to gigantic Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk (formerly known as
failure sooner or later—or so it seemed to most Western Danzig) laid down their tools and occupied the plant. As
experts into the mid-1980s. other workers joined “in solidarity,” the strikers ad-
And then Mikhail Gorbachev burst on the scene. The vanced revolutionary demands, including the right to
new Soviet leader opened an era of reform that was as form free-trade unions, freedom of speech, release of po-
sweeping as it was unexpected. Although many believed litical prisoners, and economic reforms. After eighteen
that Gorbachev would soon fall from power, his reforms days of shipyard occupation, the government gave in and
rapidly transformed Soviet culture and politics, and they accepted the workers’ demands in the Gdansk Agree-
drastically reduced cold war tensions. But communism, ment. In a state where the Communist Party claimed to
which Gorbachev wanted so desperately to revitalize in rule on behalf of the proletariat, a working-class revolt
order to save it, continued to decline as a functioning sys- had won an unprecedented victory.
tem throughout the Soviet bloc.
Improve Your Grade
• In what ways did Solidarity confront the communist Primary Source: The “Twenty-one Demands”: A Call for
system in Poland, and how did Mikhail Gorbachev try to Workers’ Rights and Freedom in a Socialist State
reverse the decline of communism in the Soviet Union?
Led by feisty Lenin Shipyards electrician and devout
Catholic Lech Walesa (b. 1943), the workers proceeded
to organize their free and democratic trade union. They
Solidarity in Poland called it Solidarity. Joined by intellectuals and supported
Gorbachev’s reforms interacted with a resurgence of pop- by the Catholic Church, Solidarity became the union of
ular protest in the Soviet Union’s satellite empire. Devel- a nation. By March 1981, a full-time staff of 40,000
opments in Poland were most striking and significant. linked 9.5 million union members together as Solidarity
The Decline of Communism in Eastern Europe • 1021
published its own newspapers and cultural and intellec- Chronology

tual freedom blossomed in Poland. Solidarity’s leaders
had tremendous support, and the ever-present threat of 1985 Glasnost leads to greater freedom of speech and
calling a nationwide strike gave them real power in on- expression in the Soviet Union
going negotiations with the Communist bosses.
1985– Decline in birthrate in industrialized nations
But if Solidarity had power, it did not try to take the continues
reins of government in 1981. History, the Brezhnev
Doctrine, and virulent attacks from communist neigh- 1986 Single European Act lays groundwork for single
bors all seemed to guarantee the intervention of the Red currency
Army and a terrible bloodbath if Polish Communists August 1989 Solidarity gains power in Poland
“lost control.” Thus the Solidarity revolution remained a
“self-limiting revolution” aimed at defending the cultural November 1989 Collapse of the Berlin Wall
and trade-union freedoms won in the Gdansk Agree- November–December 1989 Velvet Revolution
ment, and it refused to use force to challenge directly the ends communism in Czechoslovakia
Communist monopoly of political power.
October 1990 Reunification of Germany
Solidarity’s combination of strength and moderation
postponed a showdown, as the Soviet Union played a 1990–1991 First war with Iraq
waiting game of threats and pressure. After a confronta-
July 1991 Failed coup against Gorbachev in Russia
tion in March 1981, Walesa settled for minor govern-
ment concessions, and Solidarity dropped plans for a December 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union
massive general strike. Criticism of Walesa’s moderate 1991 Maastricht treaty sets financial criteria for Euro-
leadership grew, and Solidarity lost its cohesiveness. The pean monetary union
worsening economic crisis also encouraged grassroots
radicalism, as the Polish Communist leadership shrewdly 1991–2000 Resurgence of nationalism and ethnic
denounced Solidarity for promoting economic collapse conflict in eastern Europe
Apago PDF Enhancer
and provoking Soviet invasion. In December 1981,
1991–2001 Civil war in Yugoslavia
Communist leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski suddenly
1992–1997 “Shock therapy” in Russia causes decline
struck, proclaiming martial law, arresting Solidarity’s
of the economy
leaders, and “saving” the nation.
Outlawed and driven underground, Solidarity fought 1993 Creation of the European Union; growth of
successfully to maintain its organization and to voice the illegal immigration in Europe
aspirations of the Polish masses after 1981. Part of the 1996 Cronin, The World the Cold War Made
reason for the union’s survival was the government’s un-
willingness (and probably its inability) to impose full-scale 1998– Growing support for global human rights in
terror. Moreover, millions of Poles decided to continue Europe
acting as if they were free, even though they were not. 1999 Russian economy booms
Cultural and intellectual life remained extremely vigorous
as the faltering Polish economy continued to deteriorate. September 2001 Terrorist attack on the United States
Thus popular support for outlawed Solidarity remained 2001 War in Afghanistan
strong under martial law in the 1980s, preparing the way
January 2002 New euro currency goes into effect in
for the union’s political rebirth toward the end of the
the European Union
decade.
The rise and survival of Solidarity showed the desire of 2003 Second war in Iraq begins
millions of eastern Europeans for greater political liberty
2004 Ten new states join European Union
and the enduring appeal of cultural freedom, trade-union
rights, patriotic nationalism, and religious feeling. Not November 2005 Young Muslims riot in France
least, Solidarity’s challenge encouraged fresh thinking in 2006 Murderous sectarian conflict in Iraq increases
the Soviet Union, ever the key to lasting change in the
Eastern bloc.
Apago PDF Enhancer

Lech Walesa and Solidarity An inspiration for fellow workers at the Lenin Shipyards in
the dramatic and successful strike against the Communist bosses in August 1980, Walesa
played a key role in Solidarity before and after it was outlawed. Speaking here to old comrades
at the Lenin Shipyards after Solidarity was again legalized in 1988, Walesa personified an
enduring opposition to Communist rule in eastern Europe. (G. Merrillon/Gamma Presse/EYEDEA)
ries, neighborhoods, and villages. At each level of this

Gorbachev’s Reforms massive state bureaucracy, the overlapping hierarchy of
the Communist Party, with its 17.5 million members,
in the Soviet Union continued to watch over all decisions and manipulate
Fundamental change in Russian history has often come every aspect of national life. Organized opposition was
in short, intensive spurts, which contrast vividly with long impossible, and average people simply left politics to the
periods of immobility. The era of reform launched by bosses.
Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 was one such decisive trans- Yet the massive state and party bureaucracy was a
formation. Gorbachev’s initiatives brought political and mixed blessing. It safeguarded the elite, but it promoted
cultural liberalization to the Soviet Union, and they then apathy in the masses. Therefore, when the ailing Brezh-
permitted democracy and national self-determination to nev finally died in 1982, his successor, the long-time
triumph spectacularly in the old satellite empire and chief of the secret police, Yuri Andropov (1914–1984),
eventually in the Soviet Union itself, although this was tried to invigorate the system. Relatively little came of
certainly not Gorbachev’s original intention. these efforts, but they combined with a sharply worsen-
As we have seen (page 998), the Soviet Union’s Com- ing economic situation to set the stage for the emergence
munist Party elite seemed secure in the early 1980s as far in 1985 of Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1931), the most vig-
as any challenge from below was concerned. The long- orous Soviet leader in a generation.
established system of administrative controls continued Trained as a lawyer and working his way up as a Com-
to stretch downward from the central ministries and state munist Party official in the northern Caucasus, Gorbachev
committees to provincial cities, and from there to facto- was smart, charming, and tough. Gorbachev believed in
The Decline of Communism in Eastern Europe • 1023
communism, but he realized it was failing to keep up with

Western capitalism and technology. This was eroding the
Soviet Union’s status as a superpower. Thus Gorbachev
(and his intelligent, influential wife, Raisa, a dedicated
professor of Marxist-Leninist thought) wanted to save the
Soviet system by revitalizing it with fundamental reforms.
Gorbachev was also an idealist. He wanted to improve
conditions for ordinary citizens. Understanding that the
endless waste and expense of the cold war arms race had
had a disastrous impact on living conditions in the Soviet
Union, he realized that improvement at home required
better relations with the West.
In his first year in office, Gorbachev attacked corruption
and incompetence in the bureaucracy, and he consoli-
dated his power. He attacked alcoholism and drunken-
ness, which were deadly scourges of Soviet society, and
elaborated his ambitious reform program.
The first set of reform policies was designed to transform
and restructure the economy, in order to provide for the
real needs of the Soviet population. To accomplish this
economic “restructuring,” or perestroika, Gorbachev and
his supporters permitted an easing of government price
controls on some goods, more independence for state
enterprises, and the setting up of profit-seeking private
cooperatives to provide personal services for consumers.
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These timid economic reforms initially produced a few
improvements, but shortages then grew as the economy
stalled at an intermediate point between central planning
and free-market mechanisms. By late 1988, widespread
consumer dissatisfaction posed a serious threat to Gor-
bachev’s leadership and the entire reform program.
Improve Your Grade
Primary Source: The Last Heir of Lenin Explains His
Reform Plans: Perestroika and Glasnost
Gorbachev’s bold and far-reaching campaign “to tell it

like it is” was much more successful. Very popular in a
country where censorship, dull uniformity, and outright
lies had long characterized public discourse, the new- Mikhail Gorbachev In his acceptance speech before the
Supreme Soviet (the U.S.S.R.’s parliament), newly elected
found “openness,” or glasnost, of the government and president Mikhail Gorbachev vowed to assume “all responsi-
the media marked an astonishing break with the past. bility” for the success or failure of perestroika. Previous parlia-
Long-banned and vilified émigré writers sold millions of ments were no more than tools of the Communist Party, but
copies of their works in new editions, while denunciations this one actively debated and even opposed government pro-
of Stalin and his terror became standard fare in plays and grams. (Vlastimir Shone/Gamma Presse/EYEDEA)
movies. Thus initial openness in government pronounce-
ments quickly went much further than Gorbachev in- since 1917. Gorbachev and the party remained in con-
tended and led to something approaching free speech and trol, but a minority of critical independents was elected
free expression, a veritable cultural revolution. in April 1989 to a revitalized Congress of People’s
Democratization was the third element of reform. Be- Deputies. Millions of Soviets then watched the new con-
ginning as an attack on corruption in the Communist gress for hours on television as Gorbachev and his minis-
Party, it led to the first free elections in the Soviet Union ters saw their proposals debated and even rejected. Thus
NORWAY FINLAND sion. Thus nationalist demands contin-

Oslo
SWEDEN RUSSIAN S.F.S.R. ued to grow in the non-Russian Soviet
Helsinki
Stockholm Leningrad republics.
Tallinn
ESTONIA
Finally, the Soviet leader brought
Sites of popular “new political thinking” to the field of
demonstrations
Sofia Capital cities
foreign affairs and acted on it. He with-
Riga
DENMARK
LATVIA
drew Soviet troops from Afghanistan
Copenhagen Baltic and sought to reduce East-West ten-
Sea LITHUANIA sions. Of enormous importance, he
Vilnius
Schwerin
R.S.F.S.R. sought to halt the arms race with the
Hamburg Gdansk
EAST Minsk United States and convinced President
GERMANY
Berlin POLAND BELORUSSIA Ronald Reagan of his sincerity. In De-
Magdeburg
Halle Cottbus
Poznan Warsaw cember 1987, the two leaders agreed in
Leipzig Dresden SOVIET UNION a Washington summit to eliminate all
Karl-Marx-Stadt
WEST Prague
Wroclaw land-based intermediate-range missiles
Cracow Kiev Kharkov
GERMANY
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
in Europe, setting the stage for more
Ostrava
UKRAINE arms reductions. Gorbachev also en-
Munich Brno
Bratislava
couraged reform movements in Poland
Vienna
and Hungary and pledged to respect
AUSTRIA Budapest
Iasi MOLDAVIA the political choices of the peoples of
HUNGARY Kishinev
ROMANIA
Sebes Odesa eastern Europe, repudiating the Brezh-
Ljubljana Sibiu
Timisoara Brasov Galati nev Doctrine. By early 1989, it seemed
Novi Sad that if Gorbachev held to his word, the
Belgrade Braila
Knin Bucharest tragic Soviet occupation of eastern Eu-
Sarajevo Black Sea
ITALY YUGOSLAVIA Apago PDF Enhancer rope might well wither away, taking the
Pec Pristina BULGARIA Varna long cold war with it once and for all.
Rome Titograd Sofia
Shkoder Prizren Plovdiv
Skopje
Kurdzhali
Tirane
ALBANIA
Istanbul TURKEY
The Revolutions
GREECE
0 150 300 Km.
of
0 150 300 Mi.
Instead, history accelerated. In 1989

MAP 31.1 Democratic Movements in Eastern Europe, 1989 With Gor- Gorbachev’s plan to reform commu-
bachev’s repudiation of the Brezhnev Doctrine, the revolutionary drive for free- nism in order to save it snowballed out
dom and democracy spread throughout eastern Europe. Countries that had been of control. A series of largely peaceful
satellites in the orbit of the Soviet Union began to set themselves free to establish revolutions swept across eastern Eu-
their own place in the universe of free nations.
rope (see Map 31.1), overturning exist-
ing communist regimes and ending the
millions of Soviet citizens took practical lessons in open communists’ monopoly of power. Watched on television
discussion, critical thinking, and representative govern- in the Soviet Union and around the world, these stirring
ment. The result was a new political culture at odds with events marked the triumph and the transformation of
the Communist Party’s monopoly of power and control. long-standing opposition to communist rule and foreign
Democratization ignited demands for greater auton- domination in eastern Europe.
omy and even for national independence by non-Russian The revolutions of 1989 had momentous consequences.
minorities, especially in the Baltic region and in the Cau- First, the peoples of eastern Europe joyfully re-entered
casus. In April 1989, troops with sharpened shovels the mainstream of contemporary European life and cul-
charged into a rally of Georgian separatists in Tbilisi and ture, after having been conquered and brutalized by Nazis
left twenty dead. But whereas China’s Communist lead- and communists for almost sixty years. Second, Gor-
ers brutally massacred similar prodemocracy demon- bachev’s reforms boomeranged, and a complicated anti-
strators in Beijing in June 1989 and reimposed rigid communist revolution swept through the Soviet Union,
authoritarian rule, Gorbachev drew back from repres- as the multinational empire broke into a large Russia and
fourteen other independent states. Third, West Germany the beginning. It applied shock therapy designed to make
quickly absorbed its East German rival and emerged as a clean break with state planning and move quickly to
the most influential country in Europe. Finally, the long market mechanisms and private property. Thus the Soli-
cold war came to an abrupt end, and the United States darity government abolished controls on many prices on
suddenly stood as the world’s only superpower. January 1, 1990, and reformed the monetary system
• How did anticommunist revolutions sweep through with a “big bang.”
eastern Europe in 1989, and what were the immediate Hungary followed Poland. Hungary’s Communist
consequences? Party boss, János Kádár, had permitted liberalization of
the rigid planned economy after the 1956 uprising in ex-
change for political obedience and continued Commu-
nist control. In May 1988, in an effort to retain power by
The Collapse of Communism granting modest political concessions, the party replaced
Kádár with a reform communist. But opposition groups
in Eastern Europe rejected piecemeal progress, and in the summer of 1989
Solidarity and the Polish people led the way to revolution the Hungarian Communist Party agreed to hold free
in eastern Europe. In 1988 widespread labor unrest, rag- elections in early 1990. Welcoming Western investment
ing inflation, and the outlawed Solidarity’s refusal to and moving rapidly toward multiparty democracy, Hun-
cooperate with the military government had brought gary’s Communists now enjoyed considerable popular
Poland to the brink of economic collapse. Thus Solidar- support, and they believed, quite mistakenly it turned
ity skillfully pressured Poland’s frustrated Communist out, that they could defeat the opposition in the upcom-
leaders into another round of negotiations that might ing elections. In an effort to strengthen their support at
work out a sharing of power to resolve the political stale- home and also put pressure on East Germany’s hard-line
mate and the economic crisis. The subsequent agreement Communist regime, the Hungarians opened their border
in early 1989 legalized Solidarity and declared that a to East Germans and tore down the barbed-wire “iron
large minority of representatives to the Polish parliament
Apago PDF Enhancer curtain” with Austria. Thus tens of thousands of dissatis-
would be chosen by free elections in June 1989. Still fied East German “vacationers” began pouring into
guaranteed a parliamentary majority and expecting to Hungary, crossed into Austria as refugees, and continued
win many of the contested seats, the Communists be- on to immediate resettlement in thriving West Germany.
lieved that their rule was guaranteed for four years and The flight of East Germans led to the rapid growth of
that Solidarity would keep the workers in line. a homegrown protest movement in East Germany. Intel-
Lacking access to the state-run media, Solidarity suc- lectuals, environmentalists, and Protestant ministers took
ceeded nonetheless in mobilizing the country and winning the lead, organizing huge candlelight demonstrations
most of the contested seats in an overwhelming victory. and arguing that a democratic but still socialist East Ger-
Moreover, many angry voters crossed off the names of un- many was both possible and desirable. These “stayers”
opposed party candidates, so that the Communist Party failed to convince the “leavers,” however, who continued
failed to win the majority its leaders had anticipated. Soli- to flee the country en masse. In a desperate attempt to
darity members jubilantly entered the Polish parliament, stabilize the situation, the East German government
and a dangerous stalemate quickly developed. But Solidar- opened the Berlin Wall in November 1989, and people
ity leader Lech Walesa, a gifted politician who always repu- danced for joy atop that grim symbol of the prison state.
diated violence, adroitly obtained a majority by securing East Germany’s aging Communist leaders were swept
the allegiance of two minor procommunist parties that had aside, and a reform government took power and sched-
been part of the coalition government after World War II. uled free elections.
In August 1989, the editor of Solidarity’s weekly news- In Czechoslovakia, communism died quickly in
paper was sworn in as Poland’s new noncommunist leader. November–December 1989 in an almost good-humored
In its first year and a half, the new Solidarity government ousting of Communist bosses. This so-called Velvet Rev-
cautiously introduced revolutionary political changes. It olution grew out of popular demonstrations led by stu-
eliminated the hated secret police, the Communist min- dents, intellectuals, and a dissident playwright turned
isters in the government, and finally Jaruzelski himself, moral revolutionary named Václav Havel. The protesters
but it did so step by step in order to avoid confrontation practically took control of the streets and forced the
with the army or the Soviet Union. However, in economic Communists into a power-sharing arrangement, which
affairs, the Solidarity-led government was radical from quickly resulted in the resignation of the Communist
Apago PDF Enhancer
Demonstrators During the Velvet Revolution Hundreds of thousands of Czechoslova-

kian citizens flooded the streets of Prague in peaceful, daily protests after the police savagely
beat student demonstrators in mid-November 1989. On the night of November 24, three
hundred thousand people roared “Dubček-Havel” when Alexander Dubček, the aging re-
former ousted in 1968 by the Soviets, stood on a balcony with Václav Havel, the leading
opponent of communism. That night the communists agreed to share power, and a few days
later they resigned from the government. (Corbis)
government. As 1989 ended, the Czechoslovakian as-

sembly elected Havel president.
The Disintegration of the Soviet Union
Only in Romania was revolution violent and bloody. As 1990 began, revolutionary changes had triumphed in
There ironfisted Communist dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu all but two eastern European states—tiny Albania and
(1918–1989) had long combined Stalinist brutality with the vast Soviet Union. The great question now became
stubborn independence from Moscow. Faced with mass whether the Soviet Union would follow its former satel-
protests in December, Ceauşescu, alone among eastern lites and whether reform communism would give way to
European bosses, ordered his ruthless security forces to a popular anticommunist revolution.
slaughter thousands, thereby sparking a classic armed up- In February 1990, as competing Russian politicians
rising. After Ceauşescu’s forces were defeated, the tyrant noisily presented their programs, and nationalists in the
and his wife were captured and executed by a military non-Russian republics demanded autonomy or indepen-
court. A coalition government emerged from the fight- dence from the Soviet Union, the Communist Party suf-
ing, although the legacy of Ceauşescu’s oppression left a fered a stunning defeat in local elections throughout the
very troubled country. country. As in the eastern European satellites, democrats
and anticommunists won clear majorities in the leading Gorbachev’s eroding power and his unwillingness to risk
cities of the Russian Federation. Moreover, in Lithuania a universal suffrage election for the presidency strength-
the people elected an uncompromising nationalist as pres- ened his great rival, Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007). A radical
ident, and the newly chosen parliament declared Lithuania reform communist who had been purged by party conser-
an independent state. Gorbachev responded by placing vatives in 1987, Yeltsin embraced the democratic move-
an economic embargo on Lithuania, but he refused to ment, and in May 1990 he was elected leader of the Russian
use the army to crush the separatist government. The re- Federation’s parliament. He boldly announced that Russia
sult was a tense political stalemate, which undermined would put its interests first and declare its independence
popular support for Gorbachev. Separating himself fur- from the Soviet Union, thereby broadening the base of the
ther from Communist hardliners, Gorbachev asked So- anticommunist movement as he joined the patriotism of
viet citizens to ratify a new constitution, which formally ordinary Russians with the democratic aspirations of big-
abolished the Communist Party’s monopoly of political city intellectuals. Gorbachev tried to save the Soviet Union
power and expanded the power of the Congress of Peo- with a new treaty that would link the member republics in
ple’s Deputies. Retaining his post as party secretary, Gor- a looser, freely accepted confederation, but six of the fifteen
bachev convinced a majority of deputies to elect him Soviet republics rejected Gorbachev’s pleas.
president of the Soviet Union.
Apago PDF Enhancer
The Fall of the Berlin Wall The sudden opening of the Berlin Wall in November 1989
dramatized the spectacular collapse of communism throughout eastern Europe. Built by the
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1961, the hated barrier had stopped the flow of refugees
from East Germany to West Germany. (Patrick Piel/Gamma Presse/EYEDEA)
Apago PDF Enhancer
Celebrating Victory, August 1991 A Russian soldier flashes the victory sign in front of the
Russian parliament, as the last-gasp coup attempt of Communist hardliners is defeated by
Boris Yeltsin and an enthusiastic public. The soldier has cut the hammer and sickle out of the
Soviet flag, consigning those famous symbols of proletarian revolution to what Trotsky once
called the “garbage can of history.” (Filip Horvat/Corbis Saba)
Opposed by democrats and nationalists, Gorbachev anticommunist revolution swept the Russian Federation as
was also challenged again by the Communist old guard. Yeltsin and his supporters outlawed the Communist Party
Defeated at the Communist Party congress in July 1990, and confiscated its property. Locked in a personal and
a gang of hardliners kidnapped a vacationing Gorbachev political duel with Gorbachev, Yeltsin and his democratic
and his family in the Caucasus and tried to seize the So- allies declared Russia independent and withdrew from
viet government in August 1991. But the attempted the Soviet Union. All the other Soviet republics also left.
coup collapsed in the face of massive popular resistance, The Soviet Union—and Gorbachev’s job—ceased to ex-
which rallied around Yeltsin, recently elected president ist on December 25, 1991 (see Map 31.2). The indepen-
of the Russian Federation by universal suffrage. As the dent republics of the old Soviet Union then established a
world watched spellbound on television, Yeltsin defiantly loose confederation, the Commonwealth of Indepen-
denounced the rebels from atop a stalled tank in central dent States, which played only a minor role in the 1990s.
Moscow and declared the “rebirth of Russia.” The army
supported Yeltsin, and Gorbachev was rescued and re- German Unification and
turned to power as head of the Soviet Union.
The leaders of the coup wanted to preserve Communist the End of the Cold War
power, state ownership, and the multinational Soviet The sudden death of communism in East Germany in
Union, but they succeeded only in destroying all three. An 1989 reopened the “German question” and raised the
North
Sea NORWAY ARC TIC O C EAN
DENMARK SWEDEN
a
GERMANY Se
FINLAND
Baltic
(RUSSIA) Tallinn

ESTONIA
POLAND Riga
LITHUANIA LATVIA St. Petersburg
Vilnius (Leningrad)
Le
BELARUS a
n
Y enisey
Minsk er V ol g a
ep
i
Ob
Dn
Kiev Moscow

MOLDOVA
Kishinev R U S S I A
UKRAINE
na
Le
lg a
Vo
Ob
Black
Sea
CHECHNYA
GEORGIA
KAZAKHSTAN e n ise
Y
TURKEY y
S ea
Tbilisi
ARMENIA
Yerevan
AZERBAIJAN Aral
Sea

ian
Baku
(AZER.) MONGOLIA
C asp
IRAQ UZBEKISTAN
Alma-Ata
Ashkhabad Tashkent
Bishkek
IRAN TURKMENISTAN KYRGYZSTAN Capital Cities
Dushanbe CHINA
Capital of the Commonwealth
Apago PDF Enhancer
AFGHANISTAN
TAJIKISTAN of Independent States
MAP 31.2 Russia and the Successor States After the attempt in August 1991 to depose
Gorbachev failed, an anticommunist revolution swept the Soviet Union. Led by Russia and
Boris Yeltsin, the republics that formed the Soviet Union declared their sovereignty and inde-
pendence. Eleven of the fifteen republics then formed a loose confederation called the Com-
monwealth of Independent States, but the integrated economy of the Soviet Union dissolved
into separate national economies, each with its own goals and policies.
threat of renewed cold war conflict over Germany. Taking poured across the border into West Germany. Almost all
power in October 1989, East German reform commu- returned to their homes in the East, but the joy of warm
nists, enthusiastically supported by leading East German welcomes from long-lost friends and loved ones and the
intellectuals and former dissidents, wanted to preserve so- exhilarating experience of shopping in the well-stocked
cialism by making it genuinely democratic and responsive stores of the much wealthier West aroused long-dormant
to the needs of the people. They argued for a third way, hopes of unity among ordinary citizens.
which would go beyond the failed Stalinism they had ex- Second, West German chancellor Helmut Kohl and his
perienced and the ruthless capitalism they saw in the closest advisers skillfully exploited the historic opportunity
West. These reformers supported closer ties with West on their doorstep. Sure of support from the United States,
Germany, but they feared unification and wanted to pre- whose leadership he had steadfastly followed, in Novem-
serve a distinct East German identity. ber 1989 Kohl presented a ten-point plan for a step-by-
These efforts failed, and within a few months East step unification in cooperation with both East Germany
Germany was absorbed into an enlarged West Germany, and the international community. Kohl then promised the
much like a faltering company is merged into a stronger struggling citizens of East Germany an immediate eco-
rival and ceases to exist. Three factors were particularly nomic bonanza—a one-for-one exchange of all East Ger-
important in this sudden absorption. First, in the first man marks in savings accounts and pensions into much
week after the Berlin Wall was opened, almost 9 million more valuable West German marks. This generous offer
East Germans—roughly one-half of the total population— helped a well-financed conservative-liberal Alliance for
Germany, which was set up in East Germany and was lost both the will and the means to be a global super-
closely tied to Kohl’s West German Christian Democrats, power. Yet the United States retained the strength and
to overwhelm those who argued for the preservation of the desire to influence political and economic develop-
some kind of independent socialist society in East Ger- ments on a global scale. Thus the United States, still
many. In March 1990, the Alliance outdistanced the So- flanked by many allies, emerged rather suddenly as the
cialist Party and won almost 50 percent of the votes in an world’s only surviving superpower.
East German parliamentary election. (The Communists In 1991 the United States used its military superiority
ignominiously fell to fringe-party status.) The Alliance on a grand scale in a quick war with Iraq in western Asia.
for Germany quickly negotiated an economic union on Emerging in 1988 from an eight-year war with neigh-
favorable terms with Chancellor Kohl. boring Iran with a big, tough army equipped by the So-
Finally, in the summer of 1990, the crucial international viet bloc, western Europe, and the United States, Iraq’s
aspect of German unification was successfully resolved. strongman Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) set out to make
Unification would once again make Germany the strongest himself the leader of the entire Arab world. Eyeing the
state in central Europe and would directly affect the secu- great oil wealth of his tiny southern neighbor, Saddam
rity of the Soviet Union. But Gorbachev swallowed hard— Hussein’s forces suddenly invaded Kuwait in August 1990
Western cartoonists showed Stalin turning over in his and proclaimed the annexation of Kuwait.
grave—and negotiated the best deal he could. In a historic Reacting vigorously to free Kuwait, the United States
agreement signed by Gorbachev and Kohl in July 1990, a mobilized the U.N. Security Council, which in August
uniting Germany solemnly affirmed its peaceful intentions 1990 imposed a strict naval blockade on Iraq. Receiving
and pledged never to develop nuclear, biological, or chem- the support of some Arab states, as well as of Great Britain
ical weapons. Germany also sweetened the deal by promis- and France, the United States also landed 500,000 Amer-
ing to make enormous loans to the hard-pressed Soviet ican soldiers in Saudi Arabia near the border of Kuwait.
Union. In October 1990, East Germany merged into West When a defiant Saddam Hussein refused to withdraw from
Germany, forming henceforth a single nation under the Kuwait, the Security Council authorized the U.S.-led mil-
West German laws and constitution. Apago PDF Enhancer itary coalition to attack Iraq. The American army and air
The peaceful reunification of Germany accelerated the force then smashed Iraqi forces in a lightning-quick desert
pace of agreements to liquidate the cold war. In Novem- campaign, although the United States stopped short of
ber 1990, delegates from twenty-two European coun- toppling Saddam because it feared a sudden disintegration
tries joined those from the United States and the Soviet of Iraq more than Saddam’s hanging on to power.
Union in Paris and agreed to a scaling down of all their The defeat of Iraqi armies in the Gulf War demon-
armed forces. The delegates also solemnly affirmed that strated the awesome power of the U.S. military, rebuilt
all existing borders in Europe—from unified Germany to and revitalized by the spending and patriotism of the
the newly independent Baltic republics—were legal and 1980s. Little wonder that in the flush of yet another vic-
valid. The Paris Accord was for all practical purposes a tory, the first President Bush spoke of a “new world
general peace treaty, bringing an end to World War II order,” an order that would apparently feature the
and the cold war that followed. United States and a cooperative United Nations working
Peace in Europe encouraged the United States and the together to impose stability throughout the world.
Soviet Union to scrap a significant portion of their nu-
clear weapons in a series of agreements. In September
1991, a confident President George H. W. Bush also can- Building a New Europe
celed the around-the-clock alert status for American in the s
bombers outfitted with atomic bombs, and a floundering
Gorbachev quickly followed suit. For the first time in The fall of communism, the end of the cold war, and the
four decades, Soviet and American nuclear weapons were collapse of the Soviet Union opened a new era in European
no longer standing ready to destroy capitalism, commu- and world history. The dimensions and significance of this
nism, and life itself. new era, opening suddenly and unexpectedly, are subject
to debate. We are so close to what is going on that we
lack vital perspective. Yet the historian must take a stand.
The Gulf War of 1991 First, it seems clear that Europe took giant strides toward
As anticommunist revolutions swept eastern Europe and a loose unification of fundamental institutions and beliefs
East-West tensions rapidly disappeared, the Soviet Union and that many broad economic, social, and political
Building a New Europe in the 1990s • 1031
trends operated all across the continent in the 1990s. We outperform its western European counterparts in the
shall focus on three of the most important trends: the Clinton years. Second, the deregulation of markets and
pressure on national economies increasingly caught up in the privatization of state-controlled enterprises were an
global capitalism; the defense of social achievements un- integral part of the powerful trend toward a wide-open,
der attack; and a resurgence of nationalism and ethnic wheeler-dealer global economy. The rules of the global
conflict. Second, with these common themes providing economy, which were laid down by Western govern-
an organizational framework, we shall examine the course ments, multinational corporations, and international fi-
of development in the three overlapping but still distinct nancial organizations such as the International Monetary
regions of contemporary Europe. These are Russia and Fund (IMF), called for the free movement of capital and
the western states of the old Soviet Union, previously goods and services, as well as low inflation and limited
communist eastern Europe, and western Europe. government deficits. Accepting these rules and attempt-
• How, in the 1990s, did the different parts of a reunifying ing to follow them was the price of full participation in
Europe meet the challenges of postcommunist the global economy.
reconstruction, resurgent nationalism, and economic union? The ongoing computer and electronics revolution
strengthened the move toward a global economy. That
revolution thrived on the diffusion of ever-cheaper com-
putational and informational capacity to small research
Common Patterns and Problems groups and private businesses, which were both cause
The end of the cold war and the disintegration of the So- and effect of the revolution itself. By the 1990s, an inex-
viet Union ended the division of Europe into two oppos- pensive personal computer had the power of a 1950s
ing camps with two different political and economic mainframe that filled a room and cost hundreds of thou-
systems. Thus, although Europe in the 1990s was a col- sands of dollars. The computer revolution reduced the
lage of diverse peoples with their own politics, cultures, costs of distance, speeding up communications and help-
and histories, the entire continent shared an underlying ing businesses tap cheaper labor overseas. Reducing the
network of common developments and challenges.
Apago PDF Enhancer friction of distance made threats of moving factories
Of critical importance, in economic affairs European abroad ring true and helped hold down wages at home.
leaders embraced, or at least accepted, a large part of the Globalization, the emergence of a freer global econ-
neoliberal, free-market vision of capitalist development. omy, probably did speed up world economic growth as
This was most strikingly the case in eastern Europe, enthusiasts invariably claimed, but it also had powerful
where states such as Poland and Hungary implemented and quite negative social consequences. Millions of ordi-
market reforms and sought to create vibrant capitalist nary citizens in western Europe believed that global cap-
economies. Thus postcommunist governments in eastern italism and freer markets were undermining hard-won
Europe freed prices, turned state enterprises over to pri- social achievements. As in the United States and Great
vate owners, and sought to move toward strong curren- Britain in the 1980s, the public in other countries gener-
cies and balanced budgets. Milder doses of this same ally associated globalization with the increased unem-
free-market medicine were administered by politicians ployment that accompanied corporate downsizing, the
and big business to the lackluster economies of west- efforts to reduce the power of labor unions, and, above
ern Europe. These initiatives and proposals for further all, government plans to reduce social benefits. The reac-
changes marked a considerable modification in western tion was particularly intense in France and Germany,
Europe’s still-dominant welfare capitalism, which fea- where unions remained strong and socialists championed
tured government intervention, high taxes, and high lev- a minimum of change in social policies.
els of social benefits. Indeed, the broad movement toward neoliberal global
Two factors were particularly important in accounting development sparked a powerful counterattack as the
for this ongoing shift from welfare state activism to 1990s ended. Financial crises, which devastated many of
tough-minded capitalism. First, Europeans were only fol- Asia’s smaller economies and threatened to spread, trig-
lowing practices and ideologies revived and enshrined in gered this reaction. Many critics and protesters argued
the 1980s in the United States and Great Britain (see increasingly that globalization damaged poor countries as
page 1012). Western Europeans especially took Ameri- much as wealthy ones. Above all, critics insisted that glob-
can prescriptions more seriously because U.S. prestige alization hurt the world’s poor, because multinational
and power were so high after the United States “won the corporations destroyed local industries and paid pitiful
cold war” and because the U.S. economy continued to wages, and because international financial organizations
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Santiago Calatrava: Tenerife Concert Hall, 2003 One of the most celebrated of the
“postmodern” architects, who go beyond the modernism that dominated from the 1920s to
the 1970s, Calatrava is known for swooping shapes and unusual spaces that convey a sense of
motion to his buildings. The enormous, free-standing “roof ” of this concert hall rises on a
waterfront property like a cresting, crashing wave, linking the ocean with the city and beckon-
ing tourists to Tenerife and Portugal’s Canary Islands. Postmodern architects rely heavily on
three-dimensional computer modeling to fashion complex forms and translate them into
construction blueprints. (Barbara Burg and Oliver Schuh/Palladium Photodesign, Cologne, Germany)
demanded harsh balanced budgets and deep cuts in gov- Europe followed the same general political model, al-
ernment social programs. These attacks shook global though the variations were endless.
neoliberalism, but it remained dominant. The triumph of the liberal democratic program led the
Political developments across Europe also were loosely American scholar Francis Fukuyama to discern in 1992
unified by common patterns and problems. The demise the “end of history” in his influential book by that title.
of European communism brought the apparent triumph According to Fukuyama, first fascism and Nazism and
of liberal democracy everywhere. All countries embraced then communism had been definitively bested by liberal
genuine electoral competition, with elected presidents democratic politics and market economics. Conversely, as
and legislatures and the outward manifestations of repre- James Cronin perceptively noted in 1996 in The World
sentative liberal governments. With some notable excep- the Cold War Made, the fall of communism also marked
tions, such as discrimination against Gypsies, countries the return of nationalism and national history.1 The cold
also guaranteed basic civil liberties. Thus, for the first war and the superpowers generally kept their allies and
time since before the French Revolution, almost all of clients in line, either by force or by granting them condi-
tional aid. As soon as the cold war was over, nationalism same time, Russian production fell a staggering 20 per-
and ethnic conflict re-emerged, and history, as the story cent. Nor did the situation stabilize quickly. Throughout
of different peoples, began again. 1995 rapid but gradually slowing inflation raged, and out-
The resurgence of nationalism in the 1990s led to terri- put continued to fall. According to most estimates, in
ble tragedy and bloodshed in parts of eastern Europe, as it 1996 the Russian economy produced at least one-third
did in several hot spots in Africa and Asia. During the civil and possibly as much as one-half less than in 1991. Only in
wars in Yugoslavia, many observers feared that national 1997 did the economy stop declining, before crashing yet
and ethnic hatreds would spread throughout eastern Eu- again in 1998 in the wake of Asia’s financial crisis.
rope and infect western Europe in the form of racial hos- Rapid economic liberalization worked poorly in Russia
tility toward minorities and immigrants. Yet if nationalist for several reasons. Soviet industry had been highly mo-
and racist incidents were a recurring European theme, they nopolized and strongly tilted toward military goods. Pro-
remained limited in the extent of their damage. Of critical duction of many items had been concentrated in one or
importance in this regard was the fact that all European two gigantic factories or in interconnected combines that
states wished to become or remain full-fledged members supplied the entire economy. With privatization these
of the European society of nations and to join eventually powerful state monopolies became powerful private mo-
an ever-expanding European Community, renamed the nopolies, which cut production and raised prices in order
European Union in 1993. States that embraced national to maximize their financial returns. Moreover, powerful
hatred and ethnic warfare, most notably Serbia, were managers and bureaucrats forced Yeltsin’s government to
branded as outlaws and boycotted and isolated by the Eu- hand out enormous subsidies and credits to reinforce the
ropean Union and the international community. The positions of big firms and to avoid bankruptcies and the
process of limiting resurgent nationalism in Europe was al- discipline of a free market. The managerial elite also com-
most as significant as the resurgence itself. bined with criminal elements to intimidate would-be ri-
vals and prevent the formation of new businesses. Not
that most ordinary Soviet citizens were eager to start busi-
Recasting Russia nesses. In the end, enterprise directors and politicians
Apago PDF Enhancer
Politics and economics were closely intertwined in Russia succeeded in eliminating worker ownership and converted
after the attempted Communist coup in 1991 and the dis- large portions of previously state-owned industry into
solution of the Soviet Union. President Boris Yeltsin, his their own private property.
democratic supporters, and his economic ministers wanted Runaway inflation and poorly executed privatization
to create conditions that would prevent forever a return brought a profound social revolution to Russia. A new
to communism and would also right the faltering econ- capitalist elite acquired great wealth and power, while large
omy. Following the example of some postcommunist numbers of people fell into abject poverty, and the major-
governments in eastern Europe and agreeing with those ity struggled in the midst of decline to make ends meet.
Western advisers who argued that private economies Managers, former officials, and financiers who came
were always best, the Russian reformers opted in January out of the privatization process with large shares of the
1992 for breakneck liberalization. Their “shock therapy” old state monopolies stood at the top of the reorganized
freed prices on 90 percent of all Russian goods, with the elite. The richest plums were found in Russia’s enormous
exception of bread, vodka, oil, and public transportation. oil and natural resources industries, where unscrupulous
The government also launched a rapid privatization of in- enterprise directors pocketed enormous dishonest gains.
dustry and turned thousands of factories and mines over The new elite was more highly concentrated than ever be-
to new private companies. Each citizen received a voucher fore. By 1996 Moscow, with 5 percent of Russia’s popu-
worth 10,000 rubles (about $22) to buy stock in private lation, accounted for 35 percent of the country’s national
companies, but control of the privatized companies usu- income and controlled 80 percent of its capital resources.
ally remained in the hands of the old bosses, the man- At the other extreme, the vast majority saw their sav-
agers and government officials from the communist era. ings become practically worthless. Pensions lost much of
President Yeltsin and his economic reformers believed their value, and whole markets were devoted to people
that shock therapy would revive production and bring selling off their personal goods to survive. Perhaps the
prosperity after a brief period of hardship. The results of most telling statistic, summing up millions of hardships
the reforms were in fact quite different. Prices increased and tragedies, was the truly catastrophic decline in the
250 percent on the very first day, and they kept on soaring, life expectancy of the average Russian male from sixty-
increasing twenty-six times in the course of 1992. At the nine years in 1991 to only fifty-eight years in 1996.
Rapid economic decline in 1992 and 1993 and rising tion, poverty, and national decline they experienced
popular dissatisfaction encouraged a majority of commu- throughout the 1990s.
nists, nationalists, and populists in the Russian parliament This widespread disillusionment set the stage for the
to oppose Yeltsin and his coalition of democratic reform- “managed democracy” of Vladimir Putin, first elected pres-
ers and big-business interests. The erratic, increasingly ident as Yeltsin’s chosen successor in 2000 and re-elected
hard-drinking Yeltsin would accept no compromise and in a landslide in March 2004. An officer in the secret police
insisted on a strong presidential system. Winning in April in the communist era, Putin maintained relatively free
1993 the support of 58 percent of the population in a markets in the economic sphere but re-established semi-
referendum on his proposed constitution, Yeltsin then authoritarian political rule. Aided greatly by high oil prices
brought in tanks to crush a parliamentary mutiny in Oc- for Russia’s most important export, this combination
tober 1993 and literally blew away the opposition. Sub- worked well and seemed to suit most Russians. In 2007,
sequently, Yeltsin consolidated his power, and in 1996 he the Russian economy had been growing rapidly for eight
used his big-business cronies in the media to win an im- years, the Russian middle class was expanding, and the
pressive come-from-behind victory. But effective rep- elected parliament supported Putin overwhelmingly. Pro-
resentative government failed to develop, and many ponents of liberal democracy were in retreat, while conser-
Russians came to equate “democracy” with the corrup- vative Russian intellectuals were on the offensive, arguing
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Russia’s Leading Capitalist on Trial, 2004 Mikhail Khodorkovsky emerged from the
privatization of Russian industry as the progressive chief and largest shareholder of Yukos,
Russia’s most successful oil company. But after he supported liberal opposition parties in
2002, an increasingly authoritarian President Putin jailed the billionaire, charged him with
tax fraud, and confiscated his wealth before the trial even began. Putin’s behavior was widely
criticized in the West, but most ordinary Russians applauded because they believed the super
rich had plundered the Russian state. (Alexander Natruskin/Reuters/Corbis)
that free markets and capitalism required strong political observers agreed that Poland, the Czech Republic, and
rule to control corruption and prevent chaos. Historians Hungary were the most successful (see Map 31.3). Each
saw a reassertion of Russia’s long authoritarian tradition. of these three countries met the critical challenge of eco-
Putin’s forceful, competent image in world affairs also nomic reconstruction more successfully than Russia, and
soothed the country’s injured pride and symbolized its each could claim to be the economic leader in eastern
national resurgence. Nor did the government permit any Europe, depending on the criteria selected. The reasons
negative television reports on the civil war in Chechnya, for these successes included considerable experience with
the tiny republic of 1 million Muslims on Russia’s south- limited market reforms before 1989, flexibility and lack
ern border, which in 1991 had declared its independence of dogmatism in government policy, and an enthusiastic
from the Russian Federation (see Map 31.2). The savage embrace of capitalism by a new entrepreneurial class. In
conflict in Chechnya continued, largely unreported, with the first five years of reform, Poland created twice as
numerous atrocities on both sides. many new businesses as Russia, with a total population
only one-fourth as large.
The three northern countries in the former Soviet bloc
Progress in Eastern Europe also did far better than Russia in creating new civic in-
Developments in eastern Europe shared important similar- stitutions, legal systems, and independent broadcasting
ities with those in Russia, as many of the problems were networks that reinforced political freedom and national
the same. Thus the postcommunist states of the former revival. Lech Walesa in Poland and Václav Havel in
satellite empire worked to replace state planning and so- Czechoslovakia were elected presidents of their countries
cialism with market mechanisms and private property. and proved as remarkable in power as in opposition.
Western-style electoral politics also took hold, and as in After Czechoslovakia’s “Velvet Revolution” in 1989,
Russia, these politics were marked by intense battles be- Havel and the Czech parliament accepted a “velvet di-
tween presidents and parliaments and by weak political vorce” in 1993 when Slovakian nationalists wanted to
parties. The social consequences of these revolutionary break off and form their own state. All three northern
changes were similar to those in Russia. Ordinary citizens
Apago PDF Enhancer countries managed to control national and ethnic ten-
and the elderly were once again the big losers, while the sions that might have destroyed their postcommunist re-
young and the ex-Communists were the big winners. construction.
Inequalities between richer and poorer regions also in- Above all, and in sharp contrast to Russia, the popular
creased. Capital cities such as Warsaw, Prague, and Buda- goal of “rejoining the West” reinforced political modera-
pest concentrated wealth, power, and opportunity as never tion and compromise. Seeing themselves as heirs to me-
before, while provincial centers stagnated and old indus- dieval Christendom and liberal democratic values in the
trial areas declined. Crime and gangsterism increased in 1920s, Poles, Hungarians, and Czechs hoped to find se-
the streets and in the executive suites. curity in NATO membership and economic prosperity in
Yet the 1990s saw more than a difficult transition, with western Europe’s ever-tighter union. Membership re-
high social costs, to market economies and freely elected quired many proofs of character and stability, however.
governments in eastern Europe. Many citizens had never Providing these proofs and endorsed by the Clinton ad-
fully accepted communism, which they equated with Rus- ministration, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic
sian imperialism and the loss of national independence. were accepted into the NATO alliance in 1997. Gaining
The joyous crowds that toppled communist regimes in admission to the European Union (EU) proved more
1989 believed that they were liberating the nation as well difficult, because candidates also had to accept and be
as the individual. Thus communism died and nationalism ready to apply all the rules and regulations that the EU
was reborn. had developed since 1956—an awesome task.
The surge of nationalism in eastern Europe recalled a Romania and Bulgaria were the eastern European lag-
similar surge of state creation after World War I. Then, gards in the postcommunist transition. Western tradi-
too, authoritarian multinational empires had come crash- tions were much weaker there, and both countries were
ing down in defeat and revolution. Then, too, nation- much poorer than neighbors to the north. In 1993 Bul-
alities with long histories and rich cultures had drawn garia and Romania had per capita national incomes of
upon ideologies of popular sovereignty and national self- $1,140, in contrast to Hungary ($3,830) and the Czech
determination to throw off foreign rule and found new Republic ($2,710). Although Romania and Bulgaria even-
democratic states. tually made progress in the late 1990s, full membership
The response to this opportunity in the former com- for both countries in either NATO or the EU still lay far
munist countries was quite varied in the 1990s, but most in the future.
1036
Reykjavík
ICELAND
Faroe Islands
(Den.) FINLAND
Shetland
Islands
NORWAY
(U.K.) Lake R U S S I A
Ladoga
Oslo SWEDEN Helsinki
St. Petersburg
Stockholm Tallinn (Leningrad)
ESTONIA
Glasgow a
olg
Apago
V
NORTHERN Moscow
IRELAND North Riga LATVIA
m_31.03
IRELAND DENMARK
Dublin Sea Copenhagen
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UNITED LITHUANIA
FPO
KINGDOM Vilnius
NETHERLANDS (RUSSIA)
Hamburg Gdansk Minsk KAZAKHSTAN
The El
Hague b BELARUS
London
e
Amsterdam Berlin POLAND
GERMANY V
Brussels Warsaw
ATLANTIC Bonn Leipzig
istula
BELGIUM Kiev
Kharkov V ol
OCEAN Paris Frankfurt
Prague ga
Luxembourg
Se LUX. UKRAINE D niep
CZECH e Donetsk
e
Lo i r e Stuttgart
hin
ine
r
REPUBLIC Dnepropetrovsk
R SLOVAKIA
Munich
FRANCE Bratislava Ca
Zurich LIECH. Vienna MOLDOVA
Bern Budapest sp
Vaduz AUSTRIA
Geneva SWITZ. HUNGARY Chisinau ia
Lyons Ljubljana
Odessa n
Milan SLOVENIA Zagreb ROMANIA
Se
Turin Po CROATIA
Porto
a
GEORGIA
ANDORRA Monaco SAN BOSNIA & Belgrade Bucharest
MARINO Tbilisi Baku
PORTUGAL Andorra MONACO
San HERZEGOVINA
SERBIA D a nu b e Black Sea AZERBAIJAN
SPAIN la Vella Marino Sarajevo Kosovo:UN Protectorate, 1999 ARMENIA
Madrid BULGARIA Yerevan
Lisbon T ag us Corsica MONT.
Barcelona (Fr.) ITALY Podgorica Sofia
AZER.
Rome Skopje
ALBANIAF.Y.R. Istanbul
VATICAN
CITY Naples Tiranë MACEDONIA Ankara
Balearic Sardinia
(It.) TURKEY
Islands
(Sp.) GREECE IRAN
Gibraltar
(U.K.)
Mediterranean Sea
MOROCCO Athens
ALGERIA Sicily SYRIA
0 250 500 Km. (It.) IRAQ
TUNISIA Crete Nicosia
Valletta MALTA (Gr.)
0 250 500 Mi. CYPRUS
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Escape from Srebrenica A Bosnian Muslim refugee arrives at the United Nations base in
Tuzla and with her anguished screams tells the world of the Serbian atrocities. Several thou-
sand civilians were murdered at Srebrenica, and Western public opinion finally demanded
decisive action. Efforts continue to arrest those Serbs believed responsible and to try them
for crimes against humanity. (J. Jones/Corbis Sygma)
Tragedy in Yugoslavia
The great postcommunist tragedy was Yugoslavia, which
under Josip Tito had been a federation of republics and
regions under strict communist rule (see page 996). Af-
Mapping the Past ter Tito’s death in 1980, power passed increasingly to the
MAP 31.3 Contemporary Europe No longer divided by
sister republics, which encouraged a revival of regional
ideological competition and the cold war, today’s Europe and ethnic conflicts that were exacerbated by charges of
features a large number of independent states. Several of ethnically inspired massacres during World War II and a
these states were previously part of the Soviet Union and dramatic economic decline in the mid-1980s.
Yugoslavia, both of which broke into many different countries. The revolutions of 1989 accelerated the breakup of Yu-
Czechoslovakia also divided on ethnic lines, while a reunited
Germany emerged, once again, as the dominant nation in
goslavia. Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic intended
••
central Europe. 1 Which countries shown here were previously part
of the Soviet Union? 2 Which countries were part of Yugoslavia?
to grab land from other republics and unite all Serbs, re-
gardless of where they lived, in a “greater Serbia.” In
•3 Where did the old “iron curtain” run? (See Map 30.2, page 988, if
necessary.)
1989 Milosevic arbitrarily abolished self-rule in the Ser-
bian province of Kosovo, where Albanian-speaking people
SLOVAKIA Ethnic Majority

Albanians
Vienna
Bratislava Bulgarians
Croatians
AUSTRIA Budapest
Hungarians
Macedonians
HUNGARY
Montenegrins
Bosnians or
Sandzak Muslims
SLOVEN I A
Ljubljana Romanians
Zagreb ROMANIA
Serbs
CROATIA
VOJVODINA Slovenes
No majority present
Banja Luka Yugoslavia in 1991
BOSNIA– Belgrade Republic boundaries
MAP 31.4 The Ethnic Com- HERZEGOVINA SERBIA
Autonomous region
boundaries
position of Yugoslavia, 1991 Sarajevo
Yugoslavia had the most ethni-
A
cally diverse population in

d
r
eastern Europe. The Republic of a

i
Sofia
Croatia had substantial Serbian ti MONTENEGRO
and Muslim minorities. Bosnia- c KOSOVO BULGARIA
Herzegovina had large Muslim, I S
T ea
Serbian, and Croatian popula- A Skopje
tions, none of which had a major- L
Y MACEDONIA
ity. In June 1991, Serbia’s brutal
effort to seize territory and unite 0
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100 200 Km. Tiranë
all Serbs in a single state brought 0 75 150 Mi.

ALBANIA GREECE
a tragic civil war.
constituted the overwhelming majority. Milosevic’s moves Croatian army drove all the Serbs from Croatia. In No-
strengthened the cause of separatism, and in June 1991 vember 1995, President Bill Clinton helped the warring
Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence. Slove- sides hammer out a complicated accord that gave the
nia repulsed a Serbian attack, but Milosevic’s armies man- Bosnian Serbs about 49 percent of Bosnia and the Muslim-
aged to take about 30 percent of Croatia. In 1992 the Croatian peoples the rest. Troops from NATO countries
civil war spread to Bosnia-Herzegovina, which had de- patrolled Bosnia to try to keep the peace.
clared its independence. Serbs—about 30 percent of that The Albanian Muslims of Kosovo had been hoping for
region’s population—refused to live under the more nu- a restoration of self-rule, but they gained nothing from
merous Bosnian Muslims (see Map 31.4). Yugoslavia had the Bosnian agreement. In early 1998, frustrated Kosovar
once been a tolerant and largely successful multiethnic militants formed the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and
state, with different groups living side by side and often began to fight for independence. Serbian repression of the
intermarrying. The Bosnian civil war unleashed ruthless Kosovars increased, and in 1998 Serbian forces attacked
brutality, with murder, rape, destruction, and the herding both KLA guerrillas and unarmed villagers, displacing
of refugees into concentration camps. 250,000 people within Kosovo. By January 1999, the
While scenes of horror shocked the world, the Western Western Powers, led by the United States, were threaten-
nations had difficulty formulating an effective response. ing Milosevic with heavy air raids if he did not withdraw
The turning point came in July 1995, when Bosnian Serbian armies from Kosovo and accept self-government
Serbs overran Srebrenica—a Muslim city previously de- (but not independence) for Kosovo. Milosevic refused,
clared a United Nations “safe area”—and killed several and in March 1999 NATO began bombing Yugoslavia.
thousand civilians. World outrage prompted NATO to Serbian paramilitary forces responded by driving about
bomb Bosnian Serb military targets intensively, and the 780,000 Kosovars into exile. NATO redoubled its highly
destructive bombing campaign, which eventually forced The Maastricht plan for monetary union encountered
Milosevic to withdraw and allowed the joyous Kosovars to widespread skepticism and considerable opposition from
regain their homeland. The impoverished Serbs eventu- ordinary people, leftist political parties, and patriotic na-
ally voted the still-defiant Milosevic out of office, and in tionalists. Ratification votes were close, especially when
July 2001 a new pro-Western Serbian government turned the public rather than the politicians could vote yes or no
him over to the war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands, to on the question.
stand trial for crimes against humanity. The civil wars in There were several interrelated reasons for this wide-
the former Yugoslavia were a monument to human cru- spread popular opposition. Many people resented the
elty and evil in the worst tradition of the twentieth cen- unending flow of rules handed down by the EU’s ever-
tury. But ongoing efforts to preserve peace, repatriate growing bureaucracy in Brussels, which sought to im-
refugees, and try war criminals also testified to the regen- pose common standards on everything from cheese to
erative power of liberal values and human rights as the day care and undermined national practices and local tra-
twenty-first century unfolded. ditions. Moreover, increased unity meant yielding still
more power to distant “Eureaucrats” and political insid-
ers, thereby undermining popular sovereignty and dem-
Unity and Identity in Western Europe ocratic control through national politics and electoral
The movement toward western European unity, which competition. Above all, many ordinary citizens feared
since the late 1940s had inspired practical politicians seek- that the new Europe was being made at their expense.
ing economic recovery and idealistic visionaries imagining Joining the monetary union required national govern-
a European identity that transcended destructive national ments to meet stringent fiscal standards and impose
rivalries, received a powerful second wind in the mid- budget cuts. The resulting reductions in health care and
1980s. The Single European Act of 1986 laid down a de- social benefits hit ordinary citizens and did nothing to re-
tailed legal framework for establishing a single market, duce western Europe’s high unemployment rate.
which would add the free movement of labor, capital, and Events in France dramatically illustrated these develop-
services to the existing free trade in goods. With work
Apago PDF Enhancer ments. Mitterrand’s Socialist government had been forced
proceeding vigorously toward the single market, which to adopt conservative financial policies in the 1980s (see
went into effect in 1993 as the European Community page 1012), and in early 1993 a coalition of conservatives
proudly rechristened itself the European Union (EU), and moderates won an overwhelming victory by promis-
French president François Mitterrand and German chan- ing a vigorous attack on unemployment. However, the
cellor Helmut Kohl took the lead in pushing for a mone- Maastricht criteria soon forced the new government to
tary union of EU members. After long negotiations and resume deficit-reducing cuts in health benefits and trans-
compromises, designed especially to overcome Britain’s portation services. France’s powerful unions and railroad
long-standing reluctance to cede aspects of sovereignty, in workers responded with a crippling national strike that
December 1991 the member states reached an agreement shut down rail traffic throughout France for almost a
in the Dutch town of Maastricht. The Maastricht treaty month. Yet despite the enormous inconvenience and
set strict financial criteria for joining the proposed mone- economic damage, many people felt that the transport
tary union, with its single currency, and set 1999 as the workers were also fighting for them. The government
target date for its establishment. The treaty also antici- had to back down, and soon the Socialists returned to
pated the development of common policies on defense power. The Socialists quickly passed a controversial new
and foreign affairs after achieving monetary union. law to reduce the legal workweek to thirty-five hours in
Western European elites and opinion makers generally an attempt to reduce France’s stubborn 12 percent un-
supported the decisive step toward economic integration employment rate without budget-busting spending.
embodied in the Maastricht treaty. They saw monetary More generally, much of the western European public in-
union as a means of coping with Europe’s ongoing eco- creasingly saw laws to cut the workweek and share the
nomic problems, imposing financial discipline, cutting work as a way to reconcile desires for social welfare and a
costs, and reducing high unemployment. European elites humane market economy with financial discipline and
also viewed monetary union as a historic, irreversible step global competition.
toward a basic political unity. This unity would allow west- Battles over budgets and high unemployment through-
ern Europe as a whole to regain its rightful place in world out the European Union in the 1990s raised profound
politics and to deal with the United States as an equal. questions about the meaning of European unity and
identity. Would the European Union expand as prom- ioned the economic difficulties, but many ordinary citi-
ised to include the postcommunist nations of eastern zens felt hurt and humiliated.
Europe, and if it did, how could Muslim Turkey’s long- Eastern German women suffered in particular. Before
standing application be ignored? How could a European unification, the overwhelming majority had worked out-
Union of twenty-five to thirty countries have any real co- side the home, effectively supported by cheap child care,
hesion and common identity? Conversely, would a large, flexible hours, and the prevailing socialist ideology. Now
cohesive Europe remain closely linked with the United they faced expensive child care and a variety of pressures
States in the NATO alliance and with an evolving Western to stay at home and let men take the hard-to-find jobs.
tradition? Many of these women, who had found autonomy and
The merging of East Germany into the German Fed- self-esteem in paid work, felt a keen sense of loss. They
eral Republic suggested the enormous difficulties of full helped vote Kohl out of office in 1998.
East-West integration under the best conditions. After Instructed by the serious difficulties of unification in
1991 Helmut Kohl’s Germany pumped massive invest- Germany, western Europeans proceeded cautiously in
ments into its new eastern provinces, but Germans in the considering new requests for EU membership. Sweden,
east still saw factories closed and social dislocation. Un- Finland, and Austria were admitted because they had
employment in Germany reached a postwar high of 12.8 strong capitalist economies and because they no longer
percent in late 1997, and it soared to 20 percent in the needed to maintain the legal neutrality that the Soviet
eastern region. Germany’s generous social benefits cush- Union had required during the cold war.
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Turkey’s Struggle for EU Membership Turkish elites and the general population want to
“join Europe,” but the road to EU membership is proving long and difficult. The EU has
required Turkey to make many constitutional reforms and give greater autonomy to Turkish
Kurds. Yet the Turks face ever more demands, and many now believe that the real roadblock
is Europe’s anti-Muslim feeling. (CartoonStock Limited)
New Challenges in the Twenty-first Century • 1041
At the same time the former communist states pressed

toward meeting the EU’s detailed criteria for membership. New Challenges in the Twenty
In December 2000, the EU’s fifteen members agreed to first Century
begin final negotiations with the eight leading eastern can-
didates in the near future. The very smooth establishment As the twenty-first century opened and the historic move-
of the euro on January 1, 2002, when brand-new euros ment toward European unity began to include post-
entered the billfolds of all euro-zone citizens as their uni- communist eastern Europe, European society faced new
fied common currency, built confidence and brought an uncertainties. Of great significance, Europe continued
acceleration of arduous but triumphant negotiations. Thus to experience a remarkable baby bust, as birthrates fell
on May 1, 2004, the European Union added 70 million to levels that seemed to promise a shrinking and aging
people and expanded to include 455 million citizens in population in the future. At the same time, the peaceful,
twenty-five different countries. The largest newcomer by wealthy European Union attracted rapidly growing num-
far was Poland, followed in descending size by the Czech bers of refugees and illegal immigrants from the former
Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, Estonia, Lithuania, Soviet Union, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. The un-
Latvia, Malta, and Cyprus. expected arrival of so many newcomers raised many per-
In June 2004, more than two years after charging a spe- plexing questions and prompted serious thinking about
cial commission to write “a new constitution for European European identity, Europe’s humanitarian mission, and
citizens,” the leaders of the European Union reached Europe’s place in the world.
agreement on the final document. Above all, the new con- • Why did the prospect of population decline, the reality of
stitution, with almost 350 articles, established a single large-scale immigration, and concern for human rights
rulebook to replace the complex network of treaties con- emerge as critical issues in contemporary Europe?
cluded by the member states since the 1957 creation of the
European Economic Community. The EU constitution
created a president, a foreign minister, and a voting system
weighted to reflect the number of people in the different
The Prospect of Population Decline
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Population is still growing rapidly in many poor countries,
states. The result of intense debate and many compro-
mises, the constitution moved toward a more centralized but this is not the case in the world’s industrialized na-
federal system in several fields, but each state retained veto tions. In 2000, women in developed countries had only
power in the most sensitive areas, such as taxation, social 1.6 children on average; only in the United States did
policy, and foreign affairs. In order for the constitution to women have, almost exactly, the 2.1 children necessary to
take effect, each and every EU country needed to ratify it. maintain a stable population. In European countries, where
Nine countries, led by Germany, Italy, and seven eastern women have been steadily having fewer babies since the
European members, soon ratified the constitution by par- 1950s, national fertility rates ranged from 1.2 to 1.8 chil-
liamentary action, while seven states planned to go beyond dren per woman. Italy, once renowned for big Catholic
the political elites and let the voters decide. The referen- families, had achieved the world’s lowest birthrate—a
dum campaigns were noisy and contentious, as generally mere 1.2 babies per woman. In 2006, the European fer-
well-informed citizens debated whether the new consti- tility rate was little changed at about 1.4 children per
tution surrendered too much national sovereignty to an woman.
emerging central European government in Brussels. If the current baby bust continues, the long-term conse-
British voters were considered most likely to vote no, but quences could be dramatic, though hardly predictable.
both the French and the Dutch beat them to it, rejecting At the least, Europe’s population would decline and age.
the new constitution by clear majorities. Nationalist fears Projections for Germany are illustrative. Total German
about losing sovereignty were matched by fears that an un- population, barring much greater immigration, would
wieldy European Union would grow to include Ukraine, gradually decline from 82 million in 2001 to only 62 mil-
Georgia, and Muslim Turkey—countries with cultures and lion around 2050. The number of people of working age
histories that were very different from those in western would drop by a third, and almost half of the population
Europe. Thus the long postwar march toward ever greater would be over sixty. Social security taxes paid by the shrink-
European unity stopped, or at least stalled, and the Euro- ing labor force would need to soar for the skyrocketing
pean Union concentrated on fully integrating the new costs of pensions and health care for seniors to be met—a
eastern European members. recipe for generational tension and conflict. As the premier
of Bavaria, Germany’s biggest state, has warned, the pro- dren. Europeans may respond with enough vigor to limit
spect of demographic decline was a “ticking time bomb un- the extent of their population decline and avoid societal
der our social welfare system and entire economy.”2 disaster.
Why, in times of peace, were Europeans failing to repro-
duce themselves? Certainly the uneven, uninspiring Euro-
pean economic conditions of the 1980s and much of the
The Growth of Immigration
1990s played some role. High unemployment fell heavily As European demographic vitality waned in the 1990s,
on young people and often frustrated their plans to settle a surge of migrants from Africa, Asia, and eastern Eu-
down and have children. Some observers also argued that rope headed for western Europe. Some migrants entered
a partial rejection of motherhood and parenting was criti- the European Union legally, but increasing numbers
cal. They noted that many women chose to have no chil- were smuggled in past beefed-up border patrols. Large-
dren or only one child. By 2000, 30 percent of German scale immigration emerged as a contentious and critical
women born in 1965 were childless, whereas 90 percent challenge.
would have had children in earlier generations. In the Historically a source rather than a destination of immi-
Catholic countries of southern Europe, where strong pres- grants, booming western Europe drew heavily on North
sures to have children still exist, a quarter of the couples Africa and Turkey for manual laborers from about 1960
were fulfilling their “social duty” with a single child. until about 1973, when unemployment started to rise
In our view, the ongoing impact of careers for married and governments abruptly stopped the inflow. Many for-
women and the related drive for gender equality re- eign workers stayed on, however, eventually bringing
mained the decisive factors in the long-term decline of their families to western Europe and establishing perma-
postwar birthrates. After World War II, Western women nent immigrant communities there.
married early, had their children early, and then turned A new and different surge of migration into western
increasingly to full-time employment, where they suf- Europe began in the 1990s. The collapse of communism
fered from the discrimination that drove the women’s in the East and savage civil wars in Yugoslavia sent hun-
movement (see pages 1009–1010). As the twenty-first
Apago PDF Enhancer dreds of thousands of refugees fleeing westward. Equally
century opened, women had attained many (but not all) brutal conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and
of their objectives. They did as well as or better than men Rwanda—to name only four countries—brought thou-
in school, and educated young women earned almost as sands more from Asia and Africa. Illegal immigration
much as their male counterparts. into the European Union also exploded, rising from an
Research showed that European women (and men) in estimated 50,000 people in 1993 to perhaps 500,000 a
their twenties, thirties, and early forties still wanted to decade later. This movement exceeded the estimated
have two or even three children—about the same number 300,000 unauthorized foreigners entering the United
as their parents had wanted. But unlike their parents, States each year.
young couples did not realize their ideal family size. Many In the early twenty-first century, many migrants still
women postponed the birth of their first child into their applied for political asylum and refugee status, but most
thirties in order to finish their education and establish were eventually rejected and classified as illegal job seek-
themselves in their careers. Then, finding that raising even ers. Certainly, greater economic opportunities exerted a
one child was more difficult and time-consuming than an- powerful pull. Germans earned on average five times
ticipated, new mothers tended to postpone and eventually more than neighboring Poles, who in turn earned much
forgo a second child. This was especially true of profes- more than people farther east and in North Africa.
sional women. The better educated and the more eco- Illegal immigration also soared because powerful crim-
nomically successful a woman was, the more likely she was inal gangs turned to “people smuggling” for big, low-
to stop with a single child or to have no children at all. risk profits. Ruthless Russian-speaking gangs played an
By 2005 some population experts believed that Euro- important role in the trade, passing their human cargo
pean women were no longer postponing having children. across Russia and through the Balkans to western Eu-
At the least, birthrates appeared to have stabilized. More- rope. A favorite final leg involved Albanian smugglers
over, the frightening implications of dramatic population with speedy motorboats, who slipped across the narrow
decline had emerged as a major public issue. Opinion Adriatic Sea past Italian coastal patrols and landed their
leaders, politicians, and the media started to press the case high-paying passengers on the beaches of southern Italy.
for more babies and more support for families with chil- From there new arrivals could head off unimpeded in al-
New Challenges in the Twenty-first Century • 1043
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Illegal Immigrants from Eritrea Italian police have just rescued these young immigrants
from an overloaded boat off the coast of Italy. Fleeing civil war and desperate for work, the
immigrants are weary because of the long and dangerous voyage from Libya. Every year
thousands of illegal immigrants try to reach Italy and Spain from North Africa. Many are
found dead on the shoreline. (Mimi Mollica/Corbis)
most any direction, because in 1998 the European liefs. Concern about illegal migration in general often
Union abolished all border controls between member fused with fears of Muslim immigrants and Muslim resi-
states. After 2000, growing numbers from Africa and the dents who had grown up in Europe. As busy mosques
Middle East tried similar entries across the Strait of came to outnumber dying churches in parts of some Eu-
Gibraltar into southern Spain. ropean cities, rightist politicians especially tried to exploit
A large portion of the illegal immigrants were young widespread doubts that immigrant populations from Mus-
women from eastern Europe, especially Russia and lim countries would ever assimilate to the different na-
Ukraine. Often lured by criminals promising jobs as tional cultures. These doubts increased after the attack on
maids or waitresses and sometimes simply kidnapped and New York’s World Trade Center, as we shall see later in the
sold like slaves from hand to hand for a few thousand chapter.
dollars, these women were smuggled into the most pros- An articulate minority challenged the anti-immigrant
perous parts of central Europe and into the European campaign and its racist overtones. They argued that
Union and forced into prostitution or worse. Europe badly needed newcomers—preferably talented
Illegal immigration generated intense discussion and newcomers—to limit the impending population decline
controversy in western Europe. A majority opposed the and provide valuable technical skills. European leaders
newcomers, who were accused of taking jobs from the also focused on improved policing of EU borders and
unemployed and somehow undermining national unity. tougher common procedures to combat people smug-
The idea that cultural and ethnic diversity could be a force gling and punish international crime. Above all, grow-
for vitality and creativity ran counter to deep-seated being illegal immigration pushed Europeans to examine
the whys of this dramatic human movement and to con- European leaders and humanitarians believed that Eu-
sider how it related to Europe’s proper role in world affairs. rope’s mission required more global agreements and new
international institutions to set moral standards and to
regulate countries, political leaders, armies, corporations,
Promoting Human Rights and individuals. In practice, this meant more curbs on the
The tide of refugees and illegal job seekers made thinking sovereign rights of the world’s states, just as the states of
people in western Europe acutely aware of their current the European Union had imposed increasingly strict stan-
good fortune, the sweet fruit of more than fifty years of dards of behavior on themselves in order to secure the
peace, security, and rising standards of living. The nearby rights and welfare of EU citizens. As Nicole Gnesotto, the
agonies of barbarism and war in the former Yugoslavia director of the European Union’s institute, concluded,
vividly recalled the horrors of World War II, and they cast the EU has a “historical responsibility” to make morality
in bold relief the ever-present reality of collective violence “a basis of policy,” because “human rights are more im-
in today’s world. At the same time, western European portant than states’ rights.”3 In general, the United States
countries were generally doing their best to limit or expel reacted coolly to the idea of preferring human rights to
the foreigners arriving at their gates, as we have seen. This states’ rights. American leaders stressed the preservation
ongoing rejection gave some Europeans a guilty con- of U.S. freedom of action in world affairs, particularly af-
science and a feeling that they needed to do more when ter George W. Bush was elected president in 2000.
they had so much and so many others had so little. As a In practical terms, western Europe’s evolving human
result, European intellectuals and opinion makers began rights mission meant, first of all, humanitarian interven-
to envision a new historic mission for Europe—the pro- tions to stop civil wars and to prevent tyrannical govern-
motion of domestic peace and human rights in those ments from slaughtering their own people. Thus the
lands plagued by instability, violence, and oppression. European Union joined with the United States to inter-
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Fighting the AIDS Epidemic These women, financed in part by the European Union, are
treating an AIDS patient at his home in Mozambique. In 2004 the United Nations estimated
that about 42 million persons were infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. AIDS is
the fourth-leading cause of death in the world. (Black Star/stockphoto.com)
The West and the Islamic World • 1045
vene militarily to stop the killing in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Yet we are deeply involved in this momentous historical
Macedonia and to protect the rights of embattled mi- drama, and we must try to find insight and understanding.
norities (see pages 1037–1039). The states of the EU also • How and why did relations between the West and the
vigorously supported UN-sponsored conferences and Islamic world deteriorate dramatically in the early twenty-
treaties that sought to verify the compliance of anti–germ first century?
warfare conventions, outlawed the use of hideously de-
structive land mines, and established a new international
court to prosecute war criminals.
Europeans also pushed for broader definitions of indi- The al-Qaeda Attack of
vidual rights. Abolishing the death penalty in the Euro-
pean Union, for example, they condemned its continued
September 11, 2001
use in China, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and some On the morning of September 11, 2001, two hijacked
other countries as inhumane and uncivilized. Rights for passenger planes from Boston crashed into and destroyed
Europeans in their personal relations also continued to the World Trade Center towers in New York City.
expand. In the pacesetting Netherlands, for example, a Shortly thereafter a third plane crashed into the Penta-
growing network of laws gave prostitutes (legally recog- gon, and a fourth, believed to be headed for the White
nized since 1917) pensions and full workers’ rights and House or the U.S. Capitol, crashed into a field in rural
legalized gay and lesbian marriages, the smoking of pot Pennsylvania. These terrorist attacks took the lives of
in licensed coffee shops, and assisted suicide (euthanasia) more than three thousand people from many countries
for the terminally ill. and put the personal safety of ordinary citizens at the top
As the twenty-first century opened, western Euro- of the West’s agenda. Stunned and horrified, the peoples
peans also pushed as best they could to extend their and governments of the world joined Americans in heart-
broad-based concept of social and economic rights to the felt solidarity.
world’s poor countries. These efforts were related to The United States, led by President George W. Bush,
sharp criticism of globalization and unrestrained capital-
Apago PDF Enhancer launched a military campaign to destroy the perpetrators
ism (see pages 1031–1032), criticism that helped social- of the crime—Saudi-born millionaire Osama bin Laden’s
ists regain power in several countries in the European al-Qaeda network of terrorists and Afghanistan’s reac-
Union. Quite typically, Europe’s moderate social demo- tionary Muslim government, the Taliban. Drawing on the
crats combined with human rights campaigners in 2001 world’s sympathy and building a broad international
to help African governments secure drastic price cuts coalition that included western Europe, Russia, and Pa-
from the big international drug companies on the drug kistan, the United States joined its tremendous airpower
cocktails needed to combat Africa’s AIDS crisis. Strong with the faltering Northern Alliance in Afghanistan,
advocates of greater social equality and state-funded which had been fighting the Taliban for years. By mid-
health care, European socialists embraced morality as a October 2001 American special forces on the ground
basis for action and the global expansion of human rights were directing precision air strikes that devastated Taliban
as a primary goal. and al-Qaeda troops, and a rejuvenated Northern Alliance
took the offensive. In mid-November the Taliban col-
lapsed, and jubilant crowds in the capital of Kabul wel-
The West and the Islamic World comed Northern Alliance soldiers as liberators. Afghan
opposition leaders and United Nations mediators worked
A hundred years from now, when historians assess devel- out plans for a new broad-based government, while
opments in the early twenty-first century, they will almost American planes, ground troops, and tribal fighters
certainly highlight the dramatic deterioration in the long, searched for bin Laden and his die-hard supporters in
rich, up-and-down relationship between the West and the their mountain hideaways. In 2002 foreign governments,
Islamic world. They will examine the reasons that the aid organizations, and the United Nations turned to the
peaceful conclusion of the cold war and the joyful reunifi- arduous task of helping the Afghans get themselves back
cation of a divided continent gave way to spectacular ter- on their feet after a generation of conflict and civil war fol-
rorist attacks, Western invasions of Muslim countries, and lowing the 1979 Soviet invasion of their country.
new concern about Muslims living in the West. Unfortu- In trying to make some sense out of the heinous attack
nately, we lack the perspective and the full range of source of September 11, 2001, and the current wave of terrorist
materials that future historians will have at their disposal. action in general, it is helpful to realize that civil war and
terrorism often went hand in hand in the twentieth cen- year in the 1970s—in order to take hostages and black-
tury. Beginning in the 1920s and peaking in the 1960s, mail governments into meeting some demand, such as
many nationalist movements used terrorism in their the release of convicted fellow terrorists. Some terrorists
battles to achieve political independence and decoloni- trained in the facilities of the PLO (the Palestine Libera-
zation. This was the case in several new states, including tion Organization) operated international networks and
Algeria, Cyprus, Ireland, Israel, and Yemen.4 Those targeted Israel and U.S. installations abroad. This second
fighting for independence and political power often tar- wave receded in the 1980s as painstaking police work and
geted police forces for assassination campaigns, thereby international cooperation defeated these “revolutionar-
breaking down confidence in the colonial government ies” in country after country.
and provoking counter-atrocities that generated increased In recent years a third wave has been building, leading
support for the independence movement. toward al-Qaeda’s attack on the World Trade Center and
In the Vietnam War era, a second wave of terrorism the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. In analyzing this
saw some far-left supporters of the communist Vietcong, third wave, many commentators were quick to stress the
such as the American Weathermen, the German Red role of extreme Islamic fundamentalism as a motivating
Army Faction, and the Italian Red Brigade, practicing factor. But the most perceptive scholars noted that recent
“revolutionary terror” in an effort to cripple the Western deadly attacks had been committed by terrorists inspired
heartland. These groups engineered a series of deadly by several religious faiths and religious sects and were by
bombings, assassinations, and kidnappings. These terror- no means limited to Islamic extremists.5 These scholars
ists also hijacked airplanes—more than one hundred each noted that the different terrorist movements in today’s
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new tk
New York, September 11, 2001 Pedestrians race for safety as the World Trade Center
towers collapse after being hit by jet airliners. Al-Qaeda terrorists with box cutters hijacked
four aircraft and used three of them as suicide missiles to perpetrate their unthinkable crime.
Heroic passengers on the fourth plane realized what was happening and forced their hijackers
to crash in a field. (AP Images/Suzanne Plunkett)
world need to be linked to underlying political conflicts still developing weapons of mass destruction in flagrant
and civil wars for meaningful understanding. disregard of his promise to end all such programs follow-
When this perspective is applied to Osama bin Laden ing the first war with Iraq, in 1991 (see page 1030). Sad-
and al-Qaeda members, two stages stand out. First, in dam had used chemical weapons in his war with Iran in
the long bitter fighting against the Soviet Union and the the 1980s and against the Kurdish population of north-
local communists in Afghanistan, bin Laden and like- ern Iraq, and the Bush administration argued that sooner
minded “holy warriors” developed terrorist skills and a or later he would probably use these terrible weapons
narrow-minded, fanatical Islamic puritanism. They also against the United States and its allies or would give
developed a hatred of most existing Arab governments, them to anti-American fanatics like those who struck
which they viewed as corrupt, un-Islamic, and unrespon- New York on September 11, 2001.
sive to the needs of ordinary Muslims. The objects of In August 2002, Vice President Cheney promised
their hostility included the absolute monarchy of oil-rich Iraqi exiles that the United States would depose Saddam,
Saudi Arabia (bin Laden’s own country), pro-Western although according to the United Nations charter, the
but undemocratic Egypt, and the secular, one-party dic- Security Council has the sole authority to use armed
tatorship of Saddam Hussein. force, except in self-defense, and Iraq, impoverished by a
Second, when these Islamic extremists returned home decade of tough United Nations sanctions, gave no indi-
from Afghanistan and began to organize, they usually met cation of attacking any of its neighbors, much less the
the fate of many earlier Islamic extremists and were jailed United States. Moreover, large numbers of Americans
or forced into exile, often in tolerant Europe. There they shared widespread doubts in Europe about the legality—
blamed the United States for being the supporter and and wisdom—of an American attack on Iraq and argued
corrupter of existing Arab governments, and they organ- for a peaceful settlement of the Iraqi weapons crisis. So
ized murderous plots against the United States—a de- the Bush administration reluctantly agreed to new Secu-
spised proxy for the Arab rulers they could not reach. This rity Council resolutions requiring Iraq to accept the re-
development set the stage for the 1998 bombing of the turn of United Nations weapons inspectors and destroy
U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, which claimed nearly
Apago PDF Enhancer any remaining prohibited weapons. Iraq accepted the
200 lives, the World Trade Center atrocity, and the U.S.- inspectors, declaring it had destroyed all prohibited
led counterattack on al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. weapons.
As 2003 opened, the inspectors operated freely in Iraq
and found no weapons of mass destruction. However, the
The War in Iraq United States and Britain said Iraq was hiding prohibited
Unfortunately, Western unity in Afghanistan soon turned weapons, moved armies to the Middle East, and lobbied
into bitter quarreling and international crisis over the for a new United Nations resolution authorizing immedi-
prospect of war with Iraq. As soon as he was elected in ate military action against Iraq. The world followed the
2000, President Bush and his most influential advisers, debates in the Security Council with unprecedented inter-
led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of De- est and generally opposed an attack on Iraq. France, Rus-
fense Donald Rumsfeld, began to consider how to over- sia, China, Germany, and a majority of the smaller states
throw Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and remake the Middle argued for continued weapons inspections. Western gov-
East. Paul O’Neill, Bush’s secretary of the treasury, ernments became bitterly divided, and the Security Coun-
summed up discussions on Iraq by the president and cil deadlocked and failed to act.
his cabinet this way: “From the start, they were building In March 2003 the United States and Britain invaded
the case against Hussein and looking at how we could Iraq from bases in Kuwait and quickly overwhelmed the
take him out and change Iraq into a new country. And, Iraqi army. Yet even as Saddam’s dictatorship collapsed,
if we did that, it would solve everything.”6 And indeed, the confident expectation of a long and peaceful occupa-
many in the administration believed that the United tion in a pro-American Iraq was impaired by serious er-
States could create a democratic, pro-American Iraq, an rors of American judgment. As chaos spread and looters
Iraq that would transform the Middle East, make peace stripped government buildings and hospitals of every-
with Israel, provide easy access to the world’s second- thing from computers to faucets, American and British
largest oil reserves, and show small states the folly of troops simply turned a blind eye and took no action.
opposing the United States. The most effective prowar Disbanding the Iraqi army also alienated the population,
argument, however, played on American fears of re- worsened security, and created mass unemployment,
newed terrorism and charged that Saddam Hussein was while the failure to seize huge stocks of weapons left Iraqi
The Golden Mosque of Samarra: Before and After Built to commemorate two of
Shi’ite Islam’s most revered saints, the Golden Mosque drew countless Shi’ite pilgrims. Then,
on June 13, 2006, insurgents dressed as Iraqi policemen entered the mosque, overwhelmed
the guards, and detonated two bombs that collapsed the golden dome and destroyed the
mosque. Sectarian conflict exploded. (A second terrorist bombing in June 2007 levelled the
two minarets seen on the right.) (AP Images/Khalid Mohammed, Hameed Rasheed)
insurgents with guns and explosives for subsequent

Apago PDFnational elections in January 2005. Boycotted by the Sun-
Enhancer
counterattacks. The allies found no weapons of mass de-
nis, these elections brought the Shi’ite majority to power
struction, which raised many questions about a prewar and marked the high point of Iraqi and American hopes for
manipulation of intelligence data. security and a gradual reconciliation with the Sunni popula-
American efforts to establish a stable, pro-American Iraq tion. Instead, Sunni fighters and jihadist extremists stepped
proved difficult if not impossible. Poor postwar planning up their deadly campaign. Then, in February 2005 in a care-
and management by President Bush and his top aides was fully planned operation, they blew up the beautiful Golden
one factor, but there were others. Modern Iraq, a creation Mosque of Samarra, one of the most sacred shrines of Shi’ite
of Western imperialism after World War I (see page 906), Islam. This outrage touched off violent retaliation. Shi’ite
is a fragile state with three distinct groups: non-Arab militias became death squads, killing Sunnis and driving
Kurds, and Sunnis and Shi’ites—Arab Muslims who were them from their homes. By 2006 a deadly sectarian conflict
forever divided by a great schism in the seventh century. had taken hold of Baghdad. American soldiers, continuing
Saddam’s dictatorship preached Arab and Iraqi national- loyally to do their duty, were increasingly caught in the
ism, but it relied heavily on the Sunni minority—20 per- crossfire. In 2007, as President Bush faced widespread op-
cent of the population—and repressed the Shi’ites, who position at home, it seemed unlikely that yet another inten-
made up 60 percent of the population. Jailed or ousted sification of American efforts to create stability in Iraq would
from their positions by American forces, top Sunnis succeed.
quickly turned against the occupation, rallied their sup-
porters, and launched an armed insurgency. By late 2004,
radical Sunnis and al-Qaeda converts were slipping into
The West and Its Muslim Citizens
Iraq, where they directed horrendous suicide bombings at The attack on the World Trade Center and the long war
American soldiers, Iraqi security forces, and defenseless in Iraq, signaling a dramatic worsening of relations be-
Shi’ite civilians. tween the West and the Islamic world, had major reper-
Believing in democracy and representative institutions, cussions in Western countries. In the United States there
the Americans restored Iraqi sovereignty in July 2004, were great fears of more terrorist attacks, but to almost
formed a provisional government, and held relatively free everyone’s surprise Europe received the extremists’ next
blows. In May 2004 Moroccan Muslims living in Spain generations were finding themselves locked out in their
exploded bombs planted on morning trains bound for adopted countries. In short, economics, inadequate job
Madrid and killed 252 commuters. A year later a similar training, and discrimination trumped religion and ex-
attack was carried out in London by British citizens of tremist teachings.
Pakistani descent, young men who had grown up in This argument was strengthened by widespread riot-
Britain and seemed to be ordinary fellows. ing in France in November 2005 that saw hundreds of
Even more traumatic for the tolerant Dutch and many young second- and third-generation Muslim immigrants
other Europeans was the repeated stabbing and brutal go on a rampage. Almost always French by birth, lan-
murder of Theo van Gogh by a young Dutch Muslim. Van guage, and education, marauding groups of “Arabs”
Gogh, a provocative filmmaker, had joined an anti-Islamic torched hundreds of automobiles night after night in
feminist and refugee from East Africa in making a vulgar Paris suburbs and large cities. (See the feature “Listening
ten-minute film that mocked the prophet Muhammad and to the Past: The French Riots: Will They Change Any-
denounced Islam’s treatment of women. For his “blas- thing?” on pages 1054–1055.) The rioters complained
phemy,” van Gogh was “executed” by the son of Moroc- bitterly of very high unemployment, systematic discrimi-
can immigrants, who proudly explained his action to the nation, and exclusion. Religious ideology appeared al-
court in colloquial Dutch. most nonexistent in their thinking. Studies sparked by
These spectacular attacks and lesser actions by Islamic the rioting in France found poor, alienated Muslims in
militants sharpened the European debate on immigration unwholesome ghettos throughout western Europe.
(see pages 1042–1044). A shrill chorus warned that, in Although Muslim immigrants in the United States
addition to the security danger, Europe’s rapidly growing certainly experienced increased hostility after the Sep-
Muslim population posed a dire threat to the West’s en- tember 11 attack, it was generally recognized that they
tire Enlightenment tradition, which embraced freedom of were integrating more successfully with their adopted
thought, representative government, toleration, separa- homeland than were their European counterparts. This is
tion of church and state, and, more recently, equal rights partly because the United States believes that it has al-
for women and gays. Islamic extremists and radical clerics
Apago PDF Enhancer ways been a nation of immigrants, whereas the European
settled in Europe were, the critics claimed, rejecting these ideal remains the homogeneous national state. Equally
fundamental Western values and preaching instead the su- important, Muslim immigrants to the United States have
premacy of Islamic laws for Muslims living in Europe, and often been well educated, have come from several coun-
even for non-Muslim Europeans on some issues. More- tries speaking different languages, and have spread out
over, the critics claimed, many “moderate” Islamic teach- within cities and across the country. Muslim immigrants
ers were really anti-Western radicals playing for time. (See to western Europe, usually a larger percentage of the
the feature “Individuals in Society: Tariq Ramadan.”) host country’s population than in America, have gener-
And time was on the side of Euro-Islam. Europe’s Mus- ally been poor rural people with limited education who
lim population, estimated at 15 million in 2006, appeared came to do manual labor. In each of the leading host
likely to double to 30 million by 2025, and it would in- countries, they came mainly from a single Muslim coun-
crease rapidly thereafter as the number of non-Europeans try and then lived together on the fringes of the largest
plummeted (see pages 1041–1042). cities. Muslim immigrants to the United States brought
Admitting that Islamic extremism could pose a serious more “human capital,” and this facilitated more success-
challenge, many mainstream observers focused instead ful integration.
on the problem of immigrant integration. Whereas the Finally, the fact that Americans and western Europeans
first generation of Muslim immigrants—predominately have gone their separate ways on religion probably im-
Turks in Germany, Algerians in France, Pakistanis in pacts their relations with their Muslim citizens. A large
Britain, and Moroccans in the Netherlands—had found though declining number of Americans still take religion
jobs as unskilled workers in Europe’s great postwar seriously, whereas western Europeans have largely aban-
boom, they and their children had been hard hit after doned Christianity, with less than 5 percent of the popu-
1973 by the general economic downturn. Immigrants lation attending church on most Sundays. Thus many
also suffered from the ongoing decline of European Americans still can—or should—understand and even
manufacturing due to globalization. Provided for mod- appreciate the power of Islam for devout Muslims,
estly by the welfare state and housed minimally in ugly whereas western Europeans tend to find all traditional re-
housing projects, many Muslims of the second and third ligious belief irrational and out-of-date. This is why, in
addition to determined efforts to root out anti-Muslim that the energy crisis—in the form of skyrocketing oil
discrimination, the renowned French scholar Olivier Roy prices—meant disaster in the form of lower standards of
argues, Europe must recognize that Islam is now a Euro- living at best and the collapse of civilization at worst. In
pean religion and a vital part of European life. This recog- fact, oil prices collapsed in the early 1980s and generally
nition, he argues, will open the way to eventual full stayed low until the second Iraq war in 2003. It was
acceptance of European Muslims in both political and cul- heartening in that time of pessimism to know that most
tural terms. It will head off the resentment that can drive dire predictions do not prove true, just as the same
Europe’s Muslim believers to separatism and acts of terror. knowledge of likely error is sobering in times of optimistic
expectations.
Optimistic visions of the future were certainly in the air
The Future in Perspective after the end of the cold war. The pendulum had defi-
nitely swung, most notably in the United States. Un-
• What does the study of history have to tell us about the troubled in the late 1990s by the high unemployment
future? and the early stages of corporate downsizing that soured
For centuries astrologers and scientists, experts and ordi- the mood in western Europe, the United States cele-
nary people, have sought to peek into the future. And al- brated its dynamic economy and its booming stock mar-
though it may seem that the study of the past has little to ket. U.S. military power, leadership in world affairs, and
say about the future, the study of history over a long pe- excellence in advanced technologies also encouraged op-
riod is actually very useful in this regard. It helps put the timism and rosy projections.
future in perspective. In 2000 the American mood shifted. The dot-com
Certainly, history is full of erroneous predictions, a few bubble burst, and in 2001 the U.S. economy slid into a
of which we have mentioned in this book. Yet lack of suc- recession. The al-Qaeda attack on New York and the
cess has not diminished the age-old desire to look into the tragic war in Iraq, with its endless carnage and suicide
future. Self-proclaimed experts even pretend that they bombings, led to many pessimistic forecasts of a long up-
have created a new science of futurology. With great pom-
Apago PDF Enhancer hill struggle against global extremism, especially Islamic
posity, they often act as if their hunches and guesses about extremism. Most frightening of all were grim warnings by
future human development are inescapable realities. Yet some self-described experts who predicted that terrorist
the study of history teaches healthy skepticism regarding groups were likely to succeed in developing or buying bi-
such predictions, however scientific and learned they may ological and nuclear weapons of mass destruction, which
appear. Past results suggest that most such predictions will they would then turn on millions of innocent people with
simply not come true, or at least not in the anticipated unspeakable cruelty. Such nightmare scenarios are not im-
ways. Thus history provides some psychological protec- possible, but we should remember that modern govern-
tion from the visions of modern prognosticators. ments possess tremendous resources that they can
This protection is particularly valuable when we realize mobilize to control individuals and opposition groups, es-
that views of the future tend to swing between pessimistic pecially when the leading states decide to work together,
and optimistic extremes from one generation, or even as they did immediately after September 11, 2001. Once
from one decade, to the next. These swings back and forth again, just as it is sobering to know that the rosiest pre-
between optimism and pessimism, which one historian dictions in optimistic times usually do not prove true, so
has aptly called “the great seesaw” in the development of is it heartening to know that the direst projections in pes-
the Western world, reflect above all the current situation simistic times normally do not come to pass.
of the observers.7 Thus in the economic stagnation and Whatever does or does not happen, the study of his-
revived cold war of the 1970s and 1980s, many projec- tory puts the future in perspective in other ways. We have
tions into the future were quite pessimistic, just as they seen that every age has its problems and challenges. Oth-
were very optimistic in the 1950s and 1960s. Many ers before us have trodden the paths of uncertainty and
people in the Western world feared that conditions were crisis. This knowledge helps save us from exaggerated
going to get worse rather than better. For example, there self-pity in the face of our own predicaments.
were fears that pollution would destroy the environment Perhaps our Western heritage may rightly inspire us
and that the traditional family would disappear. Some with pride and measured self-confidence. We stand, mo-
gloomy experts predicted that twenty to thirty states mentarily, at the head of the long procession of Western
might well have nuclear weapons by the end of the twen- civilization. Sometimes the procession has wandered, or
tieth century. Many forecasters and politicians predicted backtracked, or done terrible things. But it has also
Individuals
in Society
Tariq Ramadan
R eligious teacher, activist professor, and media star, grounds. Becoming full
Tariq Ramadan (b. 1962) is Europe’s most famous Mus- citizens and refusing to
lim intellectual. He is also a controversial figure, praised live in parallel as the
by many as a moderate bridge-builder and denounced foreign Other, Muslims
by others as an Islamic militant in clever disguise. should work with non-
Born in Switzerland of Egyptian ancestry, Ramadan Muslims on matters
is the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, the charismatic of common concern,
founder of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood. Al- such as mutual respect,
Banna fought to reshape Arab nationalism within a better schools, and
framework of Islamic religious orthodoxy and anti- economic justice.*
British terrorism until he himself was assassinated in Ramadan is most effec- Tariq Ramadan.
(AP Images/Keystone/Salvatore Di Nolfi)
1949. Growing up in Geneva, where his father sought tive with second- or
refuge in 1954 after Nasser’s anti-Islamic crackdown in third-generation college
Egypt, the young Tariq attended mainstream public graduates. He urges them to think for themselves and
schools, played soccer, and absorbed a wide-ranging distinguish the sacred revelation of Islam from the
Islamic heritage. For example, growing up fluent in nonessential cultural aspects that their parents brought
French and Arabic, he learned English mainly from from African and Asian villages.
listening to Pakistani Muslims discuss issues with his With growing fame has come growing controversy.
father, who represented the Muslim Brotherhood and In 2004, preparing to take up a professorship in the
its ideology in Europe. United States, he was denied an entry visa on the
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Ramadan studied philosophy and French literature as grounds that he had contributed to a Palestinian char-
an undergraduate at the University of Geneva, and he ity with ties to terrorists. Defenders disputed the facts
then earned a doctorate in Arabic and Islamic studies. and charged that his criticism of Israeli policies and the
Marrying a Swiss woman who converted to Islam, Ra- invasion of Iraq were the real reasons. Ramadan’s
madan moved his family to Cairo in 1991 to study Is- critics also claim that he says different things to differ-
lamic law and philosophy. It proved to be a pivotal ent groups: hard-edged criticism of the West found on
experience. Eagerly anticipating the return to his Muslim tapes for Muslims belies the reasoned moderation of
roots, Ramadan gradually realized that only in Europe his books. Some critics also argue that his recent con-
did he feel truly “at home.” In his personal experience demnation of Western capitalism and globalization is
he found his message: that Western Muslims should feel an opportunistic attempt to win favor with European
equally “at home” and that they should participate fully leftists and does not reflect a self-proclaimed Islamic
as active citizens in their adopted countries. passion for justice. Yet, on balance, Ramadan’s reputa-
In developing his message, Ramadan left the class- tion remains intact.† An innovative bridge-builder, he
room and focused on creating non-scholarly books, symbolizes the growing importance of Europe’s Mus-
audio cassettes that sell in the tens of thousands, and lim citizens.
media events. Slim and elegant in well-tailored suits
and open collars, Ramadan is a brilliant speaker. His Questions for Analysis
public lectures in French and English draw hundreds of
Muslims (and curious non-Muslims). 1. What is Ramadan’s message to Western Muslims?
Ramadan argues that Western Muslims basically How did he reach his conclusions?
live in security, have fundamental legal rights, and can 2. Do you think Ramadan’s ideas are realistic? Why?
freely practice their religion. He notes that Muslims in *See, especially, Tariq Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future
the West are often more secure than are believers in the of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
Muslim world, where governments are frequently re- †See Ian Buruma, The New York Times Magazine, February 4, 2007.
pressive and arbitrary. According to Ramadan, Islamic

teaching requires Western Muslims to obey Western
laws, although in rare cases they may need to plead Improve Your Grade
“conscientious objection” and disobey on religious Going Beyond Individuals in Society
1051
carried the efforts and sacrifices of generations of toiling, representative government, and nationhood in the Euro-
struggling ancestors. Through no effort of our own, we pean homeland. We hold a good hand.
are the beneficiaries of those sacrifices and achievements. Our study of history, of mighty struggles and fearsome
Now that it is our turn to carry the torch onward, we challenges, of shining achievements and tragic failures,
may remember these ties with our forebears. gives a sense of the essence of life itself: the process of
To change the metaphor, we in the West are like a card change over time. Again and again we have seen how
player who has been dealt many good cards. Some of peoples and societies evolve, influenced by ideas, human
them are obvious, such as our technical and scientific her- passions, and material conditions. As surely as anything is
itage or our commitment to human rights, religious free- sure, this process of change over time will continue as the
dom, and the individual. Others are not so obvious, future becomes the present and then the past. And stu-
sometimes half-forgotten or even hidden up the sleeve. dents of history are better prepared to make sense of this
Think, for example, of the Christian Democrats, the unfolding process because they have already observed it.
moderate Catholic party that emerged after World War II They know how change is rooted in existing historical
to play such an important role in the western European forces, and their projections will probably be better than
renaissance. And in the almost miraculous victory of many of the trendy speculations of futurologists. Stu-
peaceful revolution in eastern Europe in 1989—in what dents of history are also prepared for the new and unex-
Czech playwright-turned-president Václav Havel called pected in human development, for they have already seen
“the power of the powerless”—we see again the regener- great breakthroughs and revolutions. They have an un-
ative strength of the Western ideals of individual rights, derstanding of how things really happen.
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p_31_14
new tk
Demonstrating for Peace Millions long for peace, but history and current events suggest
that bloody conflicts will continue. Yet there is cause for some cautious optimism: since 1945
wars have been localized and cataclysmic catastrophes like World Wars I and II have been
averted. Holding torches, some 3,500 people form the sign of peace in an antiwar, antivio-
lence rally in Heroes Square in central Budapest. The rally marked the third anniversary of the
U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. (Peter Kollanyi/epa/Corbis)
• In what ways did Solidarity confront the communist rope west of Russia, Ukraine, and the Caucasus. This
system in Poland, and how did Mikhail Gorbachev try triumph was the shining achievement of the post–cold
to reverse the decline of communism in the Soviet war era.
Union? The twenty-first century highlighted critical issues,
• How did anticommunist revolutions sweep through and we have seen how the European baby bust, the
eastern Europe in 1989, and what were the immediate growth of illegal immigration, and the increased com-
consequences? mitment to human rights were all interrelated. The most
• How, in the 1990s, did the different parts of a disturbed development was the renewed hostility be-
reunifying Europe meet the challenges of tween the West and the Islamic world, which was marked
postcommunist reconstruction, resurgent nationalism, indelibly by the al-Qaeda attack of 2001, the campaign
and economic union? to punish Afghanistan, and the American and British in-
vasion of Iraq. Essentially an effort to remake Iraq (and
• Why did the prospect of population decline, the the Arab world) along Western lines, the war in Iraq saw
reality of large-scale immigration, and concern for
American soldiers run up against a potent combination
human rights emerge as critical issues in contemporary
of Arab nationalism, Islamic extremism, and sectarian
Europe?
conflict. War in the Middle East encouraged shrill cries
• How and why did relations between the West and the about an ominous Muslim threat from immigrants living
Islamic world deteriorate dramatically in the early
twenty-first century?
Apago PDF Enhancer in western Europe, but a study of history would suggest
that these fears were greatly exaggerated.
• What does the study of history have to tell us about
the future?
Key Terms
The rise of Solidarity in Poland showed again that the Gdansk Agreement Paris Accord
communist system in eastern Europe depended ulti- Solidarity “new world order”
mately on Soviet armies. Therefore, when the Russian perestroika globalization
leader Mikhail Gorbachev refused to use force abroad glasnost European Union
and his ambitious reforms at home spiraled out of con- shock therapy Kosovo Liberation
trol, the peoples of eastern Europe rose and overturned Velvet Revolution Army (KLA)
communist rule in the spectacular, peaceful revolutions third way Maastricht treaty
of 1989. In a dramatic finale, the democratic movement Alliance for baby bust
triumphed in the Soviet Union, the two Germanies Germany
joined in a single state, the cold war ended, and the
United States remained the only superpower. Improve Your Grade Flashcards
In the 1990s, post–cold war Europe grappled with
neoliberal market economies, welfare systems under con-
tinuing attack, and globalization. Social and economic Suggested Reading
reconstruction in Russia was less successful than it was in
eastern Europe, with the glaring exception of the former Bernstein, Richard B. Out of the Blue: A Narrative of Sep-
Yugoslavia, which was destroyed by resurgent ethnic na- tember 11, 2001. 2003. A gripping account by a talented
tionalism. Eastern Europe’s rebuilding and its determi- journalist.
nation to “rejoin Europe” stimulated the long postwar Brubaker, Rogers. Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and
movement toward European unity, and the newly named the National Question. 1996. An excellent analysis of the
European Union expanded to include almost all of Eu- contemporary resurgence of nationalism.
(continued on page 1056)
The French Riots: Will They Change Anything?
In late November 2005, young Muslim males rioted

for several nights in the suburbs of Paris and other
interior—the presidential candidate Nicolas
Sarkozy—there had been a general police crack-
French cities. Receiving saturation coverage from the down in these ugly suburban clusters of
media, this explosion of car-burning and arson deteriorating high-rise apartments built years ago
ignited controversy and debate throughout France to house immigrant workers. They were meant to
and across Europe. What caused the riots? What be machines for living. The police attention meant
could and should be done? How did the conditions of random identity checks, police suspicion, and
second- and third-generation Muslims in France harassment of young men hanging about—maybe
compare with conditions of Muslims in other Western dealing in drugs, maybe simply doing nothing
countries? because there is nothing for them to do. (In the
One penetrating commentary, aimed at an past, they at least had to do national military
American audience and reprinted here, came from service, which was a strong integrative force, but
Apago PDF Enhancer
William Pfaff, a noted author and political columnist now France has a professional army.)
with many years of European experience. As you Their grandfathers came to France, mostly from
read Pfaff’s analysis, note in particular the contrast North Africa, to do the hard labor in France’s
he draws between the French government’s policy industrial reconstruction after the Second World
toward Muslims and the policy pursued in Britain War. Their fathers saw the work gradually dry up
and the Netherlands. as Europe’s economies slowed, following the first
oil shock in the early 1970s. After that came
The rioting in France’s ghetto suburbs is a unemployment. The unemployment rate in the
phenomenon of futility—but a revelation zones where there has been the most violence is
nonetheless. It has no ideology and no purpose nearly 40 percent and among young people it is
other than to make a statement of distress and higher. Many of the young men in these places
anger. It is beyond politics. It broke out have never been offered a job. When they applied,
spontaneously and spread in the same way, their names often excluded them.
communicated by televised example, ratified by Their grandfathers were hard-working men.
the huge attention it won from the press and Their fathers saw their manhood undermined by
television and the politicians, none of whom had unemployment. These young men are doomed to
any idea what to do. be boys. They often take their frustration out on
It has been an immensely pathetic spectacle, their sisters and girlfriends, who are more likely to
whose primary meaning has been that it have done well in school and found jobs—and
happened. It has been the most important frequently a new life—outside the ghetto. . . .
popular social phenomenon in France since the The Muslim mothers and wives of the French
student uprisings of 1968. But those uprisings . . . ghetto are often confined in the home. Drugs are
had consequences for power. The new riots have big business in the American ghetto; they are not
nothing to do with power. that big in France. The crimes of the French
They started with the accidental electrocutions ghetto are robbery and shoplifting, stealing
of two boys hiding from the police, who they mobile phones, stealing cars for joyrides, burning
thought were after them. The police say there was them afterward to eliminate fingerprints, or
no pursuit and they had no interest in the boys. burning cars just for the hell of it, as well as
However, under the policies of the minister of robbing middle-class students in the city and
1054
making trouble on suburban trains, looking for
excitement.
Religion is important . . . in the French ghetto,
it provides the [shell] that protects against the
France that excludes Muslims. To the European
Muslim, it seems that all of the powerful in the
world are in collusion to exclude Muslims—or are
at war with them. The war in Iraq, on television,
is the constant backdrop to Muslim life in Europe.
There are itinerant imams who can put the young
ghetto Muslim on the road to danger and adven-
ture in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq—or else- French police face off with young rioters,
where. There are plenty more who preach a still silhouetted against the flames of burning
deeper ghettoization: a retreat inside Islamic fun- automobiles. (Reuters/Corbis)
damentalism, totally shutting out a diabolized
secular world.
One would think there would be a revolu- immense for candidates. Virtually no children
tionary potential in these ghettos, vulnerabil- of the Muslim immigration are prominent in
ity to a mobilizing ideology. This seems not to mainstream electoral politics; the political parties
be so. We may be living in a religious age, but it have yet to make a serious effort to include them.
is not one of political ideology. In any case, it The present government has one junior minister
is difficult to imagine how the marginalized, of Algerian origin. I am not aware of any Muslims
thirteen- to twenty-three-year-old children of of immigrant origin in French diplomacy or the
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the Muslim immigration could change France top ranks of police and military.
other than by what they are doing, which is to President Jacques Chirac has announced a
demonstrate that the French model of assim- civilian national service agency to give training
ilating immigrants as citizens, and not as members and employment to 50,000 young people from
of religious or ethnic groups, has failed for them. the troubled zones by 2007. The age of appren-
It has failed because it has not seriously been ticeship has been lowered to fourteen, with a
tried. corresponding drop in the age of compulsory
The ghettoization of immigrant youth in academic schooling and new measures to support
France is the consequence of negligence. It has apprenticeships. There will be more money for
been as bad as the ghettoization through politi- schools, local associations, and housing construction
cal correctness of Muslims in Britain and the and renovation. This is change. Whether it is
Netherlands, where many people who thought of enough, and in time, is another matter.
themselves as enlightened said that assimilation
efforts were acts of cultural aggression. The
immigrant in France is told that he or she is a Questions for Analysis
citizen just like everyone else, with all the rights
and privileges of citizenship—including the right 1. Describe the situation of young Muslims in
to be unemployed. France. What elements of their situation strike
Nicolas Sarkozy’s zero tolerance of crime and you most forcefully? Why?
of the petty mafias in the ghetto contributed to
touching off these riots, but until recently he was 2. France has maintained that, since all citizens are
the only French politician to say there has to be equal, they should all be treated the same way.
affirmative action to get an immigrant elite out of Why has this policy failed for French Muslims?
the ghettos and into important roles in French What alternatives would you suggest? Why?
life, where they can pull their communities after Source: William Pfaff, “The French Riots: Will They
them. Some affirmative action has been attempted Change Anything?” The New York Review of Books,
in recruiting candidates for the elite grandes écoles December 15, 2005, pp. 88–89. Reprinted with permission
[state schools] that train the French administrative from The New York Review of Books. Copyright © 2005
and political class, where the cultural hurdles are NYREV, Inc.
1055
Buruma, Ian. Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Stiglitz, Joseph E. Making Globalization Work. 2006. An
van Gogh and the Limits of Toleration. 2006. A masterful, excellent overview of the successes and failures of glob-
very readable investigation of the crime that electrified alization by a distinguished economist.
Europe. Suny, Ronald Grigor. The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the
Dobbs, Michael. Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the USSR, and the Successor States. 1998. An outstanding
Soviet Empire. 1998. A superb firsthand study by an in- history of Russia in the 1990s.
spired journalist. Viorst, Milton. Storm from the East: The Struggle Between
Johnson, Lonnie R. Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbors, the Arab World and the Christian West. 2007. Recom-
Friends. 2001. A book that ably interprets develop- mended short study of twentieth-century developments
ments in eastern Europe before and after the revolu- within a broad historical perspective.
tions of 1989. Woodward, Bob. State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III.
Lampe, John R. Yugoslavia as History: Twice There Was a 2006. Best-selling account based on extensive inter-
Country, 2d ed. 2003. An excellent, judicious work on views.
the tragedy in Yugoslavia.
Lucassen, Leo. The Immigrant Threat: The Integration of
Old and New Immigrants in Western Europe Since 1850. Notes
2005. Argues effectively that Muslims are assimilating 1. F. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free
as rapidly as previous immigrants. Press, 1992); and J. Cronin, The World the Cold War Made: Order,
Chaos, and Return of History (New York: Routledge, 1996),
Reid, T. R. The United States of Europe: The New Super-
pp. 267–281.
power and the End of American Supremacy. 2005. A lively, 2. Quoted in The Economist, January 6, 2001, p. 6.
informative examination by a perceptive American. 3. Quoted by Flora Lewis, International Herald Tribune, June 15,
2001, p. 6.
Ross, George. Jacques Delors and European Integration.
4. D. Rappaport, “The Fourth Wave: September 11 in the History of
1995. Analyzes the controversies surrounding the Eu-
Apago PDF Enhancer Terrorism,” Current History, December 2001, pp. 419–424.
ropean Union in the 1990s. 5. Ibid.
6. R. Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House,
Sakwa, Richard. Putin: Russia’s Choice. 2003. Puts the
and the Education of Paul O’Neill (New York: Simon and Schuster,
Russian leader in social and historical context. 2004), p. 86.
Shore, Zachary. Breeding Bin Ladens: America, Islam, and 7. G. Blainey, The Great Seesaw: A New View of the Western World
(London: Macmillan, 1988).
the Future of Europe. 2006. A comprehensive overview
of the Muslim question in Europe.
Document-Based Question (DBQ) Essay Topics
Correlation by Chapter
DBQ Topic Corresponding Page

Chapter(s)
1 Perspectives of Renaissance Writers NEW Ch 13 A-5
2 Reform and Renewal in the Christian Church Ch 14 A-8
3 Attitudes and Responses to European Exploration Ch 15 A-11

and Conquest NEW
4 Absolutism Chs 16 & 17 A-16
5 Toward a New Worldview Ch 18 A-19
6 European Expansion and the Changing Life of the People Ch 19 A-22

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7 Eighteenth-Century Medical Practices NEW Ch 20 A-26
8 The French Revolution Ch 21 A-29
9 Women in the Industrial Revolution Ch 22 A-33
10 Ideologies and Nationalism Chs 23 & 25 A-38
11 The West and the World Ch 26 A-44
12 World War I and the Home Front Ch 27 A-49
13 Age of Anxiety Ch 28 A-53
14 Dictatorships and the Second World War Ch 29 A-58
15 Views Regarding Decolonization NEW Ch 30 A-62
16 Communism and Eastern Europe Chs 30 & 31 A-66
A-1
Writing the Document-Based Question
(DBQ) Essay
This section is designed to be used in conjunction with the chapters of A History of

Western Society and to provide you with opportunities to practice writing the DBQ,
an essential part of the AP European History exam. The Document-Based Question
(DBQ) essay tests your ability to analyze historical documents and think critically like
a historian. It is not an assessment of your historical recall, but rather an assessment of
your ability to analyze and think critically about documented history.
The DBQ question looks like a standard free-response essay question. Following
the question is a series of documents, usually ten to twelve. The documents may be writ-
ten sources, pictures, artwork, maps, graphs, tables, or charts. Your task is to read and in-
terpret the documents and then to use them as evidence to answer the question in essay
format. Your essay will look like a regular essay (introduction, thesis statement, support-
ing paragraphs, and conclusion). The difference is that all the supporting information
(evidence) will come from the documents.
Your essay will be assessed on the following criteria:

1. Thesis statement: must be original and specific, not simply a rewording of
the question
2. Use of the documents: must use a majority of the documents; documents
must be used individually and specifically; documents must be used to
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support the thesis
3. Accuracy of interpretation of documents
4. Analysis of bias and point of view in several documents
5. Organization of documents into groups
First, it is essential that you directly answer the essay question/prompt. While this
may seem obvious, many students struggle to understand the terms of the question. The
College Board uses the task words listed below in crafting essay questions. Often the
task words may be combined, making the question more complex—for example, identify
AND analyze, explain to what extent, and so on.
TASK WORDS & THEIR MEANINGS*

1. ANALYZE: determine the component parts; examine the nature and relationship
2. ASSESS/EVALUATE: judge the value or character of something; appraise;
evaluate the positive points and the negative ones; give an opinion regarding
the value of; discuss the advantages and disadvantages of
3. COMPARE: examine for the purpose of noting similarities and differences
4. CONTRAST: examine in order to show dissimilarities or points of difference
5. DESCRIBE: give an account of; tell about; give a word picture of
6. DISCUSS: talk over; write about; consider or examine by argument or from
various points of view; debate; present the different sides of
*Adapted from AP European History Course Description, College Entrance Examination Board, 2007. AP and the Advanced
Placement Program are registered trademarks of the College Entrance Examination Board, which was not involved in
the production of, and does not endorse, this product.
A-2
WRITING THE DOCUMENT-BASED QUESTION (DBQ) ESSAY • A-3
7. EXPLAIN: make clear or plain; make clear the causes or reasons for; make
known in detail; tell the meaning of
8. IDENTIFY: cite specific events and phenomena, and show a connection
9. TO WHAT EXTENT: the range over which something extends; scope; the
point, degree, or limit to which something extends; magnitude
BEFORE YOU BEGIN TO WRITE the essay you will be afforded a fifteen-minute reading
and planning period. You should use this time to actively read the documents and begin
to categorize or group them. As you read, make notes in the margins, or underline
important information. You should work to interrogate the document by asking the
following questions:*
1. What is the document? (newspaper article, diary entry, public speech, and
so on)
2. Who wrote the document? (consider the writer’s education and social class)
3. When and where was the document written? (link this to a historical era or
event)
4. Why was the document written? What was the motivation of the author?
5. Who was the intended audience for the document? Is this document public
or private?
6. What does the document mean?
7. How does the document help you answer the essay question?
8. How can you categorize or group the document?
GROUP THE DOCUMENTS according to the terms of the question. You want to create
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specific groupings, such as by gender, similar opinion, social class, or time period. You
may also group documents that appear to counter each other; this practice is called jux-
taposition. It is possible to create groupings using broad categories such as political,
economic, religious, social, intellectual, or artistic views. However, students who create
specific groups according to the terms of the question usually write more sophisticated
essays. Also, it is important to remember that it takes at least two documents used prop-
erly as evidence to make one group.
FORMULATE A THESIS that addresses the terms of the question. You are expected to
create an original and specific thesis, not simply a rewording of the question. The thesis
should serve as a road map for your essay, and it should demonstrate to the reader how
you plan to answer the question. Also, a strong introduction will preview the body para-
graphs of your essay by articulating the way you intend to group the documents and
organize the essay.
WHILE WRITING THE ESSAY it is important to create strong topic sentences that intro-
duce the groupings for each of your body paragraphs of the essay. Your analysis of the
documents as they relate to the terms of the question should be used as evidence to
support your thesis. Also, it is essential to refer to the documents INDIVIDUALLY
and SPECIFICALLY. This is best accomplished by students who afford proper ATTRI-
BUTION to the documents. Each document contains source information; you should
use this source information when referring to the document—for example, According
to Protestant reformer Martin Luther, or A Catholic priest from Paris stated.
*Adapted from AP European History Course Description, College Entrance Examination Board, 2007.
A-4 • WRITING THE DOCUMENT-BASED QUESTION (DBQ) ESSAY
ANALYZING THE POINT OF VIEW of the documents at least three times throughout your
essay is absolutely essential. This demonstrates that you can think critically about the
documents and their context as it relates to history. To demonstrate analysis of bias or
point of view of the document you must explain WHY a particular source expresses the
stated view in the following ways:*
1. Relating AUTHORIAL point of view to the author’s place in society—for
example, motive, position, status
2. Evaluating the CREDIBILITY of the source
3. Recognizing that different TYPES OF DOCUMENTS serve different
purposes
4. Analyzing the TONE of the language used in the document
Here is an example of proper analysis of point of view as well as proper attribution of
the document:
In a picture taken at the Royal Palace in Berlin, August 1914 (Doc. 2), German
unity is clearly demonstrated. The photograph shows a large mass of people with
similar hats and clothing. They are seen cheering in honor of Germany. This
photograph, however, may contain bias; having been taken at the Royal Palace
by a government news agency, it shows only those who would go to Berlin to
encourage German unity; certainly this is the image the government wants to
portray as Germany prepares for war.
Use the questions in this section to help you practice and prepare for the test. Remem-
ber to use the steps and techniques discussed here. Each of the DBQ topics is correlated
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to one or more chapters in your text.
*Adapted from AP European History Course Description, College Entrance Examination Board, 2007.
DBQ 1
Perspectives of Renaissance Writers
Identify and analyze various perspectives of Renaissance writers.
Historical Background
The Renaissance was characterized by self-conscious awareness among fourteenth- and fifteenth-century
Italians that they were living in a new era. The realization that something new and unique was happening
first came to men of letters. The Renaissance also manifested itself in a new attitude toward men, women,
and the world.
Document 1
Source: Italian humanist Petrarch, in letters to Boccaccio, 1364.
. . . O inglorious age! that scorns antiquity, its mother, to whom it owes every noble art, that dares to declare
itself not only equal but superior to the glorious past. I say nothing of the vulgar, the dregs of mankind, whose
sayings and opinions may raise a laugh but hardly merit serious censure.
Document 2
Source: Peter Paul Vergerio (1370–1444), in a letter to Ubertinus, ruler of Carrara, Italy.
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For the education of children is a matter of more than private interest; it concerns the State, which indeed
regards the right training of the young as, in certain aspects, within its proper sphere. . . . Tutors and com-
rades alike should be chosen from amongst those likely to bring out the best qualities to attract by good
example, and to repress the first signs of evil. . . . Above all, respect for Divine ordinances is of the deepest
importance; it should be inculcated from the earliest years. Reverence towards elders and parents is an obli-
gation closely akin. We call those studies liberal which are worthy of a free man; those studies by which we
attain and practice virtue and wisdom.
Document 3
Source: On Learning and Literature, by Leonardo Bruni, Arezzo, Italy, 1472.
But we must not forget that true distinction is to be gained by a wide and varied range of such studies as con-
duce to the profitable enjoyment of life, in which, however we must observe due proportion in the attention
and time we devote to them. First amongst such studies I place History: a subject which must not on any
account be neglected by one who aspires to true cultivation. For it is our duty to understand the origins of
our own history and its development; and the achievements of Peoples and of Kings.
A-5
A-6 • DOCUMENT-BASED QUESTIONS
Document 4
Source: Oration on the Dignity of Man, by Pico della Mirandola of Italy, 1486.
For why should we not admire more the angels themselves and the blessed choirs of heaven? At last it seems
to me I have come to understand why man is the most fortunate of creatures and consequently worthy of all
admiration and what precisely is that rank which is his lot in the universal chain of Being—a rank to be envied
not only by brutes but even by the stars and by minds beyond this world. . . . For it is on this very account
that man is rightly called and judged a great miracle and wonderful creature indeed.
Document 5
Source: Italian humanist Laura Cereta, Letter to Bibulus Sempronius, 1488.
You brashly and publicly not merely wonder but indeed lament that I am said to possess as fine a mind as
nature ever bestowed upon the most learned man. You seem to think so learned a woman has scarcely before
been seen in the world. You are wrong. . . . The explanation is clear: women have been able by nature to be
exceptional, but have chosen lesser goals. For some women are concerned with parting their hair correctly,
adorning themselves with lovely dresses . . . or standing at mirrors to smear their lovely faces. But those in
whom a deeper integrity yearns for virtue, restrain from the start their youthful souls, reflect on higher things,
harden the body with sobriety and trials, and curb their tongues, open their ears, compose their thoughts in
wakeful hours, their minds in contemplation to letters bonded to righteousness. For knowledge is not given
as a gift, but [is gained] with diligence. Nature has generously lavished its gifts upon all people, opening to
all the doors of choice through which reason sends envoys to the will. . . .
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Document 6
Source: Lorenzo de’ Medici, letter to his son Giovanni, after his son became a cardinal
at the age of fourteen, ca 1491.
Converse on general topics with all. . . . A handsome house and a well-ordered family will be preferable to a
great retinue and a splendid residence. . . . Silk and jewels are not suitable for persons in your station. Your
taste will be better shown in the acquisition of a few elegant remains of antiquity, or in the collecting of hand-
some books, and by your attendants being learned and well-bred rather than numerous. Invite others to your
house oftener than you receive invitations. . . . Let your own food be plain. . . . The station of a cardinal is
not less secure than elevated; on which account those who arrive at it too frequently become negligent;
conceiving their object is attained and that they can preserve it with little trouble. . . . Be attentive, there-
fore, to your conduct, and confide in others too little rather than too much.
Document 7
Source: The Praise of Folly, by Dutch humanist Erasmus, 1509.
As for the theologians, perhaps it would be better to pass them over in silence, “not stirring up the hornets’
nest” and “not laying a finger on the stinkweed,” since this race of man is incredibly arrogant and touchy.
For they might rise up en masse and march in ranks against me with six hundred conclusions and force me
to recant. And if I should refuse, they would immediately shout “heretic.” For this is the thunderbolt they
always keep ready at a moment’s notice to terrify anyone to whom they are not very favorably inclined.
DBQ 1 • A-7
Document 8
Source: Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives, The Education of a Christian Woman, addressed to Her Most
Serene Majesty, Catherine of Aragon, Queen of England (1524, 1538).
. . . In addition, she will learn the art of cooking. . . . I have seen wives hated by their husbands, daughters-
in-law by their fathers-in-law, and daughters by their fathers because they said they had no skill in preparing
meals. And I have come to the conclusion that the principal reason why men here in Belgium spend so much
time in inns and taverns is the negligence and laziness of their women in cooking meals, which forces men
to avoid their own homes and seek elsewhere what they do not find there. . . . With regard to chastity in
women, we must consider the chaste woman is beautiful, charming, gifted, noble, fertile, and possessed of
every best and outstanding quality, while the unchaste woman is a sea and storehouse of all evils.
Document 9
Source: Niccolò Machiavelli, The History of Florence, 1525.
In peaceful times he [Lorenzo de’ Medici] often entertained the people with various festivities, such as jousts,
feats of arms, and representations of triumphs of olden times. He aimed to maintain abundance in the city,
to keep the people united and the nobility honoured. He had the greatest love and admiration for all who
excelled in any art, and was a great patron of learning and of literary men. . . . Lorenzo took the greatest
delight in architecture, music and poetry; and many of his own poetic compositions, enriched with commen-
taries, appeared in print. And for the purpose of enabling the Florentine youths to devote themselves to the
study of letters, he established a university in the city of Pisa, where he employed the most eminent men of all
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Italy as professors. . . . And thus, beloved of God and fortune, all his enterprises were crowned with success,
whilst those of his enemies had the opposite fate.
Document 10
Source: Celebration of the Worldly Life, by French writer Francois Rabelais, 1532.
. . . In their rules there was only one clause: DO WHAT YOU WILL because people who are free, well-born,
well-bred, and easy in honest company have a natural spur and instinct which drives them to virtuous deeds
and deflects them from vice; and this they called honour.
DBQ 2
Reform and Renewal in the Christian Church
Discuss the extent to which the religious schism during the sixteenth century was symptomatic of
political, social, and economic problems.
Document 1
Source: Albrecht of Brandenburg, Instructions for Selling Indulgences, 1517.
Respecting now the contribution to the chest [church funds], for the rebuilding of the said church of the
chief of the apostles, the penitentiaries and confessors, after they have explained to those making confession
the full remission and privileges, shall ask of them, for how much money or other temporal goods they would
conscientiously go without, the most complete remission and privileges; and this shall be done in order that
hereafter they may be brought the more easily to contribute.
Document 2
Source: Frederick II of Prussia (r. 1740–1786), Essay on the Forms of Government.
The sovereign is representative of his state. He and his people form a single body. Ruler and ruled can be
happy only if they are firmly united. The sovereign stands to his people in the same relation in which the head
stands to the body.
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Document 3
Source: Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (r. 1780–1790), excerpts from (1) a letter to Leopold of Tuscany,
1768; and (2) a confidential memorandum to his mother, Empress Maria Theresa, 1765.
Patriotism, the welfare of the monarchy, . . . are my only passion, and they would inspire me to do anything.
The aim of every measure is to have a total view; every action being related to the overall view, which only the
monarch and his closest associates should share and pursue.
Document 4
Source: The Memoirs of the Duke of Saint-Simon on the Reign of Louis XIV [r. 1643–1715] and the Regency,
trans. Bayle St. John, 1857.
The frequent fêtes [parties], the private promenades at Versailles, the journey, were means on which the King
seized in order to distinguish or mortify the courtiers, and thus render them more assiduous in pleasing
him. . . . Louis XIV took great pains to be well-informed of all that passed everywhere; in the public places,
in the private houses, in society and familiar intercourse. His spies and tell-tattlers were infinite . . . all these
letters were seen by him alone, and always before everything else. . . . These unknown means ruined an
infinite number of people of all classes, who never could discover the cause; often ruined them very unjustly;
for the King, once prejudiced, never altered his opinion.
A-8
DBQ 2 • A-9
Document 5
Source: Michael Eisenhart, The Peasant’s War Engulfs Rothenburg, 1525.
. . . through certain citizens here who adhere to the heresy of Luther, it has come about that bad, false
teaching has greatly got the upper hand, owing also to the dissimulation and concessions of some of the
town authorities. . . .
On March 21, a Tuesday, thirty or forty peasants got together in a mob in Rothenburg, bought a kettled rum,
and marched about the town. . . . They got together again on Thursday and on Friday, as many as four hun-
dred. The working classes in the town now begin to revolt. They cease to obey the authorities and form a
committee of thirty-six to manage affairs.
Document 6
Source: Report of the Commission of Enquiry into the Conditions of the Peasants of Bohemia,
presented to the Council of State in Vienna, 1769 (Holy Roman Empire).
Even those nobles who have the best intentions are unable to protect their peasants, because [taxation] agents
are rough, evil, violent and grasping. . . . The Kingdom of Bohemia is like a statue which is collapsing because
its pedestal has been taken away, because all the charges of the Kingdom are born by the peasants, who are
the sole taxpayers.
Document 7
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Source: Rules for Thinking with the Church, Ignatius Loyola, 1540.
In order to have the proper attitude of mind in the Church Militant [all active, living Christians] we should
observe the following rules:
7. Putting aside all private judgment, we should keep our minds prepared and ready to obey promptly and
in all things the true spouse of Christ our Lord, our Holy Mother, the hierarchical Church.
Document 8
Source: The Religious Peace of Augsburg, by Imperial Diet, 1555.
In order that . . . peace, which is especially necessary in view of the divided religions . . . , and is demanded
by the sad necessity of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, may be the better established and
made secure and enduring between his Roman Imperial Majesty and us, on the one hand, and the electors,
princes, and estates of the Holy Empire of the German nation on the other, therefore his Imperial Majesty,
and we, and the electors, princes, and estates of the Holy Empire, will not make war on any estate of the
empire on account of the Augsburg Confession and the doctrine, religion, and faith of the same. . . .
Document 9
Source: John Calvin’s regulations for the villages around Geneva, 1561.
He who blasphemes, swearing by the body or blood of our Lord, or in like manner, shall kiss the earth for
the first offense, pay five sous [form of currency] for the second and ten for the third. He who contradicts
the word of God shall be sent before consistory for reproof, or before the council for punishment, as the case
may require. If any one sings indecent, licentious songs, or dances . . . he shall be kept in prison three days
and then sent to council. [There are similar provisions for drunkenness, gambling, quarreling, taking more
than five percent interest, and so on.]
Document 10
Source: Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, 1563.
Canon 6: If anyone says that in the Catholic Church there is not instituted a hierarchy by divine ordinance,
which consists of bishops, priests and ministers, let him be anathema [excommunicated].
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DBQ 3
Attitudes and Responses to European Exploration and Conquest
Identify and analyze motives, attitudes, and consequences of the European age of exploration
and conquest.
Overseas expansion broadened the geographical horizons of Europeans and brought them into confrontation
with ancient civilizations in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. These confrontations led first to conquest, then
to exploitation, and finally to profound social changes in both Europe and the conquered territories.
Document 1
Source: Privileges and Prerogatives Granted by Their Catholic Majesties
(Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain) to Christopher Columbus, 1492.
For as much of you, Christopher Columbus, are going by our command, with some of our vessels and men,
to discover and subdue some Islands and Continent in the ocean, and it is hoped that by God’s assistance,
some of the said Islands and Continent in the ocean will be discovered and conquered by your means and
conduct, therefore it is but just and reasonable, that since you expose yourself to such danger to serve us, you
should be rewarded for it. And we being willing to honour and favour You for the reasons aforesaid: Our will
is, That you, Christopher Columbus, after discovering and conquering the said Islands and Continent in the
said ocean, or any of them, shall be our Admiral of the said Islands and Continent you shall so discover and
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conquer; and that you be our Admiral, Vice-Roy, and Governour in them. . . .
Document 2
Source: Christopher Columbus, letter to Lord Sanchez, written in Lisbon on March 14, 1493,
shortly after returning from his first voyage across the Atlantic.
Thus they bartered, like idiots, cotton and gold for fragments of bows, glasses, bottles, and jars; which I forbad
as being unjust, and myself gave them many beautiful and acceptable articles which I had brought with me
taking nothing from them in return; I did this in order that I might the more easily conciliate them, that they
might be led to become Christians, and be inclined to entertain a regard for the King and Queen, our Princes
and all Spaniards, and that I might induce them to take an interest in seeking out and collecting, and deliver-
ing to us such things as they possessed in abundance, but which we greatly needed. They practice no kind of
idolatry, but have a firm belief that all strength and power, and indeed all good things, are in heaven, and that
I had descended from thence with these ships and sailors and under this impression was I received after they
had thrown aside their fears.
A-11
Document 3
Source: Fra Soncino, letter to Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, regarding John Cabot’s first voyage, 1497.
And in the spring he says that his Majesty will arm some ships, and will give him all the criminals, so that he
may go to this country and plant a colony there. And in this way he hopes to make London a greater place
for spices than Alexandria. And the principals of the business are citizens of Bristol, great mariners that now
know where to go. They say that the voyage will not take more than fifteen days, if fortune favors them after
leaving Ireland. I have talked with a Burgundian, a companion of Messer Joanne, who affirms the same, and
who is willing to go, since the Admiral, as Messer Joanne is already styled, has given him an island, and has
also given another to his barber, a Genoese, and they regard the two as Counts, and my lord, the Admiral, the
chief. And I believe that some poor Italian friars will go on the voyage, who have the promise of being bishops.
And I, being a friend of the admiral, if I wished to go, could have an archbishopric.
Document 4
Source: Queen Isabella of Spain, letter to her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon, and her daughter Joanna,
heiress to the Kingdom of Castile, written shortly before her death in November 1504.
. . . Our principal intention, in soliciting from Pope Alexander VI the concession of the lands discovered and
to be discovered, was to convert their peoples to our holy Catholic faith. . . . I beg the King my lord very
affectionately, I order and command the Princess my daughter and the Prince my son, to execute and accom-
plish this intention.
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DBQ 3 • A-13
Document 5
Source: Catholic missionary scholar Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, a sixteenth-century drawing of Aztecs
suffering from smallpox during the Cortes invasion, 1518–1519.
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Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana.
Document 6
Source: Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan’s Voyage Around the World, November 28, 1520.
When we reached land, [the enemy natives] formed in three divisions to the number of more than one
thousand five hundred persons. When they saw us, they charged down upon us with exceeding loud cries. . . .
So many of them charged down upon us that they shot the captain through the right leg with a poisoned
arrow. On that account he ordered us to retire [retreat] slowly, but the men took to flight, except six or eight
of us who remained with the captain. . . . One of them wounded him on the left leg with a large cutlass. . . .
That caused the captain to fall face downward, when immediately they rushed upon him with iron and bam-
boo spears . . . until they killed our mirror, our light, our comfort, and our true guide.
Document 7
Source: Sublimus Dei, His Holiness Pope Paul III, May 29, 1537.
We, who, though unworthy, exercise on earth the power of our Lord and seek with all our might to bring
those sheep of His flock who are outside into the fold committed to our charge, consider, however, that the
Indians are truly men and that they are not only capable of understanding the Catholic Faith but, according
to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it. Desiring to provide ample remedy for these evils, We
define and declare by these Our letters, or by any translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed
with the seal of any ecclesiastical dignitary, to which the same credit shall be given as to the originals, that,
notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people
who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession
of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely
and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved;
should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.
Document 8
Source: Bartolome de Las Casas, Historia de las Indias, 1550–1563.
The reason the Christians have murdered on such a vast scale and killed anyone and everyone in their way is
purely and simply greed. . . . Their insatiable greed and overweening ambition know no bounds; the land is
fertile and rich, the inhabitants simple, forbearing and submissive. The Spaniards have shown not the slightest
consideration for these people, treating them (and I speak from first-hand experience, having been there from
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the outset) not as brute animals—indeed, I would to God they had done and had shown them the consider-
ation they afford their animals—so much as piles of dung in the middle of the road. They have had as little
concern for their souls as for their bodies, all the millions that perished having gone to their deaths with no
knowledge of God and without the benefit of the Sacraments.
Document 9
Source: Pope Paul III; in response to a complaint from the Bishop of Tlascala in Mexico concerning the
enslavement of natives, he issues the Ipsa Veritas, a papal Bull (proclamation), 1537.
Wishing to correct this . . . we declare that the Indians . . . even if they are outside the Christian faith cannot
and must not be deprived of their liberty, or their property, and must by no means be reduced to servitude.
DBQ 3 • A-15
Document 10
Source: The Landing of Columbus at the Island of Guanahani, West Indies, October 12, 1492, by John Van-
derlyn; painted in Paris, 1842. Commissioned by the U.S. Congress, located in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.
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The Granger Collection, New York.
DBQ 4
Absolutism
Analyze the extent to which rulers and their subjects viewed the proper role of an absolute
monarch differently.
Document 1
Source: Martin Luther, Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform
of the Christian Estate, 1520.
Therefore, when necessity demands it, and the pope is an offense to Christendom, the first man who is able
should, as a true member of the whole body, do what he can to bring about a truly free council. No one can
do this so well as the temporal authorities, especially since they are also fellow-Christians, fellow-priests, fellow-
members of the spiritual estate, fellow lords over all things. Whenever it is necessary or profitable, they ought
to exercise the office and work which they have received from God over everyone.
Document 2
Source: Martin Luther, Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of the Peasants, ca 1525.
Let everyone who can smite, slay, and stab [the peasants], secretly and openly, remembering that nothing can
be more poisonous, hurtful or devilish than a rebel.
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Document 3
Source: The Twelve Articles, manifesto of German peasants in Swabia, 1524.
It has been the custom hitherto for men to hold us as their own property, which is pitiable enough, consid-
ering that Christ has delivered and redeemed us all, without exception, by the shedding of his precious
blood, the lowly as well as the great. Accordingly, it is consistent with Scripture that we should be free and
should wish to be so. . . . We are aggrieved by the appropriation by individuals of meadows and fields which
at one time belonged to the community. These we will take again into our own hands.
Document 4
Source: The Act of Supremacy, English Parliament, 1534.
Albeit the king’s Majesty justly and rightfully is and ought to be the supreme head of the Church of England,
and so is recognized by the clergy of this realm in their convocations, yet nevertheless, for corroboration and
confirmation thereof, and for increase of virtue in Christ’s religion within this realm of England, and to repress
and extirpate all errors, heresies, and other enormities and abuses heretofore used in the same, be it enacted,
by authority of this present Parliament, that the king, our sovereign lord, his heirs and successors, kings of this
realm, shall be taken, accepted, and reputed the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England, called
Anglicans Ecclesia; and shall have and enjoy, annexed and united to the imperial crown of this realm, as well
the title and style thereof, as all honors, dignities, preeminences, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities, immu-
nities, profits, and commodities to the said dignity of the supreme head of the same Church belonging and
appertaining.
A-16
DBQ 4 • A-17
Document 5
Source: Arthur Young (English agronomist), Travels [in France] During the Years 1787, 1788 and 1789.
The abuses attending the levy of taxes were heavy and universal. . . . Such an enormous power, constantly
acting and from which no man was free, must in the nature of things, degenerate in many cases into absolute
tyranny. . . . What must have been the state of the poor people paying heavy taxes from which the nobility
and clergy were exempted? A cruel aggravation of their misery to see those who could best afford to pay,
exempted. . . . The Capitaineries [lords’ exclusive hunting rights] were a dreadful scourge on all the occu-
piers of the land. . . . Such were the exertions of arbitrary power which the lower orders felt directly from
the royal authority.
Document 6
Source: Adam Olearius (German diplomat to Moscow), Travels in Moscovy, ca 1630.
Although the Russians, especially the common populace living as slaves under a harsh yoke, can bear and
endure a great deal out of love for their masters, yet if the pressure is beyond measure . . . a dangerous indig-
nation results, turned not so much against their sovereign as against the lower authorities, especially if the
people have been much oppressed by them . . . and have not been protected by the higher authorities.
Document 7
Source: Bishop Jacques Bossuet, Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture, 1708.
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There are four qualities essential to royal authority. First, the royal authority is sacred; second, it is paternal
[fatherly]; third, it is absolute; fourth, it is submitted to reason. . . . Even when princes do not do their duty,
we must respect their office and ministry. . . . However, because their power comes from above, princes must
not think that they are free to use it at their pleasure; rather must they use it with fear and discretion, as a
thing which comes to them from God, and of which God will demand a strict account. . . .
Document 8
Source: Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, Instruction (Nakaz) to the Legislative Commission of 1767.
9. The Sovereign is absolute. . . .

10. The Extent of the Dominion [of Russia] requires an absolute Power to be vested in that Person who
rules over it. . . .
13. What is the true End of Monarchy? Not to deprive people of their natural Liberty; but to correct their
Actions, in order to obtain the supreme Good. . . .
36. General or political Liberty does not consist in that licentious Notion, That a Man may do whatever he pleases.
Document 9
Source: French King Louis XIV, letter to his heir, 1661–1666.
. . . Kings are absolute seigneurs, and from their nature have full and free disposal of all property both secular
and ecclesiastical, to use it as wise dispensers, that is to say, in accordance with the requirements of their State.
Document 10
Source: Hyacinthe Rigaud, Portrait of Louis XIV, 1701.
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Scala/Art Resource, NY.
Document 11
Source: Isaac Isaacsohn, History of the Prussian Civil Service.
The absolute subordination of the Civil Service from the highest to the lowest, their unquestioning obedience
to the King, together with their absolute responsibility not only for their own actions, but also for those of
their colleagues and their inferiors, created among them an extremely strong sense of professional honour,
solidarity, and of professional pride. . . . The service of the King required undivided attention.
The King’s uniform, which every Civil Servant had to wear when on duty, kept the feeling alive among them
that they were the King’s servants and had to represent the King’s interests.
DBQ 5
Toward a New Worldview
Describe and analyze how the new worldviews of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
affected the way enlightened Europeans thought about society and human relations.
Document 1
Source: René Descartes (French), Discourse on Method, 1637.
. . . [I]n my travels I had found that those who held opinions contrary to ours were neither barbarians nor
savages, but that any of them were at least as reasonable as ourselves.
Document 2
Source: John Locke (Scottish), Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 1693.
I think I may say that of all the men we meet with, nine parts of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful or
not, by their education. ’Tis that which makes the great difference in Mankind.
Document 3
Source: Catherine the Great of Russia, Decree on Serfs, 1767.
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. . . [A]ccording to the laws that have been enacted from time immemorial by the autocratic forefathers of
Her Imperial Majesty and which have not been repealed . . . all persons who dare to incite serfs and peasants
to disobey their landlords shall be arrested and taken to the nearest government office, there to be punished
forthwith as disturbers of the public tranquility, according to the laws and without leniency.
Document 4
Source: Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792.
. . . [W]omen, in particular, are rendered weak and wretched by a variety of concurring causes, originating
from one hasty conclusion. The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently proof that their minds are
not in a healthy state; for, like the flowers which are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are
sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the
stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity. One cause of this barren bloom-
ing I attribute to a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men who,
considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring
mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers; and the understanding of the sex has been so bubbled
by this specious homage, that the civilized women of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only
anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact
respect.
A-19
Document 5
Source: Voltaire, A Plea for Tolerance and Reason, 1763.
It does not require any great art or studies elocution to prove that Christians ought to tolerate one another.
I will go even further and say that we ought to look upon all men as our brothers. What! Call a Turk, a Jew,
and a Siamese, my brother? Yes, of course; for are we not all children of the same father, and the creatures of
the same God?
Document 6
Source: Atheist Baron d’Holbach, Good Sense, 1772.
How could the human mind make any considerable progress, while tormented with frightful phantoms, and
guided by men, interested in perpetuating its ignorance and fears? Man has been forced to vegetate in his
primitive stupidity: he has been taught nothing but stories about invisible powers upon whom his happiness
was supposed to depend. Occupied solely by his fears, and by unintelligible reveries, he has always been at the
mercy of his priests, who have reserved to themselves the right of thinking for him, and directing his actions.
Document 7
Source: Denis Diderot, Encyclopedia, 1772.
Government . . . The good of the people must be the great purpose of the government. The governors are
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appointed to fulfill it; and the civil constitution that invests them with this power is bound therein by the laws
of nature and by the law of reason, which has determined that purpose in any form of government as the cause
of its welfare. The greatest good of the people is its liberty. Liberty is to the body of the state what health is
to each individual; without health man cannot enjoy pleasure; without liberty the state of welfare is excluded
from nations.
Document 8
Source: Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762.
The first and most important deduction from the principles we have so far laid down is that the general will
alone can direct the State according to the object for which it was instituted, i.e. the common good: for if
the clashing of particular interests made the establishment of societies necessary the agreement of these very
interests made it possible. The common element in these different interests is what forms the social tie; and,
were there no point of agreement between them all, no society could exist. It is solely on the basis of this
common interest that every society should be governed. . . .
DBQ 5 • A-21
Document 9
Source: Italian economist and criminologist Caesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments, 1764.
Is the death penalty really useful and necessary for the security and good order of society? Are torture and
torments just, and do they attain the end for which laws are instituted? What is the best way to prevent crimes?
Are the same punishments equally effective for all times? What influence have they on customary behavior?
These problems deserve to be analyzed with that geometric precision which the mist of sophisms, seductive
eloquence, and timorous doubt cannot withstand.
Document 10
Source: Marquis de Condorcet, The Evils of Slavery, 1788.
Reducing a man to slavery, buying him, selling him, keeping him in servitude: these are truly crimes, and crimes
worse than theft. In effect, they take from the slave, not only all forms of property but also the ability to acquire
it, the control over his time, his strength, of everything that nature has given him to maintain his life and his
needs. To this wrong they add that of taking from the slave the right to dispose of his own person. . . .
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DBQ 6
European Expansion and the Changing Life of the People
Examine the extent to which fundamental changes in the European economy during the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries affected the standards of living of both the urban
and rural working classes.
Document 1
Source: Increase of Population in Europe, 1700–1800
36
Russia
25 France
20
19
18
17 Italy
16
15
14
13
12
10
9 England
8
7
6
5
Ireland
4
3 Bohemia
2 Sweden
Silesia
1 East Prussia
1700 1725 1750 1775 1800
Document 2
Source: Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776.
[Every individual generally] neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is pro-
moting it. . . . He is in this case, as in many cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no
part of his intention. Nor is it always worse for the society that it was not part of it. I have never known much
good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.
A-22
DBQ 6 • A-23
Document 3
Source: Inquiry of English Parliament, from Parliamentary Papers, 1842.
West Riding of Yorkshire: Southern Part—In many of the collieries [coal mines] in this district, as far as relates
to the underground employment, there is no distinction of sex, but the labour is distributed indifferently
among both sexes, except that it is comparatively rare for the women to hew or get the coals, although there
are numerous instances in which they regularly perform even this work. In great numbers of the coalpits in this
district the men work in a state of perfect nakedness and are in this state assisted in the labour by females of
all ages, from girls of six years old to women of twenty-one, these females being themselves quite naked down
to the waist.
Document 4
Source: Observations . . . on the Loss of Woollen Spinning [anonymous], 1794.
But from the establishment of the Spinning Machines in many countries where I was last Summer, no Hand
Work could be had, the consequence of which is the whole maintenance of the family devolves on the father,
and instead of six or seven shillings a week, which a wife and four children could add by their [spinning] wheels,
his weekly pay is all they have to depend. . . . Shut up from morning till night, except when they are sent home
for their meals, these girls [of 14 or so] are ignorant of, and unhandy at every domestic employment, whereas
if at her wheel in her mother’s cottage, the girl assists in every occupation of the family.
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Document 5
Source: Testimony Before the Sadler Commission, British Parliament, 1832.
Elizabeth Bentley—a doffer (child whose job it was to clean the machines used in textile manufacturing)
Q: What time did you begin to work at a factory?

A: When I was six years old.
Q: What were your hours of labor in that mill?
A: From 5 in the morning till 9 at night, when they were thronged [busy].
Q: Do you consider doffing a laborious employment?
A: Yes.
Q: Explain what you had to do.
A: When the frames are full, they have to stop the frames, and take the flyers off, and take the full bobbins
off, and carry them to the roller; and then put empty ones on, and set the frames on again.
Q: Were they in the habit of strapping [beating with a strap] those who are last in doffing? Constantly? Girls as
well as boys? Severely?
A: Yes [to all].
Q: Were you generally there on time?
A: Yes, my mother has been up at 4 o’clock in the morning and at 2 o’clock in the morning. . . . I have
sometimes been at Huslet Car at 2 o’clock in the morning, when it was streaming down with rain, and
we had to stay till the mill was open.
Document 6
Source: English popular song written about 1700, called “The Clothier’s Delight,” or
“The Rich Men’s Joy and the Poor Men’s Sorrow.”
We heapeth up riches and treasure great store

Which we get by griping and grinding the poor.
And this is a way for to fill up our purse
Although we do get it with many a curse.
Document 7
Source: Observations from local Manchester (England) citizen John Aikin
concerning the growth of the city, 1795.
The prodigious extension of the several branches of the Manchester manufactures has likewise greatly increased
the business of several trades and manufactures connected with or dependent upon them. The making of paper
at mills in the vicinity has been brought to great perfection, and now includes all kinds. . . . Within the last
twenty or thirty years the vast increase of foreign trade has caused many of the Manchester manufactures to
travel abroad, and agents or partners to be fixed for a considerable time on the continent, as well as foreigners
to reside at Manchester. And the town has now in every respect assumed the style and manners of one of the
commercial capitals of Europe. . . .
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Source: Political economist Robert Malthus, Essay on the Principle of Population, 1798.
Assuming, then, my postulate as granted, I say, the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power
in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.
Subsistence only increases in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immen-
sity of the first power in comparison of the second. By that law of our nature which makes food necessary to
the life of man, the effects of these two unequal powers must be kept equal. This implies a strong and con-
stantly operating check on population from the difficulty of subsistence. This difficulty must fall somewhere;
and must necessarily be severely felt by a large portion of mankind. . . .
Document 9
Source: Robert Owen, Observations on the Effect of the Manufacturing System, 1815.
The employer regards the employed as mere instruments of gain, while these acquire a gross ferocity of
character, which, legislative measures shall not be judiciously devised to prevent its increase, and ameliorate
[improve] the condition of this class, will sooner or later plunge the country into a formidable and perhaps
inextricable state of danger.
DBQ 6 • A-25
Document 10
Source: British member of Parliament Richard Cobden, A Denunciation of the Corn Laws, 1838.
With all sincerity I declare that I am for the total repeal of those taxes which affect the price of bread and
provisions of every description, and I will not allow it to be said without denying it that the three millions of
people who have petitioned the House for the total repeal of those taxes are not sincere in their prayer. What
are those taxes upon food? They are taxes levied on the great body of the people, and the honorable gentle-
men opposite, who show such sympathy for the working classes after they have made them paupers, cannot
deny my right to claim on their behalf that those taxes should be a primary consideration.
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DBQ 7
Eighteenth-Century Medical Practices
Identify and analyze various practices used in the eighteenth century to care for the sick.
Although sickness, pain, and disease—intractable challenges built into the human condition—permeated
the European experience in the eighteenth century, medical science played a very small part in improving
the health of most people. Yet the Enlightenment’s growing focus on discovering the laws of nature and on
human problems did give rise to a great deal of research and experimentation.
Document 1
Source: Nicholas Culpeper, gentleman student in Physick and Astrology, A Directory for Midwives, 1716.
What insufferable injury it is that men and women should be trained up in such ignorance, that when they
are sick and have herbs in their gardens conducing to their cure, they are so hoodwinked, that they know not
their virtues. Is not this to uphold a company of lazy doctors, most of whose covetousness outweighs their
wits as much as a millstone outweighs a feather? How they will answer for it another day, God knows, I pity
their conditions.
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Source: Henry Daventer, The Art of Midwifery Improved, 1716.
If you make safe of them [the rules of midwifery] you will find your work easy, and you need not call for the
help of a man midwife, which is a disparagement not only to yourself but also to your profession. And let me
tell you this (and I’ll tell you but the truth) to your knowledge care and skill committed both the being and
well-being of women in labour.
Document 3
Source: Lady Wortley Montagu, in a letter sent from Constantinople on April 1, 1717.
The smallpox, so fatal and so general amongst us [British], is here [made] entirely harmless by the invention
of ingrafting. . . . Every year thousands undergo this operation . . . There is no example of anyone that had
died of it. You may believe that I am very well satisfied of the safety of the experiment, since I intend to try
it on my dear little son.
A-26
DBQ 7 • A-27
Document 4
Source: John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church, describes a mystical emotional conversion
in his journal, 1738.
In the evening I went to a [Christian] society in Aldersgate Street where one was reading Luther’s preface to
the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works
in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone
for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from
the law of sin and death.
Document 5
Source: English surgeon John Atkins, The Navy Surgeon; Practical System of Surgery, 1742.
As medicine has increased with vice and navigation, so together with gun-powder, ambition, and bad politics,
men are helped to more broken bones than formerly, and enlarged the surgeons’ practice; a branch that has
the preference of others, either in respect to antiquity, reputation, or usefulness.
Document 6
Source: Académie Royale de Chirurgie, Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Surgery, at Paris, 1750.
The Ancients [Greeks and Romans] were of the opinion, that the choice of particular parts of bleeding was
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not an indifferent matter. According to their notions, the opening of certain veins and arteries in those parts
which lay near each other, and, what is still more surprising, even in the same parts, was dignified with the
title of Specific Remedies for very difficult diseases. These absurd prejudices were notwithstanding founded
upon observations; and a course of two thousand years was not sufficient to make the closest observers change
their opinions in this respect; so that the diseased gave up their blood and their lives to the caprice of physicians
and surgeons, upon the credit of the most unequivocal observations.
Document 7
Source: William Buchan, Edinburgh physician, Domestic Medicine, 1769.
Should all other means of comfort fail, the Christian religion affords an inexhaustible source of consolation.
It teaches us, that the sufferings of this life are designed to prepare us for a future state of happiness; and that
all who pursue the paths of virtue shall at least arrive at complete felicity [happiness].
Document 8
Source: Diderot, Encyclopedia, excerpt concerning the French hospital Hôtel-Dieu, Paris, 1770.
Imagine a long series of communicating wards filled with sufferers of every kind of disease who are sometimes
packed three, four, five or even six into a bed, the living alongside the dead and dying, the air polluted by this
mass of unhealthy bodies, passing pestilential germs of their afflictions from one to the other, and the spectacle
of suffering and agony on every hand. That is the Hôtel-Dieu.
Document 9
Source: Physician Edward Jenner, An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, 1798.
Case III.—John Phillips, a tradesman of this town, had the cowpox at so early a period as nine years of age.
At the age of sixty-two I inoculated him, and was very careful in selecting matter in its most active state. It was
taken from the arm of a boy just before the commencement of the eruptive fever, and instantly inserted. It
very speedily produced a sting-like feel in the part. An efflorescence appeared, which on the fourth day was
rather extensive, and some degree of pain and stiffness were felt about the shoulder: but on the fifth day these
symptoms began to disappear, and in a day or two after went entirely off, without producing any effect on
the system.
Document 10
Source: Eighteenth-century French illustration of “trepanation,” a form of surgery in which a hole is
drilled into the skull in order to treat intracranial diseases.
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The Wellcome Trust Medical Photographic Library.

DBQ 8
The French Revolution
Describe and analyze how the ideas and objectives of the men and women who participated in
the French Revolution changed over time.
Document 1
Source: Petition from the Women of the Third Estate, January 1789.
We ask to be enlightened, to have work, not in order to usurp men’s authority, but in order to be better
esteemed by them, so that we might have the means of living out of the way of misfortune. . . .
We implore you, Sire, to set up free schools where we could learn our language. . . .
We ask to be able to come out of the state of ignorance, to be able to give our children a sound and reasonable
education so as to make of them subjects worthy of serving you.
Document 2
Source: M. Dufourny de Villiers, French revolutionary pamphlet: “Cahier of the Fourth Order [Estate]
of the poor, the infirm, the indigent, etc., the Sacred Order of the Unfortunates: . . . To make up for
the right to directly elect [representatives to] the Estates which appertains to all of France,
but which this Order does not enjoy,” April 1789 (Paris).
April 25, 1789

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. . . Reason dictates that, contrary to the [current] configuration of the Orders [Estates] . . . the true Orders
should be these: the poor; those who have only the necessities; the well-off; the rich; the opulent; the bloated.
Now, according to this classification, the poor, far from paying, will have the right to receive assistance; those
who have only necessities will neither pay nor receive, because only indigents will receive and because only
those with excess will pay and those with real needs don’t come close to having excess; if the well-off must
pay a twentieth, the rich must pay two and half times [more than the twentieth], the opulent six [times that],
the bloated ten [times that].
Document 3
Source: Preamble to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, August 1789.
The representatives of the French people, organized as a National Assembly, believing that the ignorance,
neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole causes of public calamities and of the corruption of
governments, have determined to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of
man, . . . in order that the grievances of the citizens, based hereafter upon simple and incontestable principles,
shall tend to the maintenance of the constitution and redound to the happiness of all.
A-29
Document 4
Source: Olympe de Gouges, “Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen,”
September 1791.
Mothers, daughters, sisters, [and] representatives of the nation demand to be constituted into a national
assembly. Believing that ignorance, omission, or scorn for the rights of woman are the only causes of public
misfortunes and of the corruption of governments, [the women] have resolved to set forth in a solemn dec-
laration the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of woman, . . . in order that citizens’ demands, henceforth
based on simple and incontestable principles, will always support the constitution, good morals, and the
happiness of all.
Document 5
Source: National Convention, Presiding Session of 9 Brumaire, November 1793.
Several . . . self-proclaimed Revolutionary Women may have been led astray by an excess of patriotism, but
others, doubtless, were motivated only by malevolence. . . .
The Section of Marches . . . requests . . . that popular societies of women be strictly prohibited, at least during
the revolution. . . .
To govern is to rule the commonwealth by laws, the preparation of which demands extensive knowledge,
unlimited attention and devotion, a strict immovability, and self-abnegation. . . . Are women capable of
these cares and of the qualities they call for? In general, we can answer, no. . . .
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We believe, therefore, that a woman should not leave her family to meddle in affairs of government. . . .
[I]t is not possible for women to exercise political rights.
DBQ 8 • A-31
Document 6
Source: Pierre Antoine Leseur, The Planting of a Liberty Tree, 1792.
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Giraudon/Art Resource, NY.
Document 7
Source: Proclamation of the National Convention to the French People following the execution of
King Louis XVI, January 1793.
Now, above all, we need peace in the interior of the French Republic, and the most active surveillance of the
domestic enemies of liberty. Never did circumstances more urgently require of all citizens the sacrifice of their
passions and their personal opinions concerning the act of national justice which has just been effected. Today
the French people can have no other passion than that for liberty.
Document 8
Source: Speech by Robespierre, February 1794.
The French are the first people in the world who have established true democracy by calling all men to equality
and to full enjoyment of the rights of citizenship. . . . Since virtue [good citizenship] and equality are the soul of
the republic . . . it follows that the first rule of your political conduct must be to relate all of your measures to
the maintenance of equality and to the development of virtue. . . . That which is immoral is impolitic, and that
which tends to corrupt is counterrevolutionary. Weakness, vices, and prejudices are the road to monarchy. . . .
It is necessary to annihilate both the internal and external enemies of the republic or perish with its fall.
Document 9
Source: Durand de Maillane, Description of the execution of Robespierre, July 1794.
Robespierre’s turn had come at last. . . . He dictated decrees and directed the administration. Nothing
was done except by his orders or with his approval. His caprices were flattered, and his very manias were
praised. . . . His power seemed too terrible to his accomplices as it did to his victims. A number had been
sacrificed already and others feared the same fate. They banded together to pull down the idol they them-
selves had set up.
Document 10
Source: Excerpts from Napoleon Bonaparte’s speech to his troops, April 1796.
Soldiers of liberty, only republican phalanxes [infantry troops] could have endured what you have endured. . . .
The grateful Patrie [nation] will owe its prosperity to you. . . . All of you are consumed with a desire to extend
the glory of the French people; all of you long to humiliate those arrogant kings who dare to contemplate
placing us in fetters; all of you desire to dictate a glorious peace, one which will indemnify [compensate] the
Patrie for the immense sacrifices it has made; all of you wish to be able to say with pride as you turn to your
villages: “I was with the victorious army of Italy!”
Document 11
Source: Napoleon describes the Coup d’Etat of Brumaire,
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in which he seized power in France, November 1799.
On my return to Paris [from Egypt] I found division among all authorities, and agreement upon only one
point, namely, that the Constitution was half destroyed and was unable to save liberty.
All parties came to me, confided to me their designs, disclosed their secrets, and requested my support;
I refused to be the man of a party.
A plan of general restoration had been devised by men whom the nation has been accustomed to regard as
the defenders of liberty, equality, and property; this plan required an examination, calm, free, exempt from
all influence and all fear.
I presented myself at the Council of Five Hundred, alone, unarmed, my head uncovered, just as the Elders
had received and applauded me; I came to remind the majority of its wishes, and to assure it of its power.
DBQ 9
Women in the Industrial Revolution
Discuss how the profound social changes introduced by the Industrial Revolution affected
women working in the factories. To what extent did women’s experiences reflect continuities
with traditional working-class ways of life?
Document 1
Source: Land register in the Silesian Village of Zedlitz, 1790.
The eighteen households . . . are obliged to send as workers every day two people, that is the husband and
also the wife . . . to do whatever work is necessary. . . . The fieldworkers begin harvest at sunrise, stop from
6:30 to 7 for a half-hour breakfast, work again until 10, when they eat for an hour in the fields, and then
work from 11 until 2. They eat an evening meal from 2 to 3, then they work again without stopping until
sunset. The wives of the fieldworkers begin work once they have taken care of the herds, work with the men
and maids until 6:30, and then go from the fields back to the house to prepare the meal, which they bring to
the men and maids in the fields at 10:00. They eat until 11, and then stay working in the fields until evening,
although they do the same things between 2 and 3 with the evening meal.
Document 2
Source: Testimony to Parliament of an agricultural worker’s wife and former factory worker, England.
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I went to school till I was eight years old. . . . At ten years old I went to work at a factory, where I was till
I was 26. . . . I have seven children, all boys. . . . I have worked in the fields, and when I went out I left the
children in the care of the eldest boy, and frequently carried the baby with me as I could not go home to nurse
it. I have worked at hay-making and at harvest, and at other times in weeding and keeping the ground clean.
I generally work from half-past seven till five, or half past. When at work in the spring, I have received 10d.
[pence] a day, that is higher than the wages of women in general; . . . I never felt that my health was hurt by
the work. Hay-making is hard work, very fatiguing, but it never hurt me. Working in the fields is not such hard
work as working in the factory. I am always better when I can get out to work in the fields.
A-33
Document 3
Source: Testimony of Matthew Crabtree, a worker in a blanket mill. From Sadler Commission,
British Parliament, Report on Child Labor, 1832.
Q: Do you find that the children, the females especially, are very early demoralized in them [mills]?
A: They are.
Q: Is their language indecent?
A: Very indecent, and both sexes take great familiarities with each other in the mills, without at all being
ashamed of their conduct.
Q: Do you connect their immorality of language and conduct with their excessive labor?
A: It may be somewhat connected with it, for it is to be observed that most of that goes on towards night,
when they begin to be drowsy, it is a kind of stimulus which they use to keep them awake; they say some
pert thing or other to keep themselves from drowsiness, and it generally happens to be some obscene
language.
Q: Have not a considerable number of the females employed in mills illegitimate children very early in life?
A: I believe there are; I have known some of them have illegitimate children when they were between 16 and
17 years of age.
Q: How many of [the grown-up] females had illegitimate children?
A: A great many of them. . . .
Q: Did they generally marry the men by whom they had the children?
A: No, it sometimes happens that young women have children by married men.
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Source: 1833 engraving of women operating power looms in a large English cotton mill.
Time Life Pictures/Getty Images.

DBQ 9 • A-35
Document 5
Source: Friedrich Engels, The Conditions of the Working Class in England in 1844.
The employment of women at once breaks up the family; for when the wife spends twelve or thirteen hours
every day in the mill, and the husband works the same length of time there or elsewhere, what becomes of
the children?
Women often return to the mill three or four days after confinement [for childbirth], leaving the baby, of
course; in the dinner hour they must hurry home to feed the child and eat something. . . .
Document 6
Source: Testimony of Patience Kershaw, age seventeen, gathered by Ashley’s Mines Commission,
Parliamentary Papers, 1842.
I never went to day-school; I go to Sunday-school, but I cannot read or write; I go to pit at five o’clock in
the morning and come out at five in the evening; I get my breakfast of porridge and milk first; I take my
dinner with me, a cake, and eat it as I go; I do not stop or rest any time for the purpose; I get nothing else
until I get home, and then have potatoes and meat, not every day meat. I hurry in the clothes I have now got
on, trousers and ragged jacket; the bald place upon my head is made by thrusting the corves [wagons used
to transport coal]; my legs have never swelled, but sisters’ did when they went to mill; I hurry the corves a
mile and more under ground and back; . . . I hurry 11 a-day; I wear a belt and chain at the workings, to get
the corves out; sometimes [the coal-getters] beat me, if I am not quick enough, with their hands; they strike
me upon my back. . . .
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Document 7
Source: Benjamin Disraeli, British novelist and Tory politician, from the novel
Sybil, or the Two Nations, 1845.
They come forth: the mine delivers its gang and the pit its bondsmen; the forge is silent and the engine is still.
The plain is covered with the swarming multitude: bands of stalwart men, . . . troops of youth, alas! Of both
sexes, though neither their raiment [clothing] nor their language indicates the difference; all are clad in male
attire. . . . Yet these are to be, some are, the mothers of England!
Document 8
Source: Jean-Francois Millet, The Gleaners, 1857.
Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY.

Apago PDF Enhancer
Document 9
Source: Annie Besant, “White Slavery in London,” 1888, describing women working in a match factory.
The hour for commencing work is 6:30 in summer and 8 in winter, work concludes at 6 p.m. . . . the long day
of work is performed by young girls, who have to stand the whole of the time. A typical case is that of a girl
of 16, a piece-worker who earns 4s. [shillings] a week and lives with her sister, employed by the same firm,
who “earns good money, as much as 8s. or 9s. per week.”
Out of the earnings 2s. is paid for the rent of one room; the child lives on only bread-and-butter and tea,
alike for breakfast and dinner. . . . The splendid salary of 4s. is subject to deductions in the shape of fines; if
the feet are dirty, or the ground under the bench is left untidy, a fine of 3d. [pence] is inflicted; for putting
“burnts”—matches that have caught fire during the work—on the bench 1s. has been forfeited. . . . Day work
is a little better aid than piecework, and is done chiefly by married women, who earn as much sometimes as
10s. a week. . . . Such is a bald account of one form of white slavery as it exists in London. With chattel slaves,
Mr. Bryant could not have made his huge fortune, for he could not have fed, clothed, and housed them for
4s. a week each.
DBQ 9 • A-37
Document 10
Source: Journalist’s report on the working conditions of female textile workers
in Germany in the 1880s and 1890s.
[T]he dust is breathed in by the girls, since they are not allowed to open the windows. To this has to be added
the terrible nerve-racking noise of the rattling machines so that no one can hear himself speak. . . . In conse-
quence all the girls have screeching, irritating voices even when the shop has gone quiet. . . .
Many girls work happily, particularly those weaving small carpets or curtains woven as one piece who can
observe the building up of the pattern. They love their machines like loving a faithful dog; they polish them,
and tie colored ribbons. . . .
The girls work hard, very hard. . . . I could not have stood this for long. No one would dream of stopping
work and taking a rest even when suffering from violent headache or toothache, not even a quarter of an hour
of being late was tolerated without a substantial fine. . . .
The work of the carpet weavers should not be underrated, it is anything but monotonous or repetitive. . . .
She [the weaver] has to think and coordinate, calculate and pay attention and concentrate all her thought.
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DBQ 10
Ideologies and Nationalism
Describe and analyze the concepts that became the foundations of aggressive nationalism
during the period 1815–1914.
Document 1
Source: Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation, 1807–1808.
Our oldest common ancestors, the original people of the new culture, the Teutons, called Germans by the
Romans, set themselves bravely in opposition to the overwhelming worldwide rule of the Romans. . . . Freedom
was their possession, that they might remain Germans, that they might continue to settle their own affairs
independently and originally and in their own way, and at the same time to advance their culture and to plant
the same independence in the hearts of their posterity. . . .
We who are the nearest heirs of their land, their language, their sentiments, owe to them that we are still
Germans. . . .
[These addresses] have attempted to implant in your minds the deep and immovable foundations of the true
and almighty love of the fatherland, in the conception of our nation as eternal. . . .
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A-38
DBQ 10 • A-39
Document 2
Source: Delacroix, Massacre at Chios, 1824.
Apago PDF Enhancer
Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY.
Document 3
Source: Adam Mickiewicz, Polish Romantic writer, The Books of the Polish Nation (written in response to
the crushed Polish uprising of 1830–1831), 1832.
For the Polish nation did not die: its body lieth in the grave, but its spirit hath descended from the earth. . . .
But . . . the soul shall return to the body, and the Nation shall arise and free all the peoples of Europe from
slavery. . . .
And as after the resurrection of Christ bloody offerings ceased in all the world, so after the resurrection of
the Polish Nation wars shall cease in all Christendom.
Document 4
Source: Giuseppe Mazzini, The Duties of Man, 1840.
[The current governments of Europe] do not . . . recognize any country save their own families or dynasty,
the egotism of caste. Natural divisions, and the spontaneous, innate tendencies of the peoples, will take the
place of the arbitrary divisions sanctioned by evil governments. The map of Europe will be redrawn. The
countries of the Peoples . . . will arise upon the ruins of the countries of kings and privileged castes. . . . Then
may each one of you . . . all speaking the same language, gifted with the same tendencies, and educated by
the same historical tradition, hope, even by your own single effort, to be able to benefit all Humanity.
O my brothers, love your Country! Our country is our Home, the house that God has given us, placing therein
a numerous family that loves us, and whom we love. . . . Our country is our common workshop, whence the
products of our activity are sent forth for the benefit of the whole world. . . .
Document 5
Source: Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1859.
Natural Selection acts solely through the preservation of variations in some way advantageous, which conse-
quently endure. Owing to the high geometrical rate of increase of all organic beings, each area is already fully
stocked with inhabitants; and it follows from this, that as the favoured forms increase in number, so, generally,
will the less favoured decrease and become rare.
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DBQ 10 • A-41
Document 6
Source: Maps of the unified Italian and German states, ca 1871.
SWITZERLAND AUSTRIAN EMPIRE

Kingdom of Sardinia before 1859
To Kingdom of Sardinia, 1859
LOMBARDY VENETIA
SAVOY
(From Austria) (From Austria 1866) To Kingdom of Sardinia, 1860
(To France 1860) Trieste
Magenta Milan To Kingdom of Italy, 1866, 1870
Villafranca
Solferino Venice
Turin Po Major battles
PIEDMONT Boundary of Kingdom of Italy after unification
A
FRANCE PARMA
EN
ROMAGNA
Genoa
OD
Bologna
M
NICE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
K
H
T
(To France 1860) E
I
M
Nice Pisa Florence AR
N
Marseilles CH
E
A
TUSCANY
dr
D
ia
Tiber
ti
O M
c
Elba Se
PAPAL STATES
a
CORSICA O F (1870)
(France)
Rome
S A R D I
Bari
Naples
Taranto
SARDINIA
Tyrrhenian Sea
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THE TWO SICILIES
Medit Palermo
err
ane Strait of
an Messina
Se SICILY
a
0 50 100 Km.
0 50 100 Mi.
(cont.)
0 50 100 Km. SWEDEN

DENMARK
0 50 100 Mi. Nem a n
Baltic Sea
Königsberg
SCHLESWIG
North Sea Danzig
Kiel EAST PRUSSIA
HOLSTEIN
Lübeck
Hamburg POMERANIA WEST PRUSSIA
MECKLENBURG
Bremen Elb
OLDENBURG e A
HANOVER Wa Vistul
BRANDENBURG I r a
ta
Amsterdam Hanover Berlin Warsaw
NETHERLANDS S POSEN
S RUSSIAN EMPIRE
WESTPHALIA U
R
Essen P
Ru
Mu l
hr POLAND
Antwerp Leipzig Oder
de
Cologne
BELGIUM Bonn Dresden
Weimar SILESIA
RHINE SAXONY
PROVINCE Sadowa
le
Frankfurt 1866
el
os Main Prague
M Cracow
Sedan Luxembourg
1870 BOHEMIA
Nuremberg Olmütz
Ne
ne
Verdun
Vl
cka
R hi
tav
MORAVIA
E
r
va
Karlsruhe
a
LORRAINE
R
Stuttgart BAVARIA
ra
Nancy
Mo
I
Strasbourg WÜRTTEMBERG P
Danube M
C
Inn
ALSA
Munich E
Vienna
BADEN N
A
FRANCE I Buda Pest
R
T Prussia before 1866
S
Innsbruck A U
SWITZERLAND Conquered by Prussia in
Austro-Prussian War, 1866
Austrian territories excluded from
North German Confederation,
Joined with Prussia to form
North German Confederation,
ITALY
1867
South German states joining with
Major battles Prussia to form German Empire,
1871
German Confederation boundary, 1815–1866
Won by Prussia in
Bismarck’s German Empire, 1871 Franco-Prussian War, 1871
Document 7
Source: King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, speech in Rome, 1871.
The work to which we have consecrated our life is accomplished. After long trials . . . Italy is restored to
herself and to Rome. . . .
A brilliant future opens before us. It remains for us to respond to the blessings of Providence by showing
ourselves worthy of bearing among the nations the glorious names of Italy and Rome.
Document 8
Source: Cecil Rhodes, “Confession of Faith,” 1877.
I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better. Just
fancy those parts that are at present inhabited by the most despicable specimens of human beings, what an
alteration there would be if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence. . . . [T]he absorption of the
greater portion of the world under our rule simply means the end of all wars.
DBQ 10 • A-43
Document 9
Source: Friedrich Fabri, Bedarf Deutschland der Kolonien? [Does Germany Need Colonies?], 1879.
Even more important is the consideration that a people at the height of their political power can successfully
maintain their historic position only as long as they recognize and prove themselves as the bearers of a cultural
mission. That is the only way which guarantees the stability and growth of national prosperity, which is the
necessary basis for an enduring source of power. . . . It would be good if we Germans would begin to learn
from the colonial skill of our Anglo-Saxon cousins. . . . If the new German Reich wants to justify and maintain
its power, then it will have to grasp it as a cultural mission and no longer hesitate to renew once again its
colonial calling.
Document 10
Source: Hermann Ahlwardt, member of the German Reichstag, address to the Reichstag, March 1895.
[T]he Jews as a whole must be considered harmful, for the racial traits of this people are of a kind that in the
long run do not agree with the racial traits of the Teutons [authentic Germans]. Every Jew who at this very
moment has not as yet transgressed is likely to do so at some future time under given circumstances because
his racial characteristics drive him on in that direction. . . .
What we want is a clear and reasonable separation of the Jews from the Germans.
Document 11
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Source: Theodor Herzl, Der Judenstaat [The Jewish State], 1896.
We are but one people—our enemies have made us one without our consent, as repeatedly happens in history.
Distress binds us together, and thus united, we suddenly discover our strength. Yes, we are strong enough
to form a State, and, indeed, a model State. We possess all human and material resources necessary for the
purpose. . . . Let the sovereignty be granted us over a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the rightful
requirements of a nation; the rest we shall manage for ourselves.
Document 12
Source: Kaiser Wilhelm II, speech at Hamburg, 1901.
In spite of the fact that we have no such fleet as we should have, we have conquered for ourselves a place in
the sun. It will now be my task to see to it that this place in the sun shall remain our undisputed possession,
in order that the sun’s rays may fall fruitfully upon our activity and trade in foreign parts, that our industry
and agriculture may develop within the state and our sailing sports upon the water, for our future lies upon
the water. . . .
As head of the empire I therefore rejoice over every citizen . . . who goes forth . . . and seeks new points where
we can drive in the nail on which to hang our armour.
DBQ 11
The West and the World
Identify and analyze the variety of responses that the colonized peoples advocated toward the
European colonizers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Document 1
Source: Letter from Chinese imperial official Lin Zexu (1785–1850) to Queen Victoria, 1839.
They [British merchants] may not intend to harm others on purpose, but the fact remains that they are so
obsessed with material gain that they have no concern whatever for the harm they can cause to others. Have
they no conscience? I have heard you strictly prohibit opium in your own country, an indication unmistak-
ably that you know how harmful opium is. You do not wish opium to harm your own country, but you
choose to bring that harm to other countries such as China. Why? . . . Since a foreigner who goes to Eng-
land to trade has to obey the English law, how can an Englishman not obey the Chinese law when he is
physically present within China? The present law calls for the imposition of the death sentence on any Chi-
nese who had peddled or smoked opium.
Document 2
Source: Statement from the people of Canton, 1842.
Behold that vile English nation! Its ruler is at one time a woman, then a man, and then perhaps a woman
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again; its people are at one time like vultures, and then they are like wild beasts, with dispositions more fierce
and furious than the tiger or wolf, and natures more greedy than anacondas or swine. These people having
long steadily devoured all the western barbarians, and like demons of the night, they now suddenly exalt
themselves here.
Verily, the English barbarians murder all of us that they can. They are dogs, whose desires can never be satisfied.
Therefore we need not inquire whether the peace they have now may be real or pretended. Let us all rise,
arm, unite, and go against them.
We do here bind ourselves to vengeance, and express these, our sincere intentions in order to exhibit our
high principles and patriotism. The gods from on high now look down upon us; let us not lose our just and
firm resolution.
A-44
DBQ 11 • A-45
Document 3
Source: Dadabhai Naoroji, “The Benefits of British Rule,” 1871.
The Benefits of British Rule for India: . . .

In the Cause of Civilization: Education, both male and female. . . . Resuscitation of India’s own noble literature,
modified and refined by the enlightenment of the West.
Politically: Peace and order. Freedom of speech and liberty of the press. Higher political knowledge and
aspirations. . . . Security of life and property. . . .
Materially: Loans for railways and irrigation. Development of a few valuable products, such as indigo, tea,
coffee, silk, etc. Increase of exports. Telegraphs.
Generally: A slowly growing desire of late to treat India equitably, and as a country held in trust. Good
intentions. No nation on the face of the earth has ever had the opportunity of achieving such a glorious
work as this. . . .
Our great misfortune is that you [the British] do not know our wants. When you will know our real wishes,
I have not the least doubt that you would do justice. The genius and spirit of the British people is fair play
and justice.
Document 4
Source: Requests of the Fanti people of Ghana to the British Authorities, 1872.
1. Apago PDF Enhancer

[The Fanti Confederation] must have the recognition, . . . support, and hearty co-operation of Her
Majesty’s Government, and its friendly aid and advice. We do not for one single moment pretend to be
able to carry on a Government in the interior without such recognition and assistance. . . .
4. That the courts of the Confederation be recognized as the courts of first instance in matters or disputes
between its subjects. . . .
7. . . . [O]n considering the vast improvements to be made in the country, and the great extent of the
Confederation . . . the vast efforts to be made to open up the country for traffic and other purposes, the
want of good and substantial roads, the backwardness of education, and the immense efforts which will
have to be made to spread civilization, and diffuse knowledge over the country inland, we find that the
Confederation must have a revenue of some . . . 20,000 [British pounds].
Document 5
Source: Memorandum from the chiefs of Brass (a city-state on the Niger delta)
to the (British) Royal Niger Company, June 1895.
The Niger Company are cleverer than we are. We humbly submit that we have a right, confirmed by our Treaty,
to go and trade freely in the places we have traded at for all these generations. We are ready to pay to do so,
but let us pay a fair duty, and conform to fair Regulations.
Document 6
Source: Bal Gangadhar Tilak, address to the Indian National Congress, 1907.
We are not armed, and there is no necessity for arms either. We have a stronger weapon, a political weapon, in
boycott. We have perceived one fact, that the whole of this administration, which is carried on by a handful
of Englishmen, is carried on with our assistance. We are all in subordinate service. This whole government is
carried on with our assistance and they try to keep us in ignorance of our power of cooperation between
ourselves by which that which is in our own hands at present can be claimed by us and administered by us.
The point is to have the entire control in our hands. I want to have the key of my house, and not merely one
stranger turned out of it. Self-government is our goal; we want a control over our administrative machinery.
We don’t want to become clerks and remain [clerks]. . . . We shall not give them assistance to collect revenue
and keep peace. We shall not assist them in fighting beyond the frontiers or outside India with Indian blood
and money. We shall not assist them in carrying on the administration of justice. We shall have our own courts,
and when time comes we shall not pay taxes.
Document 7
Source: Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948), Hind Swaraj, or Indian Home Rule, 1908.
Many examples can be given in which acts of majorities will be found to have been wrong and those of
minorities to have been right. All reforms owe their origins to the initiation of minorities in opposition to
majorities. . . . So long as the superstition that men should obey unjust laws exists, so long will their slavery
exist. . . .
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Passive resistance is a method of securing rights by personal suffering; it is the reverse of resistance by arms.
When I refuse to do a thing that is repugnant to my conscience, I use soul-force [satyagraha]. For instance,
the government of the day has passed a law which is applicable to me: I do not like it; if, by using violence,
I force the government to repeal the law I am employing what may be termed body-force. If I do not obey
the law and accept the penalty for its breach, I use soul-force. It involves sacrifice of self.
DBQ 11 • A-47
Document 8
Source: “Leopold, King of the Congo,” 1908 English cartoon.
Apago PDF Enhancer
The Granger Collection, New York.

Document 9
Source: “Announcement to the Arabs” [anonymous], printed in Arabic in Cairo, 1914.
O sons of Quahtan [south Arabs]! Oh descendants of Adnan [north Arabs]! . . . When will you realize the
truth? When will you know that your country has been sold to foreigners? See how your natural resources
have been alienated from you and have come into the possession of England, France, and Germany. Have
you no right to these resources? You have become humiliated slaves in the hands of the usurping tyrants; the
foreigner unjustly dispossesses you of the fruit of your work and labor and leaves you to suffer the pangs of
hunger. How long will it be before you understand that you have become the plaything in the hand of him
who has no religion but to kill the Arabs and forcibly to seize their possessions?
Document 10
Source: A missionary school in Dar es Salaam, German East Africa, before 1914. Portraits of Emperor
William II and his wife look down on the class.
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Ullstein Bilderdienst/The Granger Collection, New York.

DBQ 12
World War I and the Home Front
Describe and analyze the effects of the Great War on the European home fronts during the
course of the war.
Document 1
Source: Employment of women in wartime British industry, 1914–1918. From Report of the War Cabinet
Committee on Women in British Industry, London, 1919.
Difference
Between Percentage
Numbers of Females Est.
Est. Est. of Females to Total Number
Number Number Employed Number Females
Females Females in July People Directly
Employed Employed 1914 and Employed Replacing
in July in July July July July Males in
Trades 1914 1918 1918 1914 1918 Jan. 1918
Metal 170,000 594,000 +424,000 9 25 195,000

Chemical 40,000 104,000 +64,000 20 39 35,000
Textile 863,000 827,000 −36,000 58 67 64,000
Clothing 612,000 568,000 −44,000 68 76 43,000
Food, drink, Apago PDF Enhancer
and tobacco 196,000 235,000 +39,000 35 49 60,000
Paper and printing 147,500 141,500 −6,000 36 48 21,000
Wood 44,000 79,000 +35,000 15 32 23,000
}
China and earthenware 32,000
Leather 23,100 197,100 +93,000 4 10 62,000
Other 49,000
Government
establishments 2,000 225,000 +223,000 3 47 197,000
Total 2,178,600 2,970,600 +792,000 26 37 704,000
Document 2
Source: Stefan Zweig, Austrian writer, describing the reaction to the outbreak of the war in Vienna,
from his autobiography, written in 1941.
There were parades in the street, flags, ribbons, and music burst forth everywhere, young recruits were march-
ing triumphantly, their faces lighting up at the cheering. . . .
As never before, thousands and hundreds of thousands felt what they should have felt in peace time, that
they belonged together. . . . All differences of class, rank, and language were flooded over at that moment
by the rushing feeling of fraternity. Strangers spoke to one another on the streets, people who had avoided
each other for years shook hands, everywhere one saw excited faces.
A-49
Document 3
Source: Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 1914–1944.
The day war was declared . . . I spent the evening walking around the streets . . . noticing cheering crowds. . . .
I discovered to my amazement that average men and women were delighted at the prospect of war.
Document 4
Source: Naomi Loughnan, British woman describing her work in a munitions plant during WWI.
Though we munition workers sacrifice our ease we gain a life worth living. Our long days are filled with
interest, and with the zest of doing work for our country in the grand cause of Freedom. . . .
The day is long, the atmosphere is breathed and rebreathed, and the oil smells. Our hands are black with
warm, thick oozings from the machines, which coat the work and, incidentally, the workers. We regard our
horrible, begrimed members [limbs] with disgust and secret pride.
Document 5
Source: Minutes from a meeting of the Russian Tsar’s Council of Ministers, 1915.
The Council of Ministers knows that there were disturbances in Moscow which ended in bloodshed. . . .
There were even more serious disorders at Ivanovo-Voznesensk when it was necessary to fire on the crowd
Apago PDF Enhancer
with the result that sixteen were killed and thirty wounded.
You cannot quiet the whole of Russia by the police alone, especially now when the ranks of the police are
being thinned out . . . hourly and the population is growing daily more excited by the speeches in the Duma,
by newspaper stories, by continuous defeats, and rumors of disorder in the rear.
Document 6
Source: Blockade: Diary of an Austrian Middle-Class Woman, 1914–24 (1932).
We housewives have during the last four years grown accustomed to standing in queues; we have also grown
accustomed to being obliged to go home with empty hands and still emptier stomachs. Only very rarely do
those who are sent away disappointed give cause for police intervention. On the other hand, it happens more
and more frequently that one of the pale, tired women who have been waiting for hours collapses from
exhaustion.
DBQ 12 • A-51
Document 7
Source: Rosa Luxemburg, German socialist, “The War and the Workers,” 1916.
The scene has changed fundamentally. . . . Gone is the euphoria. Gone the patriotic noise in the streets, . . .
the swaying crowds in the coffee shops with ear-deafening patriotic songs surging ever higher. . . .
The spectacle is over. . . . The trains full of reservists are no longer accompanied by virgins fainting from pure
jubilation. They no longer greet the people from the windows of the train with joyous smiles. . . .
Business thrives in the ruins. Cities become piles of ruins; villages become cemeteries; countries [become]
deserts; populations are beggared; churches [become] horse stalls. International law, treaties and alliances, the
most sacred words and the highest authority have been torn in shreds. . . . There are food riots in Venice, in
Lisbon, Moscow, Singapore. There is plague in Russia, and misery and despair everywhere.
Document 8
Source: V. I. Lenin, “The Call to Power,” October 24, 1917 [italics in original].
It would be an infinite crime on the part of the revolutionaries were they to let the chance slip by, knowing
that the salvation of the revolution, the offer of peace, the salvation of Petrograd, salvation from famine, the
transfer of the land to the peasants depend on them.
The government is tottering. It must be given the death-blow at all costs.
To delay action is fatal.
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Document 9
Source: Letter from the prefect (governor) of the department of Isère
to France’s minister of the interior, June 17, 1917.
I have the honour to reply herewithin to the questions contained in your confidential telegram circulated on
10 June: . . .
[The farmers] work, but they do not hide the fact that “it’s been going on too long”; they are tired
of their continuous over-exertion in the fields, of the lack of hands and of the very heavy burden of the
requisitions. . . . In the towns . . . the workers, the ordinary people—are upset about the duration of the
struggle, impatient with the increasing cost of living, irritated by the considerable profits being made out of
the war by the big industrialists in their neighborhood, and increasingly taken in by the propagandists of the
united Socialist Party and their internationalist ideas.
Document 10
Source: Food Production Department, London, ca 1918.
Apago PDF Enhancer
Special Collections, Georgetown University Library.

DBQ 13
Age of Anxiety
Discuss how European culture after World War I challenged the assumptions of the prewar,
nineteenth-century European culture.
Document 1
Source: Otto Dix (German), War (triptych), 1929–1932.
Apago PDF Enhancer
Staatliche Künstsammlungen Dresden, © 2007 Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York/VG Bild-Künst, Bonn.
A-53
Document 2
Source: Pablo Picasso (Spanish), Three Musicians, 1921.
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© MoMA/Scala/Art Resource, NY. © 2002 Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York/ADAGP, Paris.
Document 3
Source: Sigmund Freud (Austrian), Civilization and Its Discontents, 1930.
The element of truth behind all this, which people are so ready to disavow, is that men are not gentle creatures
who want to be loved, and who at most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary,
creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. . . . In
consequence of this primary mutual hostility of human beings, civilized society is perpetually threatened with
disintegration. The interest of work in common would not hold it together; instinctual passions are stronger
than reasonable interests.
DBQ 13 • A-55
Document 4
Source: Lines from W. B. Yeats (Irish), “The Second Coming,” 1920–1921.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre [spiral]

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster from The Poems of W. B. Yeats: A New Edition, edited by
Richard J. Finneran. Copyright © 1924 by Macmillan Publishing Company, renewed 1952 by Bertha Georgie
Yeats.
Document 5
Source: Erich Maria Remarque (German), All Quiet on the Western Front, 1929.
What would our fathers do if we suddenly stood up and came before them and proffered our accounts? . . .
Through the years our business has been killing;—it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is
limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come out of us?
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Document 6
Source: Benito Mussolini (Italian), “The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism,” 1932.
For if the nineteenth century was a century of individualism (Liberalism always signifying individualism) it
may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism, and hence the century of the State.
Document 7
Source: Helena Swanwick (English), “The War in Its Effect upon Women,” 1916.
The course and conduct of the war, throwing upon women greater and greater responsibilities, bringing home
to them how intimately their own lives and all they hold dear and sacred are affected by the government of
the country, will tend greatly to strengthen and enlarge their claim for a share in the government.
Document 8
Source: Salvador Dali (Spanish), The Persistence of Memory, 1931.
© The Museum of Modern Art/Scala/Art Resource, NY.
ApagoDocument
PDF 9Enhancer
Source: Sir Arthur S. Eddington, physicist and philosopher, referencing The Nature of the Physical World,
Rutherford’s work on the structure of the atom, 1928.
When we compare the universe as it is now supposed to be with the universe as we had ordinarily preconceived
it, the most arresting change is not the rearrangement of space and time by Einstein but the dissolution of all
that we regard as most solid into tiny specks floating in void.
DBQ 13 • A-57
Document 10
Source: Chorus girls posing as a New Year’s Eve jazz band, Budapest, 1927.
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Ulstein Bilderdienst.
DBQ 14
Dictatorships and the Second World War
Identify the key concepts that motivated authoritarian governments and rulers in the interwar
years (1919–1939), and explain why those concepts were so appealing.
Document 1
Source: Klara Zetkin, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, and Franz Mehring (German revolutionaries),
Spartacist Manifesto, November/December 1918, as it appeared in the New York Times, January 24, 1919.
Europe has been ruined through the infamous international murder. Twelve million bodies cover the grew-
some [sic] scenes of the imperialistic crime. The flower of youth and the best man power [sic] of the peoples
have been mowed down. Uncounted productive forces have been annihilated. . . . The great criminals of this
fearful anarchy, of this chaos let loose—the ruling classes—are not able to control their own creation. The
beast of capital that conjured up the hell of the world war is not capable of banishing it again, of restoring
real order, of insuring bread and work, peace and civilization, justice and liberty, to tortured humanity.
Document 2
Source: Paul Valéry (French philosopher), speech at the University of Zurich, November 1922.
One can say that all the fundamentals of the world have been affected by the war, or more exactly, by the
circumstances of the war; something deeper has been worn away than the renewable parts of the machine.
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You know how greatly the general economic situation has been disturbed, and the polity of states, and the
very life of the individual; you are familiar with the universal discomfort, hesitation, apprehension. But among
all these injured things is the Mind. The Mind has indeed been cruelly wounded; its complaint is heard in the
hearts of intellectual man; it passes a mournful judgment on itself. It doubts itself profoundly.
A-58
DBQ 14 • A-59
Document 3
Source: German Nazi Party poster: “The String-Puller. White Collar and Manual Laborers:
Vote for the Volkischen Block,” 1924.
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Courtesy, Langewiesche-Brandt KG Verlag, Ebenhausen, Germany.
Document 4
Source: Jose Ortega y Gasset (Spanish), Revolt of the Masses, 1930.
Under . . . Fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons
or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions. This is the new thing: the right not
to be reasonable, the “reason of unreason.” Here I see the most palpable manifestation of the new mentality
of the masses, due to their having decided to rule society without the capacity for doing so. . . . The average
man . . . wishes to have opinions, but is unwilling to accept the conditions and presuppositions that underlie
all opinion. Hence his ideas are in effect nothing more than appetites in words.
Document 5
Source: Joseph Stalin, “Address to Industrial Managers,” 1931.
Do you want our socialist fatherland to be beaten and to lose its independence? If you do not want this you
must put an end to its backwardness in the shortest possible time and develop genuine Bolshevik tempo in
building up its socialist system of economy. There is no other way. That is why Lenin said during the October
Revolution: “Either perish, or overtake and outstrip the advanced capitalist countries.” We are fifty or a hundred
years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it or they
crush us.
Document 6
Source: Benito Mussolini, “Fascist Doctrines” (article in the Italian Encyclopedia), 1932.
Given that the nineteenth century was the century of Socialism, of Liberalism, and of Democracy, it does not
necessarily follow that the twentieth century must also be the century of Socialism, Liberalism, and Democ-
racy: political doctrines pass, but humanity remains; and it may rather be expected that this will be a century
of authority, . . . a century of Fascism. For if the nineteenth century was a century of individualism (Liberalism
always signifying individualism) it may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism and hence the
century of the State.
Document 7
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Source: Map of the Great Depression in Europe: unemployment figures, 1932.
Percent of ICELAND
insured workers
unemployed, 1932 Percent of workers unemployed, 1932
More than 35 25–32
More than 35
25–35 15–24
25–35 FINLAND
15–24 No comparable data available
15–24
Less than 15 NORWAY
Less than 15
SWEDEN
ESTONIA
LATVIA
IRELAND LITH.
UNITED
KINGDOM GER.
SOVIET
UNION
NETH.
POLAND
BEL. GERMANY
LUX. CZECH.
FRANCE AUS.
SWITZ. HUNG.
ROMANIA
PORT. YUGOSLAVIA
ITALY BULG.
SPAIN
ALB.
GREECE
Source: European Historical Statistics, 1790–1970

Source: Historical Atlas of Britain, 1981 Monthly Labor Review, U.S. Dept. of Labor, 1934, vol. 39
DBQ 14 • A-61
Document 8
Source: Excerpt from Jakob Graf, Hereditary and Racial Biology for Students (a German textbook), 1935.
HOW WE CAN LEARN TO RECOGNIZE A PERSON’S RACE

Assignments
1. Summarize the spiritual characteristics of the individual races. . . .
3. What are the expressions, gestures, and movements which allow us to make conclusions as to the attitude
of the racial soul?
4. Determine also the physical features which go hand in hand with the specific racial soul characteristics
of the individual figures. . . .
9. Observe people whose special racial features have drawn your attention, also with respect to their bearing
when moving or speaking. Observe their expressions and gestures.
10. Observe the Jew: his way of walking, his bearing, gestures, and movements when walking.
Document 9
Source: Nicolas Berdyaev (an exiled Russian philosopher), The Fate of Man in the Modern World, 1935.
The new world which is taking form is moved by other values than the value of man or of human personality,
or the value of truth: it is moved by such values as power, technics, race-purity, nationality, the state, the class,
the collective. The will to justice is overcome by the will to power. . . . The results of the Christian-humanistic
process of unifying humanity seem to be disappearing. We are witnessing the paganization of Christian society.
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Nationalism is polytheism: it is incompatible with monotheism.
Document 10
Source: Arthur Koestler (Hungarian-born British writer and journalist), “I Was Ripe to Be Converted,”
from The God That Failed, 1949.
A considerable portion of the middle classes in central Europe was, like ourselves, ruined by the inflation of
the ’twenties. It was the beginning of Europe’s decline. This disintegration of the middle strata of society
started the fatal process of polarization which continues to this day. The pauperized bourgeois became rebels
of the Right or Left; Schickelgruber [Hitler] and Djugashwili [Stalin] shared about equally the benefits of
social migration. Those who . . . clung to the empty shell of gentility, joined the Nazis blaming their fate on
Versailles and the Jews. . . . The other half turned Left, thus confirming the prophecy of the Communist
Manifesto.
DBQ 15
Views Regarding Decolonization
Identify and analyze the various views regarding the decolonization of Algeria from France in
the middle of the twentieth century.
On the eve of World War II, France controlled a colonial empire second in size only to that of Britain. The
empire was more than twenty times as large as the home country, and it contained one and a half times as
many inhabitants. By 1962, only scattered remnants were left. The French had fought to prevent the loss
of their colonies, and the process of decolonization in the French Empire, especially in Algeria, was violent
and brutal. Algeria, invaded by the French in 1830, was the jewel of France’s empire. By 1954 Algeria’s pop-
ulation included over a million settlers of European origin.* The Algerians fought a war for independence
against France from 1954 to 1962; they gained their independence on March 19, 1962, with the signing
of the Evian Accords.
Document 1
Source: 1954 French trade in billions of francs. From Annuarre statistique de la France, 1954, Paris
[government-released annual statistics of France, 1954].
Export Import Balance
Algeria (French colony) Apago172.38

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115.76 +56.62
Morocco (French colony) 77.63 51.30 +26.33
Tunisia (French colony) 42.02 28.75 +13.27
W. Germany 123.13 119.69 +3.44
U.S.A. 54.07 133.31 −79.24
Iraq 1.29 77.70 −76.41
Document 2
Source: The incompetent governance of the IVth Republic,
published by the right-wing Poujadist movement, 1956.
The collapse of our Empire due to the venality [susceptible to bribery or corruption] and the cowardice of
our governments who take their orders from foreigners and international financiers, French Indo-China lost
after a war that could have been avoided, the territories in India conceded without discussion. . . . As from
now Tunisia and Morocco are no longer under our influence. . . . NOUS VOMISSONS LA POLITIQUE!
[We vomit on the politicians!]
*Christopher Harrison, “French Attitudes to Empire and the Algerian War,” African Affairs 82 (1983): 75–95.
A-62
DBQ 15 • A-63
Document 3
Source: Conservative manifesto of Haute-Loire [a department of the French government], 1958.
We all know the price we have paid for our blindness towards Hitler and the policies he proclaimed in Mein
Kampf. Today Abdul Nasser [president of Egypt] reminds us that Lenin envisaged the encirclement of Europe
by way of the Mediterranean. Let us beware. We must keep Algeria for many reasons but the most important
one is the need to prevent the communist victory on the continent of Europe just as we should have kept
the frontier on the Rhine to avoid the slaughters of 1939–45.
Document 4
Source: Socialist manifesto of Charente-Maritime [a government department on the west coast of France];
statement concerning socialist attitudes to colonies in general and Algeria in particular, 1956.
France has accomplished a truly civilizing task in her overseas territories and this has resulted in the formation
of recognizable local elites. The misconceptions of the reactionary ministers, partners in crime with the colo-
nialists who exploit the native populations, and their refusal to grant these people the rights for which they
yearn have triggered off some serious incidents and in the Aures [region of east Algeria] and the Rif [moun-
tainous region of northern Morocco] there is a veritable war being fought which is immobilizing our youth,
exposing them to danger and wasting France’s credit digging us deeply into a worrying debt. The Socialist
Party, faithful to its doctrine of the emancipation of native peoples, proposes to grant them the freedom of
self-government. . . .
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Document 5
Source: Statement by French President Charles de Gaulle to Pierre Laffont, editor of the Echo d’Alger,
April 29, 1959.
Yet those who are now calling most loudly for “integration” [the bringing together of France and Algeria] are
the very voices who were once loudest against the measure. What they want is for someone to give them back
the “Algeria of Daddy’s day,” but the Algeria of Daddy’s day is dead, and if we fail to understand that, we
shall die with it.
Document 6
Source: Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, resolution
adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, December 14, 1960.
Recognizing that the peoples of the world ardently desire the end of colonialism in all its manifestations,
Convinced that the continued existence of colonialism prevents the development of international economic
co-operation, impedes the social, cultural and economic development of dependent peoples and militates
against the United Nations ideal of universal peace. . . .
Believing that the process of liberation is irresistible and irreversible and that, in order to avoid serious crises, an
end must be put to colonialism and all practices of segregation and discrimination associated therewith. . . .
Solemnly proclaims the necessity of bringing to a speedy and unconditional end colonialism in all its forms
and manifestations.
Document 7
Source: Statement by Ferhat Abbas, leader of the Algerian National Liberation Front,
to the press in Montreux, Switzerland, 1957.
For 125 years, we have served as guinea pigs for French schemes. We will settle for nothing short of
independence.
Document 8
Source: Statement by Jacques Chaban-Delmas, Mayor of Bordeaux, printed in the Conservative Party
newspaper, France Independante, 1956.
If we were chased from Africa it would mean calamity for the Africans and the unemployment queue [line] for
one out of every three French workers. [An] Increase in public expenditure and a worsening of the National
Debt which already stands at 1,000 milliards [billion]. [And] Inflation ruining our currency, causing wide-
spread poverty and leading to the triumph of Communism.
Document 9
Source: Jean Paul Sartre, French existentialist and philosopher, article entitled “Le Colonialisme est un
système” [The system of colonialism], published in Les Temps Modernes, 1956.
[If one wants to institute reforms] it is impossible to begin by economic transformations because the misery
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and the despair of the Algerians are the direct and necessary effect of colonialism and these will never be
surpassed so long as colonialism endures.
Document 10
Source: Statement by Cardinal Lienart of Lille concerning methods of torture used during the war for
independence; published in Documents Action Catholique Ouvridre, April 1959.
The war is a fact. And whatever the horror in our hearts against the war, we must recognize that it exists. But
when war exists, we have no right as Christians or even as men (for this is a question of natural law) to use any
measures at all, on the pretext that they are effective. The Cardinals and Archbishops have already reminded
us on two occasions that it is not permissible to use “methods” which are intrinsically bad. You know the
objection to this; it can be heard from both sides: “If such methods are not used, the war cannot be won.”
The answer is clear: “Then, it is better to lose the war!”
DBQ 15 • A-65
Document 11
Source: Statement by French Archbishop Guerry made during the Franco-Algerian agreements,
March 1962.
Think of all those European families who have lived during the past seven years in fear, anguish, daily insecurity,
and uncertainty for the future with its dangers of death. So many of them lost members of their families,
massacred, butchered by the troops. Think of those who worked and toiled for generations, desiring to serve
France and to make Algeria a great country by cultivating, equipping it, and opening it to modern civilization.
Now they are forced to leave their native soil, the land of their ancestors. They wished to remain French and,
though minorities will have rights, they will be forced to give up their French nationality in three years if they
remain in Algeria.
Document 12
Source: French tanks are surrounded by protesters during French President Charles de Gaulle’s visit to
Algiers, December 10, 1960.
Apago PDF Enhancer
Dalmas/Sipa Press.
DBQ 16
Communism and Eastern Europe
To what extent did criticisms of communism by citizens of the Eastern European socialist states
change over time?
Document 1
Source: Andor Heller, “The Hungarian Revolution,” 1956.
The walls of Budapest are plastered with leaflets put up by the students during the night. They list the fourteen
demands adopted at the storm meetings held at the universities:
1. Withdrawal of all Soviet troops from Hungary
2. Complete economic and political equality with the Soviet Union, with no interference in Hungary’s
internal affairs . . .
8. A secret general multi-party election
9. The organization of Hungary’s economy on the basis of her actual resources
10. Revision of the workers’ output quotas and recognition of the right to strike
11. Revisions of the system of compulsory agricultural quotas
12. Equal rights for individual farms and cooperative members . . .
Someone grabs a Hungarian flag and cuts out the hated hammer and sickle that the Communists had placed
at its center. One after another of the purified Hungarian flags appear. Suddenly someone remembers to put
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the old Kossuth [the leader of the Hungarian uprising of 1848–1849] coat-of-arms on the flag. . . . We have
created a new flag of freedom!
Document 2
Source: Milovan Djilas (Yugoslavia), The New Class, 1957.
In contrast to earlier revolutions, the Communist revolution, conducted in the name of doing away with
classes, has resulted in the most complete authority of any single new class. Everything else is shame and an
illusion. . . . This new class, the bureaucracy . . . may be said to be made up of those who have special privileges
and economic preference because of the administrative monopoly they hold. . . . The Communist Party is the
backbone of the entire political, economic and ideological activity. . . . The exclusive, if unwritten, law that
only party members can become policemen, officers, diplomats, and only they can exercise actual authority,
creates a special privileged group of bureaucrats. . . . The so-called “dictatorship of the proletariat” which is
the beginning of and under the best circumstances becomes the authority of the party, inevitably evolves
into the dictatorship of the leaders.
A-66
DBQ 16 • A-67
Document 3
Source: Ludvik Vaculik, “2,000 Words to Workers, Farmers, Scientists, Artists, and Everyone,”
Spring 1968 (published in the literary journal Literarni listy in Prague, Czechoslovakia).
The communist party betrayed the great trust the people put in it after the war [World War II]. It preferred
the glories of office, until it had those and nothing more. The disappointment was great among communists
as well as non-communists. . . . There was no criticism of the state and economic organizations. Parliament
forgot how to deliberate, the government forgot how to rule and managers how to manage. Elections had no
significance and the laws lost their value. . . . Personal and collective honor deteriorated. . . . No organization
was run by its members, not even the communist party. . . . Honesty led nowhere, and it was useless to speak
of rewards according to ability. As a result, most citizens lost interest in public affairs.
Document 4
This selection has been omitted intentionally from your CourseSmart eBook
due to electronic permissions issues. Regrettably, we cannot make this piece
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Document 5
Source: Charter 77 (an informal and loosely structured organization of intellectuals,
including Václav Havel, in Czechoslovakia), 1977.
Freedom of public expression is repressed by the centralized control of all the communications media and
of publishing and cultural institutions. No philosophical, political, or scientific view or artistic expression that
departs ever so slightly from the narrow bounds of official ideology or aesthetics is allowed to be published.
Further civil rights are seriously vitiated by the various forms of interference in the private life of citizens exer-
cised by the Ministry of the Interior, for example, by bugging telephones and houses, opening mail, following
personal movements, searching homes, setting up networks of neighborhood informers.
Document 6
Source: “Twenty-one Demands: A Call for Workers’ Rights and Freedom in a Socialist State,”
issued by Solidarity in Poland, 1980.
1. Acceptance of Free Trade Unions independent of both the Party and employers, in accordance with
the International Labor Organization’s Convention number 87 on the freedom to form unions, which
was ratified by the Polish government.
2. A guarantee of the right to strike and guarantees of security for strikers and their supporters.
3. Compliance with the freedoms of press and publishing guaranteed in the Polish constitution. A halt to
repression of independent publications and access to the mass media for representatives of all faiths.
4. (a) Reinstatement to their former positions for: people fired for defending workers’ rights, in particular
those participating in the strikes of 1970 and 1976; students dismissed from school for their convictions.
(b) The release of all political prisoners. . . . (c) A halt to repression for one’s convictions. . . .
6. The undertaking of real measures to get the country out of its present crisis by: (a) providing compre-
hensive, public information about the socio-economic situation; (b) making it possible for people from
every social class and stratum of society to participate in open discussions concerning the reform
program. . . .
11. The rationing of meat and meat products through food coupons (until the market is stabilized).
12. Abolition of “commercial prices” and hard currency sales in so-called “internal export” shops.
13. A system of merit selection for management positions on the basis of qualifications rather than Party
membership. . . .
19. Reduce the waiting time for apartments.
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DBQ 16 • A-69
Document 7
Source: Undated cartoon published probably in the early 1980s, during the Brezhnev years,
in the magazine The Crocodile, U.S.S.R.
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Vneshtorgizdat, Moscow.
Document 8
Source: Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika. Copyright 1987 by Mikhail Gorbachev.
The presentation of a “problem-free” reality backfired: a breach had formed between word and deed, which
bred public passivity and disbelief in the slogans being proclaimed. . . . Decay began in public morals; . . . and
the penetration of stereotypes of mass culture alien to us, which bred vulgarity and low tastes and brought
about ideological barrenness, increased.
One specific feature of socialism . . . [is] the high degree of social protection in our society. On the one
hand, it is, doubtless, a benefit and a major achievement of ours. On the other hand, it makes some people
spongers. There is virtually no unemployment. . . . Health care is free, and so is education. People are pro-
tected from the vicissitudes of life, and we are proud of this. But we also see that dishonest people try to
exploit these advantages of socialism: they know only their rights, but they do not want to know their duties:
they work poorly, shirk, and drink hard.
Document 9
Source: Václav Havel (president of Czechoslovakia), “The Failure of Communism,”
New Year’s Day address, 1990.
Our country is not flourishing. The great creative and spiritual potential of our nation is not being applied
meaningfully. Entire branches of industry are producing things for which there is no demand while we are
short of things we need.
The state, which calls itself a state of workers, is humiliating and exploiting them instead. Our outmoded
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economy wastes energy, which we have in short supply. The country, which could once be proud of the
education of its people, is spending so little on education that today, in that respect, we rank 72nd in the
world. We have spoiled our land, rivers, and forests, inherited from our ancestors, and have, today, the worst
environment in the whole of Europe. Adults die here earlier than in the majority of European countries. . . .
The worst of it is that we live in a spoiled moral environment. . . . The previous regime, armed with a
proud and intolerant ideology, reduced people into the means of production, and nature in its tools. So it
attacked their very essence, and their mutual relations. . . . None of us are only its victims; we are all also
responsible for it.
Document 10
Source: Olga Havlova (wife of Václav Havel), letter to the editor, New York Review of Books, June 14, 1990.
The handicapped in our country have been forced into isolation, removed from sight into homes and insti-
tutions. There are a million of them in Czechoslovakia, in a population of only fifteen million. This did not
trouble us. The state said they were being looked after, so we chose to believe it.
This was our habit of inhumanity. It would have been inhuman even if the state had been looking after these
people well. But it turns out that it has been looking after them badly. There is practically no equipment, no
nursing, sometimes not even the most basic conditions for living in dignity.
We are now changing the state. But we also need to change our habits.
DBQ 16 • A-71
Document 11
Source: Slavenka Drakulic (a Croatian columnist), “A Letter from the United States:
The Critical Theory Approach.” From How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed, 1991.
Every mother in Bulgaria can point to where communism failed, from the failure of the planned economy
[and the consequent lack of food and milk], to the lack of apartments, child-care facilities, clothes, disposable
diapers, or toilet paper. The banality of everyday life is where it has really failed, rather than on the level of
ideology.
Document 12
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due to electronic permissions issues. Regrettably, we cannot make this piece
available to you in a digital format.
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Index
Abandoned children, 660, 736 Agincourt, battle at, 385 All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque),
Abbas I (Safavid), 489, 490 Agricultural revolution, 622–623 887–888
Abdülhamid II (Sultan, Ottomans), 831 Agriculture: crisis in 14th century, 372–373; Al-Qaeda, 1045, 1046, 1047
Abolition of slavery: slave trade and, 643; in serfdom and, 561; after Thirty Years’ War, Alsace: France and, 534; Germany and, 825;
France and French territories, 702, 711 563–565; in Holy Roman Empire, 567; in surrender to Germany, 834. See also Alsace-
Aborigines: Western society and, 850 Prussia, 610; in 18th century, 622–625; in Lorraine
Abortion, 1009–1010, 1010(illus.) England, 623, 624–625; in Low Countries, Alsace-Lorraine, 880, 881
Absenteeism: clerical, 446 624–625, 624(illus.); Industrial Revolution Alva, duke of, 474
Absolute monarchy and absolutism, 523, 525, and, 718; in Egypt, 853; migration and, Alvarado, 502
528–542; in France, 526, 528–534, 600, 686, 857–858; Scandinavian cooperatives, 938; Amalgamated Society of Engineers, 741
689; army size and, 527; in Spain, 534–538; collectivization in, 951–952, 992, 995, 996. American Indians, 635; Columbus and, 498;
culture of, 539–542; in England, 543–544; See also Farms and farming; Manors and enslavement of, 505–508; in Latin America,
Puritanical, 546–547; Ottoman, 559; in manorialism; Peasant(s) 644; Western society and, 850
central and eastern Europe, 559–584; in Ahasuerus, 428, 428(illus.) American Revolution, 687–688
Prussia, 565, 571–572; religion and, 566; Ahmed Arabi, 853–854 Americas: exploration of, 493; naming of, 500;
Hohenzollern, 567; in Brandenburg-Prussia, AIDS epidemic, 1044(illus.) European conquest of, 501–504; decline of
570–571; enlightened, 609–616 Aiguillon, duke of, 691 indigenous population in, 504–505;
Abstract art, 924–925, 950(illus.) Aircraft: jet, 999 European colonies in, 504–508, 634–644;
Academy (Athens): humanists and, 414 Air force: in Second World War, 967, 974–975 economic exploitation of, 505–508; silver
Act in Restraint of Appeals (England), 461 Albania, 883, 1026, 1042–1043; guerillas in, bullion from, 509–510; colonial wars over,
Act of Union (England, 1707), 603 885(illus.) 634–637; labor in, 640–641; English exports
Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Albanian Muslims: of Kosovo, 1037–1038 to, 640(map). See also New World; specific
Nation (Luther), 451
Aden, 488
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Albert (England), 814(illus.)
Alberti, Leon Battista, 413, 414
countries
Amiens: insurrection at, 528; Treaty of, 705
Adenauer, Konrad, 987 Albert of Mainz, 447, 448 Anabaptists, 451–454
Administration: of France, 529; of Spanish Albert of Wallenstein, 562 Analytic geometry, 595
colonies, 538–539; Ottoman, 582. See also Albi, 394 Anarchism: in Spain and Italy, 842
Government Albuquerque, Alfonso de, 498 Anastasia Romanov (wife of Ivan IV), 574–575
Admonition to Peace, An (Luther), 455 Alcohol and alcoholism: of working class, Anatolia, 580; Ottomans and, 489
Adolescence: work during, 655 795–796; Soviet, 1023 Anaximander (Greece), 807
Adoration of the Magi (Mantegna), 423(illus.) Alcuin, 415 Andes region, 503
Adultery: punishment of, 656 Alembert, Jean le Rond, 602, 605 Anglican Church, 462–463, 548; Puritans and,
Afghanistan: Soviets in, 1008, 1024, 1045; war Alexander I (Russia), 706, 707, 708, 750, 751 544–545; Methodists and, 673; Ireland and,
against Taliban in, 1020, 1045; refugees from, Alexander II (Russia), 827, 828(illus.) 835
1042 Alexander III (Russia), 827 Anglo-French Entente, 892
Africa: blacks from, 429–431; culture of, Alexander VI (Pope), 410, 436, 500 Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 880(illus.)
430–431; trade with, 484, 485–488; Alexandra (Russia), 895, 896(illus.) Anglo-Russian Agreement, 880(illus.)
Ottomans and, 489; Portugal and, 497; Alexandria: riots in, 854 Angola, 859
slavery and, 508, 513–514, 641–643; Dutch Alexis (Russia), 895 Animals: in Columbian Exchange, 509; on
and, 553; English exports to, 640(map); Alfonso I (Aragon): Muslims and, 397 farms, 623
France and, 846(illus.); imperialism in, Algebra, 595 Anjou: house of, 435
860(map); partition of, 860(map); Algeciras Conference, 882 Anna of Austria, 512, 530
Christianization of, 867; First World War in, Algeria, 859, 973, 1046; fall of Algiers, 767, Anne of Brittany, 435
890; decolonization in, 990(map), 992–993; 768(illus.); France and, 767, 829, 992 Annexation: of Hawaii, 858(illus.)
neocolonialism and, 992–993; nationalism Allan, David, 657(illus.) Anticlericalism, 446, 458
and violence in, 1033; AIDS epidemic in, Alliance(s): Russian, 576; in Seven Years’ War, Anticommunists: in Soviet Union, 1028,
1044(illus.). See also North Africa 610; after First World War, 903, 908, 929. 1029(map)
African Americans: in Europe, 932(illus.); civil See also specific alliances Anti-Corn Law League, 764
rights movement and, 994–995, 994(illus.) Alliance for Germany, 1029–1030 Antigua, 642(illus.)
Africans: as slaves, 513–514 Alliance of the Three Emperors, 880(illus.) Anti-immigrant campaign, 1043–1044;
Afrikaners, 859, 861 Alliance systems: of Bismarck, 880–881, challenges to, 1049–1050
Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of the 880(illus.), 885; in cold war, 988(map) Anti-Semitism: in Spain, 437–439; before First
Peasants (Luther), 455 Allies (First World War): in Russian civil war, World War, 832; Dreyfus affair and, 834–835;
Age of Anxiety, 913–940 900–901; Treaty of Versailles and, 903, 907; modern, 837–838; Zionism and, 838, 839; in
Age of Discovery, 483–516 Middle East and, 906 Nazi Germany, 961, 970. See also Jews and
Age of Louis XIV (Voltaire), 602 Allies (Second World War), see Grand Alliance Judaism
I-1
I-2 • Index
Antiseptic principle, 783 646–647; migration from, 858–859, Authority, see Power (authority)
Antiwar movement, 1006–1007, 1052(illus.) 858(illus.); in 1914, 864(map); Second World Authorized Bible, 516
Antwerp, 474 War in, 970, 972, 972(map), 974–975; Autobiography (Cellini), 413
Apartheid policy, 863 containment policy and, 984; decolonization Autocracy: in Russia, 579–580
Apothecaries, 667 in, 990(map); financial crises in, 1031, 1033; Autocrats: in Moscow, 574
Appeasement: of Hitler, 962, 965(illus.), 984 nationalism and violence in, 1033. See also Automobiles: in postwar era, 1002
Apprenticeships, 654–655, 740 specific countries Auxiliary Service Law, 891–892, 894
Aquinas, see Thomas Aquinas Asiento, 635 Avignon: pope in, 387
Aquitaine, 381, 382, 385 Assemblies: after Hundred Years’ War, 386; Axis alliance, 963
Arabian Peninsula: Ottomans and, 581 organized by class (estate), 431; in France, Azores, 505
Arabian Sea, 484 688–689. See also National assembly (France) Aztec Empire: Spanish in, 501–502
Arab-Israeli wars, 992, 1010 Assembly of Notables (France), 688–689
Arabs and Arab world: Indian Ocean trade and, Astaire, Fred, 927 Baby boom, 1002
485; slave trade and, 513–514; after First Astell, Mary, 597 Baby bust, 1041
World War, 903, 905–907, 905(illus.); Astrolabe, 482(illus.), 495 Babylonian Captivity: of Catholic Church, 387
Ottomans and, 903; Palestine and, 992; Astrology, 591 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 540
nationalism in, 992–993; OPEC and, 1010; Astronomy: Aristotle and, 590–591, 590(illus.); Bacon, Francis, 595, 596–597
terrorism and, 1046. See also Islam Copernicus and, 591–592; Galileo and, Bacteria, see Disease
Arago, François, 771 592–594; Newton and, 594. See also Bahamas, 499
Aragon, 436; kingdom of Naples and, 410 Scientific revolution; Universe Balance of power: among Italian city-states,
Archers, 383 Atatürk (Mustafa Kemal), 906, 907(illus.) 410–412, 411(map); industrialization and,
Architecture: in Renaissance, 424–425; of Atauhualpa (Inca), 503–504 717
St. Petersburg, 579; functionalism in, 921; Athletics, see Sports Baldwin, Stanley, 928, 933
postmodern, 1032(illus.) Atlantic alliance, 1008 Balfour, Arthur, 903
Aretino, Pietro, 425 Atlantic Ocean region: slave trade in, 508, Balfour Declaration (1917), 839, 903–904,
Argentina: migration to, 856, 858; Italian 641–643; powers of, 621; economy in, 905
immigrants in, 857(illus.); Falkland Islands 634–640, 636(map) Balkan region, 559; Ottomans and, 489, 580,
and, 1013 Atomic power: discoveries in, 917–919, 829; Enlightenment and, 603; nationalism
Arguim, 497 918(illus.); Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and, 975, and, 831, 883; Alliance System and, 881; in
Aristocracy, 788–789; in England, 763; in 1000; Einstein and, 999 1878 and 1914, 884(map); in First World
France, 767; in Austrian Empire, 772; labor, Aubry, Madame, 715(illus.) War, 889; in Second World War, 967
791. See also Nobility Auden, W. H., 917 Ballet, 925
Aristotelian worldview, 599 Apago PDF Enhancer
Audiencia, 538 Baltic region: Black Death and, 377;
Aristotle, 590–591; on universe, 590(illus.) Auerstädt, battle at, 707 Lutheranism in, 466; after Thirty Years’ War,
Arkwright, Richard, 719, 735 Augsburg: Peace of (1555), 459, 563 563; Poland and, 571; Sweden and, 571, 576;
Armada (Spain), 474–475, 512–513 Augsburg Confession, 458 Russia and, 573, 576, 578(illus.); Second
Armed forces: French, 434, 527, 541, 690; size Augustine (Hippo, Saint), 415 World War and, 966; nationalism in, 1023
of, 526–527; Habsburg, 567; in Russia, 576, Augustinian friars, 446–447 Balzac, Honoré de, 808
577; Ottoman, 829–830, 831; in Japan, 871, Auschwitz-Birkenau, 969 Banking: in Florence, 408, 408(illus.); in
871(illus.). See also Military; Soldiers Austerlitz, Battle of, 706 England, 718; in continental industrialization,
Armenians: genocide against, 889–890, Australia: in Second World War, 974 732
889(illus.) Austria, 1040; Black Death in, 377; Habsburgs Bank of Amsterdam, 550
Armistice: for First World War, 901 and, 457–458, 565–567, 613–615; Burgundy Bankruptcy: in France, 688, 689
Arms race, 1024 and, 458; in Grand Alliance (1701), 534; Banten: port of, 487(illus.)
Army Order No. 1 (Russia), 896 Hungary and, 566–567, 1025; growth to Baptism: infant, 451
Arouet, François Marie, see Voltaire 1748, 570(illus.); Prussia and, 610; marriage Baptistery (Florence): doors of, 421, 425
Art(s): in Renaissance, 421–428; subject matter in, 654; church control in, 672; Napoleon Baptists, 454
of, 423; of northern Renaissance, 424; and, 705, 706, 708; Holy Alliance and, 751; Barbarians: race and, 608
creativity of artists and, 425–428; in revolt in, 770; Italy and, 818, 820, 821; Barcelona, 437, 437(map)
Reformation, 452–453, 452(illus.), Zollverein and, 821; Germany and, 822, 824, Barons: English, 373; French, 381, 382
453(illus.); Protestantism and, 473; baroque, 963(map), 964–965; republic of, 901; peace Baroque period, 539; arts of, 539–540
539–540; romanticism in, 758–761; treaty with, 903; Great Depression in, 935; Barth, Karl, 917
impressionism and, 922; postimpressionism Hitler and, 962. See also Austro-Hungarian Basel, Council of, 388
(expressionism) in, 922–926; modern, 924; Empire Basilicas, 416
abstract, 924–925, 950(illus.); cubism in, Austrian Empire: under Habsburgs, 751–753, Bastille (Paris): surrender of, 690
924–925; surrealism in, 925; dadaism in, 926; 752(map); in 1848, 772 Battle of San Romano (Ucello), 412(illus.)
social realism in, 950(illus.); Soviet, Austrian Netherlands: France and, 696, 697; Battles, see specific battles and wars
950(illus.), 954, 995, 999; suprematism and, Napoleon and, 705 Bauhaus, 921
950(illus.); women’s history and, 1003(illus.). Austro-Hungarian Empire (Austria-Hungary), Bavaria, 565
See also Architecture; Literature; specific types 836–837; industrialization in, 727, Bayle, Pierre, 599–600
Arthur (England), 435, 461 728(illus.); Alliance System and, 880–881, Beards: in Russia, 578
Artisans, 740; in Russia, 575; in guilds, 633. 880(illus.); Balkan nationalism and, 883; end “Beat” movement, 1004
See also Labor; Workers of, 903. See also First World War Beattie, James, 609
Ashley Mines Commission (England), 744 Austro-Prussian War, 821–822, 823(map) Beaumont, Henry, 397
Asia: trade with, 484, 499, 644–647; European Authoritarianism, 945, 946–949; in Russia, Beauvoir, Simone de, 1009, 1015(illus.),
empires and, 644–647; European trade with, 1034–1035 1016–1017
Index • I-3
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 761 Blockade(s): in First World War, 890, 903; of Brandt, Willy, 1008
Beijing (Peking), China, 484, 852 Berlin, 984, 985(illus.); of Cuba, 997; of Iraq, Brassey, Thomas, 725
Belgium, 696, 749, 966; Charles V and, 474; 1030 Brazil: Portugal and, 497, 539; sugar in,
industrialization in, 727, 728(illus.), 730; Block-book, 418, 419 508(illus.), 510; slaves in, 640, 642; Italians
banks in, 732; Africa and, 861; invasion of, Blood sports, 675–676, 676(illus.) in, 858
884, 887, 887(illus.); in First World War, Bloody Sunday massacre (Russia), 829 Brazza, Pierre de, 861
886(map); Treaty of Versailles and, 903; Blum, Léon, 939 Bread: in peasant diet, 524–525; in France, 690,
European unity and, 989. See also Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 429 697
Netherlands Boats, see Ships and shipping Breast-feeding, 658, 661, 802
Bellini, Gentile and Giovanni, 426(illus.) Boccaccio, Giovanni, 378, 416, 432–433 Breitenfeld, battle at, 562
Belorussia, 900 Body linen, 720 Brest-Litovsk: Treaty of, 899, 901
Benefices (offices), 446 Boers, 859 Brezhnev, Leonid, 997, 1020
Bentham, Jeremy, 781–782 Boer War, see South African War Brezhnev Doctrine, 997, 1021, 1024
Benthamite, 781 Bohemia, 391, 753, 776; Reformation in, Briand, Aristide, 930, 931, 932
Berbers: as slaves, 492 465–466; Protestantism in, 562, 565; Thirty Bride wealth, 484
Berg, Alban, 926 Years’ War and, 562; Habsburgs in, 565–566; Bridget (Sweden), 389–390
Bergson, Henri, 915 absolutism in, 566 Britain: Battle of, 967. See also England
Berlin, 567, 974; airlift to, 984, 985(illus.); Bohemian Estates, 565 (Britain)
blockade of, 984 Boleyn, Anne, 461 British Broadcasting Corporation, 928
Berlin conference (1884, 1885), 861 Bologna, 409 British Commonwealth of Nations, 992
Berlin Wall, 997, 1008; fall of, 1025, Bolotnikov, Ivan, 576 British East India Company, 647, 687, 719, 868
1027(illus.) Bolshevik Revolution, 949; Lenin and, British Empire: in 19th century, 849. See also
Bernstein, Edward, 841 896–898, 899(illus.) Colonies and colonization
Bethmann-Hollweg, Theobald von, 883, 891 Bolsheviks, 898, 947; Five-Year Plan and, Brittain, Vera, 893
Beverages, 665 978–979. See also Communists and Brittany, 435
Bible: Erasmus and, 417–418; Authorized communism; Russia; Soviet Union Broadcasting networks, 927–928
Version of, 516. See also New Testament Bombs and bombings: blitzkrieg and, Brothels, 394, 456–457
Bigarny, Felipe, 438(illus.) 966(illus.), 967; in Pacific islands, 974–975; Brothers Karamazov, The (Dostoevski), 804
Big Four, 902 of cities, 975; of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Brown, Ford Maddox, 733(illus.)
Big Science, 1000 975; in Vietnam War, 1006; in Yugoslavia, Brown v. Board of Education, 994
Big Three: wartime conferences of, 982–985, 1038–1039. See also Terrorism Brunel, I. K., 724(illus.), 725
982(illus.) Bonhomme, Jacques, 390 Brunelleschi, Filippo, 421, 424
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Bill-poster’s Fantasy, A (Perry), 778(illus.) Book of Common Order (Knox), 465 Bruni, Leonardo, 413
Bin Laden, Osama, 1045, 1047 Book of Common Prayer (England), 463, 545 Brüning, Heinrich, 959–960
Biology, 805; race and, 608 Book of Revelation, 371 Brussels, 474, 632(illus.)
Birth control, 656, 798, 803 Books: printing of, 418–421, 604(illus.); Index Bubo, 374
Birth of a Nation (film), 926 of Prohibited Books and, 467; in Bubonic plague, 374, 627–628, 627(illus.).
Birthrate: in 17th century, 626; illegitimacy and, Enlightenment, 603–607. See also Literature See also Black Death
656–657, 798; decline of, 802, 802(illus.), Bordeaux, 383(illus.); insurrection at, 528; Buchuanaland (Botswana), 861
855, 1041–1042; in Great Depression, 935; illegitimacy in, 656–657 Budget deficits, 1012
in postwar era, 1002, 1002(illus.); in western Borders: Locarno agreements and, 930, 931; of Bulgaria: peace treaty with, 903; Second World
Europe, 1041 Hungary, 1025. See also Boundaries; War and, 983; postcommunist, 1035
Bismarck, Otto von, 821–822, 824(illus.); Frontiers Bureaucracy: in England, 463; in absolutist
Prussian parliament and, 822–824; Franco- Borgia, Cesare, 410 state, 526; in France, 530–531, 705; in Spain,
Prussian War and, 824–825; as chancellor, Borodino, Battle of, 708 537; in Prussia, 571–572, 822; Ottoman,
832, 833; Berlin conference and, 861–862; Bosnia, 883, 1045 582; Russia, 827; in India, 869–870; Soviet,
African territory and, 862; Alliance System of, Bosnia-Herzegovina: civil war in, 1038; ethnic 1022, 1023; of European Union, 1039
880–881, 880(illus.) groups in, 1038, 1038(map) Burgos, 437
Black Code: in Saint-Domingue, 693 Bosnian Muslims, 1037(illus.), 1038 Burgundians (France), 385
Black Death, 374–381, 386; spread of, Bosnian Serbs, 1038 Burgundy: Austria and, 458
375–377; course of, 376(map); treatment of, Boston Tea Party, 687, 687(illus.) Burials: medieval, 372(illus.)
377–378; hospitals and, 378, 379(illus.); Botticelli, Sandro, 422(illus.), 425 Burke, Edmund, 694
consequences of, 378–381; pessimism after, Boucher, François, 654(illus.) Burma: independence for, 992
380–381; colleges founded after, 381; Boundaries: after Second World War, 985; Final Bush, George H. W., 1030
pilgrimages and, 381. See also Plague Act and, 1008. See also Borders; Frontiers Bush, George W., 1044, 1045, 1047, 1048
Blacks, 429–431, 430(illus.); as slaves, 492, Bourbon dynasty, 528; in Spain, 536(map); Business: women and, 735; in U.S., 826.
513–514; Linné on, 608. See also African restoration of, 708–710, 749; in Naples and See also Commerce
Americans; Slaves and slavery Sicily, 818 Bussy, William, 396
Black Sea region: slave trade and, 492; Bourgeoisie, 431, 684, 685; in France, 685; Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 759, 761
Constantinople and, 580 Marx on, 757 Byzantine Empire: Russia and, 575(illus.);
Black Shirts, 955 Boxer Rebellion, 872 Ottomans and, 580
Blackstone, William, 799 Boyars, 574
Blair, Tony, 1013 Brahe, Tycho, 592 “Cabal”: in England, 547
Blake, William, 734 Brain drain, 1000 Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The (film), 927
Blanc, Louis, 756, 771 Brandenburg: elector of, 457, 567–571 Cabinet system: in England, 547
Blitzkrieg, 966(illus.), 967 Brandenburg-Prussia, 563, 570–571, 570(map) Cabot, John, 501
I-4 • Index
Cabral, Pedro Alvares, 497–498, 500 Cateau-Cambrésis, Treaty of, 472 Charles II (England), 547–548, 635
Cairo, 487, 582 Catechisms: of Luther, 451 Charles II (Spain), 534, 537
Calais: England and, 385 Cathedrals: in Florence, 424 Charles III (Spain), 538–539
Calatrava, Santiago, 1032(illus.) Catherine de’ Medici, 473 Charles IV (France), 381
Calicut, India, 498 Catherine of Aragon, 435, 461, 463 Charles V (Holy Roman Empire), 439, 457,
Caliph, 584 Catherine the Great (Russia), 578, 610–613, 500(illus.); Luther and, 449; empire of, 458,
Calling of Saint Matthew, The (Pareja), 540(illus.) 612(illus.), 688, 946 460(maps), 511; Protestantism and, 458–459,
Calvin, John, and Calvinism, 452, 461, Catholic Center Party (Germany), 833 461; abdication by, 459; papacy and, 467;
463–465, 464(illus.); in Poland, 466; France Catholic Church: Babylonian Captivity of, 387; Netherlands under, 473–475, 474(map);
and, 473; in Netherlands, 474, 550; England Great Schism in, 387–388; Conciliar Indians and, 505
and, 544 movement in, 388; lay piety and, 389–390; Charles VI (Austria), 567, 610
Cambodia, see Kampuchea (Cambodia) mysticism and, 389–390; in Renaissance, 416; Charles VI (France), 386
Camel: caravans and, 487 in France, 435, 472–473, 529, 834, 835; Charles VII (France), 385, 434
Cameroons, 862 Spain and, 436; conversos in, 437–438; Charles VIII (France), 411–412
Camus, Albert, 917 reformation of, 445–457, 466; indulgences Charles X (France), 767
Canada: France and, 501, 532, 635; Loyalist in, 448; Protestantism and, 449; on marriage, Charles XI (Sweden), 568, 576
migrants to, 687 456; in England, 461–463, 544, 547; in Charles XII (Sweden), 576
Canals, 850; in England, 718, 718(map) Hungary, 466; baroque art and, 539; in Charles the Bold (Burgundy), 435
Canary Islands, 499 Ireland, 545, 835, 836; Catholic League and, Charles University (Prague), 381
Candide (Voltaire), 618 562; in northern German states, 563; Charpentier, Marc-Antoine, 542
Cannon, 383, 494 Copernican hypothesis and, 592; science and, Chartist movement, 741, 764
Canonization: of Joan of Arc, 385 596; in Austria, 615; church regulation by, Châtelet, marquise de, 601, 602(illus.)
Canon law: marriage and, 456 671–672; contributions to social and religious Chaucer, Geoffrey, 399, 400
Canterbury Tales (Chaucer), 399–400 life, 672; Pietism and, 674; French Chaumont, Treaty of, 708
Canton: foreign merchants in, 851 Revolution and, 693, 703; Napoleon and, Chechnya, 1035
Cape Colony, 859, 861, 863 705; papal infallibility and, 832; Christian Cheka, 900
Cape of Good Hope, 497, 501, 511, 553, 646 existentialism in, 917; in fascist Italy, 957; in Chemistry, 805
Capetian dynasty (France), 381 Poland, 1020. See also Christianity; Counter- Cheney, Dick: Iraq war and, 1047
Cape Town, 553 Reformation; Protestantism Chiang Kai-shek, 992
Cape Verde Islands, 505 Catholic League, 562 Chicago: architecture in, 922; counterculture in,
Capital (financial): industry and, 732; free Catholic Party: of Italy, 955; of France, 987 1004
movement of, 1031 Catholic Reformation, 466–472 Chicago, Judy, 1003(illus.)
Capital (Marx), 838 Apago PDF Enhancer
Caucasian: use of term, 429 Childbirth: deaths from, 658
Capitalism, 393; labor and, 631; Smith and, Caucasus region, 900 Child care, 739
647–648; industrial, 732; socialists on, 756; Cavaignac, Louis, 771 Child labor, 721, 736, 737–738, 740; in mines,
imperialism and, 867; neoliberal, free-market Cavendish, Margaret, 597 739, 744–745, 745(illus.)
version of, 1031–1032; criticism of, 1045 Cavour, Camillo Benso di, 818–820, 821 Child rearing, 802–804
Capito, Wolfgang, 442–443 Ceausescu, Nicolae, 1026 Children, 658–661, 800; as Ottoman tax, 582;
Capture of Louis XVI, The, June 1791, 695(illus.) Cederstrom, Gustaf, 577(illus.) infanticide and, 659–660; abandonment of,
Caraffa, Gian Pietro, 467 Celibacy: Luther on, 449; vs. marriage, 455 660; 18th-century attitudes toward, 660–661;
Caravans, 487–488 Cellini, Benvenuto, 413, 491(illus.) in Enlightenment, 661; Rousseau on, 661;
Caravel, 494 Censorship: in Russia, 827; in First World War, workdays for, 738, 765; women factory
Caribbean region: Columbus in, 498; slaves in, 894; in Soviet Union, 995(illus.) workers and, 739; illegitimate, 798; in 19th
640, 643; French Revolution and, 693; Central Committee (Soviet Union), 949 century, 802–804; sexual behavior of,
slavery in French colonies, 707. See also West Central Europe: absolutism in, 559, 609–610, 803–804; in First World War, 891–892; in
Indies 615–616; warfare and social change in, 559; postwar era, 1002. See also Abandoned
Carlsbad Decrees, 751 serfdom in, 560–561; Thirty Years’ War and, children; Illegitimacy
Carmelite nuns, 471 562, 563–565, 564(map) Chile, 509
Carnival, 675, 676 Central Middle Ages, see High Middle Ages; China: trade with, 484, 510, 511(illus.);
Carpaccio, 430(illus.) Middle Ages industrialization and, 727, 728(illus.);
Carter, Jimmy, 1008 Central Powers, 889, 890, 894 Western impact on, 850–852; British war
Cartesian dualism, 596, 598 Ceremonies: religious, 450 with, 851–852, 852(illus.); migration from,
Cartier, Jacques, 501 Cervantes, Miguel de, 537–538 858–859; in 1914, 864(map); imperialism
Cartography, 495 Ceuta, 497 and, 865, 872; Japan and, 872, 970; rebellion
Cartoons, 927 Ceylon, 501, 553, 647, 992 in, 873(illus.); First World War in, 890; civil
Cartwright, Edmund, 720 Cézanne, Paul, 923 war in, 984, 992; communists in, 984, 992;
Casta paintings: in Mexico, 644(illus.) Chabas, Paul-Émile, 790(illus.) Korean War and, 984; Nixon in, 1007
Castiglione, Baldassare, 414, 415(illus.), 433 Chadwick, Edwin, 734, 781–782 Chinggis Khan, 572–573
Castile, 436, 534. See also Ferdinand and Chamberlain, Neville, 965 Chirac, Jacques, 1055
Isabella (Spain); Spain Chamber of Deputies (France), 711, 767 Chivalry, 383
Castle, The (Kafka), 920 Chaplin, Charlie, 927, 927(illus.) Chopin, Frédéric, 761
Castlereagh, Robert, 749, 750 Charcoal, 721 Christening Feast (Steen), 549(illus.)
Castles: of Mortagne, 383(illus.) Charity schools, 662 Christian III (Denmark), 451
Castro, Fidel, 997 Charles I (England), 544–546; Parliament and, Christian IV (Denmark), 562
Catalan Atlas, 488 543, 545–546 Christian church: reforms of, 445; in early 16th
Catalonia, 437(map), 537 Charles I (Van Dyck), 544(illus.) century, 446
Index • I-5
Christian Democrats: in Europe, 987, 989, 1000–1002. See also Estates (classes); 834; Industrial Revolution and, 718; by West,
1052; in West Germany, 987, 1008, 1030 Hierarchy; Orders; specific classes 848; in Africa, 859–865; new imperialism
Christian existentialism, 917 Classical liberalism, 754; totalitarianism and, and, 865; Anglo-French Entente and, 882;
Christian humanism, 416–418 947 Japan and, 970; Second World War and, 970,
Christianity: in Renaissance, 416; Erasmus on, Classical music, 542 989–993; neocolonialism and, 992–993. See
417–418; skin color and, 431; Columbus and, Classicism, 758; French, 541–542 also Decolonization; Imperialism; New
499; slave trade and, 513–514; Ottomans Classics: Renaissance humanists and, 412–414 Imperialism
and, 580, 584; Aristotelianism and, 590; of Class war: in Paris (1848), 771 Color: in Saint-Domingue, 693
working class, 797; spread of, 867; revival of, Claustration, 469 Colseby, John de, 396
917. See also Cathedrals; Reformation Clemenceau, Georges, 894, 902, 903 Columbian Exchange, 508–509
Christian socialists (Austria), 838 Clement VII (Pope), 387, 461 Columbus, Christopher, 493, 498–499;
Christine de Pizan, 393, 404–405, 405(illus.), Clergy: wealth of, 378–379; plague and, 379; religiosity of, 499; first voyage of, 518–519
432, 433 hypocrisy of, 389(illus.); literacy of, 401; Combination Acts (England), 740, 741
Church(es): in Scotland, 545; parish, 671; absenteeism by, 446; reforms of, 446, COMECON, 988(map)
institutional, 671–676; national, 672; 467–468; Protestant, 450; education of, 469; Comedy: French, 542
Hogarth on, 673(illus.); in French local, 671; Pietism and, 672; in France, 684, Commerce: in Renaissance, 408; women in,
Revolution, 693; working class and, 797. 689; in French Revolution, 693. See also 484; in Indian Ocean, 484–485; boom in,
See also Religion Friars; Pope(s); Priests and priestesses 510; mercantilism and, 532; Dutch, 550–553,
Church councils, see Councils Climate: change in 14th century, 371–373; in 552(illus.). See also Trade
Churchill, Winston, 862; leadership of, 966; 17th century, 523, 525 Committee of Public Safety (France), 697, 698,
Grand Alliance and, 972–973; at wartime Clinton, Bill, 1031, 1038 702
conferences, 982–983, 982(illus.); “iron Clive, Robert, 647 Commodities: markets for, 850
curtain” speech of, 984 Cloth, see Textile industry Commoners: in Enlightenment, 607; as French
Church of England, see Anglican Church Clothing: consumerism and, 666; body linen, estate, 684
Church of Ireland, 462 720; of workers, 736; of middle class, Common lands, 622, 623
Church of Scotland, see Presbyterian Church 789–790; ready-made, 795. See also Fashion Common Market, 987–988, 988(map), 989,
Chwast, Seymour, 1007(illus.) Cloves, 492 1011; misery index for, 1010. See also
Ciompi revolts (Florence), 392–393, 408 Coal and Steel Community, 989 European Economic Community
Cistercians, 398 Coal industry: in England, 721–722, 739; Commons: knights and wealthy urban residents
Cities and towns: Black Death and, 378; industrialization and, 729(map); child labor as, 386
prostitution in, 394; in Italian Renaissance, in, 739, 744–745 Common Sense (Paine), 663
409–410, 432(illus.); third estate in, 431; Cockerill, William, 730, 733 Commonwealth: in England, 547
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hierarchies of orders and class in, 431–432; in Cockfighting in England (Hogarth), 676(illus.) Commonwealth of Independent States, 1028,
Poland-Lithuania, 466; landlords and, 561; Code Napoleon, see Civil Code (France, 1804) 1029(map)
guilds in, 632; illegitimacy in, 657; foundlings Code noir (Black Code): in Saint-Domingue, Communes: in France, 386; in northern Italian
in, 660; in 19th century, 779–780; sanitation 693 cities, 409. See also Paris Commune (1871)
in, 780, 781; population of, 780(map); Codes of law, see Law codes Communication(s): nationalism and, 755;
transportation in, 786; servants in, 794; Coercive Acts, 687 telegraph and, 850; broadcasting networks
bombing of, 975; Soviet, 999. See also City- Coffee: trade in, 640 and, 927–928
states; Urban planning; specific locations Coitus interruptus, 656 Communion, see Eucharist
Citizens and citizenship: in Italian cities, 409 Coke, 723 Communist Manifesto, The (Marx), 757, 838,
City of Ladies, The (Christine de Pizan), Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 532–533, 632, 634 898
404–405 Cold war, 981, 1015; origins of, 982–985; Communist Party: in Germany, 932, 960; in
City-states: in Italy, 409–412, 411(map), Truman Doctrine and, 983; Korean War and, France, 939; Soviet, 996, 1022, 1027, 1028
818 984; eastern Europe and, 984–985; Communists and communism: totalitarianism
Civil Code (France, 1804), 704, 705 Khrushchev and, 996; from 1968–1985, and, 947; Soviet, 947–949; Nazis and, 967;
Civilization(s): spread of European, 867. 1006–1007; détente and, 1008–1009; end of, after Second World War, 987; Tito and, 996;
See also Culture(s) 1019; Reagan and, 1024–1025, 1030; decline in Europe, 1020–1024
Civil Rights Act (1964), 994 German reunification and, 1028–1030; Community controls, 656
Civil rights movement (U.S.), 994–995 nationalism and, 1032–1033. See also Soviet Company of the East Indies (France), 532
Civil service, see Bureaucracy Union Compass, 482(illus.), 495
Civil war(s): in France, 382; in Netherlands, Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 759 Competition: in modern science, 999
474; in Switzerland, 770; in United States, Colet, John, 417 Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook, The
825–826; in Russia, 899–901; in Spain, 963; Collective bargaining: in Germany, 841 (Steel and Gardiner), 876
in Yugoslavia, 1033, 1038; humanitarian Collectivization: in Russia, 827; in Soviet Computer and electronics revolution, 1031
intervention in, 1044–1045 Union, 951, 952, 978–979; in China, 992 Comte, Auguste, 805–806, 807
Clandestine unions, 469 College of cardinals: in Great Schism, 388 Concentration camps: Nazi, 961, 967, 969;
Class-consciousness, 732, 734, 740 Colleges, see Universities Soviet, 996
Classes, 732, 733(illus.); wealth-based, 431; Colloquy of Marburg, 450 Conciliarists, 388
categorizing people by, 431–432; in England, Colonies and colonization: Spanish, 501–504, Concordat of Bologna, 435, 472–473
436; in London, 638; in France, 705; factory 535; in Americas, 504–510, 635–644; Concubines: Ottoman, 583
owners as, 732–734; liberal politics and, 754; English, 548–549; mercantilism and, Condition of the Working Class in England, The
city living by, 785(illus.); in urban areas, 635–637; European rivalry over, 635–640; (Engels), 734
786–797; First World War and, 894; Marxian trade and, 637–640; in Latin America, Condottieri, 409
concept of, 898; Soviet, 953; in Italy, 955; in 643–644; in Asia, 644–647; European Confraternities, 389
Nazi Germany, 961; in postwar era, consumer society and, 666; French, 693, 707, Congo, 643, 861
I-6 • Index
Congregationalists, 454 Cortes (Spain), 436 Cromwell, Thomas, 461

Congress of Berlin (1878), 881, 883 Cortés, Hernando, 493, 501–502, 503(illus.) Cronin, James, 1032
Congress of People’s Deputies (Soviet Union), Cortés, Martín, 503(illus.) Crop rotation, 623
1023, 1027 Cossacks (Russia), 575, 576 Crops: climate change and, 372; in Columbian
Congress of Vienna, 749, 818 Cottage industry, 628–631, 736; putting-out Exchange, 509. See also Agriculture
Congress system: in Europe, 751 system in, 629–630; workers in, 657; in “Cruel sports,” 796
Conrad, Joseph, 867 England, 718(map); cotton yarn in, 720; Crusader kingdoms, 490
Conscription, see Draft (military) workweek in, 736 Cryptograms, 377
Conservation of energy, law of, 805 Cotton industry: Britain and, 719–721, 849; in Crystal Palace exhibition, 725, 726(illus.)
Conservatism: Metternich and, 751; in 1970s Industrial Revolution, 719–721; in Cuba: Columbus in, 499; Chinese labor in, 859;
and 1980s, 1012; Thatcher and, 1013 Manchester, 722(illus.); Ure on, 734; factory blockade of, 997
Conservative Party: in England, 835, 933 conditions in, 736; workers in, 737(illus.); in Cuban missile crisis, 997
Consistory (Geneva), 464–465 United States, 825; in Egypt, 853. See also Cubells y Ruiz, Enrique Martinez, 787(illus.)
Constable, John, 758, 761 Textile industry Cubism, 924–925
Constance, Council of, 388, 449 Coudray, Madame du, 669, 669(illus.) Culture(s): courtly, 410; trade and, 484; spread
Constantinople, 488, 890; fall to Turks, 489; “Council of Blood” (Netherlands), 474 of Chinese, 485; of Brazil, 539; of absolutism,
sacks of, 489(illus.), 490; Ottoman siege of, Council of Europe, 989 539–542; of royal courts, 540–541; classicism
580. See also Byzantine Empire Council of Trent (School of Titian), 470 in, 541–542; scientific revolution and,
Constituent Assembly: in France, 771; in Russia, Councils: at Basel, 388; of Constance, 388, 449; 595–597; in Enlightenment, 598–609,
899 at Ferrara-Florence, 388; at Pisa, 388; in 606(illus.); urban, 603–607; popular,
Constitution: Montesquieu’s theories and, 601; England, 435; of Trent, 452–453, 467–469 671–676; national unity and, 754; middle-
in United States, 601, 688; in France, 694, Counterculture, 1004–1006 class, 789–790; imperialism and, 868
702, 818; in Haiti, 707; in Prussia, 774; in Counter-Reformation, 466, 675 Curie, Marie, 597, 918
North German Confederation, 822; in Russia, Coup d’état: by Napoleon III, 817; in Soviet Custom: by country, 600
829, 1034; Ottoman, 830; in Hungary, Union, 1028, 1028(illus.), 1033 Customs union: German Zollverein as, 731, 821
836–837; in India, 991; in Soviet Union, Couperin, François, 542 Cyprus, 1019, 1041, 1046
1027; in Turkey, 1040(illus.); in European Court (legal): French parlements as, 601, Czech nation: Palacky on, 776–777
Union, 1041 685–686 Czechoslovakia, 901, 903, 946, 1036(map);
Constitutional Charter (France), 711, 754, 767 Court (royal): culture of, 540–541; of Louis Little Entente and, 929; Nazis in, 963(illus.),
Constitutionalism, 542–553 XIV (France), 541, 542 965; Second World War and, 983;
Constitutional monarchies, 525; in England, Court, Joseph, 769(illus.) communism in, 984; liberalization in, 997;
548–549; in France, 689, 692; in Russia, 829 Courtier, The (Castiglione), 414, 433 Soviets in, 997–998, 998(illus.), 1020; Velvet
Consumer goods: in Soviet Union, 952–953, Apago PDF Enhancer
Courtiers, see Nobility Revolution in, 1025–1026, 1035; Slovakia
1023; after Second World War, 987–988, Courtly culture: in Italy, 410 and, 1035
1001(illus.), 1002; in eastern Europe, 997 Court of High Commission (England), 545 Czech people, 465, 753, 836; Germans and,
Consumer society: 18th-century roots of, Court of Star Chamber, 435, 436 398; Habsburgs and, 565
665–667 Courtrai, battle at, 390 Czech Republic, 1041; Hus and, 391; in
Consumption: in Renaissance Italy, 421; in 18th Courtship: sex and, 657–658 postcommunist era, 1035
century, 663–664; of food, 664 Cracow: University of, 381
Containment policy (U.S.), 984, 1006–1007 Cradock, Fanny, 666 Dadaism, 926
Continental Europe: rural industry in, 630; Craft guilds, 393 “Daffodils” (Wordsworth), 759–760
industrialization in, 727–732, 729(map) Crafts, see Art(s) Da Gama, Vasco, 495, 497
Continental system: of Napoleon, 708 Craft unions, 741 Dahomey, 643
Contraception, see Birth control Cranach, Lucas, the Elder, 450(illus.), 452, Daily life, see Lifestyle
Convents: Teresa of Ávila and, 471; Jansenists 456(illus.) Dalimil Chronicle, 398, 399(illus.)
and, 674(illus.). See also Nuns Cranach, Lucas, the Younger, 452, 452(illus.) Dancing: modern, 926
Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds Crane, Diana, 793 Danish phase: of Thirty Years’ War, 562
(Fontenelle), 598, 599(illus.) Cranmer, Thomas, 463 Dante Alighieri, 399–400
Conversion: of Spanish Jews, 437–439; of Crash, see Financial crash Danton, Georges Jacques, 696, 702
Protestants in France, 531; to Methodism, Creativity: of Renaissance artists, 425–428 Danzig, 398, 903
673 Crécy, battle at, 383 Dardanelles, 890
Conversos, 437–439 Crédit Mobilier, 732 Dar es Salaam, 866(illus.)
Conway, Anne, 597 Creoles, 643 Dark Ages (Europe), 412
Copernican hypothesis, 591–592, 596 Crick, Francis, 1000 Darwin, Charles, 806(illus.), 807
Copernicus, Nicolaus, 591–592 Crime: fur-collar, 396–397; in eastern Europe, David (Michelangelo), 421
Coral Sea, Battle of, 974 1035. See also Justice; Law(s) David, Jacques-Louis, 706(illus.)
Corner of the Table, A (Chabas), 790(illus.) Crimea: Tatars and, 571, 613 Dawes, Charles G., and Dawes Plan, 930
Corn Laws (England, 1815), 763, 764, 849 Crimean War, 827 Death: from famine, 372(illus.)
Coromandel Coast, 485, 510 Criminal gangs: people smuggling by, Death camps, 967, 969–970
Coronation: of Napoleon, 706(illus.) 1042–1043 Death penalty: abolishing, 1045
Corporations: industrialization and, 732. See Croatia, 466, 1038, 1038(map) Death rate, see Mortality; Mortality rate
also Guilds Croats, 772, 883 “Debate about women,” 432–433
Corregidores, 539 Crompton, Samuel, 720 De Beers Mining Company, 863
Corruption: in Soviet bureaucracy, 1023; in Cromwell, Oliver, 546–547, 546(illus.); Jews Debt: in France, 688
Russia, 1033, 1034 and, 547; science and, 596–597; Navigation Debt peonage: in Latin America, 644
Cort, Henry, 723 Acts and, 635 Decameron, The (Boccaccio), 378, 416
Index • I-7
De Chirico, Georgio, 919(illus.) of workers, 736; potato and, 766–767; on Dual revolution, 747, 751
Declaration of Independence (U.S.), 687 middle class, 789 Dubcek, Alexander, 997, 1026(illus.)
Declaration of Pillnitz, 695 Diet (political): Diet of Worms (1521), 449, Dubrovnik, 381
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the 511; Imperial Diet (1530) and, 458; of 1555, Duma (Russia), 829, 895
Citizen (France), 691, 714–715 466; in Hungary, 466 Dumas, Alexandre, 760
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen Dijon: insurrection at, 528 Dunkirk: battle at, 966
(Vallain), 682(illus.) Dinner Party, The (Judy Chicago), 1003 Dutch, 881; trading empire of, 510–511; France
“Declaration of the Rights of Woman” (de Dioceses: Christian, 467–469 and, 533; in Grand Alliance, 534; commerce
Gouges), 714–715 Diplomacy: Spanish, 439; Algeciras Conference of, 550–553, 552(illus.); in Thirty Years’ War,
Decline of the West, The (Spengler), 920 and, 882; Nixon and, 1007. See also Balance 562; Peter the Great and, 576; farming by,
Decolonization: after Second World War, of power 624–625, 624(illus.); England and, 635;
989–993, 990(map) Directory (France), 703; Napoleon and, Indonesian trade by, 646–647; in Africa, 859;
Defenestration of Prague, 562 703–704 in Java, 865. See also Dutch Republic;
Defense mechanisms, 804 “Disasters of the War, The” (Goya), 711(illus.) Holland; Netherlands
Defensor Pacis (Marsiglio of Padua), 388 Discovery, see Age of Discovery; Expansion; Dutch East India Company, 501, 511,
Deficits: Keynes and, 935; in Sweden, 938; Voyages 552–553, 646
global economy and, 1031 Discovery of the Potato Blight, The (McDonald), Dutch East Indies, 646–647, 992
Defoe, Daniel, 660 766(illus.) Dutch Empire, 510–511
De Gasperi, Alcide, 987 Discrimination: against Irish, 397; against Dutch Republic, 474; independence of, 475,
De Gaulle, Charles, 987, 989, 1006 Asians, 859; against women workers, 513; in 17th century, 549–553. See also
Delacroix, Eugène, 760–761, 782(illus.) 1003–1004; sex-based, 1009–1010; against Dutch
Delcassé, Théophile, 882 Gypsies, 1032 Dutch War: French army in, 527
Democracy, 542; in England, 549, 835; in Disease: in 14th century, 372; Black Death as, Dutch West India Company, 508, 553
Germany, 932; in Europe, 987, 989; in West 374–381; in Columbian Exchange, 504; in Dylan, Bob, 1004
Germany, 987 17th century, 525; 18th-century medicine Dynamics, law of, 594
Democracy in America (Tocqueville), 771 and, 627; in urban areas, 780, 781; germ Dynamo, 805
Democratic republics: in France, 770–772 theory of, 783; miasmatic theory of, 783; Dynasties: female rulers of, 433; Thirty Years’
Democratization: in Soviet Union, 1023–1024; AIDS and, 1044(illus.), 1045. See also Black War and, 562
in eastern Europe, 1024(map) Death Dzhugashvili, Joseph, see Stalin, Joseph
Demography: plague and, 379–380; in 17th “Dismal science”: economics as, 726
century, 524–525; population and, 626. Disraeli, Benjamin, 835 Early Middle Ages, see Middle Ages
See also Population Dissent: Calvin on, 465 Earth, see Astronomy; Universe
Denmark, 966, 1011; Russia and, 576; Apago PDF Enhancer
Districts: in France, 529 East: technology borrowed from, 495. See also
Enlightenment in, 609; Prussian war with, Diversity, 1043; in Spain, 436, 437; Ottoman, Asia; Middle East
774; Schleswig-Holstein and, 774, 822; 584 East Africa, 862, 866(illus.)
distribution of income in, 788(illus.). See also Divine Comedy (Dante), 399–400 East Anglia, 373
Scandinavia Divine right of kings: of Louis XIV, 530; of East Asia: First World War in, 890
Denmark-Norway: Protestantism in, 451 Louis XVI, 690 Eastern Christian church, see Orthodox
Depression(s): in France, 690. See also Great Division of labor: gender, 738–740, 799 Christianity
Depression Divorce, 1009–1010; in fascist Italy, 957; in Eastern Europe, 1052; Reformation in,
Deregulation: of markets, 1031 postwar era, 1003 465–466; absolutism in, 559, 610–613,
Desacralization: of French monarchy, 686 Doctors, see Physicians 615–616; warfare and social changes in,
Descartes, René, 595–596, 598 Doctor Zhivago (Pasternak), 996 559–565; serfdom in, 560–561; Slavs in,
Dessalines, Jean Jacques, 707 Doers: Saint-Simon on, 756 572; peasants in, 622; Jews and, 838; after
De-Stalinization, 996–997 Domestic servants, 740, 794, 795(illus.) First World War, 929; wartime conferences
Détente, 1008–1009 Dominicans, 389, 398, 505 and, 982–984; Marshall Plan and, 983;
Developed countries: income in, 848, 848(illus.) Donatello, 423 COMECON in, 988(map); communism in,
Devil: witches and, 475, 476, 477 Donation of Constantine, 416 996, 1025–1026; women in, 1003; after
Diaghilev, Sergei, 925, 926 Don Quixote (Cervantes), 537–538 cold war, 1019; revolutions of 1989 in,
Dialectic: history as, 758 Dostoevski, Feodor, 804 1024–1030, 1024(map); capitalism in, 1031;
Dialogue on the Two Chief Systems of the World Dot-com bubble, 1050 postcommunist, 1035; refugees from,
(Galileo), 594 Double Helix, The (Watson), 1000 1042–1043
Diamonds: in Africa, 863 Downsizing (corporate), 1031 Eastern front: in First World War, 889
Diaspora: Chinese, 485 Draft (military): in Vietnam War, 1007 Eastern Orthodoxy, see Orthodox Christianity
Diaz, Bartholomew, 497 Drainage: Dutch and English, 624–625 Eastern Slavs, 572
Dictators and dictatorship: military (England), Drama: of Shakespeare, 515–516; French, 542 Easter Rebellion, 894
546–547; Directory as, 703; in Europe, 945; Draussen und Drinnen (Grosz), 912(illus.) East Germany: West Germany and, 1008, 1019,
conservative authoritarianism and, 946; Dreiser, Theodore, 809 1040; Berlin Wall and, 1025, 1027(illus.);
radical totalitarianism and, 946–949; Dreyfus, Alfred, 834(illus.), 835 reform and, 1029; women in, 1040. See also
Mussolini and, 957; Enabling Act and, 960; Dreyfus affair, 834–835, 862 Germany
in Soviet Union, 995 Drinking, see Alcohol and alcoholism East Indies, 865; Portugal and, 501, 646; Dutch
Dictionary (Bayle), 599–600 Drogheda: rebellion at, 547 in, 646–647; Second World War in, 970
Dictionary (Voltaire), 618–619 Droz, Gustave, 800–802 Eck, Johann, 449
Diderot, Denis, 602–603, 604(illus.) Dualism: ethnicity and, 397, 398; Cartesian, 596 Economic Consequences of the Peace (Keynes),
Diet (food): of peasants, 524–525; regional Dual monarchy, see Austro-Hungarian Empire 928–929
differences in, 664; in 18th century, 664–665; (Austria-Hungary) Economic determination, 732
I-8 • Index
Economic interests: of West, 847, 874; railroads Eisenhower, Dwight, 974, 1006 Energy (power), 721–723; oil embargo and,
and, 849; new imperialism and, 865 Eisenstein, Sergei, 995, 995(illus.) 1010
Economic liberalism, 647–648 El Alamein: Battle of, 973 Engels, Friedrich, 734, 757
Economic nationalism, 732 Elba: Napoleon at, 708, 711, 750 Engineers, 789; railroad construction by,
Economic planning, see Planned economies Elbe River region, 565, 981 724(illus.), 725
Economics: Malthus and, 726; Ricardo and, “Elect”: Calvin on, 464 Engines, see Steam power
726, 757; laissez faire, 754; Marx and, 757 Elections: in France, 689; in Napoleonic France, England (Britain): population in, 373,
Economy: plague and, 379; Hundred Years’ War 705; in eastern Europe, 1025–1026; after 626(illus.); Black Death in, 377; Hundred
and, 382; in 14th century, 390–392; urban, communism, 1032 Years’ War and, 381–387, 384(maps); Wyclif
393; in Renaissance, 408; exploration and, Electors: of Saxony, 451; of Brandenburg, 457, in, 388; lay piety in, 389; Peasants’ Revolts in
493; Spain and, 509–510; global, 510–511, 567; in Germany, 457 (1381), 390–392; serfs in, 392; taxation in,
634–648, 1031; in 17th century, 524–525; Electricity, 805 392; Ireland and, 397, 398, 436, 513, 545,
moral, 525; in France, 532, 686, 688, 690, Electric streetcars, 786 547; More in, 416–418; in Renaissance in,
697, 703, 704, 771, 817; mercantilism and, Electromagnetism, 805 435–436; Catholic Church in, 461–463;
532, 640–641; in England, 547, 718–719; Elementary education, 661–662 Protestantism in, 461–463, 544–547, 548;
Dutch, 550–553; after Thirty Years’ War, 565; Elements, 590–591 marriage in, 469, 654; Armada (Spain) and,
scientific revolution and, 598; in Atlantic Eleonore of Portugal, 457 474, 512–513; Spanish Armada and,
region, 635–640, 636(map); slaves in Eliot, George (Mary Ann Evans), 809 474–475, 512–513; witchcraft executions in,
Americas and, 642–643; Industrial Revolution Eliot, T. S., 917, 920 476; exploration by, 501; mercantilism and,
and, 718–719; dual revolution and, 747; Elites: in Habsburg lands, 567; in Brandenburg- 511, 640–641; food riot in, 524(illus.); in
scientific research and, 805; in Russia, 827; Prussia, 571; popular literature and, 663; in Grand Alliance, 534; absolutism in, 543–544,
crash in 1873, 837; worldwide, 847–854, Saint-Domingue, 693–694; in Haiti, 707; in 546–547; cabinet system in, 547; Jews in,
935, 940; imperialism and, 865; in First central and eastern Europe, 747; in colonies, 547; Restoration in, 547–548; Glorious
World War, 891; Germany and, 928; 868; in India, 869–870; of Lenin, 898; in Revolution in, 548–549; women’s rights in,
reparations and, 930; Great Depression and, Soviet Union, 953, 999, 1022; in Nazi 549; Peter the Great and, 576; Voltaire on,
933, 935; in Soviet Union, 949, 950, 1023; Germany, 961; in Russia, 1033; of western 602; Act of Union in, 603; Enlightenment in,
after Second World War, 981, 985; Marshall Europe, 1039. See also Aristocracy; 603; agriculture in, 623, 624–625; enclosure
Plan and, 984, 987; Keynesian, 987; Nobility in, 623, 625, 625(illus.); textile industry in,
neocolonialism and, 992–993; women and, Elizabeth (Bohemia), 598 633; Great Britain and, 634; North America
1003; in early 1970s, 1010–1011, 1015; Elizabeth (Russia), 580, 612 and, 635–640, 637(maps); trade and,
eastern European, 1031; birthrates and, Elizabeth I (England), 396, 433, 456, 461, 637–640, 849–850; slave trade and, 643;
1041–1042; after September 11, 2001, 1050. 462(illus.), 463; Netherlands and, 471–472; India and, 646(illus.), 647, 865, 868–870,
See also Capitalism; Commerce; Communists Apago PDF Enhancer
Mary, Queen of Scots, and, 512; absolutism 877(illus.); Asian trade by, 647; infant
and communism; Finances; Great Depression; and, 543 mortality in, 658; Methodism in, 673–674;
Inflation; Trade Elizabethan literature, 514–516 American Revolution and, 687–688;
Ecumenical council: of Trent, 467 Elizabethan Settlement, 463 Napoleon and, 705, 706, 708; railroads in,
Edict of Nantes, 473, 529, 531, 548 Elizabeth II (England), 1013 716(illus.), 723–725; energy in, 721; steam
Edict on Idle Institutions (Austria), 672 Emancipation: of Russian serfs, 827; of Jews, engine in, 721–723; Crystal Palace exhibit in,
Edo (Tokyo, Japan), 853 837 725, 726(illus.); industrialization in, 727,
Education, 661(illus.); in Renaissance, 414–415; Emigration: during Black Death, 377; from 728, 728(illus.); workers in, 734, 736, 738,
Erasmus on, 418; art and, 421; of priests, Ireland, 766, 767; by Jews, 838; from 841; labor movement in, 740–741; liberalism
446; of clergy, 469; public, 603; reading Europe, 856(illus.) in, 754, 763–765; romanticism in, 758–760;
revolution and, 604–605; of children, 658; Émigré writers: Soviet, 1023 Great Famine (Ireland) and, 767; cities in,
Rousseau on, 661; popular, 662; literacy and, Emile (Rousseau), 661, 692 780–781; distribution of income in,
662–663; of physicians, 667; industrialization Empires: Islamic, 488–490; Portuguese, 788(illus.); fashion in, 792–793, 793(illus.);
and, 734; for middle class, 790; in Russia, 495–498, 511; Dutch, 510–511; Spanish, domestic servants in, 794; realist literature in,
827; Ottoman, 831; in France, 834; in India, 511–513; colonial, 634–647; rivalries over, 809; women’s suffrage in, 832(illus.); before
870; in Soviet Union, 953, 999; student 635–640; in Asia, 644–647; French First World War, 835–836; unions in, 841;
protests and, 1005–1006. See also Schools; Napoleonic, 708, 710(map); political, 859; Industrial Revolution and, 847; income per
Universities after First World War, 903, 904(map); person in, 848(illus.); foreign investment by,
Education of a Christian Prince, The (Erasmus), decolonization and, 989, 990(map), 991. See 850; shipbuilding in, 850(illus.); Opium War
418 also Colonies and colonization; Imperialism; and, 851–852, 852(illus.); Egypt and, 854;
Edward (Black Prince, England), 383–385 New imperialism; specific locations emigration from, 856, 856(illus.); Nile River
Edward I (England), 373 Empiricism, 595 and, 862; empire of, 865; British women in
Edward II (England), 373, 381 Employers: workers and, 631 India and, 876–877, 877(illus.); pre-First
Edward III (England), 381, 382, 383, 408 Employment: in cities, 657; Blanc on, 756; for World War alliances of, 880(illus.);
Edward IV (England), 435 Jews, 837 isolationism of, 881–882; mobilization by
Edward VI (England), 461, 462(illus.), 463 Employment Agency (Soyer), 936(illus.) (First World War), 892; Treaty of Versailles
Ego, 919 Enabling Act (Germany), 960 and, 902–903, 928–930; Middle East and,
Egypt, 853–854, 993(illus.), 1047; Mameluke, Enclosure, 623, 625, 625(illus.) 903, 905–906, 910–911; in 1920s, 932–933;
485–486, 581; trade with, 487; Ottomans Encomienda system, 504, 505 unemployment in, 932–933, 935–936,
and, 489; modernization of, 853; British rule Encyclopedia (Diderot and Alembert), 602–603, 942–943, 943(illus.); Great Depression in,
in, 854, 861; Suez Canal and, 854, 865; 604(illus.), 613 934(map), 935; Hitler and, 962; Dunkirk
nationalist revolution in, 992 Encyclopedists, 603 and, 966; in Second World War, 973;
Egyptian Nationalist Party, 854 End Bad Breath (Chwast), 1007(illus.) European unity and, 989; Africa and, 992;
Einstein, Albert, 918 “End of history”: Fukuyama on, 1032 Palestine, Israel, and, 992; privatization in,
Index • I-9
1012, 1013; Thatcher in, 1012; Falkland 483–516; expansion of, 492, 621–648; Fagus shoe factory (Gropius), 921, 922(illus.)
Islands and, 1013; Gulf War (1991) and, voyages of discovery from, 492–504; racism Fairbanks, Douglas, 927
1030; European Union and, 1039. See also in, 513–514; in 1715, 536(map); after Thirty Fairfax, Thomas, 546
Britain; British East India Company; First Years’ War, 563–565, 564(map); Enlightened Fairy tales, 662, 760
World War; London; Second World War monarchs in, 609–616; population growth in, Faisal (Hejaz, Syria), 890, 905–906, 905(illus.);
English Channel: Spanish Armada in, 474, 626; African slaves in, 643; French Revolution General Syrian Congress and, 910–911
512–513 and, 694; French expansion in, 705–707; in Faith: salvation by, 447. See also Religion(s)
Enlightened absolutism, 609–616 1810, 710(map); in 1815, 748(map); balance Faith healers, 667
Enlightenment, 588(illus.), 589, 598–609; in of power in, 749–751; large cities in, Fall of Algiers, The, 768(illus.)
France, 598–603; race and, 608–609; 780(map); Industrial Revolution and, 847, Fallow: elimination of, 623
Frederick the Great (Prussia) and, 610; 848; in 1750, 848; foreign investment by, Families: planning of, 656; marriage and, 657;
Jewish, 610, 611; childhood and, 661; among 850; Japan and, 850, 852–853; China and, Napoleon and, 705; as mill workers,
ordinary people, 663; French reforms and, 850–852; Egypt and, 853; population in, 736–737; in mines, 739–740; in Ireland, 766;
693 855, 1041–1042, 1053; migration from, in upper working class, 791; in 19th century,
Entertainment: urban, 778(illus.); films as, 855(illus.), 856–858; Africa partitioned by, 797–804; gender and, 799–802, 804; sizes of,
926–928 860(map); imperialism of, 862(illus.), 802, 1042; migration and, 858; in
Entrepôt, 484 867–868; “civilizing” by, 866(illus.), 867; 1970s–early 1980s, 1012. See also Marriage
Environment: urban, 780–781 First World War and, 890–892; after First Famine, 372–373, 372(illus.), 622; in 17th
Environmentalism, 1012 World War, 903, 904(map); jazz in, century, 525; in Ireland, 767, 835; in
Epidemics: of typhoid fever, 372. See also 932(illus.); Great Depression in, 934(map); Ukraine, 952
Disease dictators in, 945; Second World War and, Faraday, Michael, 805
Equality: Voltaire on, 602; race and, 609; 966–970, 968(map), 973–974; division of, Farms and farming: open-field system of, 622;
Ottoman, 831 981–985; Marshall Plan and, 983, 989; after enclosure and, 623, 625; improvements in,
Equiano, Olaudah, 641(illus.), 643, 645, Second World War, 985–989, 986(map), 623. See also Agriculture; Manors and
645(illus.) 1014–1015; alliance systems in, 988(map); in manorialism; Peasant(s)
Era of Tyrannies, The (Halévy), 947 1990s, 1030–1041; contemporary, Farnese, Alexander (Cardinal), see Paul III
Erasmus (Holbein), 443(illus.) 1036(map); in 21st century, 1042; terrorist (Pope)
Erasmus, Desiderius, 417–418, 442–443, 446; attacks on, 1048–1049; Muslims and, 1049 Fascism: in France, 939; in Spain, 939;
Zwingli and, 449 European Community, 1033, 1039 totalitarianism and, 946, 947–948; radical
Erhard, Ludwig, 987 European Economic Community, 989, 1011, dictatorships and, 947. See also Italy; Nazi
Eritrea, 1043(illus.) 1041. See also Common Market Germany
Erlach, Joseph Bernhard Fischer von, 568 European Union (EU), 1019, 1033, 1039, Fascist Party (Italy), 955, 956, 957
Apago PDF Enhancer
Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Locke), 1040(illus.); admission to, 1035; standards of, Fashion: of middle class, 789–790; for women
600 1039, 1044–1045; identity of, 1039–1040; (1850–1914), 792–793
Essay on Logical Philosophy (Wittgenstein), 916 membership in, 1040–1041; constitution of, Fashoda, 862
Essay on the Principle of Population (Malthus), 1041; borders and, 1043 Fathers, 804
726 “Europe first” policy, 972–973 Faulkner, William, 920
Essays (Montaigne), 514 Euthanasia, 1045 Federal Republic of Germany, see West Germany
Essen, 565 Evangelicalism: in Reformation, 452; Methodist, Felonies: by nobles, 396–397
Established church, 454 673 Feminine Mystique, The (Friedan), 1009
Estates (assemblies): in France, 532–533; Evans, Mary Ann, see Eliot, George (Mary Ann Feminism, 799–800, 953; Second World War
Dutch, 549; in Bohemia, 565 Evans) and, 981; in Italy, 1010(illus.); marriage and,
Estates (classes), 431; in France, 431, 684, Evolution, 806–807, 806(illus.); Anaximander 1016–1017. See also Women
684(illus.); in Prussia, 570 and, 807 Ferdinand I (Austrian Empire), 772
Estates General (France), 531, 689–690 Evolutionary Socialism (Bernstein), 841 Ferdinand I (Holy Roman Empire), 459, 474,
Este, Isabella of, 430 Existentialism, 916, 917, 1009 489, 565
Esther Before Ahasuerus (Gentileschi), 428 Expansion: Ottoman, 489; European, 492–493; Ferdinand I (Two Sicilies), 751
Estonia, 561(illus.), 576, 578, 966, 1041 French, 533, 705–707; by Russia, 573(map), Ferdinand II (Holy Roman Empire), 562
Ethiopia, 861; Portuguese voyage to, 488; 576, 613, 827, 828–829; maritime, Ferdinand and Isabella (Spain), 436, 437(map),
Italian conquest of, 956(illus.) 620(illus.); in 18th century, 621–648; of 438(illus.), 458; Inquisition and, 438–439;
Ethnic groups: in Middle Ages, 397–399; United States, 825; in late 19th century, 847; Jews and, 438–439; expansionism and, 492;
marriage between, 398; purity of, 398; great migration and, 855–859; of Western Columbus and, 498–499
Ottoman, 580(map); church membership society, 859; of Nazi Germany, 962–963, 965; Fernández de Oviedo, Gonzalo, 493
and, 797; racism and, 1033; of Yugoslavia, by Japan, 963. See also Exploration Ferrara-Florence, council at, 388
1038(map). See also Diversity; Minorities Expatriates: American, 932 Ferry, Jules, 861, 862, 865
EU, see European Union (EU) Experimental method, 592, 593 Fertility, 626
Eucharist, 449–450; Zwingli on, 450 Exploration: European, 483; before Columbus, Fertilizers, 622
Eugene of Savoy, 568 483–493; reasons for, 492–493; technology Fields: enclosure of, 623
Eugénie (France), 814(illus.) and, 493–495; by Portugal, 495–498; Fifth Republic (France), 989, 1006
Eulogies of Scientists (Fontenelle), 599 overseas, 496(map); by Spain, 501–504 Films, see Movies
Euro, 1041 Exports: English, 640(illus.). See also Trade Final Act (Helsinki Conference), 1008
Eurocrats, 1039 Expressionism: in art, 922–926, 923(illus.) “Final solution”: of Hitler, 967, 969–970
Europe: climate in 14th century, 371–373; Finances: women and, 484; absolutist monarchs
Great Famine in, 372; printing and, 418–421, Factories, 734–738, 791; in England, 719–721 and, 526; in France, 532–533, 688–689; for
420(map); religion in, 468(map), Factory Act (1833, England), 738 industry, 730–731; of Suez Canal, 853
1049–1050; exploration and conquest by, Faerie Queen (Spenser), 515 Financial crash: of 1873, 837; of 1929, 933
I-10 • Index
Finland, 1040; Sweden and, 576 War and, 381–387, 384(maps); Joan of Arc Francis II (Austria), 696, 706
Finland Station: Lenin at, 898 and, 385; Jacquerie in, 390; Italy and, 410; Franciscans, 389, 398, 505
Fireside chats: of Roosevelt, 928 Habsburg-Valois Wars and, 411–412, 459; Francis Ferdinand (Austria-Hungary), 883
First Balkan War, 883 Italian invasion by, 411–412; in Renaissance, Francis Joseph (Austria-Hungary), 772, 836,
First Coalition, 696, 697 434–435; Burgundy and, 458; Catholic 894
First Continental Congress, 687 Reformation and, 467; religious wars in, Franco, Francisco, 963
First estate (France): clergy as, 684 472–473; exploration by, 501; mercantilist Franco-Prussian War, 823(map), 824–825,
First French Republic, 770 empire of, 511; absolutism in, 526, 528, 833–834, 880
First International, 838, 840 530–534, 600; army in, 527, 541; urban Frankfurt, 773(illus.)
First World War: national state before, 831–838; disorders in, 528; administration of, 529; Frankfurt Assembly, 774, 837
impact of, 879, 908; as turning point, 879; nobility in, 529; Fronde in, 530; Canada and, Franklin, Benjamin, 688
origins of, 880–881, 884–885, 887; outbreak 532; North America and, 532, 635–637, Frederick (elector of Palatinate), 562
of, 883–884; invasion of Belgium in, 884, 637(maps); social hierarchy in, 534; Spain Frederick I (Prussia), 571
887, 887(illus.); in Europe, 886(map); and, 537; classicism in, 541–542; Frederick II (Holy Roman Empire), 563
casualties of, 887, 889, 895, 901; trench Enlightenment in, 598–603; Montesquieu’s Frederick II the Great (Prussia): palace of, 541,
warfare in, 887–888; fronts in, 887–889; theories and, 601; parlements in, 601; books 568; Voltaire and, 588(illus.), 602;
support for, 890, 894; United States in, 890; in, 603–604; population in, 626; guilds in, Enlightenment and, 609–610; Russia and,
home front in, 891–892; experiences of, 894; 632–633; England and, 635; India and, 647; 613; War of the Austrian Succession and, 635;
Lenin and, 898; cost of, 901; Russian marriage in, 654, 797–798; birth control in, potato and, 665(illus.)
revolution and, 901; changes after, 904(map) 656; illegitimacy in, 657–658; wet-nursing in, Frederick III (“the Ostentatious”) (Elector of
Fisher, Irving, 933 658–659, 659(illus.); Jesuit expulsion from, Brandenburg), see Frederick I (Prussia)
Fisher, John, 461 672; Jansenism in, 674–675; estates in, 684; Frederick III (Holy Roman Empire), 457
Fishing industry: Dutch economy and, 552 bourgeoisie in, 684–685; American Frederick VII (Denmark), 774
Five-year plans: in Soviet Union, 949, 950–952, Revolution and, 687–688; houses of Frederick William (Great Elector, Brandenburg),
978–979, 995; in China, 992 government in, 689; limited monarchy in, 567, 570–571
Flagellants, 380(illus.), 381 691–693; constitution of (1795), 702; Frederick William I (the “Soldiers’ King”)
Flanders: disease in, 372; famine in, 373; Napoleon I in, 703–711; industrialization in, (Prussia), 571–572, 609
English merchants and, 382, 382(illus.); 727, 728, 728(illus.), 730; corporate banking Frederick William III (Prussia), 707
peasant revolt in, 390; France and, 533. See in, 732; boundaries of, 749; liberalism in, Frederick William IV (Prussia), 773, 774, 821
also Holland; Low Countries 754; utopian socialism in, 756; Algeria and, Freedom(s): Rousseau and, 607; Napoleon and,
Flaubert, Gustave, 808 767, 829, 992; revolution of 1830 in, 705; liberalism and, 754
Flemish language and people, see Flanders 767–768; First Republic in, 770; Second Free French government, 987
Florence, 410, 412(illus.); Black Death and, Apago PDF Enhancer
Republic in, 770–771, 816–817; democratic Free-market economy, 987
377; University of, 381; ciompi revolts in, republic in, 770–772; cities in, 781; literature Free-market reforms, 1031
392–393, 408; homosexuality in, 395–396; in, 808–809; Napoleon III in, 815–818; Free people of color: in Saint-Domingue, 693,
banks in, 408, 408(illus.); Renaissance in, Second Empire in, 817–818; Third Republic 694
408; government of, 409; Medicis in, 410; in, 824, 833–835; Germany and, 825; Free trade: in England, 764
France and, 410–412; arts in, 421; cathedral colonial empire of, 834; Dreyfus affair in, French Academy, 541
in, 424 834–835; unions in, 841; Madagascar and, French Academy of Science, 597
Flying shuttle, 631 846(illus.); foreign investment by, 850; Egypt French Canada, 532
“Follow Me” (McBarron), 974(illus.) and, 853; Suez Canal and, 854; Africa and, French Guiana, 707
Fontenelle, Bernard de, 598–599, 599(illus.), 861; Nile River and, 862; in Indochina, 865, French Indochina, see Indochina
605, 606 992; Alliance System and, 880, 880(illus.), French language, 542
Food: in Columbian Exchange, 508; riots over, 881; Russian alliance with, 881; First World French phase: of Thirty Years’ War, 562
524(illus.); introduction of, 628; in 18th War and, 886(map), 887, 890; Treaty of French Revolution, 747; background to,
century, 663–665; of middle class, 789. See Versailles and, 902–903, 928–930; Middle 683–689; second revolution in, 696–697;
also Agriculture; Diet (food) East and, 903, 905, 906, 910–911; after First Reign of Terror in, 698–700; Thermidorian
Forced labor: in Russia, 580; in First World War World War, 908; existentialism in, 916–917; Reaction and Directory in, 702–703. See also
Germany, 891; in Soviet Union, 945, Little Entente and, 929; Ruhr crisis and, Guillotine (France)
951(illus.), 954; in China, 992. See also Slaves 929(illus.); in 1920s, 932; Popular Front in, French Section of the Workers International,
and slavery 939; Rhineland and, 962; Nazi occupation of, 838
Foreign affairs: from 1924–1929, 930; Soviet, 966; Vichy government in, 966, 973; Frescoes: in Renaissance, 428
1024 Catholic Party in, 987; economy in, 989; Freud, Sigmund, 804, 919–920
Foreigners: in Russia, 586–587, 587(illus.) Fifth Republic in, 989, 1006; after Second Friars: Luther as, 446–447
Foreign policy: in England, 435; in France, World War, 989; neocolonialism and, Friedan, Betty, 1009
529–530; Bismarck’s Alliance System and, 992–993; general strike in, 1006; government Friedrich, Caspar David, 759(illus.)
880(illus.) spending in, 1012; Gulf War (1991) and, Froissart, Jean, 383
Forests: for energy, 721 1030; globalization and, 1031; European Fronde (France), 530
Formosa (Taiwan), 872 Union and, 1039, 1041; protests and strike Frontiers: ethnic groups along, 397. See also
Fouché, Joseph, 705 in, 1039; Muslim head scarves in, 1049; Borders; Boundaries
Foundlings, 659–660, 802 Muslim riots in, 1054–1055. See also First Fugger family, 447
Fourier, Charles, 756 World War; French Revolution; Second Führer, 958
Fourteen Points: of Wilson, 902 World War Fukuyama, Francis, 1032
Fourth Republic (France), 987 Franche-Comté, 458, 533 Functionalism: in architecture, 921,
France: Great Famine in, 372; Black Death and, Franchise (vote), see Voting and voting rights 922(illus.)
377; Salic Law in, 381–382; Hundred Years’ Francis I (France), 435, 472 Fundamental Laws (Russia), 829
Index • I-11
Fur-collar crime, 396–397 728(illus.), 730–732; iron industry in, Golden Mosque of Samara, 1048(illus.)
Future: study of history and, 1050, 1052 731(illus.); nationalism in, 755(illus.); Goldhagen, Daniel, 970
unification of, 755(illus.), 774, 821–825, Gold standard: Great Depression and, 935, 937;
Gabelle (tax), 434 823(map) 824(illus.); national state of, 774; England and, 938
Galilei, Galileo, 592–594 before Bismarck, 821; Bismarck in, 832–833; Goods and services: free movement of, 1031
Galleys, 494 Social Democrats in, 833; anti-Semitic Gorbachev, Mikhail, 1009, 1020, 1023(illus.);
Gambetta, Léon, 834 political parties in, 837–838; trade unions in, reforms of, 1022–1024, 1024–1025;
Gandhi, Mohandas “Mahatma,” 991, 991(illus.) 841; foreign investment by, 850; emigration disintegration of Soviet Union and,
Gangsterism: in eastern Europe, 1035 from, 856(illus.); Africa and, 861–862; 1026–1028; Lithuania and, 1027; German
Gardens: of palaces, 569 Alliance System and, 880(illus.), 881; before unification and, 1030
Gardiner, Grace, 876 First World War, 881–883; mobilization in Gorbachev, Raisa, 1023
Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 819(map), 820(illus.), 821 (First World War), 883–884, 891–892; home Gouges, Olympe de, 695, 714–715, 715(illus.)
Gas chambers: in Holocaust, 945, 967, front in (First World War), 891–892; Government: in 14th century, 373–374; of
969–970 totalitarian society in, 892; in First World War, England, 382–383, 386, 435–436; of France,
Gauguin, Paul, 923 894–895; peace settlement with Russia, 899; 382–383, 386–387, 434–435, 530–531; in
Gays, see Homosexuality political parties in, 901–902; Treaty of Italian cities, 409; in Renaissance, 434–439;
Gdansk Agreement, 1020 Versailles and, 902–903, 928–930, 962; films of Spain, 436–439, 537; of Poland-Lithuania,
Gender: categorizing people by, 432–434; from, 927; reparations and, 928, 929, 930; 466; absolutism in, 523–542; of Spanish
division of labor, 738–740, 799; family life Western powers and, 928–930; Ruhr crisis colonies, 538–539; constitutional, 542–553;
and, 799–802, 804. See also Men; Sex and and, 929, 930, 931; Dawes Plan and, 930; by English Puritans, 546–547; Dutch, 550; of
sexuality; Voting and voting rights; Women Weimar Republic in, 930; Great Depression Prussia, 571–572, 610; Ottoman, 582;
General History of the Indies (Oviedo), 493 in, 958, 959(illus.); Hitler in, 958–960; in Montesquieu on, 601; Smith, Adam, on, 647;
General strike: in France, 1006; in Italy, Second World War, 966–967, 969, 973–974; industrialization and, 730–732; First World
1018(illus.) Holocaust and, 967, 969; after Second World War and, 831–832, 890, 945; in India, 870;
General Syrian Congress, 910–911 War, 985–987; reunification of, 1028–1030, in Japan, 871; in Russia, 896; in Turkey, 907;
General will, 608 1040, 1053; globalization and, 1031; in Germany, 932; authoritarian, 946–949;
Genesis (Bible), 455 European Union and, 1039, 1040, 1041; after Second World War, 989; funding
Geneva, 463, 464–465 women in, 1040; birthrate in, 1041. See also research, 1000; dissatisfaction with,
Geneva Accords (1954), 1006 First World War; German Empire; Holy 1011–1012; in Britain, 1012. See also
Genevan Catechism (Calvin), 464 Roman Empire; Nazi Germany; Second World Law(s)
Genius: in Renaissance, 425–426 War Goya, Francisco, 711(illus.)
Genoa, 408, 409, 490, 491 Germinal (Zola), 809 Gozzoli, Bennozzo, 417(illus.), 430
Genocide: against Armenians, 889(illus.) Apago PDF Enhancer
Germ theory of disease, 783 Grain: lack of, 373–374; distribution of, 377;
Gentileschi, Artemesia, 428(illus.) Gerritz, Decker Cornelis, 629(illus.) price of, 380; in France, 534
Gentry: beverages of, 665 Gesù: ceiling of, 453, 539 Granada, 439, 499
Geoffrin, Marie-Thérèse: salon of, 606 Ghent, 474 Grand Alliance: against Louis XIV, 534; in
Geography: in Age of Discovery, 494 Ghent Altarpiece (van Eyck), 424 Second World War, 966, 972, 976, 981
Geography (Ptolemy), 494, 494(illus.) Ghettos: in France, 1054–1055 Grand Duchy of Lithuania, 466
Geometry, 595 Ghiberti, Lorenzo, 421, 425 Grand Empire (Napoleon), 708–711
George III (England), 687 Gibbon, Edward, 660 Grand National Consolidated Trades Union,
Georgia, 1041 Gioberti, Vincenzo, 818 741
German Confederation, 751, 773, 774, 821, Giotto, 422 Graneri, Michele, 652(illus.)
822 Giovanni Arnolfini and His Bride (van Eyck), 424 Gravitation, 594–595
German Confederation of the Rhine, 706 Girls: as servants, 655; education for, 661. See Great Army (France), 708
German Empire, 824(illus.), 825, 832–833, also Women Great Break, see First World War; Russian
880; Black Death in, 377; Protestantism in, Girondists, 696, 697 Revolution (1917)
451; religious divisions in, 467; Jewish rights Gish, Lillian, 927 Great Britain: formation of, 634. See also
in, 837. See also Germany; Holy Roman Gladstone, William, 835 England (Britain)
Empire Glasnost, 1023 “Great chain of being,” 591
German people, 751, 836 Global economy, 510–511, 634–648, Great Depression, 914, 940; financial crisis and,
German Southwest Africa: colonial war in, 833 1031–1032 933, 935; unemployment in, 934(map),
German Trade Union Congress, 841 Globalization, 511, 1031, 1045 935–936; in Scandinavia, 937–938; in France,
German Workers’ Party, 958 Glorious Revolution (England, 1688–1689), 939; in England, 939–940; democracy and,
Germany, 1036(map); Black Death in, 377; 548–549 946; in Germany, 958, 959(illus.); Hitler and,
migrations from, 398; printing in, 418; Glückel of Hameln, 551 958
Lutheranism and, 446–451, 458–459; Gnesotto, Nicole, 1044 Great Elector, see Frederick William (Great
Peasants’ War (1525) in, 454–455; GNP, see Gross national product (GNP) Elector, Brandenburg)
Reformation and politics in, 457–459; Goa, 498 Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere, 970
Habsburgs and, 458–459, 635; Estonia and, Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 760 Greater Germany, 965
561(illus.); Thirty Years’ War and, 562, Gold: from Africa, 487; Columbus and, 499; Greater Serbia, 1037
563–565; Sweden and, 576; books in, 603; from Americas, 539; mercantilism and, Great Exhibition (London), 725, 726(illus.)
Enlightenment in, 603; population decline in, 634–635; in France, 688; in South Africa, Great Famine: in northern Europe, 372–373; in
626; guilds in, 633; Prussia and, 635; 861; dollar exchange for, 1010 Ireland, 766–767
marriage in, 654; compulsory education in, Golden age: in Netherlands, 549–553 Great Fear (France), 691
662; Pietism in, 672; Napoleon and, 705, Golden Bull (1356), 457 Great Fire of 1666 (London), 638, 638(illus.)
706–707; industrialization in, 727, Golden Horde, 572–573 Great Lakes region, 635
I-12 • Index
Great migration, 855–859; Europeans in, 859 Hall of Mirrors (Versailles), 541, 568, 734–736; on nationalism, 755; Michelet,
Great Northern War, 576, 578 824(illus.), 825 Jules, 769; Palacky, Frantisek, 776–777; on
“Great Patriotic War of the Fatherland,” 995 Hamburg, 565 Holocaust and anti-Semitism, 970
Great Powers, 879–880; Prussia as, 610; at Hameln, 551 Historical and Critical Dictionary (Bayle),
Congress of Vienna, 749–750; on revolutions, Hamlet (Shakespeare), 516 599–600
761 Hanseatic League, 435 Historical evolution: Marx and, 757–758
Great Rebellion (India), 869 Hardwicke Act (England), 469 History: as dialectic, 758; future and, 1050,
Great Russians, 998–999 Hardy, Thomas, 809 1052
Great Schism (Russia), 387–388 Harem, 583, 583(illus.); of Ottoman sultan, History of France (Michelet), 769
Great Train Robbery (film), 926 582, 582(illus.) Hitler, Adolf, 838, 917, 927(illus.), 957, 976;
Great Trek, 859 Hargreaves, James, 719, 720(illus.) radio and movie use by, 928, 960; emergence
Great War, see First World War Harkort, Fritz, 730, 732–733 of, 930, 931; Mussolini and, 956(illus.); rise
Great white walls, 859 Harvests: declines in, 372, 373 to power, 958–960; aggression by, 962–965,
Greece, 883, 1011; Enlightenment and, 603; Hassan al-Banna, 1051 965(illus.); empire of, 966–967; New Order
national liberation in, 761–763, 829; after Haussmann, Georges, 784, 786 of, 967; resistance to, 973; suicide of, 974.
First World War, 906; aid to, 984 Havel, Václav, 1025–1026, 1026(illus.), 1035, See also Nazi Germany; Second World War
Greek Orthodox Church: in Hungary, 466. 1052 HIV, 1044(illus.)
See also Orthodox Christianity Hawaii: migration to, 858(illus.) Hobsbawm, Eric, 747
Greenland, 372 Hayter, George, 764(illus.) Hobson, J. A., 867
Green movement (West Germany), 1012, Health: public, 781–783; urban, 782(illus.); in Hoche (General), 700
1014(illus.) 1970s and early 1980s, 1012. See also Ho Chi Minh, 992
Gregory I (Pope), 375(illus.) Disease; Medicine; Nutrition Hogarth, William, 673(illus.), 676(illus.)
Gregory XI (Pope), 387 Heart of Darkness (Conrad), 867 Hohenzollern dynasty, 536(map), 567,
Grien, Hans Baldung, 477(illus.) Hébert, Jacques, 702 571–572
Grieving Parents, The (Kollwitz), 914(illus.) Hegel, Georg, 757–758 Holbein, Ambrosius, 400(illus.)
Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, 760 Heidegger, Martin, 916 Holbein, Hans, the Younger, 443(illus.)
Grimshaw, Atkinson, 792, 793(illus.) Heidelberg: University of, 381 Holland, 749, 966; lay piety in, 389; Spanish
Gropius, Walter, 921, 922(illus.) Heine, Heinrich, 707 attacks on, 474; seaborne empire of, 511;
Gross national product (GNP), 725, 848 Heisenberg, Werner, 919 France and, 533; Napoleon and, 705; after
Grosz, George, 912(illus.) Hejaz, 890, 905 Second World War, 989; Dutch East Indies
Growth: of income, 848(illus.) Helsinki Conference (1975): Final Act of, 1008 and, 992. See also Netherlands
Guadalcanal: Battle of, 974, 975 Henrietta Marie (England), 544, 547 Holocaust, 967, 969–970, 969(illus.), 971
Guadeloupe, 640, 702, 707 Apago PDF Enhancer
Henry III (France), 473 Holstein, 774
Guanajuato, 509 Henry IV (France), 473, 528–529, 531(illus.), Holy Alliance, 751
Guanche people: as slaves, 492 686 Holy League: Christian, 581
Guangzhou, China: battle near, 852(illus.) Henry IV and The Proclamation of the Regency Holy Office, 467
Guernica (Picasso), 925, 925(illus.) (1622–1625) (Rubens), 531(illus.) Holy Roman Empire: Protestantism and, 457;
Guerrillas: in Balkans, 885(illus.) Henry V (England), 385 under Charles V, 458, 511; witchcraft
Guilds, 628, 631–633, 632(illus.), 651(illus.); Henry VI (England), 435 executions in, 476; Dutch war and, 533;
plague and, 380; women and, 393, 633; Henry VII (England), 435, 436, 501 Thirty Years’ War and, 562, 563–565; elector
groups excluded from, 628; urban, 631–633; Henry VIII (England), 462(illus.); Protestant of Brandenburg and, 567. See also Germany;
debate over, 650–651 Reformation and, 461–462 Habsburg dynasty
Guillotine (France): Louis XVI and, 696 Henry the Navigator (Portugal), 493, 495–496 Home front: in Russia, 895
Gujarat, 510 Hereditary subjugation, 560 Home rule: for Ireland, 835–836, 836(illus.)
Gulf War (1991), 1030 Heresy: of Joan of Arc, 385; Philip II (Spain) Homestead Act (United States, 1862), 826
Gunboat diplomacy, 871 and, 512 Homosexuality: in Middle Ages, 395–396,
Gunpowder, 495 Hermandades, 436 396(illus.); women’s movement and, 1010;
Guns, see Weapons Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg), 580 legalized marriage for, 1045
Guomindang, 992 Herzegovina, 883. See also Bosnia-Herzegovina Hong Kong: cession of, 851–852
Gustavus Adolphus (Sweden), 530, 562 Herzl, Theodor, 838, 839, 992 Honor: classes organized by, 431
Gustavus Vasa (Sweden), 451 Hierarchy: in Renaissance society, 428–434; of Hoover, Herbert, 937
Gutenberg, Johan, 418, 419 wealth, 431; in French society, 533. See also Hormuz, 488, 490
Gypsies, 969, 1032 Classes Hosius, Stanislaus, 466
Higher education, see Education; Schools; Hospitals, 670(illus.); medieval, 378; plague
Habsburg dynasty, 457–458, 635; France and, Universities and, 378, 379(illus.); foundling, 660; germ
529–530; in Spain, 537; in Thirty Years’ War, High Middle Ages: political institutions in, 434; theory and, 783
562; in Hungary, 566–567; Ottomans and, state in, 434. See also Middle Ages Hôtel-Dieu (Paris), 379(illus.)
582; in Austria, 613–615, 772; peoples under, Hijackings, 1046 Houdon, 619(illus.)
752(map) Hildebrandt, Johann Lukas von, 569 Households: in Renaissance, 421–422; workers
Habsburg-Valois Wars, 411–412, 459 Himmler, Heinrich, 961 in, 654–656; of urban poverty, 739; income
Hague, The, 550 Hindenburg, Paul von, 888, 891, 959, 960 of, 787; women in, 799, 800
Haiti: independence of, 701(map), 707–708. Hindus: in India, 870, 991–992 House of Commons (England), 543–544, 763,
See also L’Ouverture, Toussaint; Saint- Hiroshima: atomic bombing of, 975, 1000 835; English Reformation and, 461
Domingue Hispaniola, 499, 501, 637(map) House of Commons, The, 1833 (Hayter),
Halévy, Elie, 947 Historians: Ibn Khaldun, 513; on French 764(illus.)
Halim, Pasha (Ottomans), 830(illus.) Revolution, 685, 712; on factory workers, House of Lords (England), 544, 763, 835
Index • I-13
House of Orange, 549–550 Illegitimacy: explosion of, 656–657, 739, 798; imperialism and, 865; in Soviet Union, 951,
Houses of government: in France, 689 marriage patterns and, 656–658 952, 978–979, 995; in eastern Europe, 996
Housing: medieval, 376; Dutch, 550(illus.); in Illness: care for, 377, 667. See also Disease; Industrial Revolution, 717, 747; labor patterns
London, 638–639, 639(illus.); in 18th Health; Medicine and, 633–634; in England, 718–727,
century, 666–667; of workers, 736; urban, Illustration: scientific, 597, 597(illus.) 725(map), 849; urban areas and, 780–781;
781; in Paris, 785(illus.), 786; of middle class, Imams, 1055 global inequality and, 847; as turning point,
789; Soviet, 953; for low-income families, Imitation of Christ, The (Thomas à Kempis), 848
1001 389 “Industrious revolution,” 633–634, 634(illus.)
Huascar (Inca), 503 Immigrants and immigration: Chinese, 485; Industry: in 17th century, 525; colonial, 535; in
Huayna Capac (Inca), 503 racism and, 1033; illegal, into European Brazil, 539; in Russia, 578, 1033; in Prussia,
Hudson Bay region, 635 Union, 1042–1043; growth of, 1042–1044; 610; in 18th century, 629–631, 630(map);
Hugo, Victor, 760 from Eritrea, 1043(illus.); Muslim, 1049, cities and, 780–781; workers in, 791; in
Huguenots (France), 473, 529–530; Edict of 1054; ghettoization of, 1055. See also England, 938–939. See also Cottage industry;
Nantes and, 473, 529, 531; expulsion of, 599 Migration specific types
Huitzilopochtli (god), 501 Imperial Diet (Augsburg, 1530), 458 Infant baptism, 451
Hull, Cordell, 983 Imperialism: Russian, 828–829; Ottoman and Infanticide, 659–660
Human Comedy, The (Balzac), 808 Western, 831; political, 859; inhumane Infant mortality: wet-nursing and, 658
Humanism: in Renaissance, 412–414; Christian, practices of, 862(illus.); in Asia, 864(map), Inflation: from Black Death, 380; in Spain,
416–418; in northern Europe, 416–418; of 865; critics of, 867–869; response to, 868; in 509–510; in Europe, 510; after Thirty Years’
Montaigne, 514 India, 869(illus.); by Japan, 872; of West, War, 565; in Germany, 929, 930; in France,
Human rights: promotion of, 1044–1045, 874; after First World War, 903; League of 932; in 1970s, 1010; global economy and,
1049–1050; terrorism and, 1049; of Nations and, 906; racial, 967; after Second 1031; in Russia, 1033
immigrants, 1055 World War, 991. See also Empires; New Influenza, 504
Hume, David, 603, 608, 609 imperialism Inner light: of Baptists, 454
Hunchback of Notre Dame (Hugo), 760 Imperialism (Hobson), 867 Inoculation: against smallpox, 670–671
Hundred Days: of Napoleon, 711, 767 Imports: English, 635 Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Hundred days of reform (China), 872 Impressionism, 922 Nations (Smith), 647, 754
Hundred Years’ War, 381–387, 384(maps); Joan Inca Empire: Spanish conquest of, 502–504, Inquisition: Spain and, 438–439, 512, 534;
of Arc and, 385; England and France after, 509 Holy Office and, 467; Netherlands and, 474;
386–387 Income: gap in, 787–788; women’s witchcraft and, 476; Galileo at, 594
Hungary, 1024, 1031, 1041; Reformation in, contributions to, 800; in Great Britain, 848; Institutes of the Christian Religion, The (Calvin),
466; Habsburgs in, 565, 582; in Austrian in Third World, 848; wealth gap and, 848; per 463–464, 473
Empire, 566–567, 751; Ottoman defeat of, Apago PDF Enhancer
person, 848(illus.) Instruction, see Teaching
581; Enlightenment and, 603; revolt in, 772, Income taxes, 787 Insurance: in Germany, 833
836; Magyar nobility in, 836–837; republic Independence: of Haiti, 701(map), 707–708 Intellectual thought: in Renaissance, 407–408,
of, 901; peace treaty with, 903; Second World Independence movements: after Second World 412–421; about race, 513–514; Montaigne
War and, 974, 983; revolutions in, 997, 1025; War, 989, 991; in Middle East, 992–993 and, 514; Enlightenment and, 589, 598–609;
in postcommunist era, 1035. See also Austro- Index of Prohibited Books, 467, 603 scientific revolution and, 595–597; science
Hungarian Empire (Austria-Hungary); India: trade with, 484, 485, 640; spices from, and, 597–598, 804–807; Comte on, 805;
Magyars 490; sailing routes to, 495, 497; Anglo- uncertainty in, 913–921; on totalitarianism,
Hürrem (Ottomans), 582(illus.), 583, French conflicts in, 635, 647; Britain and, 947; de-Stalinization and, 996; feminist,
583(illus.) 646(illus.), 647, 865, 868–870, 877(illus.); 1009–1010. See also Art(s); Enlightenment;
Hus, Jan, 388, 391, 391(illus.), 449, 465 France and, 647; industrialization and, 727, Ideologies; Literature; Philosophy;
Husbands, 800, 802 728(illus.); opium and, 851; migration from, Religion(s); Renaissance
Hussein ibn-Ali (Hejaz, Syria), 890, 905 858–859; in 1914, 864(map); imperialism in, Intendants (royal officials), 529, 538–539
Hussites, 465 865, 869(illus.); decolonization and Interesting Narrative . . . (Equiano), 645
Huxley, Aldous, 917 independence in, 991–992, 991(illus.) Interest rates (financial), 373
Hygiene: plague and, 376–377 Indian National Congress, 870 Intermarriage: between Old and New Spanish
Hymns: by Luther, 451; by Charpentier, 542 Indians, see American Indians Christians, 438–439
Indies: search for water route to, 497–498, International Monetary Fund (IMF), 1031
Iberian Peninsula: blacks in, 429–430; uniting 497(illus.), 499–501 International phase: of Thirty Years’ War, 562
of, 439. See also Portugal; Spain Individualism: in Renaissance, 413 International system: pre-First World War, 894
Ibn Battuta, 488 Individual rights, 1044–1045 International Working Men’s Association, 838
Ibn Khaldun, 513 Indochina, 970, 992 International youth culture, 1004–1006
Ice age: little ice age as, 371–372 Indonesia, 490, 511, 992; Dutch trade with, Inuit people, 372
Iceland, 1011; Protestantism in, 451 646–647; in 1914, 864(map) Inventions: of scientific instruments, 595. See
Iconoclasm, 473, 474, 475(illus.) Indulgences, 442, 447–448, 448(illus.); in also Industrial Revolution; specific inventions
Id, 919 England, 548 and inventors
Identity: European, 1039–1040 Industrialization, 722(illus.), 728(illus.); steam Investments: in Prussian industry, 731–732; in
Ideologies: liberalism as, 753–754; nationalism engine and, 721–723; population and, Russian industry, 828; European, 850,
as, 754–756; socialism as, 756; Marxian 725–727; in continental Europe, 727–732, 851(map)
Socialism as, 757–758; romanticism as, 758; 729(map); factory owners and, 732–734; Invisible hand, 754
in Paris revolution of 1848, 771; of separate nationalism and, 755; urbanization and, Ipatescu, Ana, 746(illus.)
spheres, 799, 800; Marxist-Leninist, 992 779–780; middle class and, 789; science and, Iraq, 830, 903; independence of, 905; Gulf War
“I have a dream” speech (Martin Luther King, 805; in Russia, 827, 828; world economy and, (1991) and, 1030; refugees from, 1042
Jr.), 994(illus.) 847–854; uneven development of, 848; Iraq war, 1020, 1047–1049, 1052(illus.)
I-14 • Index
Ireland, 1046; England and, 397, 398, 436, Janissary corps, 582, 829–830 Justice: in England, 435; witchcraft trials and,
513, 545, 547; Protestant Reformation in, Jansen, Cornelius, 674–675 475–476
462–463; Act of Union and, 603; linen Jansenism, 674–675, 674(illus.) Justices of the peace (England), 435–436
industry in, 634(illus.); trade with, 640; Japan: trade with, 510; Russo-Japanese War and, Just price, 664
factory workers from, 738; potato and, 764, 828–829; West and, 850, 852–853, 865;
766; Great Famine in, 766–767, 835; Europeans in, 852; isolation of, 852; opening Kádár, János, 1025
nationalism in, 767, 835–836; home rule for, of, 853; Perry in, 853; migration from, Kafka, Franz, 920
835–836; Easter Rebellion in, 894; autonomy 858–859; imperialism in, 870–872; Meiji Kampuchea (Cambodia), 945
for southern, 933 Restoration in, 871; military in, 871(illus.); Kandinsky, Wassily, 926
Iron and iron industry: in England, 721, 723, Anglo-Japanese Alliance and, 881(illus.), 882; Kant, Immanuel, 608–609
740; German, 731(illus.) First World War in, 890; Rome-Berlin Axis Kay, John, 631
“Iron curtain” speech (Churchill), 984 and, 963; empire of, 970, 972, 991; in Keats, 759
Iron law of wages, 726 Second World War, 970, 972, 972(map), Kellogg, Frank B., 930
Isabella (Castile), 436, 438. See also Ferdinand 974–975; atomic bombing of, 975, 1000; Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928), 930
and Isabella (Spain) oil embargo and, 1011 Kelly, Joan, 414
Isabella (England), 381 Jaruzelski, Wojciech, 1021, 1025 Kemal, Mustafa (Atatürk), 906, 907(illus.)
Isabella (Este), 430 Jaspers, Karl, 916 Kennedy, John F.: Berlin Wall and, 997; Cuban
Islam: empires of, 488–490; slave trade and, Jaurès, Jean, 842 missile crisis and, 997; Vietnam War and,
513–514; Ottoman, 580; as a European Java, 647, 965 1006
religion, 1050; West and, 1053. See also Jazz, 932(illus.) Kepler, Johannes, 592
Arabs and Arab world; Muslims Jefferson, Thomas, 687 Kerensky, Alexander, 896, 898
Islamic conservatism: Ottoman, 831 Jehovah’s Witnesses: Nazis and, 967 Keynes, John Maynard, 928–929, 935
Islands: in Atlantic, 492 Jena, battle at, 707 Keynesian economics, 987
Ismail (Egypt), 853 Jenner, Edward, 670–671 Khartoum: massacre at, 862
Isolationism: of Great Britain, 881–882; of Jesuits, 466, 469–472, 472(illus.), 505; schools Khedive (Egypt), 853
United States, 908, 972 of, 661; nobility and, 672 Khmer Rouge, 945
Israel, 1046; General Syrian Congress and, Jewish Bride, The (Rembrandt), 551(illus.) Khodorkovsky, Mikhail, 1034(illus.)
910–911; establishment of, 992. See also Jewish Question, 967 Khrushchev, Nikita, 1027(illus.); de-
Arab-Israeli wars; Jews and Judaism; Palestine Jewish State, The: . . . (Herzl), 839 Stalinization and reform by, 996–997; Cuban
Istanbul: Constantinople as, 488, 580–581, 582 Jews and Judaism: attacks on, 373, 378; in missile crisis and, 997; fall of, 997
Italy: Black Death and, 374, 377; communes in, Spain, 436–437; conversion in Spain, Kidnapping, 1046
409; city-states in, 409–412, 411(map); arts 437–438; expulsion from Spain, 439; as Kiel: mutiny at, 901
in, 421–428; Habsburgs and, 458; trade in, Apago PDF Enhancer
slaves, 492; in England, 547; Dutch, 550, Kierkegaard, Søren, 917
490–492; baroque art in, 539; female 551; Ottoman, 580, 584; in Prussia, 610; in Kievan principality, 572
scientists in, 597; Enlightenment and, 603; Russia, 827; emancipation of, 837; migration Kilwa, 487
Napoleon and, 705, 706; industrialization in, of, 856–857; homeland for, 903, 905, 992; in King, Martin Luther, Jr., 994
727, 728(illus.); kingdom of the Two Sicilies fascist Italy, 957, 971; Nazis and, 961, 967, Kingdom of Naples, 410
in, 751; unification of, 818–821, 819(map); 969–970, 969(illus.); Soviet, 995. See also Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, 819(map), 820
immigration from, 856, 856(illus.), 857–858, Anti-Semitism; Israel King James Bible, 516
857(illus.); in Ethiopia, 861; Alliance System Joad, Cyril, 917 Kings and kingdoms, see Empires; specific
and, 881; in First World War, 889; Treaty of Joanna of Castile: Philip of Burgundy and, locations and rulers
Versailles and, 902; after First World War, 439 Kinship: in 19th century, 738, 799
903, 906; Mussolini and fascism in, 955–957; Joan of Arc, 385 Kipling, Rudyard, 867, 902
Rome-Berlin Axis and, 963; Second World John (England), 397 Kirov, Sergei, 954
War and, 966, 989; Jews in, 971; Allied John II (Portugal), 497 Kissinger, Henry, 1007
invasion of, 973; Christian Democrats in, 987; John IV (Portugal), 537 Kitchener, Horatio H., 862, 870
European unity and, 989; women’s John of Cracow, 398 Knights: crime by, 396–397
movement in, 1009, 1010(illus.); general John of Spoleto, 387–388 Knox, John, 465
strike in, 1018(illus.); birthrate in, 1041; John Paul II (pope), 1020 Koch, Robert, 783
European Union and, 1041; illegal Johnson, Lyndon, 994, 1006–1007 Kohl, Helmut, 1008, 1029, 1030, 1039,
immigration in, 1042, 1043(illus.) Johnson, Samuel, 758 1040
Ivan III (Russia), 573–574 Joliet, Louis, 532 Kollontai, Alexandra, 953
Ivan IV the Terrible (Russia), 574–575, Jonson, Ben: on death of son, 660 Kollwitz, Kathe, 914(illus.)
574(illus.) Jordan: General Syrian Congress and, Königsberg, 571
Ivan the Terrible (Eisenstein), 995(illus.) 910–911 Korea, 872; migration from, 858–859
Iwo Jima, 975 Joseph II (Austria), 613, 615, 615(illus.); Korean War, 984, 987, 1007
church and, 672 Kornilov, Lavr, 898
Jacobean literature, 516 Josephine (France), 706(illus.) Kosovo, 1037–1038, 1045
Jacobin club (France), 695, 696 Journal (Columbus), 498 Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), 1038–1039
Jacob’s Room (Woolf), 920 Journal (Wesley), 673 Kristallnacht, 961
Jacquerie, 390 Journeymen’s guilds, 393 Kronstadt: sailors’ rebellion in, 949
Jager, Hugo, 944(illus.) Joyce, James, 920 Kulaks: in Soviet Union, 951
Jakarta, 647 Judaism, see Jews and Judaism Kulturkampf, 832–833
James I (England), 515, 543, 544; literature Julius II (Pope), 416, 424, 470(illus.) Kuomintang, see Guomindang
under, 516 “June Days” (Paris), 771 Kurds, 1047, 1048
James V (Scotland), 465 Junkers, 570, 571, 822 Kuwait: Iraq invasion of, 1030
Index • I-15
Labor: Black Death and, 380; of women, 393, Law (scientific): of dynamics, 594; of universal Germany, 822, 824; totalitarianism vs.
434, 532; black, 430(illus.); Dutch, 553; in gravitation, 594–595 classical, 947
Russia, 580; in cottage industries, 629–630; Law codes: in Russia, 613; Napoleonic, 799 Liberia, 861
guilds and, 631–633; patterns of, 633–634; in Law of conservation of energy, 805 Liberty: Gallican (French), 434; of conscience,
British America, 640–641; in North America, Law of inertia: of Galileo, 593 531; liberalism and, 753, 754
640–641; slave, 640–643; away from home, Law of universal gravitation, 594–595 Liebknecht, Karl, 894, 902
654–655; in England, 719; on railroads, 725; Lawrence of Arabia, 890, 905(illus.) Liège: industrialization in, 730
sexual division of, 738–740, 799; migrants Laypeople: sacraments and, 379; literacy of, Life expectancy: in Russia (1991), 1033
and, 858, 858(illus.); in First World War, 400–401; Protestant, 450; instruction of, 469 “Life Is Everywhere” (Yaroshenko),
891–892; for Nazi Germany, 967, 971. See Lay piety, 389–390 809(illus.)
also Gender; Slaves and slavery; Strikes; League of Armed Neutrality, 688 Lifestyle: Dutch trade and, 553; changes in,
Workers League of Nations, 901, 902; Middle East and, 621, 653–677; of rural workers, 631;
Labor aristocracy, 791, 794(illus.) 905; mandates of, 906, 906(map), 910–911; consumerism in, 665–667; urban, 779; of
Labor movement: in England, 740–741 Germany and, 930, 962, 963 middle class, 789–790; Soviet, 952–954; in
Labor strikes, see Strikes Learning, see Education; Intellectual thought; Nazi slave-labor camp, 971; in 1970s and
Labor unions: outlawing of, 740, 841; in Schools; Universities early 1980s, 1012. See also Children;
England, 740–741, 740(illus.), 841; in Lebanon, 903; General Syrian Congress and, Families; Marriage
France, 817; in Germany, 841, 961; First 910–911; decolonization and, 992 Lille, 533, 534
World War and, 892; in Great Depression, Leclerc, Charles-Victor-Emmanuel, 707 Lima: Spanish in, 509
937; in Poland, 1020–1021; globalization Le Corbusier, 921 Limited liability, 732
and, 1031 Leeuwenhoek, Anton van, 552 Limited monarchy: in France, 691–693
Labouchère, Henry, 867 Legal system: in Russia, 827; in Japan, 871. Lincoln, Abraham: Civil War and, 825, 826
Labour Party (England), 842, 933, 938 See also Law(s) Linen industry: in Ireland, 634(illus.)
Lady with an Ermine (Leonardo da Vinci), Legends: of Robin Hood, 397 Linné, Carl von, 608
427(illus.) Legislative Assembly (France), 695–696 List, Friedrich, 731–732, 828, 856
Lafayette, marquis de, 688, 690, 691 Lehmus, Emilie, 801 Lister, Joseph, 783
Laissez faire, 754 Leigh, Mary, 832(illus.) Literacy, 662–663, 662(map); in Middle Ages,
Lake Texcoco, 502 Leisure: religion and, 675–676; working-class, 399–400; of laypeople, 400–401; printing
Lamarck, Jean Baptiste, 807 795–797; in postwar era, 1002 and, 418–420; reading revolution and,
Lamartine, Alphonse de, 760 Lélia (Sand), 760 604–607
Lancaster, house of, 435 Lenin, Vladimir: Hobson and, 867; Bolshevik Literature: in northern Renaissance, 416–421;
Land: common, 622; in 18th century, 622–625; Revolution and, 896–898, 899(illus.); Elizabethan, 514–516; Jacobean, 516;
in British America, 640–641; in Latin Apago PDF Enhancer
government formed by, 898; Marxian popular, 662–663; romanticism in, 758–760;
America, 643–644; migration and, 856, 857; thought and, 898; Soviet film industry and, on child rearing, 802; realism in, 804,
in Russia, 896, 899. See also Agriculture 928; single-party dictatorship and, 947; New 807–809; imperialism and, 867; of First
Landlords: plague and, 379; in central and Economic Policy of, 949; Soviet economy World War, 887–888; in Age of Anxiety,
eastern Europe, 561; agricultural revolution and, 949 919–920; stream of consciousness in, 920;
and, 622–623; in England, 625; in Ireland, Leningrad: siege of, 967 Soviet, 954, 1023; de-Stalinization and, 996;
766, 767 Lenin Shipyards (Gdansk), 1020, 1022(illus.) of women’s movement, 1009. See also Poets
Landowners: in England, 435–436 Le Nôtre, André (architect), 540 and poetry
Landscapes, 761 Leo X (Pope), 435, 442, 447 Lithuania, 966, 1041; Grand Duchy of, 466;
Langport, battle at, 546 Leo XIII (Pope), 834 in Poland-Lithuania, 466; independence,
Language(s): of Luther, 451; in 17th century, León, 436, 437(map) 1027
526; in France, 542; in Austrian parliament, Leonardo da Vinci, 423, 425, 427, 427(illus.), Little Entente, 929
836; in Hungarian parliament, 837 926 “Little ice age,” 371–372
Languedoc, 373, 394 Leopold I (Holy Roman Empire), 567, 568 Littré, Emile, 806(illus.)
La Plata, 538 Leopold II (Belgium), 861, 862(illus.) Liturgy: Protestantism and, 450
Larger Catechism (Luther), 451 Leopold II (Holy Roman Empire), 615 Liverpool and Manchester Railway, 724
La Rochelle: siege of, 529 Lepanto, Battle of, 581(illus.) Lloyd George, David, 835, 883, 892, 902–903
La Salle, Robert, 532 Le Peletier, Claude, 534 Locarno agreements, 930, 931, 962
Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 504–505 Lesbians, see Homosexuality Locke, John, 548, 600, 603
Last Judgment, The: of Michelangelo, 425 Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (Picasso), 924, Lodge, Henry Cabot, 907–908
Last Supper, The (Leonardo da Vinci), 423, 427 924(illus.) Logical empiricism, 916
Lateen sail, 494 Lespinasse, Julie de, 606 Lollards, 388
Lateran Agreement, 957 Le Tellier, Michel, 541 Lombardy, 750, 818, 820
Later Middle Ages, 371–401. See also Middle Le Vau (architect), 540, 568 London, 620(illus.), 637, 638–639, 639(illus.),
Ages Levi, Primo, 971, 971(illus.) 640(illus.); runaway slaves in, 643; blitzkrieg
Latin America: Dutch and, 553; trade and, 640; Lewis, C. S., 917 in, 966(illus.), 967
colonial, 643–644; railroads in, 849; Leyte Gulf, Battle of, 974(illus.) Long-distance trade, 510–511
authoritarianism in, 946 Liberal capitalism: vs. socialism, 771 Long Parliament (England), 545
Latvia, 578, 966, 1041 Liberal democracy: communism and, 1032 Lopez de Legazpi, Miguel, 510
Laud, William, 544–545 Liberal Party (England), 835 Lord protector (England): Cromwell as,
Lausanne: Treaty of, 907 Liberals and liberalism: economic, 647–648, 546–547
Law(s): for prostitution, 395; marital, 456; in 754; Metternich on, 751; ideology of, Lords: in eastern Europe, 560–561; peasant
England, 548; Ottoman, 584. See also Canon 753–754; in England, 754, 763–765; lands and, 560–561. See also Nobility
law; Law codes; Natural law; specific laws nationalism and, 755; in Prussia, 773; in Lord’s Supper: Zwingli on, 450
I-16 • Index
Lorraine: French seizure of, 533; Germany and, Machines, 721 Market agriculture: in Holy Roman Empire, 567
825; surrender to Germany, 834. See also Madagascar: French in, 846(illus.) Market economies: in eastern Europe, 1035
Alsace-Lorraine Madame Bovary (Flaubert), 808 Marlowe, Christopher, 515
Lotto, Lorenzo, 432(illus.) Madeira, 497, 505 Marne: Battle of (first), 887; Battle of (second),
Louis XI “Spider King” (France), 435 Madrid, 437; urban living in, 787(illus.). 901
Louis XII (France), 435 See also Spain Marquette, Jacques, 532
Louis XIII (France), 562, 568 Magellan, Ferdinand, 500–501 Marriage: age at, 393–394, 653–654; between
Louis XIV (France), 522(illus.), 685; absolutism Magistrates: in France, 686 ethnic groups in Ireland, 398; gender roles
of, 526, 528, 530–534; army of, 527; wars of, Magnetic compass, 495 and, 434; Luther on, 449; Protestantism and,
533–534, 635; acquisitions of, 533(illus.); Magyar language, 837 450, 454(illus.), 455–457; church consent
baroque arts and, 540–541; Versailles and, Magyars, 466, 751, 836. See also Hungary for, 469; in Southeast Asia, 484; patterns of,
541, 557(illus.), 568; classicism and, 542; Mahmud III (Ottomans), 830 656–658; Fourier on, 756; in Ireland, 766; in
Charles II (England) and, 547–548; Saint- Maintenon, Madame de, 531, 541 19th century, 797–798, 800–802; women
Simon on, 556–557 Maize (corn), 509 and, 798, 799–800; youth counterculture
Louis XV (France), 685, 686, 688 Malacca, 484, 498, 553 and, 1004–1005; in 1970s and early 1980s,
Louis XVI (France), 686; French Revolution Malaria, 866 1012; feminist critique of, 1016–1017;
and, 689–694; capture of, 691–692, 695, Malay Archipelago, 500 legalized gay and lesbian, 1045. See also
695(illus.); guillotining of, 696 Malevich, Kazimir, 950(illus.) Intermarriage
Louis XVIII (France), 711, 750, 767 Mali, 487, 488 “Marseillaise,” 696
Louisiana, 532, 643 Malinche, La, 503(illus.) Marseilles: Black Death and, 377; plague and,
Louis Philippe (France), 767–768, 770 Malta, 1019, 1041 377, 627, 627(illus.)
L’Ouverture, Toussaint, 701–702, 707, Malthus, Thomas, 726, 734, 807 Marshall, Alfred, 805
709(illus.) Mameluke Egyptian empire, 485–486, 581 Marshall, George C., 983
Louvois, marquis de (François le Tellier), 533, “Managed democracy”: of Putin, 1034 Marshall Plan, 984, 987, 989
541 Management: as profession, 789 Marsiglio of Padua, 388, 415
Low, David, 965(illus.) Manchester, England: industry in, 722(illus.) Martial law: in England, 547
Low Countries: population decline in, 373; Manchu dynasty (China), see Qing (Manchu) Martin V (Pope), 388
Hundred Years’ War in, 383; Habsburgs and, Dynasty (China) Martin, Pierre-Denis, 568(illus.)
458, 474; Spain and, 474, 512; agriculture in, Manchuria, 828, 829, 872, 963 Martinique, 640, 702, 707
623, 624–625; at Congress of Vienna, 749. Mandates: of League of Nations, 906, Marx, Karl, and Marxism, 757, 757(illus.), 816,
See also Belgium; Holland; Netherlands 906(map), 910–911, 992 838–842, 898; class consciousness and, 732;
Lower classes: in postwar era, 1001 Manet, Edouard, 808(illus.) social sciences and, 805; Social Democrats
Loyalists: in American Revolution, 687 Apago PDF Enhancer
Manhattan Project, 999–1000 and, 833; revisionism and, 841
Loyola, Ignatius, 469–470, 472(illus.) Manifest destiny: of U. S., 826 Marxian socialism, 838–842, 947–948; Lenin
Lübeck, 565 Mannerism: as art style, 425 and, 897; Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and, 898
Luddites, 734 Manors and manorialism: manorial rights of Mary I Tudor (England), 461, 462(illus.), 463
Ludendorff, Erich, 888, 891, 901 French nobility, 684. See also Serfs and Mary II (England), 548
Lueger, Karl, 838 serfdom Mary, Queen of Scots, 465, 512
Lully, Jean-Baptiste, 542 Mansa Musa, see Musa (Mansa) Mary of Burgundy, 457–458
Lunéville, Treaty of, 705 Mantegna, Andrea, 422, 423(illus.) Masaccio, 423
Lusitania (ship), 890 Manual on the Art of Childbirth (Coudray), 669, Massacre at Chios (Delacroix), 762(illus.)
Luther, Martin, 446–451, 452, 481(illus.), 511, 669(illus.) Massacre of Coligny and the Huguenots (Vasari),
671; music and, 451, 452; German patriotism Manuel (Portugal), 497 444(illus.)
and, 458; On Christian Liberty, 480–481; on Manufacturing: cottage industry and, 628, Massacres: in Second World War, 1037; in
Copernicus, 592. See also Lutheranism; 629–630; English, 640(illus.). See also Yugoslavia, 1037
Protestantism Industrialization; Industry Mass transit, 786
Lutheranism, 449; German recognition of, 459; Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-Tung), 992 Master race: Nordic people as, 967
in Bohemia, 465 Maps, 482(illus.), 494–495, 494(illus.); by Masturbation, 803–804
Lützen, battle at, 562 Ribeiro, 500(illus.) Masurian Lakes: Battle of, 888
Luxembourg: European unity and, 989 Marcel, Gabriel, 917 Materialism, 1012
Luxemburg, Rosa, 902 March on Washington (1963), 994(illus.) Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
Luxury goods, 665; in Renaissance, 421–422; Marconi, Guglielmo, 927 (Newton), see Principia (Newton)
trade and, 483, 511(illus.) Margaret (Valois), 473 Mathematics, 595; of Newton, 594; Descartes
Lyell, Charles, 806–807 Marginal people, 507 and, 595
Lyons, France: insurrection at, 528 Maria Theresa (Austria), 613–615, 615(illus.), Matisse, Henri, 923–924
Lyrical Ballads (Wordsworth and Coleridge), 635; Frederick the Great and, 610; church Matrimony, see Marriage
759 control and, 672 Matteotti, Giacomo, 956
Maria-Theresa (France), 534 Matter: Descartes on, 595–596
Maastricht treaty, 1039 Marie Antoinette (France), 691, 695 Maupeou, René de, 686
Macao, 510 Marie de’ Medici, 529, 531(illus.), 540 Maupeou parlements, 686
MacArthur, Douglas, 984 Marijuana, 1045 Maurice (House of Orange), 549
Macbeth (Shakespeare), 515–516 Marina (Doña), 503(illus.) Mauritania, 498
MacDonald, Ramsay, 933, 938 Maritain, Jacques, 917 Maximilian (archduke, Austria), 830(illus.)
Macedonia, 1045 Maritime trade, 620(illus.); European, 510–511 Maximilian I (Holy Roman Empire), 457–458
Machiavelli, Niccolò, 410, 415 Market(s): in 19th century, 849–850; May Day, 840, 840(illus.)
Machine gun, 862, 865–866, 878(illus.), 887 worldwide, 849–850; in Europe, 989 Mazarin, Jules, 530
Index • I-17
Mazzini, Giuseppe, 755, 818 rape in, 395; homosexuality in, 395–396; World War), 895; of totalitarian societies, 947;
McBarron, Charles, Jr., 974(illus.) ethnic groups in, 397–399; Renaissance and, in Germany, 973
McDonald, Daniel, 766(illus.) 407. See also High Middle Ages Modernism: in art, 924
Meat: in diet of common people, 664 Middle class, 431, 747; in England, 436; in Modernity: in Saint Paintersburg, 579
Medici family, 410; Cosimo de’, 410, Spain, 535–536; in Thermidorian Reaction, Modernization: of Ottoman Empire, 826,
417(illus.), 430; Lorenzo de’, 410, 421, 424, 703; in 19th century, 732, 787, 788–790; 829–831; of Russia, 826–829; definition of,
442; Piero de’, 417(illus.); chapel of, 422; liberalism and, 754; in France, 767; marriage 827; of Egypt, 853; of colonies, 868; of
Leo X in, 447; Catherine de’, 473; Marie de’, in, 797–798; feminists in, 799–800; child Japanese army, 871(illus.)
529, 531(illus.), 540 rearing in, 802–804; youth and sexuality in, Mogadishu, 487
Medicine, 805; Black Death and, 377–378; 812–813; in Germany, 821, 822, 961; Jews Mohács, Battle of, 466, 566, 566(illus.), 581
spices as, 492; plague and, 627–628; quack in, 837; in postwar era, 1001; in Russia, 1034 Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), 542
doctors and, 652(illus.); in 18th century, 663; Middle colonies: slavery in, 641 Moluccas, 484, 500
treatments in, 667; practice of, 667–671; Middle East: trade with, 484; Alliance System Mombasa, 487
advances in, 670; women in, 801, 801(illus.), and, 881; First World War and, 890, 903, Mona Lisa (Leonardo da Vinci), 427, 926
954. See also Health 905–906; Ottomans and, 906(map); Monarchy: nobility and, 317; in France,
Mediterranean region: trade in, 484, 488, decolonization in, 992–993; oil embargo and, 386–387, 473, 686, 696; female rulers and,
491–492; Constantinople and, 580 1010 433; in England, 435; in Poland, 466;
Meiji Restoration (Japan), 871, 872 Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (Eliot), constitutional, 525, 548–549; in 17th
Mein Kampf (Hitler), 930, 958, 959 809 century, 526; in Spain, 537; serfdom and,
Melba, Nellie, 927 Middleton, Gilbert de, 397 561; Enlightened, 609–616; in French family,
Memmingen, 455 Midway: Battle of, 974 705. See also specific rulers
Memoirs, The (Saint-Simon), 556–557 Midwives, 668–670; Coudray, Madame du, 669, Monet, Claude, 725, 922
Men: marriage age of, 394; homosexuality and, 669(illus.) Monetary union: in Europe, 1039
395–396; gender roles and, 433–434. See also Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 922 Money: lending of, 437. See also Economy
Families; Fathers; Gender; Husbands “Mighty Fortress Is Our God, A” (Luther), Mongols: trade and, 484, 485, 492; in Russia,
Mendeleev, Dmitri, 805 451 572–574
Mendelssohn family: Moses, 610, 611, Migration: Germanic, 209–210, 288; Black Mongol Yoke, 573
611(illus.); Dorothea, 611; Felix, 611 Death and, 377; ethnicity and, 397; from Monks and monasteries, see Friars; Missions and
Mendicant friars, 389, 398; Augustinian, 446 England, 640–641; slave trade and, 641–643; missionaries; Religious orders; specific orders
Ménétra, Jacques-Louis, 607 from Ireland, 766; from Asia, 858(illus.); to Monnet, Jean, 987, 989
Mensheviks, 898 Soviet cities, 952; from Nazi Germany, 961; Monopolies: in Chinese trade, 851
Mental illness: Nazis and, 967 after Second World War, 985, 986(map); of Monsoons: trade and, 484
Mercantile families, 408 Apago PDF Enhancer
Holocaust survivors, 992; to cities (postwar), Montagu, Mary Wortley, 670
Mercantilism, 532, 634–640; in England, 511, 1001; in 1990s, 1042. See also Immigrants Montaigne, Michel de, 514, 660
640–641; in France, 511, 532 and immigration Montcalm, marquis de (Louis-Joseph de), 635
Mercenaries: in Thirty Years’ War, 562 Milan, 408, 410, 820 Montesquieu, baron de (Charles-Louis de
Merchant marine: in France, 532; Dutch, 552 Military: in Hundred Years’ War, 386; size of, Secondat), 600–601, 606
Merchants: hospitals founded by, 378; English, 526–527; in Prussia, 571; Russian, 827; in Montezuma II (Aztec), 501–502, 503(illus.)
in Flanders, 382(illus.); as class of wealthy, United States, 1008. See also Armed forces; Montpellier, 394; insurrection at, 528
431; in third estate, 431; in Venice, 490–491; Soldiers Moon: Galileo on, 593, 593(illus.)
in Russia, 580; workers and, 631; fashion Military dictatorship: in England, 546–547 Moor, Dimitri, 900(illus.)
boutiques and, 666(illus.) Millet system (nations): Ottoman, 584 Moors, 439
Mercier, Louis-Sébastien, 678–679 Mills: children in, 736, 737–738. See also Moral economy, 525
Merian, Maria Sibylla, 597(illus.) Factories; Textile industry Morality: in Renaissance, 414; middle-class,
Merici, Angela, 469 Milosevic, Slobodan, 1037, 1039 790; of upper working class, 791; European
Mestizos: in Latin America, 644; in Mexico, Mind-body split: Cartesian dualism and, 596, Union and, 1045
644(illus.) 598 Moravia, 753
Metals, see Gold; Mines and mining; Silver Mines Act (1842, England), 739 More, Thomas, 416–417, 461
Methodists, 673–674 Mines and mining: in Americas, 643; in Moriscos, 534
Metric system: in France, 692–693 England, 721–722; child labor in, 737; Morison, Samuel Eliot: on Columbus, 498
Metternich, Klemens von, 708, 749, 750, women in, 737, 739–740; worker testimonies Morocco, 882, 973; Black Death in, 378
753(illus.), 946; Carlsbad Decrees and, 751; about, 744–745 Mortagne, Castle of: siege of, 383(illus.)
revolutions of 1848 and, 772; Italy and, 818 Ming Dynasty (China), 484, 499 Mortality: from plague, 377; in 17th century,
Mexico: Spanish conquest of, 501; crops in, Ministry of Munitions, 892 626; infant, 660–661; public health and, 783.
509; trade with, 510; industry in, 535; casta Minorities: in Austrian Empire, 772; in Russia, See also Death; Infant mortality
paintings in, 644(illus.); people of, 644(illus.) 829; in Austro-Hungarian Empire, 836–837; Mortality rate: in 17th century, 626; decline in,
Mexico City, 501 rights of, 1045 783, 783(illus.), 854
Meytens, Martin, 615(illus.) Misery index, 1011, 1011(illus.) Mortimer (England), 381
Miasmatic theory, 783 Misogyny, 476 Moscow, 967; princes of, 573; Saint Basil’s
Michael Romanov, 576 Missions and missionaries: in Americas, 499, Cathedral in, 575(illus.); Napoleon at, 708
Michelangelo, 406(illus.), 416, 421, 424–425, 505, 643; in New World, 499, 505; in Japan, Mothers, 802, 804; unwed, 656
447 852; schools and, 866(illus.); in China, 872 Motion: Aristotle on, 591; Kepler’s laws of, 592;
Michelet, Jules, 755, 768, 769, 769(illus.) Mitterand, François, 1012, 1039 Galileo on, 592–593
Microscope, 552 Mobility, see Social mobility Motion pictures, see Movies
Middle Ages: later period in, 371–401; sex and Mobilization: in French Revolution, 700; for Moulin Rouge, 796(illus.)
sexuality in, 393–396; prostitution in, 394; First World War, 883–884; in Russia (First Mountain, the, 696, 697
I-18 • Index
Movable type, 418, 419 National Assembly (Germany), 774 Nazi Germany, 944(illus.), 976; tyranny in, 945;
Movement of peoples, see Immigrants and National church: Catholic, 672 mass rally in, 948(illus.); Hitler and, 958–960;
immigration; Migration National Convention (France), 696, 697, expansionism of, 962–963, 965; Rome-Berlin
Movies, 926–928; stars of early, 926–927; 702–703 Axis and, 963; growth of, 963(map); empire
indoctrination and, 928 National debt, 1012; in Spain, 535 of, 966–967; Holocaust in, 967, 969–970,
Mozambique, 859 National Guard (France), 771 969(illus.). See also Germany; Second World
Mr., Mrs., and Baby (Droz), 800–802 Nationalism, 698–700, 754–756, 1031; after War
Muftis, 584 Hundred Years’ War, 387; economic, 732; in Nazi Labor Front, 961
Mughals (India), 647 Ireland, 767, 835–836; in Austrian Empire, Nazism, 947; defined, 957; racial imperialism
Muhammad Ali (Egypt), 830, 853 772; age of, 815–842; Napoleon III and, and, 967
Multiethnic state: Austrian Empire as, 751–753; 817–818; in Italy, 818–821; in Germany, Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact, 965
Ottoman Empire as, 753, 826–827; Russian 821–825, 902, 959, 962; in United States, Near East, see Middle East
Empire as, 753, 826–827 825–826; in Russia, 828, 829; Ottoman, 831; Nelson, Horatio: at Trafalgar, 706
Multiparty system: before First World War, 831 First World War and, 832, 884–885, 887, Neocolonialism, 993
Mundus Novus, 500 894; tariffs and, 833; in France, 833–835; NEP, see New Economic Policy
Munich: Hitler’s uprising in, 930, 958 Magyar, 836; in Austro-Hungarian Empire, Netherlands: Protestantism in, 452; under
Musa (Mansa), 487–488 836–837; among socialists, 842; in Egypt, Charles V, 473–475, 474(map); iconoclasm
Muscovite princes, 573 854, 992; in colonies, 868; in India, 870; in in, 475(illus.); revolt against Spain, 527–528;
Music: Luther and, 451, 452; baroque, 540; Japan, 872; European unity and, 989; in Flanders and, 533; golden age in, 549–553;
classical, 542; romantic, 761; atonal, 926; Soviet Union, 995; after cold war, 1033; in European unity and, 989; European Union
modern, 926; jazz, 932(illus.) eastern Europe, 1035 and, 1041; human rights in, 1045; Muslims
Music halls, 796–797 Nationalist Chinese, 992 in, 1049. See also Austrian Netherlands;
Muslim Brotherhood, 1051 Nationality, 398 Holland; Low Countries
Muslims, 883; in Spain, 397, 436, 439, 534; Nationalization: by Soviets, 900; in Britain, 987; Neutron, 919
trade by, 484, 486(map), 487(illus.); locations in Egypt, 992, 993(illus.) Nevinson, Christopher, 878(illus.)
of, 490; as slaves, 492; Portuguese National Labor Relations Act (1935), 937 Nevsky, Alexander, 573
exploration and, 498; Ottomans as, 584, 831; National Liberals (Germany), 832 New Amsterdam, 635
in Algeria, 767; at Omdurman, 862; in India, National Organization for Women (NOW), New Christians: Jews as, 437–439; Muslims as,
870, 991–992; in Chechnya, 1035; in former 1009 439; Teresa of Ávila as, 471
Yugoslavia, 1038(map); as immigrants, 1043, National People’s Party, see Guomindang Newcomen, Thomas, 722
1049; Tariq Ramadan and, 1051; as threat, National Recovery Administration (NRA), 937 New Deal (U.S.), 936–937
1053. See also Arabs and Arab world; Islam National self-determination, see Self- New Economic Policy (NEP), 949, 950
Mussolini, Benito, 946, 962, 973; propaganda Apago PDF Enhancer
determination New England: slavery in, 641
and, 928; dictatorship of, 955–957; Hitler National socialism: German, 957, 958 Newfoundland, 635
and, 956(illus.) National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) New France, 635
Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), see Kemal, Mustafa Party, 932, 958 New Granada, 509, 538
(Atatürk) National state: before First World War, 831–838 New imperialism, 847, 851(map), 859; in
Mutiny, see Great Rebellion (India) National System of Political Economy (List), Africa, 859–865; causes of, 865–866; spread
Myconius, 400(illus.) 731 of Christianity and, 867; Japan and, 870–872
My Secret Life, 798–799 Native Americans, see American Indians New Model Army, 546
Mysticism: of Bridget of Sweden, 389–390 Native peoples, 397–398; European exploration New Order (Germany), 967
and, 495 New physics, 917–919
Nagasaki: atomic bombing of, 975, 1000 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), New Spain, 538–539
Nahuatl language, 503 984, 988(map); French withdrawal from, New Testament, 371; Erasmus on, 418; Luther
Nanking, Treaty of (1851), 851 989; Poland, Hungary, and Czech Republic and, 451
Naples, 770, 818; kingdom of, 410 in, 1035; Bosnian Serb military targets and, Newton, Isaac, 594–595, 594(illus.), 599,
Napoleon I (Napoleon Bonaparte), 703–711; 1038; bombing of Yugoslavia, 1038–1039; 601–602, 805
coronation of, 706(illus.); Europe in 1810 Kosovo and, 1038–1039 New World: European “discovery” of, 492–504;
and, 708, 710(map); at Waterloo, 711; Natural History, A (Linné), 608 Spanish conquests in, 501–504; plantation
Congress of Vienna after, 749–751; Egypt Naturalism: in United States, 809 agriculture in, 505–508. See also Americas
and, 853 Natural law: Rousseau on, 607 New world order: of Bush, George H. W., 1030
Napoleon III (Louis Napoleon), 771–772, Natural philosophy, 589, 590, 595 New York (city): World Trade Center
814(illus.), 815–818, 824, 833; urban Natural rights, 687 destruction in, 1045
planning and, 784; Second Empire of, Nature: scientific revolution and, 597; New York (colony): New Amsterdam as, 635
817–818; Italian unification and, 820 representation as female, 598 Niani, 487
Napoleonic Code (France), 704, 705, 799 Navarino, battle at, 762 Nice, 696, 820
Narva, battle at, 576, 577(illus.) Navarre, 436 Nicholas I (Russia), 772
Naseby, battle at, 546 Navigation: exploration and, 495–496; scientific Nicholas II (Russia), 884, 895, 896(illus.)
Nasmyth, James, 723(illus.) revolution and, 595, 598. See also Maritime Nietzsche, Friedrich, 915, 916(illus.), 920
Nasser, Gamal Abdul, 992, 993(illus.) trade Nijmegen, Treaty of, 533
Nation, see State (nation) Navigation Acts (England), 547, 635, 637 Nikon (patriarch), 576
National Assembly (France), 386–387, Navy: Chinese, 485; Portuguese, 510; Spanish Nile River region, 862
532–533, 834, 838; free blacks and, Armada as, 512–513; French, 532; Russian, 1984 (Orwell), 920, 921(illus.), 942
386–387, 532–533, 690, 692, 694, 701; 579; English, 635, 881; in Japan, 872; “Ninety-five Theses on the Power of
disbanding of, 695; Napoleon III and, German, 881, 882(illus.), 883, 890; in First Indulgences” (Luther), 448
817, 818 World War, 890; in Second World War, 974 Nixon, Richard, 1007, 1010
Index • I-19
Nobility, 527(illus.); in England, 386; in France, Old-age pensions: in Germany, 833; in England, Overland trade, see Caravans; Trade
386, 529, 685, 689, 705; crime among, 835 Owen, Robert, 738, 741, 841
396–397; in Italy, 409; class organization and, Old Believers (Russia), 576 Oxford University, 381
431; in Spain, 438–439; in Poland, 466; vs. Olearius, Adam: in Russia, 586–587, 587(illus.)
monarchy, 526; at Versailles, 541; Czech, Oligarchy: in Italian cities, 409 Pacific Ocean region: Magellan in, 500–501,
565; in Bohemia, 565–566; Hungarian, Olivares, count-duke of (Gaspar de Guzmán), 510; Spanish empire in, 510; Second World
566–567; in Prussia, 571; in Russia, 574, 537 War in, 972(map), 974–975
580, 613; as French estate, 684; in French Omdurman: battle at, 862 Pacifism: of Anabaptists, 454
Revolution, 691. See also Aristocracy “On Cannibals” (Montaigne), 514 Paine, Thomas, 663
Noblesse d’épée, 530 On Christian Liberty (Luther), 480–481 Painting: in Italian Renaissance, 422–424; of
Noblesse de robe, 529 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich northern Renaissance, 424; by women,
Nocturnal, 495(illus.) (Solzhenitsyn), 996 426–428; in Mexico, 644(illus.); romantic,
Nonviolent resistance: by Gandhi, 991 O’Neill, Paul, 1047 759(illus.), 760–761; realism in, 809(illus.);
Nordic peoples, 967 On Germany (Staël), 760 modern, 924
Nördlingen, Battle of, 562 On Pleasure (Valla), 416 Pakistan, 992
Normandy: France and, 385; invasion of, 974 On Secular Government (Luther), 451 Palaces: Stockholm Royal Palace and, 568; of
North (United States), 825–826 On the Different Races of Man (Kant), 609 absolute monarchs, 568–569, 568(illus.),
North Africa: Ottomans and, 489, 581; Second On the Dignity of Man (Pico della Mirandola), 569(illus.)
World War in, 973; workers from, 1042, 1054 413 Palacky, Frantisek, 777(illus.); on Czech nation,
North America: European conflicts over, On the False Donation of Constantine (Valla), 416 776–777
635–640, 637(maps); migration to, 640–641; On the Family (Alberti), 414 Palestine: Ottomans and, 489; Jews in,
Industrial Revolution and, 847; steam power “On the Immortality of the Soul” 837(illus.), 838, 839; Balfour Declaration
in, 849. See also Americas (Mendelssohn), 610 and, 903, 905; division of, 992. See also Israel
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), On the Origin of Species by the Means of Natural Panama Canal, 850
see NATO Selection (Darwin), 807 Papacy, 416; Conciliar movement and, 388;
Northcliffe, Lord, 927 On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres France and, 435, 472–473; Inquisition and,
Northern Alliance (Afghanistan), 1045 (Copernicus), 591 438; reform of, 446, 467; Reformation and,
Northern Europe: great Famine in, 372; OPEC, see Organization of Petroleum 458; in Austria, 614; central Italy, Rome, and,
Renaissance in, 416–421, 424 Exporting Countries 818. See also Catholic Church; specific popes
Northern Ireland, see Ulster Open Door policy: in China, 872 Papal infallibility doctrine, 832
North German Confederation, 822 Open-field system, 622; enclosure and, 623 Papal States, 410, 467, 821
North Korea, see Korean War Opium trade, 851 Paper, 418
Norway, 966; Protestantism in, 451; Apago PDF Enhancer
Oppenheim, Moritz, 610(illus.) Parasites: Saint-Simon on, 756
independence from Sweden, 836; Great Optimism: about the future, 1050 Pareja, Juan de, 507, 507(illus.), 540(illus.)
Depression in, 937–938; after Second World Orders: social classes as, 431; religious, Paris, 678–679; religious violence in, 473; Peace
War, 989. See also Scandinavia 469–472. See also Clergy; Nobility; Peasant(s) of, 749, 750; revolution of 1848 in, 770,
Notables: in France, 688–689 Organic chemistry, 805 771; revolt in, 770–771; modernization of,
Nova Scotia, 635 Organization of European Economic 784–786, 784(map); lifestyle in, 785(illus.),
Novels, see Literature Cooperation (OEEC), 989 792, 792(illus.); in Second Empire,
Novgorod, 573 Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries 816(illus.); in Franco-Prussian War, 833–834;
NOW, see National Organization for Women (OPEC), 1010–1011 First World War peace conference in, 902;
Nuclear family, 654 Organization of Work (Blanc), 756 American expatriates in, 932. See also
Nuclear weapons, 1030; U.S. and, 987; French, Origin: categorizing people by, 429 France
989 Original sin: Jansen and, 675 Paris, Treaty of: of 1259, 381; of 1763,
Nuns: Protestantism and, 450; marriage and, Orléans: Joan of Arc at, 385; duke of, 685–686 635–637, 647; of 1783, 683
457; Jansenism and, 674(illus.) Orlov, Grigory, 612, 612(illus.) Paris Accord (1990), 1030
Nur-as-Said (Ottoman officer), 905(illus.) Ormuz, 498 Paris Commune (1871), 834, 838
Nuremberg: observatory at, 596(illus.) Orphans: in factories, 721 Parishes: churches in, 671
Nuremberg Laws, 961 Orthodox Christianity: in Russia, 574 Paris International Exhibition, 925
Nurses, 789 Orwell, George, 920, 921(illus.), 942–943 Parlement of Paris: finances and, 530, 688;
Nursing, see Breast-feeding Oslo Breakfast, 938(illus.) taxation and, 686
Nutrition: in 18th century, 664–665. See also Ottoman Empire, 580–584, 836; Hungary and, Parlements (France), 601, 685–686; Maupeou
Diet (food); Food; Health 466; trade and, 488–489; absolutism in, 559; and, 686
Habsburgs and, 566, 567; in 1566, Parliament: in Prussia, 821, 822–824; in Austria,
Oath of the Tennis Court, 690 581(map); conservatism in, 753; Greece 836
Observatory: at Nuremberg, 596(illus.) nationalism and, 761; decline of, 829–830; Parliament (England), 754; after Hundred
Occupation zones: after Second World War, reform in, 830–831; Tanzimat in, 830–831; Years’ War, 386; monarchy and, 435; Charles
986(map) Jewish settlement in, 837(illus.); Egypt and, I and, 543, 545–546; under Puritans,
October Manifesto (Russia), 829 853, 854; Alliance System and, 881; Balkan 546–547; Charles II and, 547–548;
Oedipal tensions: Freud on, 804 nationalism and, 885(illus.); First World War constitutional monarchy and, 548–549;
Of Natural Characters (Hume), 608 and, 889–890, 903; end of, 890; partition of, enclosure and, 625; voting for, 763–764. See
Ogé, Vincent, 694 906(map). See also Ottoman Turks also House of Commons (England); House of
Oil and oil industry: in Russia, 1034(illus.) Ottoman-Safavid war, 489 Lords (England)
Oil embargo, 1010–1011 Ottoman Turks, 761; Spain and, 512. See also Parliamentary government: in Italy, 955, 956
Oil shock, 1010, 1011, 1020 Ottoman Empire Parma, 409
Okinawa, 975 Otumba, battle at, 502 Parma, duke of, 512
I-20 • Index
Partitions: of Poland, 613, 614(map); of Africa, Peru, 509, 510, 538; Inca in, 502–504; industry Pluralism, 398; in church, 446, 447
860(map); of Palestine, 992 in, 535; Chinese labor in, 859 Pneumonic plague, see Black Death
Passarowitz, Treaty of, 582 Pétain, Henri-Philippe, 894, 966 Poets and poetry: romantic, 759–760. See also
Passive resistance: in Ruhr crisis, 929 Peter III (Russia), 610, 612(illus.) Literature
Pasternak, Boris, 996 Peterloo, Battle of, 763 Pogroms: in Russia, 838
Pasteur, Louis, 783, 805 Peter the Great (Russia), 576–578, 578(illus.); Poincaré, Raymond, 929, 930, 932
Pasteurization, 783 Peterhof of, 541; coronation crown of, Poison gas, 969
Patriarch: Nikon as, 576 558(illus.); St. Petersburg and, 578 Poland, 985, 1024, 1031, 1041, 1046(map);
Patriarchal tradition: among workers, 739 Petrarch, Francesco, 412 Black Death and, 377; Prussian peasants and,
Patriotism: in Germany, 458, 824; in First World Petrograd (St. Petersburg), see St. Petersburg 567; Baltic region and, 571; Russia and, 576,
War, 890–891 Petrograd Soviet, 896, 898 613, 750; Ottomans and, 583; Enlightenment
Patronage: at Versailles, 541 Petroleum, see Oil and oil industry and, 603; partitions of, 613, 614(illus.); revolt
Patrons: of Renaissance arts, 421, 425–428 Petty, William, 547 by, 770; migration from, 856, 857; after First
Paul III (Pope), 467, 472(illus.) Pfaff, William, 1054–1055 World War, 903; Treaty of Versailles and, 903;
Paulette (tax), 528 Pharmacy: in 18th century, 668(illus.). See also Little Entente and, 929; Nazis and, 945,
Paupers, 781; children as, 736 Apothecaries 963(illus.), 965–966, 967; blitzkrieg in, 966;
Peace: search for, 928–933; demonstrations for, Philip II (Spain), 439, 459, 474, 510, Second World War and, 974, 983; de-
1052(illus.) 512(illus.); Mary Tudor and, 462(illus.), 463; Stalinization and, 997; riots in, 997; Solidarity
Peace agreement: for Vietnam War, 1007 empire of, 511–513; Armada and, 512–513 movement in, 1008, 1020–1021, 1025; West
Peaceful coexistence policy, 996 Philip III (Spain), 513, 534, 537 Germany and, 1008; Communism in, 1020;
Peace of Augsburg, 459 Philip IV the Fair (France), 373 Gdansk Agreement in, 1020; economy of,
Peace of Paris, 749, 750 Philip IV (Spain), 527–528, 537 1025; in postcommunist era, 1035
Peace of Utrecht, 534, 536(map), 635 Philip V (Spain), 534, 643 Poland-Lithuania, 466; Russia and, 466,
Peace of Westphalia, 549, 563–566 Philip VI (France), 382 574–575
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, 972; Japanese attack on, Philip of Burgundy: Joanna of Castile and, 439 Polish people: in Austro-Hungarian Empire,
970 Philippines, 484, 500, 501; trade with, 510; 836
Peasant(s), 527(illus.); Luther and, 455; lifestyle migration from, 858–859; U.S. conquest of, Political asylum, 1042
in 17th century, 524–525; in France, 528, 865, 867; Battle of Leyte Gulf and, Political parties, 831; in Germany, 832–833,
767; in central and eastern Europe, 560–561; 974(illus.); independence of, 992 932; anti-Semitic, 837–838; socialist, 838,
Thirty Years’ War and, 563(illus.); in Prussia, Philosophes, 600, 607, 686 840, 841–842; in Russia, 895; in England,
567, 572; in Russia, 577, 580, 827, 829; in Philosophical Dictionary (Voltaire), 618–619 933; in France, 939. See also specific parties
Austria, 614, 615; in 18th century, 622; Philosophy: “natural,” 589, 590; of Descartes, Politics: in Renaissance, 415, 434–439; and
agricultural revolution and, 622–623; Apago PDF Enhancer
595–596; in Age of Anxiety, 915. See also German Reformation, 457–459; revolution in
marriage by, 657; popular literature and, 663; Intellectual thought (1775–1815), 683–711; dual revolution and,
religion of, 675; in French Revolution, Physicians, 667–671; women as, 801, 747; liberal, 754; nationalism and, 754–755;
690–691; in Ireland, 766, 835; in Egypt, 853; 801(illus.). See also Medicine Ottoman, 830(illus.); after First World War,
in Soviet Union, 949, 951, 951(illus.); in Physics, 595, 805; of Aristotle, 591; Newtonian, 928–933; Hitler and, 960; women’s
Ukraine, 952. See also Manors and 594–595, 914, 918, 919; new, 919 movement and, 1009–1010
manorialism; Serfs and serfdom Picasso, Pablo, 924–925 Politiques (France), 473
Peasant revolts, 390–392, 392(map); in England Pickford, Mary, 927 Polo, Marco, 484, 499, 518
(1381), 370(illus.), 390–392; in Flanders, Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 413 Poltava, battle at, 578, 579
390 Piero della Francesca, 422 Pomerania, 562
Peasants’ War (Germany, 1525), 454–455 Pietism, 672 Pompadour, Madame de, 686
Peel, Robert, 764 Pigafetta, Antonio, 493 Poorhouses, 736
Penance: Christian, 448 Pile driver, 723(illus.) Poor Laws (England), 763, 781, 782
Pennsylvania: as colony, 635; terrorist plane Pilgrimage of Grace (England), 462 Poor people: in 17th century, 525; diet of, 664,
crash in, 1045 Pilgrimages: Black Death and, 381 697; French Revolution and, 690–691, 703;
Penny Wedding, The (Allan), 657(illus.) Pisa: council at, 388 globalization and, 1031. See also Poverty
Pentagon: terrorist attack on, 1020, 1045 Pissarro, Camille, 922 Pope(s): in Great Schism, 387; in Renaissance,
People, the: categorizations of, 429–434 Pitt, William, 635 416; as artistic patrons, 424. See also Papacy;
People, The (Michelet), 769 Pius VII (Pope), 705, 706(illus.) specific popes
People of color: free, 693, 694 Pius IX (Pope), 818, 832 Popolo, 409
People’s Budget (England), 835, 883 Pizarro, Francisco, 503–504 Popp, Adelheid, 844–845
People’s Charter (England), 764 Plague: in Marseilles, 377, 627, 627(illus.). Popular culture: religion and, 671–676;
Peoples of the book, 584 See also Black Death Protestant attack on, 676
People’s Republic of China, see China Planck, Max, 917, 918, 919 Popular Front, 939
Pepper, 490 Planetary motion: Kepler’s laws of, 592 Popular literature, 662–663
Père Goriot, Le (Flaubert), 808 Planned economies, 987; in France, 697; Popular revolts: in 17th century, 527–528
Pereire, Isaac and Emile, 732 socialists on, 756; First World War and, 890; Population: in 14th century, 373; plague and,
Perestroika, 1023 New Deal and, 937; in Europe, 989 379–380; of Venice, 490; decline of
Periodic law and periodic table, 805 Plantations: slaves for, 430, 505–508, 640–641, indigenous American, 504–505; in Spain,
Perry, John, 778(illus.) 642(illus.); Portuguese, 497; sugar and, 509; growth of, 625–628, 717, 855; limits
Perry, Matthew, 853, 870–871 505–508; French trade and, 640 on, 626; in 18th century, 628, 630(map); of
Persian Gulf, 1008 Platonic Academy: humanists and, 414 London, 638; of Paris, 638; of African slaves,
Persian Letters, The (Montesquieu), 600–601 Plays, see Drama 642; of Britain, 725–726; industry and,
Perspective: in painting, 422 PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), 1046 725–727; Malthus on, 726, 807; in Ireland,
Index • I-21
766; urban, 780; Darwin and, 807; of Russia, Printing: in Renaissance, 418–421, 419(illus.); military in, 571–572; Austria and, 610; Jews
899; Soviet, 999; decline in Europe, growth in Europe, 420(map); in in, 610; compulsory education in, 662;
1041–1042; of Muslims, 1049 Enlightenment, 604(illus.). See also Books Napoleon and, 706–707, 708; iron industry
Poquelin, Jean-Baptiste, see Molière “Print Shop, The,” 604(illus.) in, 731(illus.); at Congress of Vienna, 749,
Porcelain: from China, 511(illus.) Privatization: in Britain, 1012, 1013; global 750; Holy Alliance and, 751; Frankfurt
Pornography: in France, 604 economy and, 1031; in Russia, 1033, Assembly and, 773–774; distribution of
Port Arthur: Japan and, 872 1034(illus.) income in, 788(illus.); Bismarck and,
Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 701(map) Procession in the Piazza San Marco (Bellini), 821–824. See also Brandenburg-Prussia;
Port Moresby, 974 491(illus.) Germany
Portolans, 498 Procession of the Magi (Gozzoli), 417(illus.) Prussian Constituent Assembly, 774
Portraiture: Renaissance, 422; by Van Dyck, Production: in England, 625; by cottage Psalter, 463
544(illus.) industries, 629–630; industrial, 727 Psychology and psychoanalysis: Freud and, 804,
Port-Royal: convent of, 674(illus.) Professions: middle class, 789 919–920
Portugal, 1011; Spain and, 439, 537; expansion Profit: Utopians on, 417 Ptolemy, Claudius (scientist), 494, 494(illus.),
of Christianity and, 492–493; caravel of, 494; Progress: concept of, 598–599; race and, 609 591
voyages of exploration by, 495; exploration Prokofiev, Sergei, 995 Public education: in Enlightenment, 603.
by, 495–498; overseas empire of, 495–498; Proletarianization, 625 See also Education
Africa and, 497, 859; Brazil and, 497, 539; Proletariat, 757 Public health, 628, 781–783
sugar plantations and, 505; trade by, 510; Propaganda: of imperialists, 866; in First World Public opinion: in Hundred Years’ War,
seaborne empire of, 511; Dutch and, 553, War, 894; of Lenin, 900(illus.); radio and, 382–383; Napoleon III on, 818; before First
647; slave trade and, 643; Asian trade of, 928, 960(illus.); of Stalin, 954, 979(illus.); of World War, 883
644–646 Hitler, 959, 960(illus.) Public sphere, 607
Positivist method, 806 Property: women’s rights to, 800; rights to, Public transportation, 786, 787(illus.)
Postimpressionist art, 922–926 1001 Public works programs: of Hitler, 961. See also
Postmodernism, 1032(illus.) Prophet, see Muhammad New Deal (U.S.)
Potatoes, 509, 665(illus.); introduction into Prostitution: laws regulating, 394, 395(illus.); Puddling furnace, 723
Europe, 628; in Ireland, 766–767 Protestant condemnation of, 456; in 16th and Pugachev, Emelian, 613
Potosí, 509 17th centuries, 655; in 19th century, Purgatory, 448
Potsdam Conference, 983 798–799; illegal immigrants and, 1043; in Purges: in Soviet Union, 954–955
Poverty: as reason for exploration, 493; lack of Netherlands, 1045 Purging, 667
power (energy) and, 721; in Ireland, 766; in Protectionism, 833 Puritans, 463, 465, 544, 545(illus.); occupations
France, 771; in Great Depression, 935–936. Protectorate: in England, 546–547 of, 545(illus.); English absolutism of,
See also Poor people Apago PDF Enhancer
Protectorates: German, 861–862; French, 862 546–547
Power (authority): in male-female relationships, Protest(s): against forced collectivization, Pushkin, Aleksander, 760
434; Christian, 449; of lords in eastern 951–952; student, 1005–1006; in Italy, Putin, Vladimir, 1034, 1034(illus.)
Europe, 561; in Atlantic Ocean region, 621; 1018(illus.); in France, 1039. See also Revolts Putting-out system, 629–630, 650–651, 719,
Industrial Revolution and, 848; in Germany, and rebellions 721, 729
885; in conservative authoritarianism, 946; in Protestant ethic, 544 Pyrenees, Treaty of the, 537
radical totalitarianism, 946, 947; European Protestantism, 449–454, 455–458; Luther and,
Union and, 1039. See also Absolute 446–451; salvation in, 449; appeal of, Qing (Manchu) Dynasty (China), 851, 872, 873
monarchy and absolutism; Constitutionalism 450–451; Calvin and, 452; marriage and, Quadruple Alliance: at Congress of Vienna,
Power (energy), see Energy (power) 455–457; political impact of, 458–459; in 749–750
Power looms, 720 England, 461–463, 544–547, 548; in Quakers, 454
Prado: portraits of Spanish monarchs in, 537 Hungary, 466; Catholic reconciliation and, Quanta, 918
Pragmatic Sanction (1713), 567, 610 469; in France, 473, 529–530; in northern Quarantines, 381, 627
Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438), 434, Netherlands, 474–475; Thirty Years’ War and, Quebec, 501, 532, 635
435 562; in northern German states, 563; Queens, see Monarchy; specific rulers
Prague, 391; defenestration of, 562 Bohemia and, 565; Habsburgs in, 565; Quinine, 866
Praise of Folly, The (Erasmus), 418, 446 scientific revolution and, 596–597; church Quinto, 539
Prato, 393, 394 regulation by, 671; revival of, 672–673; in Quo Vadis (film), 927
Predestination: Calvin on, 464; Jansen and, 675 Germany, 832–833; in Ireland, 835, 836;
Pregnancy: marriage and, 656, 798; in postwar Christian existentialism in, 917. See also Race and racism: categorizing people by, 399,
era, 1002. See also Illegitimacy Christianity; Edict of Nantes; Lutheranism 429–431; meanings of, 429–431; anti-
Premarital sex, 656, 798 Protestant Reformation, 449–454, 455–459; Semitism and, 439; ideas about, 513–514;
Presbyterian Church: in Scotland, 465 Wyclif and, 388; in England and Ireland, Enlightenment and, 608–609; imperialism
Presses: War of the Austrian Succession and, 635 462–463; in eastern Europe, 465–466 and, 865, 967; nationalism and, 885; Nazis
Prester John, 480, 497 Protestant Union, 562 and, 957–958, 969(illus.); in 1990s, 1033.
Pretty Cook, The (Bouchere), 654 Proudhon, Pierre Joseph, 756 See also Ethnic groups; Holocaust; Slaves and
Price: “just,” 664 Proust, Marcel, 920 slavery
Price and wage controls: in First World War, 891 Provinces: in France, 692. See also Colonies and Racial difference, 608
Price revolution, 509–510 colonization Racine, Jean, 542
Priests and priestesses: education and, 446. Provisional government: in Russia, 896–898 Racing, 796
See also Clergy Prussia: in Grand Alliance (1701), 534; after Radar, 999
Primavera (Botticelli), 422(illus.) Thirty Years’ War, 563; absolutism in, 565, Radical Reformation, 451–454
Prince, The (Machiavelli), 410, 415, 416 571–572; duke of, 567; in 17th century, Radicals (France), 939
Principia (Newton), 594, 601–602 567–571; Frederick William in, 567–571; Radicals and radicalism, 753–758, 915–916
I-22 • Index
Radio, 927, 960(illus.) witchcraft trials and, 475; church regulation Republicanism: in France, 835
Railroads, 849; in England, 716(illus.), and, 671–672. See also Counter-Reformation; Research: and development (R&D), 805; during
723–725; continental, 730–731, 732; in Protestant Reformation and after Second World War, 1000
Russia, 827; investment in, 850; in India, 870 Reform Bill (England, 1832), 763 Resistance: to Nazis, 962; in Second World War,
Raison d’état, 530 Reformed church: of Calvin, 465 971
Rákóczy, Francis, 567 Refugees: religious, in Geneva, 465; after Re-Stalinization, 997, 998
Ralph (bishop of Bath and Wells), 379 Second World War, 985, 986(map); in 1990s, Restoration: in England, 547–548, 635
Ramadan, 1051 1042–1043 Retirement benefits: in Germany, 833
R&D, see Research, and development (R&D) Regents: Dutch, 549 Return of the Native, The (Hardy), 809
Raoux, 663(illus.) Reichstag (Germany), 832, 833, 891, 901, 932; Reunification: of Germany, 1028–1030
Rape, 1009; in Middle Ages, 394–395 Hitler and, 958 Revisionism, 841
Raphael, 415(illus.), 425 Reign of Terror: in French Revolution, Revolts and rebellions: by peasants, 390–392,
Rasputin, Grigori, 895, 896(illus.) 698–700, 702–703 392(map), 454–455; ciompi revolts and,
Rastrelli, Bartolomeo, 580 Reinhart, Anna, 455 392–393, 408; urban, 392–393; popular,
Ratification: of EU constitution, 1041 Relativity theory, 918 527–528; in Ottoman Empire, 582; by
Rationalism, 598, 603, 607 Relief programs: in Great Depression, 935, 937, Pugachev, 613; by Saint-Domingue slaves,
Rationing: in First World War, 891, 894–895 959(illus.); Orwell on, 942–943 700–702, 700(illus.), 701(map); against
Ravaillac, François, 529 Religion(s): Black Death and, 381; established, Napoleon, 708; in India, 869; in Japan, 871;
Raw materials: transportation of, 849–850; 454; divisions in Europe, 468(map); in in First World War, 894; of Arabs, 903;
rationing of (First World War), 891 Netherlands, 474, 550; witches and, Kronstadt sailors’ rebellion, 949; nonviolent,
Razin, Stenka, 576 475–477; European expansion and, 492–493; 989; in eastern Europe, 997–998; students in,
Reading: in Enlightenment, 603–607; Spanish imposition of, 513; Montaigne on, 1005–1006
revolution in, 604–605; popular literature 514; in France, 529, 531–532; after Thirty Revolution(s): in politics (1775–1815),
and, 662–663 Years’ War, 563; in Bohemia, 565; absolutism 683–711; American, 687–688; dual, 747; of
Reagan, Ronald, 1008, 1012, 1024 and, 566; in Ottoman Empire, 584, 831; 1830, 767–768; of 1848, 768–774, 837; of
Realism: in Renaissance painting, 422, 423; in science and, 596–597; Voltaire on, 602, 1905, 829; of 1908 (Ottoman Empire), 831;
literature, 804, 807–809; Comte and, 805; in 618–619; popular culture and, 671–676; of in transportation, 849–850; in Germany,
painting, 809(illus.); in art, 924 peasants, 675; French Revolution and, 693, 901–902; totalitarianism as, 947; permanent,
Rearmament: by Nazi Germany, 961 703; working-class, 797; illegitimacy and, 949; youth, 980(illus.); in 1989, 1019,
Reason: use of term, 589; Descartes and, 798; revival of, 917; in India, 991–992; 1024–1030, 1024(map), 1053; in computers
595–596, 598; in Enlightenment, 598, 603; attitudes about, 1049–1050. See also specific and electronics, 1031; in eastern Europe,
race and, 609. See also Enlightenment groups 1052
Rebellions, see Revolts and rebellions Apago PDF Enhancer
Religious festivals, 675–676 Revolutionaries in Transylvania (Ipatescu),
Recession: of early 1980s, 1012 Religious orders: in Catholic Reformation, 467, 746(illus.)
Reconciliation treaty (West Germany), 1008 469–472 Revolutionary War in America, see American
Reconquista (Spain), 436 Religious toleration: Edict of Nantes and, 473; Revolution
Recreation: postwar, 1002 in France, 473; Ottoman, 490, 580; in Rhineland, 962; France and, 696
Red Army (Soviet Union), 900(illus.), 949, 973, Puritan England, 547; in England, 548; Rhodes, Cecil, 861, 863, 863(illus.)
974, 983 Dutch, 550; in Russia, 613 Rhodesia, 861
Red Army Faction (Germany), 1046 Religious truth: science, Enlightenment, and, Ribeiro, Diogo: world map by, 500(illus.)
Red Brigade (Italy), 1046 599 Ricardo, David, 726, 734, 757
Reds: in Russian civil war, 899–900, 900(illus.) Religious wars: in Europe, 458–459, 472–477 Richard II (England): wife of, 388; Peasants’
Red Sea region, 484, 487 Remarque, Erich, 887 Revolt and, 390–392
Red Shirts, 821 Rembrandt von Rijn, 551(illus.) Richard III (England), 435
Reflections on the Revolution in France (Burke), Remembrance of Things Past (Proust), 920 Richelieu, Cardinal (Armand Jean du Plessis),
694 Renaissance, 407–440; economy in, 408; 529, 541; foreign policy of, 530; Thirty Years’
Reform(s): of Christian Church, 391, 445; humanism in, 412–414; intellectual thought War and, 530, 562
Erasmus on, 418; of papacy, 467; by Peter the in, 412–421; education in, 414–415; political Riefenstahl, Leni, 928
Great (Russia), 576–578; in Prussia, thought in, 415; secularism in, 416; in North, Rigaud, André, 707
609–610; in Russia, 612–613, 827; in Austria, 416–421, 424; printing in, 418–421; arts in, Rigaud, Hyacinthe, 522(illus.)
614–615; central and eastern European, 421–428; Italian, 421–428; social hierarchy Rights: of French Protestants, 531–532; in
615–616; in churches, 672; in France, 688, in, 428–434; gender in, 432–433; wedding France, 692; in Saint-Domingue, 694; of
692–693; in 19th century, 761–768; in chest in, 433(illus.); state (nation) in, married women, 799; of Jews, 837; in
England, 763–765, 835; Ottoman, 830–831; 434–439; science and, 595 revolutionary Russia, 896; before First World
after Second World War, 987; in West Renoir, Pierre Auguste, 922 War, 914; for Soviet women, 953; in Europe,
Germany, 987; in United States, 994–995; in Reparations: Germany and, 928, 929, 1032
Soviet Union, 996–997; in Czechoslovakia, 929(illus.), 930; after Second World War, Riots: food, 524(illus.); in France, 530,
997; by Gorbachev, 1020, 1022–1024, 985 1054–1055; in Russia, 895; in Soviet Union,
1024–1025. See also Protestant Reformation; Repatriation: of migrants, 856 949; in Poland, 997, 1020
Reformation Representative assemblies: after Hundred Years’ Rite of Spring, The (Stravinsky), 926
Reformation: of Christian church, 445–457; War, 375; organization by orders, 431; in Rituals: at Versailles, 541
Protestant, 449–454, 455–459; radical, France, 533 Rivers: transportation on, 718
451–454; arts in, 452–453, 452(illus.), Representative government, 747, 753–754 Roads and highways: in England, 723
453(illus.); marriage and, 455–457; women Republic, 410; in Italian cities, 409, 410; in Road to Wigan Pier, The (Orwell), 942
and, 457; German politics and, 457–459; in France, 696, 770–772, 824, 833–835. See Robe nobility (France), 529, 530, 686. See also
eastern Europe, 465–466; Catholic, 466–472; also Dutch Republic; England (Britain) Estates (classes)
Index • I-23
Robespierre, Maximilien, 694, 696, 697; Reign 895; peace settlement with Germany, 899; Sarajevo: Francis Ferdinand assassination in, 883
of Terror and, 698–700; execution of, 702, independence of, 1028; successor states and, Sardinia, 818–820
702(illus.) 1029(map); social revolution in, 1033. See Sardinia-Piedmont: Italian unification and, 818,
Robin Hood, 397 also First World War; Razin, Stenka; Russian 819(map), 820
Robot (days of unpaid labor), 565 Revolution (1905); Russian Revolution Sarkozy, Nicolas, 1054, 1055
Rocket (locomotive), 724 (1917); Soviet Union Sartre, Jean-Paul, 916, 917
Rococo style, 605–606 Russian civil war, 949 Sassoon, Siegfried, 887
Rocroi, battle at, 537 Russian Empire: conservatism in, 753 Saudi Arabia, 1030, 1047
Rogers, Ginger, 927 Russian Federation, 1027, 1028, 1035 Savages: Africans seen as, 513
Rolling mills, 723 Russian-French Alliance, 880(illus.), 881 Savonarola, Girolamo, 410–411
Roman Catholic Church, see Catholic Church Russian-German Reinsurance Treaty, 881 Savoy, 696, 820
Romania, 762, 883, 903, 997; Little Entente Russian Orthodox Church, 574, 576. See also Saxony, 465, 565, 750; Elector of, 451, 457;
and, 929; in Second World War, 974; 1989 Orthodox Christianity Napoleon and, 706
revolution in, 1026; in postcommunist era, Russian Revolution (1905), 829 Scandinavia: Great Depression in, 937–938
1035 Russian Revolution (1917), 579(illus.), Schacht, Hjalmar, 961
Romanians, 772 895–899, 897(illus.), 953; Italian socialists Schleswig, 774
Roman Inquisition, 467 and, 955 Schleswig-Holstein, 774, 822
Romanov family: Anastasia (wife of Ivan IV), Russo-Japanese War, 872 Scholarship, see Intellectual thought
574–575; Michael, 576. See also specific Rutherford, Ernest, 918 Schönberg, Arnold, 926
rulers Rwanda, 945, 1042 Schönbrunn palace, 541, 567, 569(illus.),
Romantic movement, 758–761; Rousseau and, 615(illus.)
607 SA, see Storm troopers (SA) Schools, 400(illus.), 658, 661–662; medieval,
Rome: baroque art in, 539; papacy in, 818; Sacks: of Constantinople (1453), 489(illus.), 400(illus.); humanist, 414; Jesuit, 470–472;
Treaty of (1957), 989 580; of Constantinople (1204), 490 missions and, 866(illus.). See also Education;
Rome-Berlin Axis, 963 Sacraments: administration of, 379; Luther on, Universities
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano: fireside chats of, 449; marriage as, 456 Schuman, Robert, 989
928; New Deal of, 937; Grand Alliance and, Saddam Hussein, 1030, 1047 Science: religion and, 596–597; society and,
972; at wartime conferences, 982–983, Sadowa, Battle of, 822 597– 598; popularization of, 599(illus.);
982(illus.); Manhattan Project and, 999–1000 Safavid Empire: trade and, 489–490 racism and, 609; in 19th century, 804–807;
Rothschild, Edmond de, 837(illus.) Sahara: trade and, 487 pure theoretical vs. applied, 999; in postwar
Rotten boroughs, 763 Sailors: hospitals for, 378; lifestyle of, 493; era, 999–1000; reduced spending in, 1012.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 607–608, 609, 692, Atlantic passage and, 508 See also Scientific revolution
759; on education, 661 Apago PDF Enhancer
Sails: lateen, 494 Scientific community, 597–598
Roy, Olivier, 1050 Saint(s): veneration of images of, 452–453 Scientific farming, 623
Royal council: in England, 435; in Spain, 436 Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre, 473 Scientific method, 597, 806
“Royall Oake of Brittayne, The,” 546(illus.) Saint Basil’s Cathedral (Moscow), 575(illus.) Scientific revolution, 590–598
Royal Palace (Stockholm), 568 Saint Bavo, Church of, 453(illus.) Scientists, 1000
Royal Society of London, 596 Saint-Domingue, 637(map), 640, 693; slave Scotland: population decline in, 373; England
Rubens, Peter Paul, 531(illus.), 539–540 revolt on, 700–702, 700(illus.), 701(map) and, 436; Presbyterian Church in, 465; Stuart
Rudder, 495 St. Helena: Napoleon at, 711 dynasty from, 543; church in, 545;
Ruhr region: after Thirty Years’ War, 565; crisis St. Lawrence River region, 501, 635 Enlightenment in, 603; in Great Britain, 634
in, 929–930, 929(illus.), 931 Saint Mark Preaching in Alexandria (Gentile and Scott, Samuel, 620(illus.)
Rump Parliament (England), 546 Giovanni Bellini), 426 Scott, Walter, 759, 760
Rumsfeld, Donald, 1047 Saint Peter’s Basilica, 416, 447 Scriptures: Luther on, 447, 450
Runaway slaves: in London, 643 St. Petersburg, 578–580, 579(illus.) Sculpture: by Donatello, 423; Kollwitz and,
Rural areas: wet-nursing in, 658. See also Saint Peter’s Fields, Manchester: protests in, 763 914(illus.)
Agriculture; Farms and farming; Peasant(s); Saint-Simon, Duc de, 540–541, 556–557 Seaborne trade, 484; routes to East and, 497;
Serfs and serfdom Saint-Simon, Henri de, 756, 805 trading empires and, 506(map), 510–511
Russia, 572–580; Black Death and, 377; Salic Law: women under, 381; in France, Seaport cities: medieval, 381
absolutism in, 559; Estonia and, 561(illus.); 381–382 Second Balkan War, 883
Mongols in, 572–574; expansion of, Salons, 605–606 Second Coalition, 705
573(map), 613, 614; alliances of, 576; Salt: tax on, 434 Second Continental Congress, 687
peasants in, 577, 580; navy in, 579; foreign Saltash Bridge, The (Brunel), 724(illus.) Second Empire (France), 816(illus.), 817–818,
traveler in, 586–587, 587(illus.); Salvation: by faith, 447; Luther on, 447; 824
Enlightenment and, 603, 610–613; Napoleon Protestants on, 449; education and, 662; Second estate (France): nobility as, 684
and, 706, 707, 708; industrialization in, 727, society and, 671–672; in Methodism, 673 Second International, 840, 841
728(illus.), 730; at Congress of Vienna, 750; Salvation Army, 959(illus.) Second Reform Bill (England, 1867), 835
Holy Alliance and, 751; Turks and, 762; aid Same-sex relationships: in Middle Ages, Second Republic (France), 770–771, 816–817
to Austria, 772; modernization of, 826–829; 395–396, 396(illus.). See also Homosexuality Second revolution: in French Revolution,
Crimean War and, 827; foreign investment in, Samurai, 871 696–697
828; anti-Semitism in, 838; Marxists in, 842; Sand, George, 760 Second Sex, The (Beauvoir), 1009, 1015(illus.)
steam power in, 849; migration from, Sanitation: plague and, 375–376; urban, 780, Second Treatise of Civil Government (Locke), 548
856–857; imperialism by, 865; Alliance 781; Chadwick and, 782–783 Second World War: origins of, 931, 964(illus.);
System and, 880–881, 880(illus.); pre-First San Salvador, 499 opening of, 966–967; in Europe, 966–970,
World War alliances of, 881, 882–883; Balkan Sans-culottes (France), 697, 698(illus.) 968(map); in Africa, 968(map); casualties of,
wars and, 883; First World War impact on, Santa Fe capitulations, 499 970, 975; in Pacific Ocean region, 970, 972,
I-24 • Index
Second World War (cont.) 1004–1005; discrimination and, 1009. abolition of slave trade, 643; in Saint
972(map), 974–975; Normandy invasion in, See also Homosexuality; Prostitution Domingue, 693; Saint-Domingue revolt and,
974; in Asia, 974–975; atomic bombings in, Sex discrimination, 1009–1010 700–702, 700(illus.), 701(map); in France
975, 1000; recovery after, 981, 1014; end of, Sexism, 1009 and French colonies, 702, 707, 771; in
981–982; results in Europe, 985–989, Sexual division of labor, see Gender United States, 825–826, 826(map). See also
986(map); decolonization after, 989–993, Seymour, Jane, 461 Race and racism
990(map); science, technology, and, Sforza family, 410; Francesco, 427; Ludovico, Slave trade, 499, 506(map); Genoa and, 492;
999–1000 427; Gian Galazzo, 430 Portugal and, 510; asiento and, 635; Atlantic,
Secret police: in Soviet Union, 900, 954; in Shah: Abbas I as, 489, 490 640–643; Equiano on, 641(illus.), 645;
eastern Europe, 996; in Poland, 1025 Shakespeare, William, 515–516 abolition of, 643; slave ships and, 651(illus.);
Secularism: in Renaissance, 416; in art subject Sheep, 373 African, 861
matter, 423; in Enlightenment, 598; Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 759 Slavs, 572–573, 967; in Russia, 572; in Austro-
Ottoman, 831 Shi’ite (Shi’a) Muslims, 1048, 1048(illus.) Hungarian Empire, 836. See also Russia
Secularization: of society, 454 Shipbuilding: British, 850(illus.) Slovakia, 1035, 1041
Security Council (United Nations): Iraq and, “Ship money,” 545 Slovenia, 1038, 1041
1047 Ships and shipping, 881, 882(illus.); Venetian, Smallpox, 504; inoculation against, 670–671
Sedan, battle at, 824, 833 490; types of, 494; Dutch, 552; steam power Smith, Adam, 647–648, 754
Segovia, 437 in, 849; port facilities for, 850; British Smolensk, 708
Segregation: apartheid as, 863; in British India, dominance of, 850(illus.). See also Maritime Smyrna, 906
870 trade; Navy Snayers, Peeter, 538(illus.)
Self-determination: Metternich on, 751; Treaty Shock therapy: in Polish economy, 1025; in Soccer, 796
of Versailles and, 907; in Middle East, Russian economy, 1033 Social classes, see Classes
910–911; after Second World War, 989 Shogun, 871 Social Contract, The (Rousseau), 608
Self-interest: Smith on, 647 Shopping: as pastime, 666(illus.) Social Darwinism, 807, 865, 867
Selim I (Ottoman), 581 Shorter Catechism (Luther), 451 Social Democrats: in Germany, 833, 838, 841,
Selim II (Ottomans), 583 Shostakovich, Dimitri, 995 932, 959, 960; in Russia, 838; in Scandinavia,
Semiskilled workers, 791 Siberia, 827, 899; Russia and, 576 937–938
Seneca, 514 Sicily, 818, 820, 973; Spanish-occupied, Social equality: First World War and, 892, 894
Senegal, 862 527–528. See also Kingdom of the Two Socialist Party, 841, 842; in France, 842, 1039;
Sennett, Mack, 927 Sicilies in Germany, 932, 1030; in Italy, 955
Separate spheres, 738–739, 799, 800 Sidney, Philip, 515 Socialists and socialism, 838–842; in French
Separation of church and state, 454 Sieges: of Castle of Mortagne, 383(illus.). Revolution, 697; utopian, 755; in France,
Separation of powers, 601 Apago PDF Enhancer
See also Sacks 756, 835, 939; Marxian, 757–758; vs. liberal
September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, 1020, Siena, 409, 410; Florence and, 412(illus.) capitalism, 771; women and, 800; in
1045–1046, 1046(illus.), 1047, 1050 Sieyès, Emmanuel Joseph, 689–690, 703–704 Germany, 833; non-revolutionary nature of,
September Massacres (France), 696, 697 Sigismund (Holy Roman Empire), 391 840; of Adelheid Popp, 844–845; First World
Serbia, 883; local autonomy for, 829; boycott Sigismund I (Poland), 466 War and, 890; Sorel and, 915–916; in
of, 1033; Milosevic and, 1037–1039, Sigismund Augustus (Poland), 583 Scandinavia, 937–938, 938(illus.); in 2001,
1038(map) Signori (rulers), 409 1045
Serbian people, 772, 883, 1038(map) Silent Generation, 1004 Social mobility: in England, 543
Serfs and serfdom: in England, 392; in Spain, Silesia, 562; Prussian control of, 610, 614, Social revolution: in Russia, 1033
393; in central and eastern Europe, 559–560; 635 Social rights: before First World War, 914
after Thirty Years’ War, 565; in Russia, Silk Road, 488 Social science: in 19th century, 805–807
577–578, 580, 613, 827; in Prussia, 610; in Silks: trade in, 510 Social security: in Germany, 833; in United
Austria, 614, 615, 772. See also Peasant(s) Silver: from Americas, 509–510, 539, 643; States, 937; reforms in postwar era, 1001; in
Sermon on the Mount: Erasmus and, 418 Spanish income from, 510, 513 1970s, 1011
Servants: blacks as, 429–430; women as, 655; Sin: Luther on, 447; forgiveness through Social welfare, see Welfare
of middle class, 789; domestic, 794, indulgences, 447–448; Jansen on, 675 Society: in 14th century, 390–401; Machiavelli
795(illus.) Single European Act (1986), 1039 on, 415; utopia and, 417; in Renaissance,
Servetus, Michael, 465 Sino-Japanese War, 872 428–434; Calvinist, 463; in France, 534,
Service nobility: in Russia, 574, 578 Sister Carrie (Dreiser), 809 684–685; Dutch, 550; in central and eastern
Seven Years’ War, 635; alliances in, 610; Sistine Chapel: Michelangelo and, 406(illus.), Europe, 559–565; in Russia, 576; science
European claims and, 637(maps); India and, 424, 425 and, 597–598; in Prussia, 610; lifestyle
647; France and, 686, 687–688 Six Acts (England), 763 changes and, 621; 18th-century changes in,
Seville, 437 Sixtus IV (Pope), 438 621–648; consumer, 665–667; economic
Sewage systems, 628, 782–783 Sixtus V (Pope), 512 determination in, 732; urban, 786–797,
Sewing machine, 795 Skepticism, 514, 599–600 791(illus.); postwar (1945–1968), 999–1006;
Sex and sexuality: in urban areas, 393–396; Skilled workers, 740(illus.), 791 in 1970s and 1980s, 1011–1012. See also
gender and, 432; Protestants on, 456–457; Skin color: categorizing people by, 429 Estates (classes); Orders; Social mobility
servant girls and, 655; premarital sex, 656, Skyscrapers, 922 Society of Friends, see Quakers
798; gender segregation of jobs and, 739; in Slave labor: for Nazi Germany, 967. See also Society of Jesus, see Jesuits
19th century, 797–798; in marriage, 800, Forced labor Sodomy, 395, 396
802; women and, 802; sexual behavior of Slaves and slavery: from Africa, 429, 430, 488; Soil: fertility of, 622
children, 803–804; Freud on, 804; middle- sugar plantations and, 505–508, 508(illus.); Solar system, 590; Copernicus on, 591–592;
class youth and, 812–813; after First World Ottoman, 582, 830; science used to defend, Brahe on, 592; Kepler on, 592. See also
War, 920; in youth counterculture, 609; in American colonies, 640–641; Astronomy; Universe
Index • I-25
Soldiers: in Thirty Years’ War, 563(illus.); in Spanish Netherlands, 533 Strasbourg: Jews killed in, 378; France and, 534
Prussia, 572(illus.); of First World War, 894. Spanish Troops (Snayers), 538(illus.) Strasser, Gregor, 959
See also Armed forces; Military Special-interest groups, 866 Stravinsky, Igor, 926
Solidarity movement, 1008, 1014(illus.), Spectator sports, 796 Stream-of-consciousness technique, 920
1020–1021, 1022(illus.), 1025 Speculation: in England, 373 Streetcars, 786
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 996, 999 Spencer, Herbert, 807 Streptomycin, 377
Somalia: refugees from, 1042 Spengler, Oswald, 920 Stresemann, Gustav, 930, 931, 932
Somme: Battle of, 887, 891 Spenser, Edmund, 515 Strikes, 841; in Britain, 740, 933; in Manchester
Song of Love, The (De Chirico), 919(illus.) Spice Islands, see Moluccas (1810), 741; in France, 817, 1006, 1039; in
Sophia (Austria), 772 Spices and spice trade, 490, 492, 497, 510–511 First World War, 894–895; in Germany, 902;
Sorel, Georges, 915–916 Spies and spying: in France, 531, 705 in Poland, 1020–1021, 1022(illus.)
Sorgh, Hendrick, 624(illus.) Spinning jenny, 719, 720 Strutt family, 735; Elizabeth, 734, 735;
Sound and the Fury, The (Faulkner), 920 Spinsters: origins of term, 631 Jedediah, 735, 735(illus.)
South (U.S.), 825–826; slavery in, 641 Spirit of the Laws, The (Montesquieu), 601 Stuart dynasty. See also specific rulers
South Africa: England and, 859 Spiritual Exercises (Loyola), 469 Stuart dynasty (England), 543, 544
South African War (1899–1902), 863, 867, 881 Sports: blood sports, 675, 676(illus.); of Student protests, 1004–1005, 1012; in United
South America, 509; silver from, 509, 539; gold working class, 796 States, 1006–1007
from, 539 Spurs, Battle of the, 390 Sturm und Drang, 758
Southeast Asia: trade with, 484; Chinese Srebrenica: massacre at, 1037(illus.), 1038 Styria, 565
immigration to, 485 Sri Lanka, see Ceylon Subcontractors: industrialization and, 738
South Korea, see Korean War SS squads (Nazi Germany), 961, 962, 967, Submarines, 890
Sovereignty, 526; of American states, 687 973–974 Sub-Saharan Africa, 513
Soviets, 896 Stadholder (Dutch), 549–550 Succession, see War of the Austrian Succession;
Soviet Union: forced-labor camps in, 945, Staël, Germaine de, 760 War of the Spanish Succession
951(illus.), 954; tyranny in, 945; five-year Stalin, Joseph, 979(illus.); rise to power of, Sudan, 862, 865
plans in, 949, 950–952, 978–979; 949–950; Trotsky and, 950; propaganda and, Sudetenland, 965
totalitarianism in, 949; life and culture in, 954; wife of, 954; Hitler pact with, 965; Five- Suez Canal, 850, 865, 905, 993(illus.); opening
952–954; terror and purges in, 954; German Year Plan of, 978–979; at wartime of, 854(illus.)
attack on, 967, 968(map); Second World War conferences, 982–983, 982(illus.) Suez Canal Company, 992
and, 967, 973; Stalin and, 975–976; eastern Stalingrad: Battle of, 968(map), 973 Suffrage, see Universal suffrage; Voting and
Europe and, 996; de-Stalinization in, Stalin-White Sea Canal, 951(illus.) voting rights; Women’s suffrage movement
996–997; Brezhnev Doctrine and, 997; Standard of living: industrialization and, 717, Sugar and sugar industry: trade in, 484,
disintegration of, 1019, 1026–1028; fromApago PDF Enhancer
786–787; of workers, 736; in 1750, 848; in 491–492, 640; slavery and, 505–508,
1970s to 1985, 1020–1024; Russia and Soviet Union, 953, 996, 998; in postwar era, 642(illus.); refinery for, 508(illus.); in Brazil,
successor states of, 1029(map); end of cold 1002. See also Lifestyle 539; consumption of, 665; migrant labor for,
war and, 1030. See also Cold war; Russia; Standards and standardization: European Union 858(illus.)
Russian Revolution (1917); Second World War and, 1039 Suleiman I the Magnificent (Ottoman), 489,
Soyer, Isaac, 936(illus.) Stanley, Henry M., 861 512, 580, 581, 582, 583, 829; Hungary
Space programs: in U.S. and Soviet Union, 1000 Star Chamber (England), 435, 436 defeated by, 466
Spain, 946, 1011, 1043; serfdom and, 393; Jews Starry Night, The (Van Gogh), 923(illus.) Sullivan, Louis H., 921
in, 436–437; in Renaissance, 436–439; New Starvation, see Famine Sully, duke of (Maximilien de Béthune), 529, 532
Christians in, 437–439; in 1492, 437(map); State (nation): in Renaissance, 415, 434–439; in Sultan, 581; Ottoman, 584
Inquisition in, 438–439, 534; Muslims in, 17th century, 525–526; absolutist, 528–542; Summer (Grimshaw), 792, 793(illus.)
439; in Holy Roman Empire, 474; Armada Habsburgs and, 567; in Russia, 576, 577; Summer Palace (Vienna), 569, 569(illus.)
and, 474–475, 512–513; expansion of creation of, 755; before First World War, Sumptuary laws, 431–432
Christianity and, 492–493; exploration by, 831–838; authoritarian, 947. See also Sundiata Keita, 487
498–499, 501–504; New World and, Government Sun King: Louis XIV (France) as, 530
501–504; colonial settlement by, 504–508, States General (Netherlands), 549 Sunni Islam, 582, 1048
643–644; seaborne empire of, 506(map), Status: in France, 689. See also Classes Sun Yat-sen, 872, 992
511; silver in, 509–510; trading empire of, Statute of Kilkenny, 399–400 Superego, 919
510–511; Dutch war and, 533; War of the Statute of Laborers (England, 1351), 380, 390 Superpowers, 1008, 1025, 1030, 1032–1033
Spanish Succession and, 534, 553, 571, 635, Staupitz, John, 447 Supremacy Act (England), 461
643; absolutism in, 534–538; commerce in, Steam power, 849; steam engine and, 721–723, Suprematism (Malevich), 950(illus.)
535–537; Bourbon dynasty in, 536(map); 728–729; steamship and, 866 Surgeons and surgery, 783; in 18th century,
decline of, 537; France and, 537; monarchy Steele, Flora Annie, 876 667–668
in, 537; colonies of, 538–539; in Thirty Years’ Steen, Jan, 549(illus.) Surrealism, 919(illus.), 925
War, 562; churches in, 672; at Battle of Stein, Gertrude, 932 Survival in Auschwitz (Levi), 971
Trafalgar, 706; Napoleon and, 708, Stephenson, George, 724 Survival of the fittest, 807
711(illus.); revolt in, 751; civil war in, Sterilization: in operating room, 783 Swabia, 455
925(illus.), 963; fascism in, 939; terrorist Stern, Karl, 917 Swallows: Italian migrants as, 858
attack on, 1049. See also Silver Sternpost rudder, 495 Sweated industries, 794–795
Spanish America: slaves in, 642 Stockholders: in banks, 732 Sweden, 1040; Lutheranism in, 451; Baltic
Spanish-American War, 865, 867 Stockholm: Royal Palace in, 568 region and, 571; Russia and, 576; Napoleon
Spanish Armada, 474–475, 512–513 Stock market crash (1929), 933 and, 706; Norwegian nationalism and, 836;
Spanish civil war, 963 Stolypin, Peter, 829 Great Depression in, 937–938. See also
Spanish Empire, 511–513 Storm troopers (SA), 961 Scandinavia
I-26 • Index
Swedish phase: of Thirty Years’ War, 530, 562 Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Hardy), 809 Total war: in French Revolution, 697–698; First
Swedish Victory at Narva, The, 1701 Test Act (England), 548 World War as, 890–892; social impact of, 892,
(Cederstrom), 577(illus.) Tet Offensive, 1007 894; Russia and, 895; Second World War as,
Swinka, Jakub, 398 Tetzel, John, 447–448 973
Switzerland: Protestantism in, 451; civil war in, Tewfiq (Egypt), 854 Toulouse, 394
770 Textile industry, 631; foreign trade and, 510; in Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de, 796(illus.)
Sword nobility (France), 530 England, 630, 633, 719–721; in Low Tourism: in postwar era, 1002
Syllabus of Errors (Pius IX), 818 Countries, 630; improvements in, 719–720; Tournai, 533
Syphilis, 504, 803 energy in, 721; children in, 737–738; families Toussaint L’Ouverture, see L’Ouverture,
Syria, 903, 910–911; Ottomans and, 489, 830; in, 737–738. See also Woolen industry Toussaint
independence of, 905; decolonization and, Thatcher, Denis, 1013 Towns, see Cities and towns
992 Thatcher, Margaret, 1008, 1012, 1013 Toynbee, Arnold, 917
Syrian National Congress, 905–906 Theater, see Drama Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Wittgenstein),
System of Nature, The (Linné), 608 Theodore (Russia), 575 916
System of Positive Philosophy (Comte), 805 Theology: on subjugation of women to men, Trade: in Italian cities, 409; European
Szlachta (Polish nobility), 466 455–456; of Calvin, 463–464; Voltaire on, exploration and, 483; in Indian Ocean,
602 484–485; Afro-Asian, 486(map); Muslim,
Tableau de Paris (Mercier), 678–679 Thermidorian Reaction, 702–703 486(map), 487(illus.); overland, 488;
Tabula rasa, 600 Thermodynamics, 805 Ottoman, 489; by Venice, 490–491; by
Taille, 533 Thiers, Adolphe, 834 Genoa, 491–492; transatlantic, 510; long-
Tai Ping Rebellion, 872 Third Balkan War, 883. See also First distance, 510–511; with Spanish colonies,
Taiwan, 992 World War 535; English, 547, 635, 637–640; Dutch,
Taliban, 1020, 1045 Third Coalition, 706 552–553; after Thirty Years’ War, 563–565; in
Talleyrand, Charles, 749, 750 Third estate, 431 Atlantic region, 636(map), 637–640; colonial,
Tamerlane, 495 Third estate (France): commoners as, 684; 637–640; with Asia, 644–647; in 19th
Tametsi decree, 469 Estates General and, 689 century, 849–850; transportation and,
Tannenberg: Battle of, 888 Third Reform Bill (England, 1884), 835 849–850; world market and, 849–850; China
Tanzimat, 830–831 Third Republic (France), 824, 833–835 and, 850–852; Japan and, 852. See also
Tariff protection: industrialization and, 718, Third Rome, 574 Business; Commerce; Maritime trade; Slave
730; in Germany, 833; in Great Depression, Third way: in East Germany, 1029 trade
935; Common Market and, 989 Third World: income per person in, 848, Trade corporations, see Guilds
Tatars, 571, 613. See also Mongols 848(illus.) Trade routes: Silk Road as, 488
Taxation: in England, 392, 544, 835; in France, Apago PDF Enhancer
Thirteenth Amendment (U.S.), 826 Trade unions, 741, 834; in Soviet Union, 952.
434, 528–529, 532–533, 686, 688–689; of Thirty Years’ War, 549, 562; French army in, See also Labor unions
prostitutes, 457; papal, 458; in Russia, 527; phases of, 530, 562; Spain in, 537, 562; Trading companies, See British East India
577–578; by Ottomans, 582, 829; income Europe after, 563–565, 564(map); elector of Company; Dutch East India Company; Dutch
taxes, 787 Brandenburg in, 567 West India Company
Taxonomies: race and, 608 Thomas à Kempis, 389 Trading empires: seaborne, 506(map)
Tea: consumption of, 665 Thomas Aquinas, 590 Traditions: of colonies, 868
Teaching, 789 Three Emperors’ League, 880(illus.), 881 Trafalgar, Battle of, 706
Technology: Chinese, 485; exploration and, Three Musicians (Picasso), 924, 925(illus.) Tragedy: Shakespearean, 515–516; French, 542
493–495; agricultural, 622–623; British, 728; Tiburtius, Franziska, 801, 801(illus.) Training, see Education
wealth and, 848; imperialism and, 865, 866; Tiepolo, Giovanni, 535(illus.) Tramp freighter: voyage of, 849
Soviet Union and, 978–979; in postwar era, Tilsit, Treaty of, 707 Transatlantic trade, 510
999–1000. See also Industrial Revolution Timbuktu, 487, 488 Transjordan, 903
Teheran Conference, 982–983 Time of Troubles (Russia), 575–576 Transportation: in England, 718, 718(map);
Teke people, 861 Tirpitz, Alfred von, 883 railroads and, 724–725; public, 786,
Telegraph, 866 Titian, 425, 512(illus.) 787(illus.); revolution in, 849–850; trade and,
Telescope, 593(illus.), 595 Tito, Josip Broz, 996, 1037 849–850. See also Railroads; Roads and
Tempest, The (Shakespeare), 516 Titus Andronicus (Shakespeare), 515(illus.) highways
Tencin, Madame de, 605 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 771 Trans-Saharan trade, 487
Ten Commandments, The (Cranach the Elder), Tofts, Mary, 673(illus.) Transubstantiation, 449–450
450(illus.), 452 Togo, 862 Transvaal, 861, 863
Tenerife Concert Hall, 1032(illus.) Tokyo (Edo), Japan, 853 Transylvania, 466, 746(illus.); Habsburgs and,
Ten Hours Act (England, 1847), 764–765 Toledo: Jews in, 437; conversos in, 438 466, 566, 582
Tenochtitlán, 501, 502(illus.) Toleration, see Religious toleration Travel: dangers of, 397; in postwar era, 1002.
Teresa of Ávila (Saint), 471, 471(illus.) Tolstoy, Leo, 809 See also Expansion; Exploration
Territorial expansion, see Expansion Topkapi Palace, 582, 582(illus.) Traveler Looking over a Sea of Fog (Friedrich),
Terror, the: in French Revolution, 698–700 Tordesillas, Treaty of, 500 759(illus.)
Terrorism: in Russia, 828(illus.), 954; in Japan, Tories (England), 763, 764 Travels (Marco Polo), 518
871; attacks on United States, 1045–1046; Torture: in Inquisition, 439 Travels in Muscovy (Olearius), 586–587,
Islamic fundamentalism and, 1045–1046; Totalitarianism, 945, 976; in First World War 587(illus.)
al-Qaeda and, 1046–1047; U. S. embassy Germany, 892; racial imperialism and, 967. Treaties, see specific treaties
bombing and, 1047; attacks on Europe, See also Communists and communism; Nazi Treitschke, Heinrich von, 865
1048–1049; in Spain, 1049; predictions Germany; Soviet Union Trench warfare, 886(map), 887, 888, 888(illus.)
about, 1050 Total state, 947–948 Trent, Council of, 452–453, 467–469
Index • I-27
Trial, The (Kafka), 920 Soviet Union, 953; in Germany, 958, 961, Upper middle class, 788–789
Trials: for sodomy, 396; for witchcraft, 475–476 1040; in 1970s, 1010; globalization and, Upper working class, 791
Tridentine decrees, 467, 469 1031; European Union and, 1039; in western Urban VI (Pope), 387
Triennial Act (England), 545 Europe, 1039, 1040, 1042; in Europe, 1054 Urban VIII (Pope): Galileo and, 594
Trinity: Servetus and, 465 Unification: of Russia, 573; of Germany, Urban areas: plague and, 379–380; discontent,
Triple Alliance, 880(illus.), 881, 889 755(illus.), 774, 821–825, 823(map) 392; in 14th century, 392–393; in Russia,
Triple Entente, 880(illus.), 885, 889, 890, 894 824(illus.); of Italy, 818–821, 819(map) 575; culture in, 603–607; illegitimacy in, 657;
Triumph of Democratic Republics, The (French Uniformitarianism principle (Lyell), 807 lifestyle in, 779, 780–786; classes in,
illustration), 770(illus.) Union of South Africa, 861, 863 786–797, 791(illus.); standard of living in,
Triumph of Spain, The (Tiepolo), 535 Union of Utrecht (1581), 474, 475 841. See also Cities and towns
Triumph of the Will, The (Riefenstahl), 928 Unions, see Labor unions Urban guilds, 631–633
Trotsky, Leon, 898, 900, 949, 950 United Kingdom, see England (Britain) Urbanization: Industrial Revolution and, 779
Truce: ending Korean War, 984 United Nations: Korean War and, 984; Palestine Urban planning, 784–786, 784(map)
True and False Churches, The (Cranach the division by, 992; Iraq and, 1030, 1047; in Ure, Andrew, 734
Younger), 452(illus.) Afghanistan, 1045 Ursuline order, 469
Truman, Harry S: at Potsdam Conference, 983; United Provinces of the Netherlands, see Dutch Utopia (More), 417
Korean War and, 984 Republic Utopian socialism, 756
Truman Doctrine, 983 United States: Montesquieu’s theories and, 601; Utrecht: Union of, 474, 475; Peace of, 534,
Truth: religious, 599 industrialization in, 727, 728(illus.); urban 536(map), 635
Tsars (Russia), 574–576; use of title, 574. transportation in, 786; naturalism in, 809;
See also specific rulers nation building in, 825–826; slavery in, Vaccine, 783; for plague, 377
Tudor dynasty (England), 435, 436, 461–463, 826(map); Japan and, 852, 972; migration to, Vaclav IV (Bohemia, Holy Roman Empire), 391
462(illus.). See also specific rulers 856; annexation of Hawaii by, 858(illus.); Valdes Leal, Juan de, 472(illus.)
Tuileries palace, 696 imperialism by, 865; Philippines and, 867; in Valencia, 437
Tull, Jethro, 625 First World War, 890, 901; Treaty of Versailles Valentino, Rudolph, 927
Turgot, Jacques, 650, 686 and, 902–903, 907–908, 928–930; Middle Valla, Lorenzo, 416
Turkey: Ottomans and, 580; Russia, Prussia, East and, 910–911; modern architecture in, Vallain, Nanine, 682(illus.)
and, 613; Greek independence and, 762; 922; films from, 926–927; stock market crash Valmy, Battle of, 696
Young Turks and, 831; after First World War, in, 933; Great Depression in, 934(map), Valois dynasty: Habsburg-Valois Wars and,
903, 906; independence of, 907; aid to, 984; 936–937; New Deal in, 936–937; Soviet 411–412, 459
European Union and, 1040, 1040(illus.), industrialization and, 952; Pearl Harbor Values: of upper working class, 791
1041; workers from, 1042. See also Anatolia; attack and, 970, 972; in Second World War, Van den Vondel, Joost, 550–553
Ottoman Empire Apago PDF Enhancer
970, 973, 974–975; isolationism of, 972; Van der Weyden, Rogier, 424, 424(illus.)
Turks: Russia and, 613; Young Turks and, 831; atomic bombing of Japan by, 975, 1000; Van Dyck, Anthony, 544(illus.)
Atatürk and, 906–907. See also Ottoman containment policy of, 984; Korean War and, Van Eyck, Jan, 424
Empire; Turkey 984, 1006; Marshall Plan and, 984, 987; Van Gogh, Theo, 1049
Turner, Joseph M. W., 725, 761 military protection by, 987; civil rights Van Gogh, Vincent, 923
Tuscany, 818 movement in, 994–995, 994(illus.); science Vasa family, see Gustavus Vasa (Sweden)
Twelve Articles, 455 and technology in, 1000; student protests in, Vasari, Giorgio, 407, 426, 444(illus.)
Twentieth Party Congress, 996 1005; Vietnam War and, 1006–1007; Atlantic Vassals: English king as, 381
Two New Sciences (Galileo), 592–593 alliance and, 1008; international monetary Vatican: Sistine Chapel in, 406(illus.); Lateran
Two Sicilies, kingdom of, see Kingdom of the system and, 1010; oil embargo and, 1010; Agreement and, 957. See also Catholic
Two Sicilies misery index for, 1011; military buildup in, Church; Papacy
Tyler, Wat, 370(illus.), 392 1012; as superpower, 1025, 1030; end of cold Vaudeville theater, 796–797
Typhoid fever, 372, 783 war and, 1030; Gulf War (1991) and, 1030; Vegetable Market, 1662 (Sorgh), 624(illus.)
Typhus, 504 economic practices of, 1031; NATO Velázquez, Diego, 507, 507(illus.)
Tyrants and tyranny: in authoritarian rule, 945 admissions and, 1035; Kosovo and, 1038; Velvet Revolution, 1025–1026, 1026(illus.)
Tyrol, 565 birthrate in, 1041; human rights vs. states’ Venetia, 750, 818, 822
Tzu Hsi (China), 872, 873(illus.) rights and, 1044; terrorist attacks on, Venice, 409, 410; trade in, 408, 490–491; arts
1045–1046, 1048; attacks on embassies of, in, 425
Ubertinus of Carrara, 414 1047; Iraq War (2003–), 1047–1049. See Verdun, 887; Battle of, 891
Uccello, Paolo, 412(illus.) also Cold war; First World War; Second Vergerio, Peter Paul, 414
Ukraine, 828, 899, 900, 952, 967, 1041; Russia World War Vermuyden, Cornelius, 625
and, 576; serfdom in, 613 Unity movement: in western Europe, 987, Vernacular languages: literature in, 399–400
Ulster, 766; opposition to home rule in, 988(map), 989 Verrocchio, Andrea del, 427
835–836, 836(illus.) Universal suffrage: male, 754, 764, 818, 955; in Versailles, Treaty of, 902, 903, 905(illus.), 928,
Ulysses (Joyce), 920 Russian Federation, 1028 962; U.S. rejection of, 907–908
Uncertainty principle, 919 Universe: Aristotle on, 590; Copernicus on, Versailles palace, 540–541, 568, 568(illus.);
Unconditional surrender policy: of Grand 591–592; Newton on, 595 court at, 541; gardens of, 569, 569(illus.);
Alliance (Allies), 973, 982 Universities: colleges founded in, 381; student Estates General in, 690; women’s march on,
Unconscious: Freud on, 804 protests and, 1005–1006 691–692, 692(illus.). See also Hall of Mirrors
Underemployment, 1012 Unskilled workers, 791, 794 (Versailles)
Unemployment: in Great Depression, Unwed mothers, 656 Vespucci, Amerigo, 500
934(map), 935–936, 936(illus.), 937; in Upper classes, 787; sexual exploitation of girls Viceroyalties: in Spanish New World, 538–539
England, 935–936, 942–943, 943(illus.); in by, 655; diet of, 664. See also Aristocracy; Vichy government, 966, 973
United States, 937; Orwell on, 942–943; in Nobility Vico, Giovanni Battista, 769
I-28 • Index
Victor Emmanuel II (Italy), 818, 820, 974–975; bombing and, 975. See also Civil and, 989; East Germany and, 1008, 1019,
820(illus.), 821 war(s); specific battles and wars 1040; Poland and, 1008; Berlin Wall and,
Victor Emmanuel III (Italy), 956 Warsaw, 974 1025, 1027(illus.). See also Germany
Victoria (England), 814(illus.) Warsaw Ghetto, 969(illus.), 1008 West Indies, 501, 640
Vienna, 567, 581; University of, 381; Ottoman Warsaw Pact, 984 Wet-nursing, 658, 659(illus.), 802
siege of, 489, 582; anti-Semitism in, 838 Wars of the Roses, 435 Whaling: Japan and, 852
Vietcong, 1007, 1046 Warthmüller, R., 665(illus.) What Is Enlightenment? (Kant), 608
Vietnam, 872, 981, 992 Washington, George, 688 What Is Property? (Proudhon), 756
Vietnam War, 1006–1007, 1007(illus.) Waste Land, The (Eliot), 920 What Is the Third Estate? (Sieyès), 689–690
Villafranca, treaty at, 820 Water frame, 719, 720 Wheat, 380, 509; in France, 534
Villages, see Cities and towns Watergate scandal, 1007 Whigs: in England, 763
Vindication of the Rights of Man, A Waterloo, battle at, 711, 750 White-collar groups, 789
(Wollstonecraft), 694 Watson, James, 1000 White man’s burden, 867
Vindication of the Rights of Woman, A Watt, James, 722, 732–733 White Mountain, Battle of, 562, 565
(Wollstonecraft), 694 Waugh, Evelyn, 917 White people: Enlightenment thinkers on, 609
Violence: religious, 472–477; against indigenous Wealth: clerical, 378–379; decline from plague, Whites: in Russian civil war, 899–900
Americans, 504–505; against imperialists, 380; hierarchy of classes by, 431; nobility and, Widows: in High Middle Ages, 393. See also
869; against women, 1009 431; of Catholic Church, 450–451; in Women
Virocha (god), 503 England, 727; of aristocracy, 788–789; of Wilkinson, John, 722
Vitry, Jacques de, 390 upper middle class, 788–789; of American William I (Germany), 821, 822, 824(illus.),
Vocations (callings): for clergy, 469 heiresses, 789; disparities in, 848; Industrial 825, 833
Voltaire, 588(illus.), 601–602, 613, 619(illus.); Revolution and, 848; technology and, 848; in William II (Germany), 833, 881, 883
on religion, 618–619 Russia, 1034(illus.); in eastern Europe, 1035 William and Mary (England), 548
Von Bora, Katherina, 450, 455, 456 Wealth of Nations (Smith), see Inquiry into the William Louis (House of Orange), 550
Voting and voting rights, 831; for women, 549, Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations William of Orange (king of England), 548, 553
831, 832(illus.), 894; Chartists and, 741, (Smith) William of Orange (“the Silent”), 474, 550
764; liberalism and, 754; in England, Weapons: in Hundred Years’ War, 383; on ships, Wilson, Woodrow, 890; Fourteen Points of,
763–764, 835; in France, 767, 768, 771, 494; after Second World War, 1000 902; League of Nations and, 902
818; in Austria-Hungary, 836; for workers, Weapons of mass destruction, 1050; war with Winter Palace (St. Petersburg), 579(illus.),
840–841; for African Americans, 994. See also Iraq and, 1047 580
Universal suffrage Weather, see Climate Winter (Town) Palace (Vienna), 569
Voting Rights Act (1965), 994 Weathermen, 1046 Witches and witchcraft: European persecution
Voyages: Chinese, 485; European voyages of Apago PDF Enhancer
Weavers and weaving, 720. See also Textile of, 472, 475–477
discovery, 492–504, 496(map); of Columbus, industry Witches’ Sabbat (Grien), 477(illus.)
518–519 Weaver’s Repose, The (Gerritz), 629(illus.) Witte, Sergei, 828
Wedding chest: in Renaissance, 433(illus.) Wittenberg, 451; Luther at, 447
Wage earners: peasant farmers as, 625 Weimar Republic, 929, 958 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 916
Wages: for men vs. women, 631, 1003–1004; Welfare: in England, 835; after Second World Wojtyla, Karol, see John Paul II (pope)
Ricardo on, 726; for workers, 736, 786–787 War, 987; 1970s monetary crisis and, Wollstonecraft, Mary, 694–695, 799
Waksman, Selman, 377 1011–1012 Women: in France, 381–382, 532; as Lollards,
Wales, 781 Welfare state: in Britain, 987; shift to capitalism, 388; in High Middle Ages, 393; marriage age
Walesa, Lech, 1020, 1021, 1022(illus.), 1025, 1031 of, 394; homosexuality among, 396; in
1035 Werner, Anton von, 824(illus.) schools, 400(illus.); Christine de Pizan and,
Wallenstein, see Albert of Wallenstein Wesley, John, 660, 673–674 404–405; humanists and, 414; as Renaissance
Walsingham (chronicler), 386 Wesley, Susannah, 660–661 painters, 426–428; Renaissance debate about,
War and Peace (Tolstoy), 809 West, the, see Western world 432–433; as rulers, 433; gender roles and,
War communism, 900 West Africa: Muslim world and, 487–488; trade 433–434, 799–802; in Protestant churches,
War crime tribunal (Netherlands): Milosevic at, and, 640; imperialism in, 862 450; religious status of, 455–456;
1039 West Berlin, 997. See also Berlin Reformation and, 457; as witches, 475–477;
War of Independence, see American Revolution Western Europe: grain distribution in, 377; in Southeast Asia, 484; in sciences, 597,
War of the Austrian Succession, 610, 614, 635, Peter the Great and, 576, 578; in 18th 597(illus.); in Enlightenment, 601; elite,
686 century, 622; postwar period in, 985–989; 605–606; Rousseau on role of, 607, 609; in
War of the League of Augsburg: French army in, Common Market in, 987; unity movements textile manufacturing, 631; in guilds, 633; in
527 in, 987–989, 1039–1041; decolonization by, workforce, 634, 794–795, 891–892, 894,
War of the Spanish Succession, 534, 553, 571, 989–993; student protests in, 1005; after cold 953–954, 1002–1004, 1012, 1040;
635, 643 war, 1019; shift from welfare state to prostitution and, 655, 798–799; work by,
War Raw Materials Board, 891 capitalism, 1031; migration to, 1042–1044 655; education for, 661; fashion for, 666,
Warriors: kings perceived as, 433 Western front: in First World War, 887 789–790, 792–793, 792(illus.), 793(illus.);
Wars and warfare: religious, 458–459, 472–477; Westernization: of colonies, 868 as midwives, 668–670; in French Revolution,
army size and, 526–527; in France, 533–534; Western powers: Germany and, 928–930 691–692, 692(illus.); Napoleonic Code and,
in central and eastern Europe, 559–565; in Western world: expansion of, 847; China and 705; middle class, 734, 789–790; in factories,
Russia, 576, 578; imperial, 635–637; Japan and, 850–853; new imperialism of, 737(illus.); sexual division of labor and,
industrialization and, 728; trench warfare and, 859–865; values in, 915 738–740; in coal industry, 739–740;
887–888, 888(illus.); submarine warfare, 890; West Germany: economic recovery in, 987; after workdays for, 765; in working class, 794–795;
blitzkrieg, 966; saturation bombing in, Second World War, 987, 989; European unity rights of, 799; voting rights for, 831,
Index • I-29
832(illus.); British Empire and, 870, Workers International, see International Yemen, 1046
876–877; in First World War, 891–892, Working Men’s Association Yokohama: Westerners in, 871
891(illus.), 892, 893, 894; in Turkey, 907; in Workforce: women in, 532, 634, 794–795 Yongle (China), 485
literature, 920; in Soviet Union, 953–954; in Working class, 732, 787, 790–797; marriage in, York: house of, 435; duke of (James II), 548
fascist Italy, 957; in Nazi Germany, 961, 962; 657–658; condition of, 736; labor movement Young Turks, 831
after Second World War, 981; in postwar era, and, 740–741; in England, 764, 765; leisure Young Woman Reading a Letter (Raoux), 663
1002–1004; Beauvoir on, 1016–1017; after and religion of, 795–797; home of, Youth culture: middle class, 812–813;
German reunification, 1040; birthrate declines 803(illus.). See also Workers international, 1004–1006
and, 1042; as illegal immigrants, 1043; Workplace: conditions in, 631, 720–721, Youth movement, 980(illus.); of Italian fascism,
Muslim girls in France, 1049. See also 736–738; women’s rights in, 631 957; of Nazis, 959
Marriage; Nuns Workshops: in Paris, 771 Ypres: deaths in, 372–373
Women’s movement, 1003–1004, 1009–1010 Works Progress Administration (WPA), 937 Ypsilanti, Alexander, 761
Women’s rights: married women and, 799–800; Workweek: hours in, 736 Yucatec Mayan language, 503
in Soviet Union, 953; in workplace, 1010 World of Yesterday, The (Zweig), 812–813 Yugoslavia, 901, 903, 1046(map); Little
Women’s suffrage movement, 831, 832(illus.) World the Cold War Made, The (Cronin), Entente and, 929; ethnic groups in, 946,
Wood: as energy source, 721 1032 1038(map); Second World War and, 974,
Woodstock, 1004(illus.) World Trade Center: terrorist attacks on, 1020, 983; Tito in, 996; civil war in, 1019, 1033;
Woolen industry: sheep and, 373; in England, 1045, 1046, 1046(illus.) disintegration of, 1037–1039; NATO and,
382(illus.), 386. See also Textile industry Worldview: science and, 593–594, 804; of 1038–1039
Woolf, Virginia, 920 Enlightenment, 598 Yukos, 1034(illus.)
Wordsworth, William, 734, 758, 759–760 World War I, see First World War
Work: increased pace of, 633–634. See also World War II, see Second World War Zacatecas, 509
Labor; Workers Worms: Diet of (1521), 449 Zambia, 861
Work (Brown), 733(illus.) Worship, see Freedom; Religion(s) Zapolya, Janos, 466
Workday, 738, 765, 771 Wozzeck (Berg), 926 Zeeland, 474
Workers: Dutch, 553; employers and, 631; rural, WPA, see Works Progress Administration (WPA) Zemstvo, 827
631; in French Revolution, 697; in factories, Wright, Frank Lloyd, 921 Zheng He, 485, 486(map)
734–736; conditions of, 736–738; in cotton Wright, Joseph, 661(illus.), 735(illus.) Zimbabwe, 861
mill, 737(illus.); in England, 738; on mining, Writing, see Literature Zionism, 838, 905, 992; Herzl and, 838, 839
744–745; socialism and, 756, 844–845; Marx Wyclif, John, 388 Zola, Emile, 808–809, 808(illus.), 835
on, 757; in France, 817; in Russia, 829; in Zollverein, 731, 821
Xhosa people, 859
Germany, 833; on May Day, 840(illus.); living Zones of occupation, see Occupation zones
Apago
standards of, 841; in Berlin, 845(illus.); PDF Enhancer Zoning, 786
migrants as, 858; women as, 892, 894, Yalta Conference, 982(illus.), 983 Zulu people, 859
953–954, 1003–1004, 1012, 1040; Soviet, Yaroshenko, N. A., 809(illus.) Zurich, 451
952, 953. See also Labor; Peasant(s); Working Yeltsin, Boris, 1027, 1028, 1028(illus.), 1033, Zweig, Stephan, 812–813
class 1034 Zwingli, Ulrich, 449, 450, 451, 452, 458
Timeline A History of Western Society: A Brief Overview
Government Society and Economy
3200 B.C. Dominance of Sumerian cities in Neolithic peoples rely on settled agriculture,
Mesopotamia, ca 3200–2340 while others pursue nomadic life, ca
Unification of Egypt; Archaic Period, ca 7000–ca 3000
3100–2660 Development of wheeled transport in
Old Kingdom of Egypt, ca 2660–2180 Mesopotamia, by ca 3200
Dominance of Akkadian empire in Expansion of Mesopotamian trade and culture
Mesopotamia, ca 2331–2200 into modern Turkey, the Middle East, and
Iran, ca 2600
Middle Kingdom in Egypt, ca 2080–1640
2000 B.C. Babylonian empire, ca 2000–1595 First wave of Indo-European migrants, by

Hyksos invade Egypt, ca 1640–1570 2000
Hittite Empire, ca 1600–1200 Extended commerce in Egypt, by ca 2000
New Kingdom in Egypt, ca 1570–1075 Horses introduced into western Asia, by ca
2000
1500 B.C. Third Intermediate Period in Egypt, ca Use of iron increases in western Asia, by ca
1100–700 1300–1100
Unified Hebrew Kingdom under Saul, David, Second wave of Indo-European migrants, by
and Solomon, ca 1025–925 ca 1200
1000 B.C. Hebrew Kingdom divided into Israel and Concentration of landed wealth in Greece, ca
Judah, 925 750–600
Apago PDF Enhancer
Assyrian Empire, ca 900–612 Greek overseas expansion, ca 750–550
Phoenicians found Carthage, 813 Beginning of coinage in western Asia, ca 640
Kingdom of Kush conquers and reunifies
Egypt, 8th c.
Medes conquers Persia, 710
Babylon wins independence from Assyria, 626
Dracon issues law code at Athens, 621
Cyrus the Great conquers Medes, founds
Persian Empire, 550
Solon’s reforms at Athens, ca 549
Persians complete conquest of ancient Near
East, 521–464
Reforms of Cleisthenes in Athens, 508
500 B.C. Battle of Marathon, 490 Building of the Via Appia begins, 312
Xerxes’ invasion of Greece, 480–479 Growth of Hellenistic trade and cities, ca
Delian Confederacy, 478/7 300–100
Twelve Tables in Rome, 451/0 Beginning of Roman silver coinage, 269
Valerio-Horatian laws in Rome, 449 Growth of slavery, decline of small farmers in
Rome, ca 250–100
Peloponnesian War, 431–404
Agrarian reforms of the Gracchi, 133–121
Rome captures Veii, 396
Gauls sack Rome, 390
Roman expansion in Italy, 390–290
Conquests of Alexander the Great, 334–323
Punic Wars, 264–146
Reforms of the Gracchi, 133–121
Religion and Philosophy Science and Technology Arts and Letters
Growth of anthropomorphic religion in Development of wheeled transport in Sumerian cuneiform writing, ca 3200
Mesopotamia, ca 3000–2000 Mesopotamia, by ca 3200 Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, ca 3100
Emergence of Egyptian polytheism and belief Use of widespread irrigation in Mesopotamia
in personal immortality, ca 2660 and Egypt, ca 3000
Spread of Mesopotamian and Egyptian Construction of the first pyramid in Egypt, ca
religious ideas as far north as modern 2600
Anatolia and as far south as central Africa,
ca 2600
Emergence of Hebrew monotheism, ca 1700 Construction of the first ziggurats in Epic of Gilgamesh, ca 1900
Mixture of Hittite and Near Eastern religious Mesopotamia, ca 2000 Code of Hammurabi, ca 1790
beliefs, ca 1595 Widespread use of bronze in the ancient Near
East, ca 1900
Babylonian mathematical advances, ca 1800
Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt into Hittites introduce iron technology, ca 1400 Phoenicians develop alphabet, ca 1400
Palestine, 13th c. Naturalistic art in Egypt under Akhenaten, ca
Religious beliefs of Akhenaten, ca 1367 1367
Egyptian Book of the Dead, ca 1300
Era of the prophets in Israel, ca 1100–500 Babylonian astronomical advances, ca Beginning of the Hebrew Bible, ca 9th c.
Intermixture of Etruscan and Roman religious 750–400 First Olympic Games, 776
cults, ca 753–509 Apago PDF Enhancer Babylonian astronomical advances, ca
Growing popularity of local Greek religious 750–400
cults, ca 700 B.C.–A.D. 337 Homer, traditional author of the Iliad and
Babylonian Captivity of the Hebrews, Odyssey, ca 700
586–539 Hesiod, author of the Theogony and Works
and Days, ca 700
Archilochos, lyric poet, 648
Aeschylus, first significant Athenian tragedian,
525/4–456
Pre-Socratic philosophers, 5th c. Hippocrates, formal founder of medicine ca Sophocles, tragedian who used his plays to ex-
Socrates, 469–399 430 plore moral and political problems, ca
Theophrastus, founder of botany, ca 372–288 496–406
Plato, 429–347
Aristarchos of Samos, advances in astronomy, Euripides, the most personal of the Athenian
Diogenes, leading proponent of cynicism, ca
ca 310–230 tragedians, ca 480–406
412–323
Euclid codifies geometry, ca 300 Thucydides, historian of the Peloponnesian
Aristotle, 384–322
War, ca 460–400
Epicurus, 340–270 Herophilus, discoveries in medicine, ca
300–250 Aristophanes, the greatest writer of Old Com-
Zeno, founder of Stoic philosophy, 335–262 edy, ca 457–ca 385
Archimedes, works on physics and hydrolog-
Emergence of Mithraism, ca 300 Herodotus, the father of history, ca 450
ics, ca 287–212
Spread of Hellenistic mystery religions, 2nd c.
Greek cults brought to Rome, ca 200
100 B.C. Dictatorship of Sulla, 88–79 Reform of the Roman calendar, 46

Civil war in Rome, 78–27
Dictatorship of Caesar, 45–44
Principate of Augustus, 31 B.C.–A.D. 14
A.D. 300 Constantine removes capital of Roman Em- Growth of serfdom in Roman Empire, ca
pire to Constantinople, ca 315 200–500
Visigoths defeat Roman army at Adrianople Economic contraction in Roman Empire,
(378), signaling massive German invasions 3rd c.
into the empire
Bishop Ambrose asserts church’s independ-
ence from the state, 380
Death of emperor Romulus Augustus marks
end of Roman Empire in the West, 476
Clovis issues Salic law of the Franks, ca 490
500 Law Code of Justinian, 529 Gallo-Roman aristocracy intermarries with

Dooms of Ethelbert, king of Kent, ca 604 Germanic chieftains
Spread of Islam across Arabia, the Mediter- Decline of towns and trade, ca 500–700
ranean region, Spain, North Africa, and Asia Agrarian economy predominates in the West,
as far as India, ca 630–733 ca 500–1800
700 Charles Martel defeats Muslims at Tours, 732 Height of Muslim commercial activity, ca
Pippin III anointed king of the Franks, 754 700–1300, with western Europe
Charlemagne secures Frankish crown, r.
768–814
Apago PDF Enhancer
800 Imperial coronation of Charlemagne, Christ- Byzantine commerce and industry, ca
mas 800 800–1000
Treaty of Verdun, 843 Invasions and unstable conditions lead to
Viking, Magyar, and Muslim invasions, ca increase of serfdom
845–900
1000 Seljuk Turks conquer Muslim Baghdad, 1055 Decline of Byzantine free peasantry, ca
Norman conquest of England, 1066 1025–1100
Penance of Henry IV at Canossa, 1077 Growth of towns and trade in the West, ca
1050–1300
Domesday Book, 1086
1100 Henry I of England, r. 1100–1135 Henry I of England establishes the Exche-

Louis VI of France, r. 1108–1137 quer, 1130
Frederick I of Germany, r. 1152–1190 Beginnings of the Hanseatic League, 1159
Henry II of England, r. 1154–1189
Thomas Becket murdered, 1170
Philip Augustus of France, r. 1180–1223
Mithraism spreads to Rome, 27 B.C.–A.D. 270 Pliny the Elder, student of natural history, 23 Virgil, 70–19 B.C.
Dedication of the Ara Pacis Augustae, 9 B.C.–A.D. 79 Livy, ca 59 B.C.–A.D. 17
Traditional birth of Jesus, ca 3 Frontinus, engineering advances in Rome, 30 Ovid, 43 B.C.–A.D. 17
B.C.–A.D. 104
Constantine legalizes Christianity, 312 St. Jerome publishes the Latin Vulgate, late
Theodosius declares Christianity the official 4th c.
state religion, 380 St. Augustine, Confessions, ca 390
Donatist heretical movement at its height, ca Byzantines preserve Greco-Roman culture, ca
400 400–1000
St. Augustine, The City of God, ca 425
Clovis adopts Roman Christianity, 496
Rule of St. Benedict, 529 Using watermills, Benedictine monks exploit Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, ca
Monasteries established in Anglo-Saxon energy of fast-flowing rivers and streams 520
England, 7th c. Heavy plow and improved harness facilitate Justinian constructs church of Santa Sophia,
Muhammad preaches reform, ca 610 use of multiple-ox teams; harrow widely 532–537
used in northern Europe Pope Gregory the Great publishes Dialogues,
Publication of the Qu’ran, 651
Pastoral Care, Moralia, 590–604
Synod of Whitby, 664
Missionary work of St. Boniface in Germany, Byzantines successfully use “Greek fire” in Lindisfarne Gospel Book, ca 700
ca 710–750 naval combat against Arab fleets attacking Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English
Iconoclastic controversy in Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, 673, 717 Nation, ca 700
726–843 Beowulf, ca 700
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Pippin III donates Papal States to the papacy, Carolingian Renaissance, ca 780–850
756
Foundation of abbey of Cluny, 909 Stirrup and nailed horseshoes become wide- Byzantines develop the Cyrillic script, late
Byzantine conversion of Russia, late 10th c. spread in shock combat 10th c.
Paper, invented in China ca 2d c., enters
Europe through Muslim Spain in 10th c.
Beginning of reformed papacy, 1046 Arab conquests bring new irrigation methods, Romanesque style in architecture and art, ca
Schism between Roman and Greek Orthodox cotton cultivation, and manufacture to 1000–1200
churches, 1054 Spain, Sicily, southern Italy Song of Roland, ca 1095
Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085 Avicenna, Arab scientist, d. 1037 Muslim musicians introduce lute, rebec—
Peter Abelard, 1079–1142 stringed instruments and ancestors of violin
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, 1090–1153
First Crusade, 1095–1099
Universities begin, ca 1100–1300 In castle construction Europeans, copying Rubaiyat of Umar Khayyam, ca 1120
Concordat of Worms ends investiture contro- Muslim and Byzantine models, erect Dedication of abbey church of Saint-Denis
versy, 1122 rounded towers and crenelated walls launches Gothic style, 1144
Height of Cistercian monasticism, 1125–1175 Windmill invented, ca 1180 Hildegard of Bingen, 1098–1179
Aristotle’s works translated into Latin, ca Some monasteries, such as Clairvaux and Court of troubador poetry, especially that of
1140–1260 Canterbury Cathedral Priory, supplied by Chrétien de Troyes, circulates widely
underground pipes with running water and
Third Crusade, 1189–1192
indoor latrines, elsewhere rare until 19th c.
Pope Innocent III, 1198–1216
1200 Spanish victory over Muslims at Las Navas de Economic revival, growth of towns, clearing
Tolosa, 1212 of wasteland contribute to growth of per-
Frederick II of Germany and Sicily, r. sonal freedom, 13th c.
1212–1250 Crusaders capture Constantinople (Fourth
Magna Carta, 1215 Crusade) and spur Venetian economy, 1204
Louis IX of France, r. 1226–1270 Agricultural expansion leads to population
growth, ca 1225–1300
Mongols end Abbasid caliphate, 1258
Edward I of England, r. 1272–1307
Philip IV (the Fair) of France, r. 1285–1314
England and France at war, 1296
1300 Philip IV orders arrest of Pope Boniface at European economic depression, ca

Anagni, 1303 1300–1450
Hundred Years’ War, 1337–1453 Black Death appears ca 1347; returns inter-
Political disorder in Germany, ca 1350–1450 mittently until 18th c.
Merchant oligarchies or despots rule Italian Height of the Hanseatic League, 1350–1450
city-states Peasant and working-class revolts: Flanders,
1302; France, 1358; Florence, 1378; Eng-
land, 1381
1400 Joan of Arc rallies French monarchy, Population decline, peasants’ revolts, high la-
1429–1431 bor costs contribute to decline of serfdom in
Medici domination of Florence begins, 1434 western Europe
Princes in Germany consolidate power, ca Christopher Columbus reaches the Americas,
1450–1500 October 1492
Ottoman Turks under Mahomet II capture Portuguese gain control of East Indian spice
Constantinople, May 1453 trade, 1498–1511
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Wars of the Roses in England, 1453–1471 Flow of Balkan slaves into eastern Mediter-
ranean; of African slaves into Iberia and
Ferdinand and Isabella complete reconquista
Italy, ca 1400–1500
in Spain, 1492
French invasion of Italy, 1494
1500 Charles V, Holy Roman emperor, 1519–1556 Balboa discovers the Pacific, 1513
Imperial sack of Rome, 1527 Magellan’s crew circumnavigates the earth,
Philip II of Spain, r. 1556–1598 1519–1522
Revolt of the Netherlands, 1566–1609 Spain and Portugal gain control of regions of
Central and South America, ca 1520–1550
St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, August 24,
1572 Peasants’ Revolt in Germany, 1524–1525
Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 1588 “Time of Troubles” in Russia, 1598–1613
Henry IV of France issues Edict of Nantes,
1598
1600 Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648 Chartering of British East India Company,
Richelieu dominates French government, 1600
1624–1643 Famine and taxation lead to widespread
Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, r. revolts, decline of serfdom in western
1640–1688 Europe, ca 1600–1650
English Civil War, 1642–1649 English Poor Law, 1601
Maimonides, d. 1204 Notebooks of Villard de Honnecourt, a master Parzifal, Roman de la Rose, King Arthur and the
Founding of Franciscan order, 1210 mason (architect), a major source for Gothic Round Table celebrate virtues of knighthood
engineering, ca 1250 Height of Gothic style, ca 1225–1300
Fourth Lateran Council, 1215
Development of double-entry bookkeeping in
Founding of Dominican order, 1216
Florence and Genoa, ca 1250–1340
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) marks height
Venetians purchase secrets of glass manufac-
of Scholasticism
ture from Syria, 1277
Pope Boniface VIII, 1294–1303
Mechanical clock invented, ca 1290
Babylonian Captivity of the papacy, Edward III of England uses cannon in siege Petrarch, 1304–1374
1307–1377 of Calais, 1346 Paintings of Giotto, ca 1305–1337
John Wyclif, ca 1330–1384 Dante, Divine Comedy, ca 1310
Great Schism in the papacy, 1377–1418 Boccaccio, The Decameron, ca 1350
Jan van Eyck, 1366–1441
Brunelleschi, 1377–1446
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, ca 1385–1400
Council of Constance, 1414–1418 Water-powered blast furnaces operative in Masaccio, 1401–1428

Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, 1438 Sweden, Austria, the Rhine Valley, Liège, ca Botticelli, 1444–1510
1400
Expulsion of Jews from Spain, 1492 Leonardo da Vinci, 1452–1519
Leonardo Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci (1202) pop-
Albrecht Dürer, 1471–1528
ularizes use of Hindu-Arabic numerals, “a
major factor in the rise of science in the Michelangelo, 1475–1564
Western world” Raphael, 1483–1520
Paris and largest Italian cities pave streets, Rabelais, ca 1490–1553
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making street cleaning possible
Printing and movable type, ca 1450
Lateran Council attempts reforms of church Copernicus, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, 1509
abuses, 1512–1517 Bodies, 1543 Castiglione, The Courtier, 1528
Machiavelli, The Prince, 1513 Galileo, 1564–1642 Cervantes, 1547–1616
Concordat of Bologna, 1516 Kepler, 1571–1630 Baroque movement in the arts, ca 1550–1725
More, Utopia, 1516 Harvey, 1578–1657 Shakespeare, 1564–1616
Luther, Ninety-five Theses, 1517 Rubens, 1577–1640
Henry VIII of England breaks with Rome, Montaigne, Essays, 1598
1532–1534
Velazquez, 1599–1660
Loyola establishes Society of Jesus, 1540
Calvin establishes theocracy in Geneva, 1541
Merici establishes Ursuline order for educa-
tion of women, 1544
Council of Trent, 1545–1563
Peace of Augsburg, 1555
Hobbes, 1588–1679
Descartes, 1596–1650
Huguenot revolt in France, 1625 Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, 1605 Rembrandt van Rijn, 1606–1669
Boyle, 1627–1691 Golden Age of Dutch culture, 1625–1675
Leeuwenhoek, 1632–1723 Vermeer, 1632–1675
Racine, 1639–1699
1600 (cont.) Louis XIV, r. 1643–1715 Chartering of Dutch East India Company,
Peace of Westphalia, 1648 1602
The Fronde in France, 1648–1660 Height of Dutch commercial activity, ca
1630–1665
1650 Protectorate in England, 1653–1658 Height of mercantilism in Europe, ca

Leopold I, Habsburg emperor, r. 1658–1705 1650–1750
Treaty of the Pyrenees, 1659 Principle of peasants’ “hereditary subjuga-
tion” to their lords affirmed in Prussia, 1653
English monarchy restored, 1660
Colbert’s economic reforms in France, ca
Ottoman Siege of Vienna, 1683
1663–1683
Glorious Revolution in England, 1688–1689
Cossack revolt in Russia, 1670–1671
Peter the Great of Russia, r. 1689–1725
1700 War of the Spanish Succession, 1701–1713 Foundation of St. Petersburg, 1701
Peace of Utrecht, 1713 Last appearance of bubonic plague in western
Frederick William I of Prussia, r. 1713–1740 Europe, ca 1720
Louis XV of France, r. 1715–1774 Enclosure movement in England, ca
1730–1830
Maria Theresa of Austria, r. 1740–1780
Jeremy Bentham, 1748–1823
Frederick the Great of Prussia, r. 1740–1786
1750 Seven Years’ War, 1756–1763 Start of general European population

Catherine the Great of Russia, r. 1762–1796 increase, ca 1750
Partition of Poland, 1772–1795 Growth of illegitimate births, ca 1750–1850
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Louis XVI of France, r. 1774–1792 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776
American Revolution, 1776–1783 Thomas Malthus, Essay of the Principle of
Population, 1798
Beginning of the French Revolution, 1789
1800 Napoleonic era, 1799–1815 European economic imperialism, ca

Congress of Vienna, 1814–1815 1816–1880
“Battle of Peterloo,” Great Britain, 1819
1825 Greece wins independence, 1830 Height of French utopian socialism,

French conquest of Algeria, 1830 1830s–1840s
Revolution in France, 1830 German Zollverein founded, 1834
Great Britain: Reform Bill of 1832; Poor Law European capitalists begin large-scale foreign
reform, 1834; Chartists, repeal of Corn investment, 1840s
Laws, 1838–1848 Great Famine in Ireland, 1845–1851
British complete occupation of India, 1848 Marx, Communist Manifesto, 1848
Revolutions in Europe, 1848
1850 Second Empire in France, 1852–1870 Crédit Mobilier founded in France, 1852
Crimean War, 1853–1856 Japan opened to European influence, 1853
Unification of Italy, 1859–1870 Mill, On Liberty, 1859
Civil War, United States, 1861–1865 Russian serfs emancipated, 1861
Bismarck leads Germany, 1862–1890 First Socialist International, 1864–1871
Unification of Germany, 1864–1871 Marx, Das Capital, 1867
Britain’s Second Reform Bill, 1867
Third Republic in France, 1870–1940
Patriarch Nikon’s reforms split Russian Tull (1674–1741) encourages innovation in Construction of baroque palaces and remod-
Orthodox church, 1652 English agriculture eling of capital cities throughout central and
Test Act in England excludes Roman Newton, Principia Mathematica, 1687 eastern Europe, ca 1650–1725
Catholics from public office, 1673 Newcomen develops steam engine, 1705 J. S. Bach, 1685–1750
Revocation of Edict of Nantes, 1685 Fontenelle, Conversations on the Plurality of
James II tries to restore Catholicism as state Worlds, 1686
religion, 1685–1688 The Enlightenment, ca 1690–1790
Montesquieu, 1689–1755 Voltaire, 1694–1778
Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government, 1690
Pierre Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary,
1697
Wesley, 1703–1791 Charles Townsend introduces four-year crop Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, 1748
Hume, 1711–1776 rotation, 1730
Diderot, 1713–1784
Condorcet, 1743–1794
Ricardo, 1772–1823 Hargreaves’s spinning jenny, ca 1765 Encyclopedia, edited by Diderot and d’Alem-
Fourier, 1772–1837 Arkwright’s water frame, ca 1765 bert, published, 1751–1765
Papacy dissolves the Jesuits, 1773 Watt’s steam engine promotes industrial Mozart, 1756–1791
Church reforms of Joseph II in Austria, 1780s Apago PDF Enhancer
breakthroughs, 1780s Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762
Reorganization of the church in France, War widens the gap in technology between Beethoven, 1770–1827
1790s Britain and the continent, 1792–1815 Wordsworth, 1770–1850
Jenner’s smallpox vaccine, 1796 Romanticism, ca 1790–1850
Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of
Women, 1792
Napoleon signs Concordat with Pope Pius Staël, On Germany, 1810

VII regulating Catholic church in France, Liszt, 1811–1886
1801
Spencer, 1820–1903
Comte, System of Positive Philosophy, First railroad, Great Britain, 1825 Balzac, The Human Comedy, 1829–1841
1830–1842 Faraday studies electromagnetism, Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 1830
List, National System of Political Economy, 1830–1840s Hugo, Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1831
1841
Nietzsche, 1844–1900
Sorel, 1847–1922
Decline in church attendance among working Modernization of Paris, ca 1850–1870 Realism, ca 1850–1870
classes, ca 1850–1914 Great Exhibition, London, 1851 Freud, 1856–1939
Pope Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors, denounces Darwin, Origin of Species, 1859 Flaubert, Madame Bovary, 1857
modern thoughts, 1864
Pasteur develops germ theory of disease, Tolstoy, War and Peace, 1869
Doctrine of papal infallibility, 1870 1860s Impressionism in art, ca 1870–1900
Suez Canal opened, 1869 Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Middlemarch, 1872
Mendeleev develops the periodic table, 1869
1875 Congress of Berlin, 1878 Full property rights for women, Great Britain,
European “scramble for Africa,” 1880–1900 1882
Britain’s Third Reform Bill, 1884 Social welfare legislation, Germany,
1883–1889
Dreyfus affair in France, 1894–1899
Second Socialist International, 1889–1914
Spanish-American War, 1898
Witte directs modernization of Russian
Boer War, 1899–1902
economy, 1892–1899
1900 Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905 Women’s suffrage movement, England, ca

Revolution in Russia, 1905 1900–1914
Balkan wars, 1912–1913 Social welfare legislation, France, 1904, 1910;
England, 1906–1914
Agrarian reforms in Russia, 1907–1912
1914 World War I, 1914–1918 Planned economics in Europe, 1914

Armenian genocide, 1915 Auxiliary Service Law in Germany, 1916
Easter Rebellion, 1916 Bread riots in Russia, March 1917
U.S. declares war on Germany, 1917
Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–1918
Treaty of Versailles, 1919
1920 Mussolini seizes power, 1922 New Economic Policy in the Soviet Union,
Stalin uses forced collectivization, police 1921
terror, ca 1929–1939 Dawes Plan for reparations and recovery,
Hitler gains power, 1933 1924
Rome-Berlin Axis, 1936 The Great Depression, 1929–1939
Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, 1939 Rapid industrialization in Soviet Union,
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World War II, 1939–1945
1930s
Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” 1933
1940 United Nations, 1945 The Holocaust, 1941–1945

Cold war begins, 1947 Marshall Plan, 1947
Fall of colonial empires, 1947–1962 European economic progress, ca 1950–1969
Communist government in China, 1949 European Coal and Steel Community, 1952
Korean War, 1950–1953 European Economic Community, 1957
“De-Stalinization,” 1955–1962
1960 The Berlin Wall goes up, 1961 Civil rights movement in United States,
United States in Vietnam, ca 1961–1973 1960s
Student rebellion in France, 1968 Collapse of postwar monetary system, 1971
Soviet tanks end Prague Spring, 1968 OPEC oil price increases, 1973 and 1979
Détente, 1970s Stagflation, 1970s
Soviets in Afghanistan, 1979 Women’s movement, 1970s
1980 U.S. military buildup, 1980s Growth of debt, 1980s

Solidarity in Poland, 1980 Economic crisis in Poland, 1988
Unification of Germany, 1989 Maastricht Treaty proposes monetary union,
Revolutions in eastern Europe, 1989–1990 1990
End of Soviet Union, 1991 European Community becomes European
Union, 1993
War in former Yugoslavia, 1991–1995
Migration to western Europe grows, 1990s
War in Chechnya, 1991–present
2000 Terrorist attack on U.S., Sept. 11, 2001 Euro note enters circulation, 2002
War in Afghanistan, 2001 Voters reject new constitution for the
War in Iraq, 2003–present European Union, 2005
Immigrant riots in France, 2005
Growth of public education in France, ca Emergence of modern immunology, ca Zola, Germinal, 1885
1880–1900 1875–1900 Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden,” 1899
Growth of mission schools in Africa, Trans-Siberian Railroad, 1890s
1890–1914 Marie Curie, discovery of radium, 1898
Electrical industry: lighting and streetcars,
1880–1900
Separation of church and state, France, Planck develops quantum theory, ca 1900 “Modernism,” ca 1900–1929
1901–1905 First airplane flight, 1903 Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1902
Jean-Paul Sartre, 1905–1980 Einstein develops relativity theory, Cubism in art, ca 1905–1930
1905–1910 Proust, Remembrance of Things Past,
1913–1927
Schweitzer, Quest of the Historical Jesus, 1906 Submarine warfare, 1915 Spengler, The Decline of the West, 1918
Ernest Rutherford splits the atom, 1919
Emergence of modern existentialism, 1920s “Heroic age of physics,” 1920s Gropius, the Bauhaus, 1920s
Wittgenstein, Essay on Logical Philosophy, First major public radio broadcasts in Great Dadaism and surrealism, 1920s
1922 Britain and the United States, 1920 Woolf, Jacob’s Room, 1922
Revival of Christianity, 1920s and 1930s Heisenberg, “principle of uncertainty,” 1927 Joyce, Ulysses, 1922
Talking movies, 1930 Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922
Radar system in England, 1939 Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front,
Picasso, Guernica, 1937
De Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1949 Oppenheimer, 1904–1967 Cultural purge in Soviet Union, 1946–1952
Communists fail to break Catholic church in “Big Science” in United States, ca 1940–1970 Van der Rohe, Lake Shore Apartments,
Poland, 1950s U.S. drops atomic bombs on Japan, 1945 1948–1951
Watson and Crick discover structure of DNA Orwell, 1984, 1949
molecule, 1953 Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, 1956
Russian satellite in orbit, 1957 The “beat” movement in the U.S., late 1950s
Catholic church opposes the legalization of European Council for Nuclear Research The Beatles, 1960s
divorce and abortion, 1970 to present (CERN), 1960 Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan
Pope John Paul II electrifies Poland, 1979 Space race, 1960s Denisovitch, 1962
Russian cosmonaut first to orbit globe, 1961 Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 1963
American astronaut first person on the moon, Servan-Schreiber, The American Challenge,
1969 1967
Revival of religion in Soviet Union, 1985 to Reduced spending on Big Science, 1980s Solzhenitsyn returns to Russia, 1994
present Computer revolution continues, 1980s and Author Salman Rushdie is exiled from Iran,
Fukuyama proclaims “end of history,” 1991 1990s 1989
Growth of Islam in Europe, 1990s U.S. Genome Project begins, 1990 Gehry, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, 1997
First WWW server/browser, 1991
Pentium processor invented, 1993
“Dolly,” first genetically cloned sheep, 1996
Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Growing concern about global warming, 2000s Calatrava, Tenerife Concert Hall, 2003
Islam, 2004 First hybrid car, 2003
Conservative elected as Pope Benedict XVI,
2005

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2007927730

Copyright © 2008 by Bedford/St. Martin’s

Manufactured in the United States of America.

A History of Western Society

Clare Haru Crowston

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Chapter 12 The Crisis of the Later Middle Ages, 1300–1450 371

Chapter 13 European Society in the Age of the Renaissance, 1350–1550 407

Chapter 14 Reformations and Religious Wars, 1500–1600 445

Chapter 15 European Exploration and Conquest, 1450–1650 483

Chapter 16 Absolutism and Constitutionalism in Western Europe,

Chapter 17 Absolutism in Central and Eastern Europe to 1740 559

Chapter 18 Toward a New Worldview, 1540–1789 589

Chapter 19 The Expansion of Europe in the Eighteenth Century 621

Chapter 20 The Changing Life of the People 653

Chapter 21 The Revolution in Politics, 1775–1815

Chapter 23 Ideologies and Upheavals, 1815–1850 747

Chapter 25 The Age of Nationalism, 1850–1914 815

Chapter 26 The West and the World, 1815–1914 847

Chapter 27 The Great Break: War and Revolution, 1914–1919 879

Chapter 28 The Age of Anxiety, ca 1900–1940 913

Chapter 29 Dictatorships and the Second World War, 1919–1945 945

Chapter 30 Cold War Conﬂicts and Social Transformations, 1945–1985 981

Chapter 31 Revolution, Rebuilding, and New Challenges: 1985 to the

Maps xvii Suggested Reading 402

LISTENING TO THE PAST An Age of Gold 442

Seventeenth-Century State-Building: The Rise of Austria and Prussia 565

Ideologies and Upheavals, 1815–1850 747

Napoleon III in France 815 The Great Migration 854

Western Imperialism, 1880–1914 859 The Treaty of Versailles 902

Chapter Summary 874 The Age of Anxiety, ca 1900–1940 913

Notes 977 Revolution, Rebuilding, and New

Solidarity in Poland 1020 The Growth of Immigration 1042

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Chapter 12 Christine de Pizan 404

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Prelude to Disaster • 373

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The Black Death • 375

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27 Salé ed Sicily DEC. 1347

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The Black Death • 377

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The Black Death • 379

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The Hundred Years’ War • 381

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