Western Civilization II: Renaissance to the Present

This is Unit Four of Social Sciences and History, part one of two: Western civilization from Renaissance Italy to the first factories. Unit three closed on plague, war and schism leaving stronger crowns and a rich northern Italy. This part carries one idea from there. The state grew. Gunpowder war demanded taxes, taxes demanded bureaucrats, and kings who had been first among nobles became employers of paid officials. Absolutism grew the state in France and Prussia; England rejected absolutism and grew the state anyway; empire and revolution grew it more, and Napoleon carried its code across Europe. Watch for the anchor's caveats as you go, because it names them at every step, from the word revolution to the reasons Britain industrialized first. By the end you will be able to say why the Renaissance began in Italy and what gunpowder did to monarchy. To classify a reformation by its cause. To compare Spain's empire with the trade empires. To state the Enlightenment's program and match four thinkers to their claims. And to put the French Revolution in order and say what turned it radical.

Three entries on the Renaissance: why rebirth began in Italy, the idea and its thinkers, and the press, the patrons and perspective.

Why the Renaissance began in Italy.

SSH 0301 Why the Renaissance Began in Italy

Northern Italy escaped the Hundred Years' War, sat under weak popes during the Schism, and was Europe's most urbanized region, trading with the East. Its merchants adopted double-entry bookkeeping and bills of exchange from the Arab world, and the Peace of Lodi in fourteen fifty-four brought forty years of calm. Milan's despots, Venice's Doge and Florence's Medici were three different politics.

The idea of rebirth.

SSH 0302 Humanism and Its Thinkers

Renaissance means rebirth of Greece and Rome, and humanism put humankind at the center. Petrarch founded the movement about thirteen hundred and coined the Dark Ages. Christine de Pizan argued women's capacity; Erasmus corrected the New Testament from Greek; Machiavelli's Prince is arguably the first political science. The anchor calls Petrarch the founder and the artists the famous ones. The exam asks both.

Print, patronage, and perspective.

SSH 0303 Print, Patronage, and Perspective

The movable-type press was the era's one technological leap. Patronage turned art into political competition: a family paid, the city received, honor followed. Painters replaced Gothic flatness with linear perspective, and Brunelleschi's dome was completed in fourteen thirty-six by the cathedral's own record, where the anchor misprints fourteen thirteen. Michelangelo's David of fifteen oh four followed Greek sculpture. Rebirth meant imitation, then invention.

Three entries on the new monarchies: what gunpowder and taxes did to kings, three kingdoms becoming states, and the empire the anchor calls the model of the age.

Gunpowder and taxes.

SSH 0304 Gunpowder, Taxes, and the New Monarchies

From about thirteen fifty to fifteen hundred the largest monarchies expanded. Gunpowder war demanded guns, mercenaries and fortifications, so kings levied new taxes and hired non-noble officials trained by humanists, dismissable at will: a medieval king first among nobles, a Renaissance king with paid bureaucrats. The anchor's caveat is that many historians reject the word revolution. The change took over a century.

Three kingdoms becoming states.

SSH 0305 Spain, England, France Become States

Isabella and Ferdinand's marriage united Spain, and Granada fell in fourteen ninety-two. England's War of the Roses ended in fourteen eighty-five with Henry the Seventh's Star Chamber. France's Charles the Seventh built a professional army on permanent taxes, and Louis the Eleventh made wartime taxes permanent. The German lands stayed fragmented under the Holy Roman Empire, an abstraction since Charlemagne.

The model state of the age.

SSH 0306 The Ottoman Empire as a Model State

The anchor calls the Ottoman Empire the model early modern state: centralized, prosperous, trading with Europe, honoring merchants and granting legal autonomy to Jews and Christians. Constantinople fell to it in fourteen fifty-three. Safavid Persia stood beside it, heir to two thousand years of Persian statecraft. Western civilization texts often reduce the Ottomans to a faceless threat, the anchor says. The exam does not.

Three entries on the reformations: Luther, Calvin and Henry, Rome's answer, and how to sort a reformation by what it wanted changed.

Luther, Calvin, and Henry.

SSH 0307 Luther, Calvin, Henry VIII

Indulgences promised time off purgatory. Luther held that faith alone saved, not works. Calvin in Geneva added predestination. Henry the Eighth broke with Rome for an heir by the Act of Supremacy of fifteen thirty-four. By sixteen hundred the map read Catholic south, Orthodox east, Protestant north. Two reformations protested the Church's failings; England's began, the anchor says, with a king's desires.

Rome's answer.

SSH 0308 The Catholic Reformation

Paul the Third launched the hard line: the Inquisition in fifteen forty-two, the Council of Trent, and the Jesuits under Loyola from fifteen forty, while Teresa of Ávila reformed the Carmelites. Doctrine did not move; abuses were corrected; new orders reached the laity. Historians now prefer Catholic Reformation to Counter-Reformation, the anchor reports. Neither side held any notion of toleration.

Sorting the reformations.

SSH 0309 Classifying a Reformation by Its Cause

The exam asks why a given reformation happened, and the anchor supplies four causes. Doctrinal: Luther's conviction that salvation came by faith, not works, which made indulgences a fraud. Theological extension: Calvin's reasoning that God had already chosen the saved, so Geneva should be governed accordingly. Dynastic: Henry's need for a male heir and the pope's refusal, which produced a national church with Catholic doctrine and a royal head. Institutional: the Catholic Reformation's drive to correct abuses and reaffirm doctrine. A monarch made head of his church after a marriage dispute is dynastic. A reformer teaching that God predetermined the saved is theological. A theologian denying that works earn salvation is doctrinal. A council reaffirming every contested doctrine while ordering bishops to reside in their dioceses is institutional. Ask what the reformer wanted changed and what he left standing. The trap is treating the English Reformation as doctrinal: Henry kept Catholic doctrine, and only the head changed. The second trap is calling the Catholic Reformation a mere reaction; the anchor says its reform impulse predated Luther.

Three entries on wars, absolutism and the exception: the religious wars and Westphalia, Louis and Prussia, and the England that grew a stronger state without absolutism.

The wars that followed.

SSH 0310 The Religious Wars and Westphalia

The Little Ice Age's worst decades saw France's factions at war, Philip the Second losing the Dutch and the Armada in fifteen eighty-eight, and the Thirty Years' War from sixteen eighteen killing twenty to forty percent of the German lands. Westphalia in sixteen forty-eight emptied the Empire of meaning. Nobody won, the anchor judges. Rulers turned to order and control: absolutism.

Louis and Prussia.

SSH 0311 Absolutism: Louis XIV and Prussia

Richelieu's intendants laid France's foundation. Louis the Fourteenth, king from sixteen forty-three to seventeen fifteen, outlasted the Fronde and ruled from Versailles. Prussia's Great Compromise traded nobles' control of serfs for the king's taxes and army. Governments grew about four times larger, and armies from twenty thousand past one hundred fifty thousand. Spain, bankrupt by the sixteen twenties, shows absolutism failing.

The exception.

SSH 0312 England's Exception: Civil War to 1688

James the First claimed royal prerogative; civil war followed, and Charles the First was executed. After the Catholic James the Second, the Glorious Revolution of sixteen eighty-eight brought William of Orange and the Bill of Rights. After sixteen eighty-eight parliament governed, willing to tax and grow the state for war. Absolutism failed here and the state grew stronger anyway: constitutional monarchy. That is this lecture's idea in its sharpest case.

Four entries on empires overseas: Spain's conquests, early capitalism and its crime, the Dutch and British trade empires, and the comparison the exam draws between them.

The conquests.

SSH 0313 Columbus, Cortés, Potosí

Columbus sailed in fourteen ninety-two on faith and commerce; the earth's roundness was known, its size not. Cortés reached Mexico in fifteen nineteen with about four hundred fifty men and turned the Aztecs' tributaries against them. Potosí's silver flowed from fifteen forty-five, mined by forced labor, the mita. The anchor calls the conquests a catastrophe for native peoples. Bullion undermined Spain's development.

Early capitalism.

SSH 0314 Early Capitalism and the Slave Trade

By the seventeenth century empires sought commodities, sugar, tobacco and coffee, rather than bullion. The anchor names this the first phase of capitalism: exchange for profit, reinvested for more, under states that protected property, with Europe controlling about a third of the globe by eighteen hundred. The Atlantic slave trade was that system's crime, in the anchor's words. Unit six carries its results.

The Dutch and the British.

SSH 0315 The Dutch and British Trade Empires

The Dutch invented currency exchange and the stock market and founded the first corporation, the East India Company, in sixteen oh two. Britain imitated: the Navigation Acts of sixteen fifty-one, three Dutch wars, New Amsterdam renamed New York. At Plassey in seventeen fifty-seven, eight hundred British with two thousand sepoys won Bengal. The English East India Company began as a monopoly and ended ruling India.

Comparing two empires.

SSH 0316 Comparing Two Empires on Purpose, Method, Cost

The exam contrasts the Spanish empire of the sixteenth century with the Dutch and British trade empires of the seventeenth, and three questions sort them. Purpose: Spain sought bullion and converts; the trade empires sought commodities and profit. Method: Spain conquered by force and alliance, extracted the royal fifth, and imposed forced labor; the Dutch and British chartered monopoly companies, built exchanges and banks, and passed navigation laws. Cost: for native peoples, Spain's conquest was catastrophe; for Africans, the trade empires' plantations created the Atlantic slave trade. For Spain, bullion bred stagnation; for the Netherlands and Britain, commerce bred capitalism. An empire whose wealth flowed from a single silver mountain is Spain. An empire whose wealth flowed from a chartered company's monopoly is Dutch or British, and sixteen oh two makes it Dutch. An empire whose home economy failed to develop despite enormous inflows is Spain. An empire that won its Indian foothold with a small force and local mercenaries is Britain at Plassey. The trap is separating trade from violence. The anchor is explicit that the trade empires warred constantly and rested on enslaved labor. Method differed; coercion did not disappear.

Four entries on science, the Enlightenment and the society of orders: from geocentrism to Newton, the program, four thinkers, and the world they lived in.

The Scientific Revolution.

SSH 0317 From Geocentrism to Newton

Humanists dissatisfied with ancient authors began observing for themselves: inductive reasoning. Ptolemy's geocentric spheres gave way, and Newton's Principia of sixteen eighty-seven gave one law of gravitation for planets and pebbles, while medicine lagged under Galen's humors until Vesalius and Harvey. The shift was cultural more than technological. A mechanical universe suggested a clockmaker God: deism.

The Enlightenment's program.

SSH 0318 The Enlightenment's Program

Convenient dates: sixteen eighty-eight to seventeen eighty-nine. Reason was applied to science, morality and society. Philosophes held that progress was limitless, citizens should be equal before the law, and rational laws should serve the public interest; the Encyclopedia ran to twenty-eight volumes from seventeen fifty-one. Censorship, salons and an underground press carried the ideas. Most philosophes wanted a better monarchy, not a republic.

Four thinkers.

SSH 0319 Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, Smith

Locke: sovereignty granted by the people and revocable, toleration, the blank slate. Voltaire: justice against superstition, skepticism about the masses. Rousseau: the general will. Smith: the invisible hand against monopolies and tariffs. Émilie du Châtelet translated Newton into French. Hume's contempt for the commons shows the movement's limit, and Kant praised public reason while telling subjects to obey.

The society these thinkers lived in.

SSH 0320 The Society of Orders and the Great Powers

Nobles monopolized power, land, officer posts and their own courts. Peasants in the west paid dues; serfs in the east were sold with estates by the soul; enclosure in Britain pressed peasants off common land. Five great powers emerged, France first, and Russia joined late: the Rus, the Mongol yoke, the Ivans, Peter. The century's wars were commercial and colonial.

Four entries to close: why seventeen eighty-nine, the Revolution in order, Napoleon's code and conquest, and why Britain industrialized first.

Why seventeen eighty-nine.

SSH 0321 Why 1789: Debt, Estates, Equality

A century of British wars left France paying about sixty percent of revenue in interest under outdated taxes. The Notables refused new taxes, so Louis the Sixteenth called the Estates General, unmet since sixteen fourteen: three estates, and nobody alive who knew the procedure. Equality, once claimed, spread beyond its authors' intent, an argument the anchor attributes to Lynn Hunt.

The Revolution's phases.

SSH 0322 From Constitution to Terror: Sequencing the Revolution

The exam asks for the Revolution's order, and the anchor's phases make a chain. Until June seventeen ninety-one the National Assembly built a constitutional monarchy under inflation, hunger and hostile monarchies. That June the king fled toward the border and was caught, and his correspondence with foreign courts destroyed his prestige. In October the constitution passed with the king under house arrest. Austria and Prussia demanded his restoration; radicals pushed a preemptive declaration of war. War radicalized everything: the republic, the king's execution, the Terror. Then the Directorate of seventeen ninety-five, and out of its wars, Napoleon. Given the Terror, the flight to Varennes, the Estates General and the Directorate, the order is Estates General, Varennes, Terror, Directorate: eighty-nine, ninety-one, ninety-three to ninety-four, ninety-five. Asked what turned a constitutional monarchy radical, the anchor's answer is the flight and the war together. The trap is putting the Terror before the constitution; the constitution came first and failed. A second trap is ending the Revolution at the king's death; the anchor runs it through the Directorate to Napoleon.

Napoleon.

SSH 0323 Napoleon: Code, Conquest, Nationalism

Napoleon rose through the Directorate's wars, a genius of logistics. He founded the Bank of France in eighteen hundred and the Civil Code of eighteen oh four, and exported legal equality, the end of serfdom and toleration. Six hundred thousand marched on Russia in eighteen twelve; then Elba, then Waterloo. The empire weakened nobilities, and its plunder provoked the nationalism that outlived it.

Why Britain industrialized first.

SSH 0324 Why Britain Industrialized First

The anchor rejects a cultural explanation of European dominance: the lead was technological and lasted under a century. Industrialization began in Britain about seventeen fifty on population growth, commercial agriculture and coal, in mining and textiles first, with agriculture leaving subsistence behind by eighteen hundred. The old view credited European culture or race. The anchor calls that self-serving and inaccurate.

Look at what you can now do. You can say why the Renaissance began in Italy, urban, trading and at peace, and what gunpowder did to kings: taxes, then bureaucrats. You can classify a reformation as doctrinal, theological, dynastic or institutional by asking what the reformer wanted changed and what he left standing. You can compare Spain's empire with the trade empires on purpose, method and cost, and you know coercion did not disappear. You can state the Enlightenment's program and match Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau and Smith to their claims. And you can put the Revolution in order and say that the flight and the war together turned it radical. Through all of it the state grew, with or without absolutism, which is the idea this lecture opened with. Part two opens on the railways and the cities, then carries the ideologies, the unifications, imperialism, two world wars and the Cold War to nineteen ninety-one.