In less than three hundred years, the European age of exploration had changed the shape of the world. In some areas, such as the Americas and the Spice Islands in Asia, it led to the destruction of indigenous civilizations and the establishment of European colonies. In others, such as Africa, India, and mainland Southeast Asia, it left native regimes intact but had a strong impact on local societies and regional trade patterns. Japan and China were least affected.
At the time, many European observers viewed the process in a favorable light. They believed that it not only expanded wealth through world trade and exchanged crops and discoveries between the Old World and the New, but also introduced “heathen peoples” to the message of Jesus. No doubt, the conquest of the Americas and expansion into the rest of the world brought out the worst and some of the best of European civilization. The greedy plundering of resources and the brutal repression and enslavement were hardly balanced by attempts to create new institutions, convert the natives to Christianity, and foster the rights of the indigenous peoples. In any event, Europeans had begun to change the face of the world and increasingly saw their culture, with its religion, languages, and technology, as a coherent force to be exported to all corners of the world.
CHAPTER REVIEW
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Upon Reflection
How did the experiences of the Spanish and Portuguese during the age of exploration differ from those of their French, Dutch, and English counterparts?
What role did religion play as a motivation in the age of exploration? Was it as important a motive as economics? Why or why not?
Why and how did Japan succeed in keeping Europeans largely away from its territory in the seventeenth century?
Key Terms
portolani
conquistadors
encomienda
viceroy
audiencias
triangular trade
Middle Passage
Columbian Exchange
price revolution
joint-stock company
mercantilism
Suggestions for Further Reading
GENERAL WORKS For general accounts of European discovery and expansion, see G. V. Scammell, The First Imperial Age: European Overseas Expansion, c. 1400–1715 (London, 1989); D. Arnold, Age of Discovery, 2nd ed. (London, 2002); and G. J. Ames, The Globe Encompassed: The Age of European Discovery, 1500–1700 (Upper Saddle River, N.J., 2007). On European perceptions of the world outside Europe, see M. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1991). On the technological aspects, see R. C. Smith, Vanguard of Empire: Ships of Exploration in the Age of Columbus (Oxford, 1993).
CHAPTER TIMELINE
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PORTUGUESE AND SPANISH EXPANSION On Portuguese expansion, see M. Newitt, A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion (London, 2004). On Columbus, see W. D. Phillips and C. R. Phillips, The Worlds of Christopher Columbus (Cambridge, 1992). On the Spanish Empire in the New World, see H. Kamen, Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492–1763 (New York, 2003). For a theoretical discussion of violence and gender in America, see R. Trexler, Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European Conquest of the Americas (Ithaca, N.Y., 1995). On the destructive nature of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, see D. E. Standard, American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World (New York, 1993). For a revisionist view of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, see M. Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (Oxford, 2003).
MERCANTILE EMPIRES AND WORLDWIDE TRADE The subject of mercantile empires and worldwide trade is covered in J. D. Tracy, The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350–1750 (Cambridge, 1990); J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World (New Haven, Conn., 2006); and M. J. Seymour, Transformation of the North Atlantic World, 1492–1763 (Westport, Conn., 2004). See also A. Grafton et al., New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Cambridge, Mass., 2005). On the African slave trade, see H. Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1870 (New York, 1997); M. Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (New York, 2007); and J. K. Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800 (Cambridge, 1998).
IMPACT OF EXPANSION The impact of expansion on European consciousness is explored in A. Pagden, European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven, Conn., 1993). On the impact of disease, see N. D. Cook, Born to Die: Disease and the New World (New York, 1998). The human and ecological effects of the interaction of New World and Old World cultures are examined thoughtfully in A. W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, Conn., 1972) and Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe (New York, 1986). The native American female experience with the European encounter is presented in R. Gutierrez, When Jesus Came the Corn Mother Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500–1846 (Stanford, Calif., 1991).
ECONOMIC DIMENSIONS OF EXPANSION On mercantilism, see L. Magnusson, Mercantilism: The Shaping of an Economic Language (New York, 1994). On the concept of a world economy, see A. K. Smith, Creating a World Economy: Merchant Capital, Colonialism, and World Trade, 1400–1825 (Boulder, Colo., 1991).
Visit the CourseMate website at www.cengagebrain.com for additional study tools and review materials for this chapter.
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CHAPTER 15
State Building and the Search for Order in the Seventeenth Century
Nicolas-Ren e Jollain the Elder’s portrait of Louis XIV captures the king’s sense of royal grandeur.
Chateaux de Versailles et de Trianon//_c R_eunion des Mus_ees Nationaux/Art Resource, NY
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CHAPTER OUTLINE AND FOCUS QUESTIONS
Social Crises, War, and Rebellions
What economic, social, and political crises did Europe experience in the first half of the seventeenth century?
The Practice of Absolutism: Western Europe
What was absolutism in theory, and how did its actual practice in France reflect or differ from the theory?
Absolutism in Central, Eastern, and Northern Europe
What developments enabled Brandenburg-Prussia, Austria, and Russia to emerge as major powers in the seventeenth century?
Limited Monarchy and Republics
What were the main issues in the struggle between king and Parliament in seventeenth-century England, and how were they resolved?
The Flourishing of European Culture
How did the artistic and literary achievements of this era reflect the political and economic developments of the period?
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CRITICAL THINKING
What theories of government were proposed by Jacques Bossuet, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke, and how did their respective theories reflect concerns and problems of the seventeenth century?
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BY THE END of the sixteenth century, Europe was beginning to experience a decline in religious passions and a growing secularization that affected both the political and intellectual worlds (on the intellectual effect, see Chapter 16). Some historians like to speak of the seventeenth century as a turning point in the evolution of a modern state system in Europe. The ideal of a united Christian Europe gave way to the practical realities of a system of secular states in which matters of state took precedence over the salvation of subjects’ souls. By the seventeenth century, the credibility of Christianity had been so weakened through religious wars that more and more Europeans came to think of politics in secular terms.
One of the responses to the religious wars and other crises of the time was a yearning for order. As the internal social and political rebellions and revolts died down, it became apparent that the privileged classes of society— the aristocrats—remained in control, although the various states exhibited important differences in political forms. The most general trend s
aw an extension of monarchical power as a stabilizing force. This development, which historians have called absolute monarchy or absolutism, was most evident in France during the flamboyant reign of Louis XIV, regarded by some as the perfect embodiment of an absolute monarch. In his memoirs, the duc de Saint-Simon, who had firsthand experience of French court life, said that Louis was “the very figure of a hero, so imbued with a natural but most imposing majesty that it appeared even in his most insignificant gestures and movements.” The king’s natural grace gave him a special charm as well: “He was as dignified and majestic in his dressing gown as when dressed in robes of state, or on horseback at the head of his troops.” He spoke well and learned quickly. He was naturally kind and “loved truth, justice, order, and reason.” His life was orderly: “Nothing could be regulated with greater exactitude than were his days and hours.” His self-control was impeccable: “He did not lose control of himself ten times in his whole life, and then only with inferior persons.” But even absolute monarchs had imperfections, and Saint-Simon had the courage to point them out: “Louis XIV’s vanity was without limit or restraint,” which led to his “distaste for all merit, intelligence, education, and, most of all, for all independence of character and sentiment in others,” as well as “to mistakes of judgment in matters of importance.”
But absolutism was not the only response to the search for order in the seventeenth century. Other states, such as England, reacted differently to domestic crisis, and another very different system emerged in which monarchs were limited by the power of their representative assemblies. Absolute and limited monarchy were the two poles of seventeenth-century state building.
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Social Crises, War, and Rebellions
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FOCUS QUESTION: What economic, social, and political crises did Europe experience in the first half of the seventeenth century?
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The inflation-fueled prosperity of the sixteenth century showed signs of slackening by the beginning of the seventeenth. Economic contraction was evident in some parts of Europe in the 1620s. In the 1630s and 1640s, as imports of silver from the Americas declined, economic recession intensified, especially in the Mediterranean area. Once the industrial and financial center of Europe in the Renaissance, Italy was now becoming an economic backwater. Spain’s economy was also seriously failing by the 1640s.
Population trends of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries also reveal Europe’s worsening conditions. The sixteenth century was a period of expanding population, possibly related to a warmer climate and increased food supplies. It has been estimated that the population of Europe increased from 60 million in 1500 to 85 million by 1600, the first major recovery of European population since the devastation of the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century. Records also indicate a leveling off of the population by 1620, however, and even a decline by 1650, especially in central and southern Europe. Only the Dutch, English, and French grew in number in the first half of the seventeenth century. Europe’s longtime adversaries—war, famine, and plague—continued to affect population levels. After the middle of the sixteenth century, another “little ice age,” when average temperatures fell, affected harvests and caused famines. These problems created social tensions that came to a boil in the witchcraft craze.
The Witchcraft Craze
Hysteria over witchcraft affected the lives of many Europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Witchcraft trials were held in England, Scotland, Switzerland, Germany, some parts of France and the Low Countries, and even New England in America.
Witchcraft was not a new phenomenon. Its practice had been part of traditional village culture for centuries, but it came to be viewed as both sinister and dangerous when the medieval church began to connect witches to the activities of the devil, thereby transforming witchcraft into a heresy that had to be wiped out. After the establishment of the Inquisition in the thirteenth century, some people were accused of a variety of witchcraft practices and, following the biblical injunction “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” were turned over to secular authorities for burning at the stake or, in England, hanging.
THE SPREAD OF WITCHCRAFT What distinguished witchcraft in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from these previous developments was the increased number of trials and executions of presumed witches. Perhaps more than 100,000 people were prosecuted throughout Europe on charges of witchcraft. As more and more people were brought to trial, the fear of witches as well as the fear of being accused of witchcraft escalated to frightening proportions. Although larger cities were affected first, the trials also spread to smaller towns and rural areas as the hysteria persisted well into the seventeenth century.
The accused witches usually confessed to a number of practices, most often after intense torture. But even when people confessed voluntarily, certain practices stand out. Many said that they had sworn allegiance to the devil and attended sabbats or nocturnal gatherings where they feasted, danced, and even copulated with the devil in sexual orgies. More common, however, were admissions of using evil incantations and special ointments and powders to wreak havoc on neighbors by killing their livestock, injuring their children, or raising storms to destroy their crops.
A number of contributing factors have been suggested to explain why the witchcraft frenzy became so widespread in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Religious uncertainties clearly played some part. Many witchcraft trials occurred in areas where Protestantism had been recently victorious or in regions, such as southwestern Germany, where Protestant-Catholic controversies still raged. As religious passions became inflamed, accusations of being in league with the devil became common on both sides.
Recently, however, historians have emphasized the importance of social conditions, especially the problems of a society in turmoil, in explaining the witchcraft hysteria. At a time when the old communal values that stressed working together for the good of the community were disintegrating before the onslaught of a new economic ethic that emphasized looking out for oneself, property owners became more fearful of the growing numbers of poor in their midst and transformed them psychologically into agents of the devil. Old women were particularly susceptible to suspicion. Many of them, no longer the recipients of the local charity available in traditional society, may even have tried to survive by selling herbs, potions, or secret remedies for healing. When problems arose—and there were many in this crisis-laden period— these women were handy scapegoats.
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A Witchcraft Trial in France
Persecutions for witchcraft reached their high point in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when tens of thousands of people were brought to trial. In this excerpt from the minutes of a trial in France in 1652, we can see why the accused witch stood little chance of exonerating herself.
The Trial of Suzanne Gaudry
28 May, 1652…. Interrogation of Suzanne Gaudry, prisoner at the court of Rieux…. [During interrogations on May 28 and May 29, the prisoner confessed to a number of activities involving the devil.]
Deliberation of the Court—June 3, 1652
The undersigned advocates of the Court have seen these interrogations and answers. They say that the aforementioned Suzanne Gaudry confesses that she is a witch, that she had given herself to the devil, that she had renounced God, Lent, and baptism, that she has been marked on the shoulder, that she has cohabited with the devil and that she has been to the dances, confessing only to have cast a spell upon and caused to die a beast of Philippe Cornié….
Third Interrogation—June 27
This prisoner being led into the chamber, she was examined to know if things were not as she had said and confessed at the beginning of her imprisonment.
—Answers no, and that what she has said was done so by force.
Pressed to say the truth, that otherwise she would be subjected to torture, having pointed out to her that her aunt was burned for this same subject.
—Ans
wers that she is not a witch….
She was placed in the hands of the officer in charge of torture, throwing herself on her knees, struggling to cry, uttering several exclamations, without being able, nevertheless to shed a tear. Saying at every moment that she is not a witch.
The Torture
On this same day, being at the place of torture.
This prisoner, before being strapped down, was admonished to maintain herself in her first confessions and to renounce her lover.
—Says that she denies everything she has said, and that she has no lover. Feeling herself being strapped down, says that she is not a witch, while struggling to cry … and upon being asked why she confessed to being one, said that she was forced to say it.
Told that she was not forced, that on the contrary she declared herself to be a witch without any threat.
—Says that she confessed it and that she is not a witch, and being a little stretched [on the rack] screams ceaselessly that she is not a witch….
Asked if she did not confess that she had been a witch for twenty-six years.
—Says that she said it, that she retracts it, crying that she is not a witch.
Asked if she did not make Philippe Cornié’s horse die, as she confessed.
—Answers no, crying Jesus-Maria, that she is not a witch.
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