I.
OVERSEAS EXPANSION AND CAPITALISM
A. Roots of Change
1. During the 1400s, merchants flourished, cities grew larger, feudal social systems broke
down, and commerce became part of everyday life.
2. By 1500, Paris and London had populations of over 200,000 people.
3. As of 1400, most Europeans still worked the land.
a) In much of Europe serfs became free or tenant farmers who were still burdened by
taxes and service obligations to feudal lords.
b) A “Little Ice Age” brought winter freezing to canals and rivers, and caused poor
harvests.
4. A favorable attitude toward commerce gave merchants a status of power.
a) Societies developed an opportunity to make profits.
b) Banks and other financial institutions were established.
c) Venice and Genoa (Italy) and Bruges and Antwerp (Belgium) became centers of
enterprise.
5. By the 1500s, many small states became larger monarchies, and organized, more
competitive centralized states developed in Europe.
6. Between 1450 and 1550, Europe’s technology in shipbuilding, navigation, weaponry,
and printing was beginning to catch up to and even surpass that of the Asian and Arab
societies.
B. “Gold, God, and Glory”: Explorations and Conquests
1. “Gold, God, and Glory” describes European motives for exploration.
2. Iberian sailors used the caravel and, later, the galleon, the astrolabe, and had cannon on
their ships.
3. Competition among Europeans improved naval technology, and by the late 1500s, the
English built unrivalled, maneuverable ships with the best cannon.
4. Intense competition between European powers led to increased exploration.
a) By the late sixteenth century, the Portuguese dominated the coast of Africa and
Indian Ocean trade, and Spain controlled much of the Americas.
b) Britain, France, and Holland became major colonial powers in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, while Portuguese influence waned.
5. Trade and colonization brought great wealth to several European nations.
6. By 1750, several European nations were laying the foundations for a system of Western
dominance and economic capitalism.
C.
The Rise of Capitalism
1. Capitalism arose in Western Europe, which became wealthy from trade and colonization
and required a constant influx of new capital.
2. Eastern European nobles discouraged capitalism and gave little support to merchants;
some eastern monarchies dealt with agricultural labor shortages by mandating serfdom
upon the peasantries, requiring that they remain on the land.
3. The Dutch dominated European and Asian trade, and Amsterdam was the center of the
trade by the early seventeenth century.
4. Instead of investing wealth in land, people made investments in business and industry,
increased production of ships, arms, and textiles, and increased purchases of goods such
as coffee, tea and sugar, clocks, china, and glassware.
5.
Early capitalism was frowned on by the Church due to its condemnation of usury; that
changed as overseas markets increased overall wealth in European societies.
6. Capitalism created a new commercial middle class, the bourgeoisie, as well as the first
joint-stock companies, which were managed by directors with great capital to invest in
diversified economic activities.
7.
II.
Capitalism fostered cooperation of the state and big business enterprises for their mutual
benefit and gave rise to a system known as mercantilism.
8. Under mercantilism, trade was controlled by semi-military, government-backed joint
stock companies and had overseas colonies.
THE RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION
A. Renaissance Thought, Art, and Literature
1. The Renaissance incorporated ideas from classical literature and promoted individualism,
secularism, tolerance, beauty, and creativity, advocating humanism which emphasized
humanity and its creations.
2. The Church was undergoing a crisis, including abuses by leadership and clergy and
leading some Renaissance thinkers to favor reform, though the popes rejected doctrinal
or institutional change.
3. In The Prince, Machiavelli (1469-1527) examined political power as separate from moral
doctrine and demonstrated how rulers must keep their aims in mind, applying ruthless
policies to pursue national interests while ignoring, but appearing to follow, moral
values.
4. Many Renaissance thinkers, such as Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Nicolaus
Copernicus (1473-1543), studied the sciences, questioning traditional ideas and
employing direct experimental methods and observation.
5. The Renaissance spread Italian artistic influences that deepened knowledge of humanity.
a) As a painter and sculptor, eccentric Florentine Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)
became famous for his realistic depictions on the ceiling of the Vatican’s Sistine
Chapel.
b) The Venetian, Titian (ca.1488-1576), broke with Christian tradition by painting
nudes and pre-Christian fables; Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-ca.1652) painted heroic
women from Greek mythology and the Bible.
c) In the Low Countries, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca.1525-1560) painted realistic
landscapes and scenes of peasant and town life; El Greco (1541-1614), a native of
Crete who settled in Spain, blended Venetian, Byzantine, and Spanish traditions.
6. Growing secularism had literary consequences, as writers broke with tradition, shifting
their focus to human rather than religious topics.
a) William Shakespeare (1564-1616) reflected the Elizabethans’ celebration of the
individual and the English nation by creating stories of human passion, as well as
English and world histories.
b) In Spain, Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) portrayed the end of the Spanish golden
era in his novel, Don Quixote.
B. The Reformation and Religious Change
1. Critics viewed the long-dominant Church as corrupt under the control of incompetent
popes and clergy who violated Christian teachings.
2. The spread of printing and literacy inspired some individuals to examine and reinterpret
Christian writings, and many of these sought Church reform throughout the 1500s; by
1600, almost 40 percent of Europeans had renounced Catholicism.
3. Martin Luther (1483-1546) set off the Reformation and incited the creation of
Protestantism with his view that only faith, not good works, could forgive sins and
ensure salvation, arguing that every believer had the freedom to interpret scripture.
4. The Lutherans argued that the Bible was the only source of faith, and nothing in scripture
justified papal power and catholic rituals.
5. As Lutheranism spread in northern Europe, the Reformation also inspired peasants to
revolt against the lords and church leaders; Luther supported the nobles, who crushed the
uprisings, causing over 100,000 deaths.
6.
The Protestant Reformation bred a variety of sects that were carried to other parts of the
world.
7. Forced to leave France, John Calvin (1509-1564) settled in Geneva, which became a
theocracy; Calvin’s teachings, which rejected free will in favor of predestination, spread
from Switzerland to England and Holland.
8. Henry VIII of England (r.1509-1547) broke with the Church for political and dynastic
reasons, naming himself the head of the English Church.
C. Protestantism, Capitalism, and Catholic Reaction
1. Some forms of Protestantism supported the thriving new economic attitudes and
capitalist values.
2. Calvinists claimed that citizens demonstrated their fitness for salvation by being lawabiding, industrious, thrifty, and sober—ideals in accord with capitalism.
3. Capitalism was emerging in some Catholic countries, but it flourished in Protestant
Holland, England, and northern Germany.
4. The Catholic Church’s response to the Protestant challenge was the Counter Reformation,
a movement designed to protect the Church and crush dissidents using methods that
included the Holy Inquisition, a body that existed to combat heresy, and the Congregation
of the Index to censor books.
5. In 1534, the Spaniard, Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) founded the Society of Jesus, a
missionary order, to defend and spread Catholicism; one Jesuit, Francis Xavier (15061552), became a pioneering missionary in India, Southeast Asia, and Japan.
6. The pope sponsored the Council of Trent (1545-1563) to examine and reconsider Church
doctrines.
a) The Council reaffirmed most Catholic dogma, including those rejected by
Protestants.
b) The Council did institute some reforms, such as more papal supervision of priests
and bishops, and it mandated seminary training for all clergy.
7. Despite reforms, religious passions continued to foster intolerance, as French Protestants,
English Catholics, and other Christian minorities faced discrimination and sometimes
violence, and anti-Jewish policies grew, with many Jews expelled from their countries or
segregated in city ghettoes.
D. Religious Wars and Conflicts
1. Religious divisions contributed to wars and conflicts from the late-sixteenth through the
early-eighteenth centuries.
2. King Philip II of Spain (r.1556-1598), who ruled a vast empire in the Americas,
Southeast Asia, Portugal, the Low Countries, and parts of Italy, was committed to
defending Catholicism in Europe and spreading the faith abroad.
3. The Spanish Empire was marred by religious tensions, especially by Philip’s suppression
of Calvinism in the Low Countries, leading to a general revolt in 1566.
4. Spain attacked England for assisting the Low Country rebels and for attacks upon
Spanish shipping in the Americas; when Philip II tried to invade England by sea in 1588,
the Spanish Armada was defeated by the English.
5. The mostly Protestant, Dutch-speaking Northern provinces broke away from Spain in
1588 and became fully independent in 1609, forming the Netherlands.
1. Religious wars raged in France until the Catholic King Henry IV (1553-1610), a
Protestant sympathizer, signed the Treaty of Nantes in 1598, recognizing Catholicism as
the state religion but allowing Huguenots (French Protestants) religious freedom.
2. The conflict between Islam and Christendom continued as the Ottoman Turks expanded
into Eastern Europe; in 1683, Polish intervention stopped the Turkish incursion in
Austria and pushed them out of Hungary, ending Ottoman expansion in Europe.
III. CHANGING STATES AND POLITICS
A.
B.
Regional Wars and National Conflicts
1. The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) was a series of bloody conflicts generated between
rival states and within multinational empires, some caused by religious divisions.
2. In 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia reaffirmed freedom of religion, but it failed to end
Protestant-Catholic conflict.
a) After 1659, Catholic France established a new balance of power in Europe at the
expense of the Catholic Habsburgs.
b) The Dutch benefited because the long struggle had weakened their former ruler,
Spain.
3. After Westphalia, European warfare changed radically with the creation of professional
armies and the use of new technologies.
4. In the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), England, Holland, Austria, Denmark,
Portugal, and some Germany states fought France and Spain over the succession to the
Spanish throne and the partition of the Spanish Empire.
5. With the Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession, Spain was
forced to transfer territory in Belgium and Italy to Austria; England received part of
eastern Canada, plus the strategically-important Gibraltar peninsula at Spain’s southern
tip, giving the English command of the entrance into the Mediterranean.
6. After Utrecht, the idea of maintaining a balance of power between rival states emerged as
the governing principle of European power politics.
Absolutist and Despotic Monarchies
1. Absolutism emerged by the seventeenth century as a system of strong monarchial power
concentrated under one ruler, which was viewed in France, Russia, Spain, Austria, the
Papal States, and the Ottoman Empire as the safest way to avoid chaos.
2. By the mid–seventeenth century, France, with 18 million people, had become the largest,
most powerful nation in Europe, and its culture was admired worldwide.
3. King Louis XIV (r.1661-1715), called “the Sun King,” lived in great luxury, claiming
that he was the embodiment of the State and that he ruled by divine right.
4. Louis imposed mercantilism to control the economy and enhance the national treasury,
revoked the Edict of Nantes, and limited Protestantism.
5. After Louis forbade Protestant pastors to speak and closed Protestant schools and
churches, at least 200,000 Huguenots emigrated from France to England, Holland, and
North America.
6. To prevent Habsburg dominance of Europe, Louis XIV fought four major wars that
ultimately sapped his treasury, which ultimately added to the revolutionary fervor that
overtook France in the late 1700s.
7. In Russia, Ivan IV (r.1533-1584), known as Ivan the Terrible, took the title of czar,
centralizing Russia after defeating the Tartar Mongols and Turks.
8. Muscovite czars after Ivan created a rural economy based upon serfdom, the main source
of labor in Russia.
9. The czars imposed tight control over the Russian Orthodox Church, following its break
from the Greek Orthodox Church in the late 1500s.
10. Peter the Great (r.1683-1725) was an enlightened but despotic czar who wished to
modernize his country by copying Western technology and administrative techniques,
launching ambitious programs of reforms.
11. Some of Peter’s policies were unpopular, while others increased royal power at the
expense of the church and nobility.
a) Peter established industries, strengthened the autocracy and serfdom, and developed
a more efficient government.
b) He built a new capital on the Baltic, naming it St. Petersburg.
C.
D.
52. Peter also expanded Russian territory, creating a huge empire and exploiting its
resources.
The Rise of Representative Governments
1. Some European countries, including England and the Netherlands, moved towards
greater political freedom.
2. The Netherlands built a colonial empire, and large Dutch joint-stock companies
controlled the overseas markets.
a) The Dutch East India Company, formed in 1602, monopolized the spice trade from
Southeast Asia with huge profits from it.
b) The Company also imported other valuable Asian products, including Chinese silks
and porcelain, Indian cotton textiles, and precious metals.
3. These commercial activities amassed vast capital, making Amsterdam a major hub of
world trade; the flow of wealth also fostered an innovative republican system and a
climate of freedom and tolerance, attracting people who sought refuge from persecution.
1. After ending Spanish domination, Protestant Holland became a republic and part of a
confederation linked by common institutions such as the assemblies of delegates.
2. The Scottish Stuarts came to power after Elizabeth I died without an heir. Anglicanism
became the only recognized faith in Scotland and England, and Puritans and
Presbyterians, including those in Parliament, were persecuted.
3. Stuart despotism led to the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1641; parliamentary
troops led by Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) defeated the royalist forces and beheaded
King Charles I.
4. Parliament abolished the monarchy and proclaimed a republican Commonwealth (16491660) dominated by Cromwell.
5. The Puritans favored capitalism and protecting property rights which ended lingering
vestiges of feudalism in England.
6. Cromwell’s rule became dictatorial, imposing Puritan morality, banning newspapers,
executing dissidents, and crushing a Catholic rebellion in Ireland; on his death,
Parliament restored the Stuarts to the throne.
7. After the Stuart restoration, Protestant-Catholic conflicts resumed, which resulted in the
1688 abdication of the pro-Catholic king, James II (r.1685-1688).
8. In the Glorious Revolution of 1688, parliament offered the throne to the Protestant
William of Orange and his wife, Mary, eldest daughter of James II, who were required to
accept limits to their authority by accepting a Bill of Rights.
9. The Glorious Revolution represented only a limited move toward democracy, but the
new government represented only the factions with political influence and wealth: the
nobility, wealthy merchants, and property owners.
Rising New States, Declining Old States
1. Catholic, German-speaking Austria became a major power after the Thirty Years War,
governing Czechs, Croats, Slovenians, Hungarians, Italians, Romanians, and Serbs.
2. Lutheran Sweden became independent of Denmark in 1520, establishing a hereditary but
not absolutist monarchy, with a national assembly; under King Gustavus Adolphus
(r.1611-1632), Sweden conquered parts of Poland, Prussia, and the eastern Baltic.
3. By 1721, Russia and Prussia had displaced the Swedes from all their eastern Baltic
possessions except Finland.
4. Under King Frederick the Great (r.1740-1786), Prussia built a formidable army and
expanded at the expense of Poland, Austria, and the Holy Roman Empire.
5. By the sixteenth century, the Holy Roman Empire had become a political entity without
much cohesion or power.
6. By 1569, Poland and Lithuania formed a combined republican commonwealth that
enjoyed economic prosperity and offered religious tolerance under elected kings; after
1717, rebellion and invasion weakened the commonwealth. Russia came to dominate
Poland and annexed Lithuania, and Catholicism became a major feature of Polish and
Lithuanian identity.
IV. THE TRANSFORMATION OF CULTURES AND SOCIETIES
A. Arts and Philosophy
1.
The Renaissance and Reformation fostered the Baroque style, which shocked people by
limiting restraints on expression and questioned accepted ideas.
2. Many Dutch artists broke away from the preoccupation with religious themes to paint
landscapes, still lives, and domestic scenes.
a) The works of painters such as Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) and Jan Vermeer
(1632-1675) conveyed the emotions, personalities, thoughts, and feelings of
individuals in Amsterdam.
b) The works of Dutch artists also showed imported foreign products, such as Chinese
bowls, Turkish carpets, Southeast Asian spices, and American tobacco, reflecting a
growing world economy.
3. Composers such as George Frederick Handel (1685-1750) and Johann Sebastian Bach
(1685-1759) produced music that appealed to a wide audience.
4. The English politician and philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626) sought to eliminate
intellectual restraints on science by separating philosophy from theology through the use
of reason.
5. The French rationalist philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) promoted pure reason
and advocated a new system of knowledge embracing all aspects of reality.
6. The English political theorist Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), author of The Leviathan,
argued that society was not perfectible, even with the use of reason or Christian
teachings; according to Hobbes, truth, reason, and justice were artificial attributes created
by social convention and language.
B.
Science and Technology
1. The Scientific Revolution (ca.1600-1750) was an era of rapid advancement in knowledge,
especially in mathematics and astronomy; it was derived partly from imported Asian and
Islamic ideas and technologies.
2. The German, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) used mathematics to confirm the heliocentric
view of the solar system, and the Florentine Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) proved the
theories of Nicolaus Copernicus experimentally.
3. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), a mathematics professor at Cambridge University,
discovered the fundamental laws of physics and published his Mathematical Principles
of Natural Philosophy in 1687, describing the motions of the planets, the comets, the
moon, and the sea; his ideas dominated Western scientific thought for the next 200 years.
4. Scientific discoveries fostered technology.
a) These advances included improved gunpowder weapons, clocks, lead pencils,
thermometers, the first slide rule, and the first calculator.
b) In England, the first blast furnace and the first crude steam engine helped launch
the Industrial Revolution.
C. The Enlightenment
1. The Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason, (1675-1800) was a philosophical movement
based on science and reason that rejected many traditional ideas; it spread a humanistic
secularism, promoted critical approaches to knowledge, and addressed gender issues.
2. The Englishman, John Locke (1632-1704), was one of the first Enlightenment
philosophers advocating empiricism; his political theories influenced the foundation of
modern democratic states.
3.
D.
E.
In France, some philosophes (philosophers) such as Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)
attacked religious dogma and absolutist power, while Voltaire (1694-1778) argued
against established religion and argued that rational behavior fostered a happy life.
Capitalism and Rural Society
1. By the sixteenth century, wealthy businessmen began buying land as investment, which
caused a shift from agriculture to the more profitable activity of raising sheep.
2. In England peasantry mostly disappeared as a class, replaced by tenant farmers, poor
farm workers, or rural vagabonds.
3. Under the new capitalist system, people became responsible for their own condition; it
also created a labor pool of landless peasants for fledgling industries.
4. Capitalism also undermined guilds, destroying medieval concepts of economic justice, as
businessmen favored production by displaced peasants who were paid for each item.
5. The economic inequities fostered widespread discontent, radical movements, peasant
revolts, and banditry throughout Western Europe.
6. Many people moved to cities, leading to overcrowding and unsanitary conditions.
Families and Gender Relations
1. The nuclear family became common in northern Europe, with societies increasingly
recognizing childhood as a distinct phase of life.
2. The importation of consumer goods had a negative effect upon women’s economic roles
and status, though their experiences varied, and in some parts of Europe, women engaged
in trade or controlled financial resources.
3. Lower-class women faced increased exploitation as servants in affluent households.
4. Because millions of people believed in magic, astrology, and witches, many women were
accused of witchcraft and were tortured, banished, or executed.
5. Governments and churches regulated sexual and moral behavior, prosecuting adultery,
premarital sex, and homosexuality.