The Making of The West Peoples and Cultures Compress
The Making of The West Peoples and Cultures Compress
The Making of The West Peoples and Cultures Compress
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‘The Orrery’, c.1766 (oil on canvas), Wright of Derby, Joseph (1734–97) / Derby Museum and Art Gallery, UK /
Bridgeman Images.
FIFTH EDITION
Lynn Hunt
University of California, Los Angeles
Thomas R. Martin
College of the Holy Cross
Barbara H. Rosenwein
Loyola University Chicago
Bonnie G. Smith
Rutgers University
Bedford/St. Martin’s
A Macmillan Education Imprint
Copyright © 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007 by Bedford / St. Martin’s. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except as may be expressly permitted by the applicable copyright statutes
or in writing by the Publisher.
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(617-399-4000)
ISBN 978–1-4576-8143-1 (Combined Edition) ISBN 978-1-319-02752-0 (Combined Loose-leaf Edition)
ISBN 978–1-4576-8152-3 (Volume I) ISBN 978-1-319-02753-7 (Loose-leaf Edition, Volume 1)
ISBN 978–1-4576-8153-0 (Volume II) ISBN 978-1-319-02754-4 (Loose-leaf Edition, Volume 2)
Acknowledgments and copyrights appear on the same page as the text and art selections they cover; these
acknowledgments and copyrights constitute an extension of the copyright page. It is a violation of the law to
reproduce these selections by any means whatsoever without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Preface: Why This Book This Way
W
e are delighted to present the fifth edition of The Making of the West:
Peoples and Cultures. With this edition, The Making of the West moves
fully into the digital age, and we are proud and excited to offer a whole
new way of teaching and learning western civilization. At the same time, we have
stayed true to the fundamental approach that has made this book a popular choice for
instructors and students alike. We continue to link the history of the West to wider
developments in the world. We continue to offer a synthetic approach to history —
from military to gender — that integrates different approaches rather than privileging
one or two. And we continue to believe that students benefit from a solid chronologi-
cal framework when they are trying to understand events of the past. This new edi-
tion is priced affordably, to save your students money and keep your overall course
budget manageable. If you have been a user of the comprehensive edition of The Mak-
ing of the West, you will find the complete feature program available in LaunchPad, as
described below. If you were previously a user of the concise edition, you and your
students also have access to the full feature program in LaunchPad. In addition to the
features, LaunchPad is loaded with the full-color e-book plus LearningCurve, an
adaptive learning tool; the popular Sources of the Making of the West documents col-
lection; additional primary sources; a wealth of assessment tools; chapter summa-
tive quizzes; and more.
a full suite of skill-building features, all of which will be familiar to users of the com-
prehensive edition of The Making of the West and are now made available for the first
time to users of the concise edition
The adaptive learning tool known as LearningCurve is designed to get students to
read before they come to class. With LearningCurve students move through questions
based on the narrative text at their own pace and accumulate points as they go in a
game-like fashion. Feedback for incorrect responses explains why the answer is incor-
rect and directs students back to the text to review. The end result is a better under-
standing of the key elements of the text.
The LaunchPad e-book features five unique skill-building features. Four of these
features appear in every chapter in LaunchPad. They extend the narrative by revealing
the process of interpretation, providing a solid introduction to historical argument
and critical thinking, and capturing the excitement of historical investigation.
■ Primary Sources — at least two per chapter — give students a more direct expe-
rience of the past through original voices. Whether it is Frederick Barbaraossa
replying to the Romans when they offer him the emperor’s crown, Marie de
Sévigne’s description of the French court, or an ordinary person’s account of the
outbreak of the Russian Revolution, primary documents offer a window into
the thoughts and actions of the past. Each document is accompanied by a short,
auto-graded multiple-choice quiz.
■ Contrasting Views compares two or more often conflicting primary sources
focused on a central event, person, or development — such as Roman attitudes
toward Cleopatra, the Mongols, the consumer revolution of the eighteenth cen-
tury, and decolonization in Africa — enabling students to understand history
from a variety of contemporaneous perspectives. Each feature contains analyti-
cal questions along with an auto-graded multiple-choice quiz.
■ Seeing History guides students through the process of reading images as his-
torical evidence. Each one provides either a single image or paired images for
comparison and contrast, with background information, and questions that
encourage visual analysis. It also has an auto-graded multiple-choice quiz.
■ Taking Measure introduces students to quantitative analysis in every chapter.
Each highlights a chart, table, graph, or map of historical statistics that illumi-
nates an important political, social, or cultural development. Topics include the
distances covered by Alexander the Great’s army, the expansion of the printing
press to 1500, and wartime production of the major powers during the Second
World War. Each comes with a question for analysis and an auto-graded multiple-
choice quiz.
■ Terms of History appears in 11 of the chapters and looks not only at the origin
of a term — such as civilization, renaissance, progress, and globalization — but
also at the changing meaning of the term over time, which further underscores
historical skill building. The feature comes with an auto-graded multiple-choice
quiz.
Preface: Why This Book Contents
This Way vii
Chronological Framework
We know from our own teaching that introductory students need a solid chronological
framework, one with enough familiar benchmarks to make the material easy to grasp.
Each chapter is organized around the main events, people, and themes of a period in
which the West significantly changed; thus, students learn about political and mili-
tary events and social and cultural developments as they unfolded. This chronological
integration also makes it possible for students to see the interconnections among
varieties of historical experience — between politics and cultures, between public
events and private experiences, between wars and diplomacy and everyday life. For
teachers, our chronological approach ensures a balanced account and provides the
opportunity to present themes within their greater context. But perhaps best of all, this
approach provides a text that reveals history as a process that is constantly alive, sub-
ject to pressures, and able to surprise us.
Updated Scholarship
As always, we have also incorporated the latest scholarly findings throughout the book
so that students and instructors alike have a text on which they can confidently rely. In
viii Preface: Why This Book This Way
the fifth edition, we have included new and updated discussions of topics such as fresh
archaeological evidence for the possible role of religion in stimulating the major changes
of the Neolithic Revolution; the dating of the Great Sphinx in Egypt, the scholarly
debate that could radically change our ideas of the earliest Egyptian history; the newest
thinking on the origins of Islam; the crucial issues in the Investiture Conflict between
pope and emperor; the impact of the Great Famine of the fourteenth century; the slave
trade, especially its continuation into the nineteenth century; and the ways in which
scholars are considering recent events within the context of the new digital world.
Focused Reading
Each chapter begins with a vivid anecdote that draws readers into the atmosphere of
the period and introduces the chapter’s main themes, accompanied by a full-page
illustration. The Chapter Focus poses an overarching question at the start of the nar-
rative to help guide students’ reading. Strategically placed at the end of each major
section, a Review Question helps students assimilate core points in digestible incre-
ments. Key Terms and names that appear in boldface in the text have been updated to
concentrate on likely test items; these terms are defined in the Glossary of Key Terms
and People at the end of the book.
Geographic Literacy
The map program of The Making of the West has been praised by reviewers for its com-
prehensiveness. In each chapter, we offer three types of maps, each with a distinct role
Preface: Why This Book Contents
This Way ix
Acknowledgments
In the vital process of revision, the authors have benefited from repeated critical read-
ings by many talented scholars and teachers. Our sincere thanks go to the following
instructors, whose comments often challenged us to rethink or justify our interpreta-
tions and who always provided a check on accuracy down to the smallest detail:
Stephen Andrews, Central New Mexico Community College; David Bachrach,
University of New Hampshire; Curtis Bostick, Southern Utah University; Fedja Buric,
Bellarmine University; Marie Therese Champagne, University of West Florida; Sviato-
slav Dmitriev, Ball State University; Gabrielle Everett, Jefferson College; William Grose,
Wytheville Community College; Elizabeth Heath, Baruch College-CUNY; Kevin Her-
lihy, University of Central Florida; Renzo Honores, High Point University; Chris Laney,
Berkshire Community College; Christina Bosco Langert, Suffolk Community College;
Elizabeth Lehfeldt, Cleveland State University; James Martin, Campbell University;
Walter Miszczenko, College of Western Idaho; Yvonne Rivera, Montgomery County
Community College; David Pizzo, Murray State University; Kevin Robbins, Indiana
University/Purdue University; James Robertson, College of San Mateo; Brian Rutishauser,
Fresno City College; Charles Levine, Mesa Community College; Lisa Ossian, Des Moines
Area Community College; Ruma Salhi, Northern Virginia Community College; Christo-
pher Sleeper, Mira Costa College; Allison Stein, Pellissippi State Community College;
Pamela Stewart, Arizona State University; Nancy Vavra, University of Colorado at Boul-
der; K. Steven Vincent, North Carolina State University; and Joanna Vitiello, Rockhurst
University.
x ContentsWhy This Book This Way
Preface:
Many colleagues, friends, and family members have made contributions to this
work. They know how grateful we are. We also wish to acknowledge and thank the
publishing team at Bedford/St. Martin’s who did so much to bring this revised edition
to completion: editorial director Edwin Hill; publisher for history Michael Rosenberg;
director of development for history Jane Knetzger; developmental editor Kathryn Ab-
bott; associate editor Emily DiPietro; editorial assistant Lexi DeConti; senior market-
ing manager Sandra McGuire; senior production editor Kerri Cardone; art researcher
Bruce Carson; text designer Lisa Buckley; cover designer Billy Boardman; and copy-
editor Lisa Wehrle.
Our students’ questions and concerns have shaped much of this work, and we
welcome all our readers’ suggestions, queries, and criticisms. Please contact us at our
respective institutions or via [email protected].
Versions and Supplements
A
dopters of The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures and their students
have access to abundant print and digital resources and tools, the acclaimed
Bedford Series in History and Culture volumes, and much more. The Launch-
Pad course space for The Making of the West provides access to the narrative as well as
a wealth of primary sources and other features, along with assignment and assessment
opportunities at the ready. See below for more information, visit the book’s catalog site
at macmillanhighered.com/hunt/catalog, or contact your local Bedford/St. Martin’s
sales representative.
xi
xii Versions and Supplements
Bedford Coursepack for Blackboard, Canvas, D2L, or Moodle. We can help you inte-
grate our rich content into your course management system. Registered instructors
can download coursepacks that include our popular free resources and book-specific
content for The Making of the West. Visit macmillanhighered.com/cms to find your
version or download your coursepack.
Instructor’s Resource Manual. The instructor’s manual offers both experienced and
first-time instructors tools for presenting textbook material in engaging ways. It
includes content learning objectives, annotated chapter outlines, and strategies for
teaching with the textbook, plus suggestions on how to get the most out of Learning-
Curve and a survival guide for first-time teaching assistants.
Online Test Bank. The test bank includes a mix of fresh, carefully crafted multiple-
choice, matching, short-answer, and essay questions for each chapter. All questions
appear in Microsoft Word format and in easy-to-use test bank software that allows
instructors to add, edit, re-sequence, and print questions and answers. Instructors can
also export questions into a variety of course management systems.
The Bedford Lecture Kit: Lecture Outlines, Maps, and Images. Look good and save time
with The Bedford Lecture Kit. These presentation materials are downloadable individu-
ally from the Instructor Resources tab at macmillanhighed.com/huntconcise/catalog.
They include fully customizable multimedia presentations built around chapter out-
lines that are embedded with maps, figures, and images from the textbook and are
supplemented by more detailed instructor notes on key points and concepts.
Sources of The Making of the West, Fourth Edition. This companion sourcebook pro-
vides written and visual sources to accompany each chapter of The Making of the West.
Political, social, and cultural documents offer a variety of perspectives that comple-
ment the textbook and encourage students to make connections between narrative his-
tory and primary sources. To aid students in approaching and interpreting documents,
xiv Versions and Supplements
each chapter contains an introduction, document headnotes, and questions for discus-
sion. Now with a chapter organization that matches the textbook, this reader is avail-
able free when packaged with the print text.
Sources of The Making of the West e-Book. The reader is also available as an e-book.
When packaged with the print or electronic version of the textbook, it is available
for free.
The Bedford Series in History and Culture. More than 100 titles in this highly praised
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Rand McNally Atlas of Western Civilization. This collection of almost seventy full-
color maps illustrates the eras and civilizations in world history from the emergence of
human societies to the present.
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For more information, visit macmillanhighered.com/tradeup.
A Pocket Guide to Writing in History. This portable and affordable reference tool by
Mary Lynn Rampolla provides reading, writing, and research advice useful to students
in all history courses. Concise yet comprehensive advice on approaching typical his-
tory assignments, developing critical reading skills, writing effective history papers,
conducting research, using and documenting sources, and avoiding plagiarism —
enhanced with practical tips and examples throughout — have made this slim refer-
ence a best-seller.
A Student’s Guide to History. This complete guide to success in any history course
provides the practical help students need to be successful. In addition to introducing
students to the nature of the discipline, author Jules Benjamin teaches a wide range of
skills from preparing for exams to approaching common writing assignments, and
explains the research and documentation process with plentiful examples.
Brief Contents
‘The Orrery’, c.1766 (oil on canvas), Wright of Derby, Joseph (1734–97) / Derby
Museum and Art Gallery, UK / Bridgeman Images.
Preface v
Versions and Supplements xi
Maps and Figures xlvi
LaunchPad Features li
Authors’ Note: The b.c.e./c.e. Dating System lvi
World Map lviii
Map of Europe lx
xvi
Contents xvii
Egyptian Museum, Cairo / Alfredo Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.
Chapter 1
Early Western Civilization, 400,000–1000 b.c.e. 3
Conclusion 36
Chapter 1 Review 38
xviii Contents
Chapter 2
Near East Empires and the Reemergence of
Civilization in Greece, 1000–500 b.c.e. 41
From Dark Age to Empire in the Near East, 1000–500 b.c.e. 42
The New Empire of Assyria, 900–600 b.c.e. 43 ■ The Neo-Babylonian
Empire, 600–539 b.c.e. 43 ■ The Persian Empire, 557–500 b.c.e. 44 ■
The Israelites, Origins to 539 b.c.e. 46
Conclusion 73
Chapter 2 Review 74
Contents xix
Chapter 3
The Greek Golden Age, c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e. 77
Conclusion 108
Chapter 4
From the Classical to the Hellenistic World,
400–30 b.c.e. 113
Classical Greece after the Peloponnesian War, 400–350 b.c.e. 114
Athens’s Recovery after the Peloponnesian War 114 ■ The Execution of
Socrates, 399 b.c.e. 116 ■ The Philosophy of Plato 116 ■ Aristotle,
Scientist and Philosopher 118 ■ Greek Political Disunity 118
Conclusion 138
Chapter 5
The Rise of Rome and Its Republic, 753–44 b.c.e. 143
Conclusion 170
Chapter 6
The Creation of the Roman Empire,
44 b.c.e.–284 c.e. 175
From Republic to Empire, 44 b.c.e.–14 c.e. 176
Civil War, 44–27 b.c.e. 176 ■ The Creation of the Principate, 27 b.c.e.–
14 c.e. 177 ■ Daily Life in the Rome of Augustus 179 ■ Changes in
Education, Literature, and Art in Augustus’s Rome 182
Conclusion 205
Chapter 7
The Transformation of the Roman Empire,
284–600 c.e. 211
From Principate to Dominate in the Late Roman Empire, 284–395 212
The Political Transformation and Division of the Roman Empire 212 ■
The Social Consequences of Financial Pressures 215 ■ From the Great
Persecution to Religious Freedom 217
Conclusion 244
Chapter 8
The Heirs of Rome: Islam, Byzantium, and Europe,
600–750 249
Islam: A New Religion and a New Empire 250
Nomads and City Dwellers 250 ■ The Prophet Muhammad and the Faith
of Islam 251 ■ Growth of Islam, c. 610–632 252 ■ The Caliphs,
Muhammad’s Successors, 632–750 253 ■ Peace and Prosperity in Islamic
Lands 255
Conclusion 274
From the First Bible of Charles the Bald, c. 843–851 / Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris,
France / Bridgeman Images.
Chapter 9
From Centralization to Fragmentation, 750–1050 279
Conclusion 309
Chapter 10
Commercial Quickening and Religious Reform,
1050–1150 313
The Commercial Revolution 314
Fairs, Towns, and Cities 314 ■ Organizing Crafts and Commerce 318 ■
Conclusion 344
Chapter 11
The Flowering of the Middle Ages, 1150–1215 347
Conclusion 374
Chapter 12
The Medieval Synthesis — and Its Cracks,
1215–1340 379
The Church’s Mission 380
Innocent III and the Fourth Lateran Council 380 ■ The Inquisition 382 ■
Conclusion 404
Chapter 13
Crisis and Renaissance, 1340–1492 409
Conclusion 436
Chapter 14
Global Encounters and the Shock of the Reformation,
1492–1560 441
The Discovery of New Worlds 442
Portuguese Explorations 442 ■ The Voyages of Columbus 444 ■ A New
Era in Slavery 444 ■ Conquering the New World 445 ■ The Columbian
Exchange 446
Conclusion 468
akg-images.
Chapter 15
Wars of Religion and the Clash of Worldviews,
1560–1648 473
Religious Conflicts Threaten State Power, 1560–1618 474
French Wars of Religion, 1562–1598 474 ■ Dutch Revolt against Spain 476
■ Elizabeth I’s Defense of English Protestantism 479 ■ The Clash of Faiths
and Empires in Eastern Europe 481
Conclusion 500
Chapter 16
Absolutism, Constitutionalism, and the Search
for Order, 1640–1700 505
Louis XIV: Absolutism and Its Limits 506
The Fronde, 1648–1653 506 ■ Court Culture as an Element of
Absolutism 508 ■ Enforcing Religious Orthodoxy 509 ■ Extending
State Authority at Home and Abroad 510
Conclusion 536
Chapter 17
The Atlantic System and Its Consequences,
1700–1750 541
The Atlantic System and the World Economy 542
Slavery and the Atlantic System 542 ■ World Trade and Settlement 546 ■
Conclusion 571
Chapter 18
The Promise of Enlightenment, 1750–1789 575
Conclusion 603
Chapter 19
The Cataclysm of Revolution, 1789–1799 607
Conclusion 634
Chapter 20
Napoleon and the Revolutionary Legacy,
1800–1830 639
The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte 640
A General Takes Over 640 ■ From Republic to Empire 641 ■ The New
Paternalism: The Civil Code 644 ■ Patronage of Science and Intellectual
Life 645
Conclusion 668
By Salvatore Fergola, Museum San Martino, Naples, Italy / photo © Roger Viollet /
The Image Works.
Chapter 21
Industrialization and Social Ferment, 1830–1850 673
Conclusion 703
Chapter 22
Politics and Culture of the Nation-State,
1850–1870 709
The End of the Concert of Europe 710
Napoleon III and the Quest for French Glory 711 ■ The Crimean War,
1853–1856: Turning Point in European Affairs 712 ■ Reform in Russia 713
Conclusion 740
Chapter 23
Empire, Industry, and Everyday Life, 1870–1890 745
Conclusion 778
Chapter 24
Modernity and the Road to War, 1890–1914 783
Conclusion 816
Kathe Kollwitz / photo © Paul Maeyaert / Bridgeman Images / © 2015 Artists Rights
Society [ARS], New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.
Chapter 25
World War I and Its Aftermath, 1914–1929 821
Conclusion 854
Chapter 26
The Great Depression and World War II,
1929–1945 859
The Great Depression 860
Economic Disaster Strikes 860 ■ Social Effects of the Depression 862 ■
Conclusion 893
Chapter 27
The Cold War and the Remaking of Europe,
1945–1960s 899
World Politics Transformed 900
Chaos in Europe 901 ■ New Superpowers: The United States and the
Soviet Union 902 ■ Origins of the Cold War 903 ■ The Division of
Germany 906
Conclusion 932
Chapter 28
Postindustrial Society and the End of the
Cold War Order, 1960s–1989 937
The Revolution in Technology 938
The Information Age: Television and Computers 938 ■ The Space Age 940
■ The Nuclear Age 941 ■ Revolutions in Biology and Reproductive
Technology 942
The Testing of Superpower Domination and the End of the Cold War 957
A Changing Balance of World Power 957 ■ The Western Bloc Meets
Challenges with Reform 959 ■ Collapse of Communism in the Soviet
Bloc 963
Conclusion 968
Chapter 29
A New Globalism, 1989 to the Present 973
North versus South? 989 ■ Radical Islam Meets the West 990 ■
The Promise and Problems of a World Economy 993
Conclusion 1005
MAP 6.3 Christian Populations in the SPOT MAP The Kingdom of the Franks
Late Third Century c.e. 198 under Hugh Capet 987–996 306
SPOT MAP The Fragmented Roman MAPPING THE WEST Europe and the
Empire of the Third Century 205 Mediterranean, c. 1050 309
MAPPING THE WEST The Roman
Empire in Crisis, 284 c.e. 207 Chapter 10
SPOT MAP The Walls of Placenza 317
Chapter 7 SPOT MAP The World of the Investiure
MAP 7.1 Diocletian’s Reorganization Conflict, c. 1070–1122 324
of 293 214 MAP 10.1 The First Crusade, 1096–
SPOT MAP The Empire’s East/West 1099 333
Division, 395 215 SPOT MAP The Crusader States in
MAP 7.2 The Spread of Christianity, 1109 336
300–600 220 SPOT MAP Norman Conquest of
MAP 7.3 Migrations and Invasions of England, 1066 338
the Fourth and Fifth Centuries 231 MAPPING THE WEST Europe and the
MAPPING THE WEST Western Europe Mediterranean c. 1150 343
and the Eastern Roman (or
Byzantine) Empire, c. 600 245 Chapter 11
MAP 11.1 Europe in the Age of Henry II
Chapter 8 and Frederick Barbarossa, 1150–
MAP 8.1 Expansion of Islam to 1190 356
750 254 SPOT MAP The Consolidation of
MAP 8.2 Byzantine and Sasanid France under Phillip Augustus,
Empires, c. 600 258 1180–1223 360
MAP 8.3 The Merovingian Kingdoms MAP 11.2 Crusades and Anti-Heretic
in the Seventh Century 263 Campaigns, 1150–1215 371
SPOT MAP Tours, c. 600 265 MAP 11.3 The Reconquista, 1150–
SPOT MAP The British Isles 270 1212 372
SPOT MAP Lombard Italy, Early Eighth SPOT MAP The Albigensian Crusade,
Century 273 1209–1229 374
MAPPING THE WEST Rome’s Heirs, MAPPING THE WEST Europe and
c. 750 275 Byzantium, c. 1215 375
Chapter 9 Chapter 12
MAP 9.1 The Byzantine Empire, SPOT MAP Italy at the End of the
1025 281 Thirteenth Century 393
MAP 9.2 Islamic States, c. 1000 286 MAP 12.1 France under Louis IX,
MAP 9.3 Expansion of the Carolingian r. 1226–1270 395
Empire under Charlemagne 292 MAP 12.2 The Mongol Invasions to
SPOT MAP England in the Age of King 1259 401
Alfred, 871–899 304 MAPPING THE WEST Europe,
c. 1340 405
xlviii Maps and Figures
MAP 20.2 Europe after the Congress MAP 23.2 Expansion of Russia In Asia,
of Vienna, 1815 656 1865–1895 751
MAP 20.3 Revolutionary Movements MAP 23.3 Expansion of Berlin to
of the 1820s 663 1914 773
SPOT MAP Nationalistic Movements MAP 23.4 The Balkans, c. 1878 776
in the Balkans, 1815–1830 664 MAPPING THE WEST The West and the
MAP 20.4 Latin American World, c. 1890 779
Independence, 1804–1830 666
MAPPING THE WEST Europe in Chapter 24
1830 669 MAP 24.1 Jewish Migrations In the Late
Nineteenth Century 802
Chapter 21 SPOT MAP The Struggle for Ethiopia,
MAP 21.1 Industrialization in Europe, 1896 803
c. 1850 677 MAP 24.2 Africa In 1914 805
SPOT MAP The Opium War, 1839– MAP 24.3 Imperialism In Asia, 1894–
1842 690 1914 806
MAP 21.2 The Spread of Cholera, MAP 24.4 The Balkans, 1908–
1826–1855 681 1914 812
MAP 21.3 Languages of Nineteenth- MAPPING THE WEST Europe at the
Century Europe 692 Outbreak of World War I, August
SPOT MAP The Divisions of Italy, 1914 817
1848 700
MAPPING THE WEST Europe in Chapter 25
1850 705 MAP 25.1 The Fronts of World War I,
1914–1918 823
Chapter 22 MAP 25.2 The Russian Civil War,
MAP 22.1 The Crimean War, 1853– 1917–1922 833
1856 712 MAP 25.3 Europe and the Middle East
MAP 22.2 Unification of Italy, 1859– after the Peace Settlements of
1870 718 1919–1920 837
MAP 22.3 Unification of Germany, SPOT MAP National Minorities in
1862–1871 721 Postwar Poland 842
SPOT MAP The Austro-Hungarian SPOT MAP The Irish Free State and
Monarchy, 1867 723 Ulster, 1921 843
MAP 22.4 U.S. Expansion, 1850– MAPPING THE WEST Europe and the
1870 725 World In 1929 855
MAPPING THE WEST Europe and the
Mediterranean, 1871 741 Chapter 26
MAP 26.1 The Spanish Civil War,
Chapter 23 1936–1939 878
MAP 23.1 Africa, c. 1890 748 MAP 26.2 The Growth of Nazi
SPOT MAP British Colonialism in the Germany, 1933–1939 880
Malay Peninsula and Burma,
1826–1890 750
l Maps and Figures
Chapter 20 Chapter 23
DOCUMENT 20.1 Napoleon’s Army DOCUMENT 23.1 An African King
Retreats from Moscow (1812) Describes His Government
DOCUMENT 20.2 Wordsworth’s Poetry DOCUMENT 23.2 Henrik Ibsen, From
(1798) A Doll’s House
CONTRASTING VIEWS Napoleon: For CONTRASTING VIEWS Experiences of
and Against Migration
SEEING HISTORY The Clothing SEEING HISTORY Anglo-Indian Polo
Revolution: The Social Meaning of Team
Changes in Postrevolutionary TAKING MEASURE European
Fashion Emigration, 1870–1890
TAKING MEASURE Power Capability
of the Leading States, 1816–1830 Chapter 24
DOCUMENT 24.1 Leon Pinsker Calls
Chapter 21 for a Jewish State
DOCUMENT 21.1 Marx and Engels, DOCUMENT 24.2 Turkish Nationalism
The Communist Manifesto (1848) DOCUMENT 24.3 Vietnamese
DOCUMENT 21.2 Alexis de Tocqueville Resistance and the Importance of
Describes the June Days in Paris Becoming Modern
(1848) CONTRASTING VIEWS Debating the
CONTRASTING VIEWS The Effects of Revolt in Art, Ideas, and Lifestyles
Industrialization SEEING HISTORY Outrage and
Consumption in Modern Art
LaunchPad Features lv
W
hen were you born? What year is it? We customarily answer questions
like these with a number, such as “1991” or “2008.” Our replies are usually
automatic, taking for granted the numerous assumptions Westerners
make about how dates indicate chronology. But to what do numbers such as 1991 and
2008 actually refer? In this book the numbers used to specify dates follow a recent revi-
sion of the system most common in the Western secular world. This system reckons
the dates of solar years by counting backward and forward from the traditional date of
the birth of Jesus Christ, over two thousand years ago.
Using this method, numbers followed by the abbreviation b.c.e., standing for “be-
fore the common era” (or, as some would say, “before the Christian era”), indicate the
number of years counting backward from the assumed date of the birth of Jesus Christ.
b.c.e. therefore indicates the same chronology marked by the traditional abbreviation
b.c. (“before Christ”). The larger the number preceding b.c.e. (or b.c.), the earlier in
history is the year to which it refers. The date 431 b.c.e., for example, refers to a year
431 years before the birth of Jesus and therefore comes earlier in time than the dates
430 b.c.e., 429 b.c.e., and so on. The same calculation applies to numbering other time
intervals calculated on the decimal system: those of ten years (a decade), of one hun-
dred years (a century), and of one thousand years (a millennium). For example, the
decade of the 440s b.c.e. (449 b.c.e. to 440 b.c.e.) is earlier than the decade of the
430s b.c.e. (439 b.c.e. to 430 b.c.e.). “Fifth century b.c.e.” refers to the fifth period of
100 years reckoning backward from the birth of Jesus and covers the years 500 b.c.e. to
401 b.c.e. It is earlier in history than the fourth century b.c.e. (400 b.c.e. to 301 b.c.e.),
which followed the fifth century b.c.e. Because this system has no year “zero,” the first
century b.c.e. covers the years 100 b.c.e. to 1 b.c.e. Dating millennia works similarly:
the second millennium b.c.e. refers to the years 2000 b.c.e. to 1001 b.c.e., the third
millennium to the years 3000 b.c.e. to 2001 b.c.e., and so on.
To indicate years counted forward from the traditional date of Jesus’s birth, num-
bers are followed by the abbreviation c.e., standing for “of the common era” (or “of the
Christian era”). c.e. therefore indicates the same chronology marked by the traditional
abbreviation a.d., which stands for the Latin phrase anno Domini (“in the year of the
Lord”). a.d. properly comes before the date being marked. The date a.d. 1492, for ex-
ample, translates as “in the year of the Lord 1492,” meaning 1492 years after the birth of
Jesus. Under the b.c.e./c.e. system, this date would be written as 1492 c.e. For dating
centuries, the term “first century c.e.” refers to the period from 1 c.e. to 100 c.e. (which
is the same period as a.d. 1 to a.d. 100). For dates c.e, the smaller the number, the
earlier the date in history. The fourth century c.e. (301 c.e. to 400 c.e.) comes before
the fifth century c.e. (401 c.e. to 500 c.e.). The year 312 c.e. is a date in the early fourth
lvi
Authors’ Note lvii
century c.e., while 395 c.e. is a date late in the same century. When numbers are given
without either b.c.e. or c.e., they are presumed to be dates c.e. For example, the term
eighteenth century with no abbreviation accompanying it refers to the years 1701 c.e.
to 1800 c.e.
No standard system of numbering years, such as b.c.e./c.e., existed in antiquity.
Different people in different places identified years with varying names and numbers.
Consequently, it was difficult to match up the years in any particular local system with
those in a different system. Each city of ancient Greece, for example, had its own method
for keeping track of the years. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides, therefore, faced
a problem in presenting a chronology for the famous Peloponnesian War between
Athens and Sparta, which began (by our reckoning) in 431 b.c.e. To try to explain to
as many of his readers as possible the date the war had begun, he described its first year
by three different local systems: “the year when Chrysis was in the forty-eighth year of
her priesthood at Argos, and Aenesias was overseer at Sparta, and Pythodorus was
magistrate at Athens.”
A Catholic monk named Dionysius, who lived in Rome in the sixth century c.e.,
invented the system of reckoning dates forward from the birth of Jesus. Calling him-
self Exiguus (Latin for “the little” or “the small”) as a mark of humility, he placed Jesus’s
birth 754 years after the foundation of ancient Rome. Others then and now believe his
date for Jesus’s birth was in fact several years too late. Many scholars today calculate that
Jesus was born in what would be 4 b.c.e. according to Dionysius’s system, although a
date a year or so earlier also seems possible.
Counting backward from the supposed date of Jesus’s birth to indicate dates earlier
than that event represented a natural complement to reckoning forward for dates after
it. The English historian and theologian Bede in the early eighth century was the first
to use both forward and backward reckoning from the birth of Jesus in a historical work,
and this system gradually gained wider acceptance because it provided a basis for stan-
dardizing the many local calendars used in the Western Christian world. Nevertheless,
b.c. and a.d. were not used regularly until the end of the eighteenth century. b.c.e. and
c.e. became common in the late twentieth century.
The system of numbering years from the birth of Jesus is far from the only one in
use today. The Jewish calendar of years, for example, counts forward from the date
given to the creation of the world, which would be calculated as 3761 b.c.e. under the
b.c.e./c.e. system. Under this system, years are designated a.m., an abbreviation of the
Latin anno mundi, “in the year of the world.” The Islamic calendar counts forward from
the date of the Prophet Muhammad’s flight from Mecca, called the Hijra, in what is the
year 622 c.e. The abbreviation a.h. (standing for the Latin phrase anno Hegirae, “in the
year of the Hijra”) indicates dates calculated by this system. Anthropology commonly
reckons distant dates as “before the present” (abbreviated b.p.).
History is often defined as the study of change over time; hence the importance of
dates for the historian. But just as historians argue over which dates are most signifi-
cant, they disagree over which dating system to follow. Their debate reveals perhaps
the most enduring fact about history—its vitality.
80°N
Greenland
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Alaska
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UNITED
C A NA DA KINGDOM
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40°N
UNITED STATES PORTUGAL
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BAHAMAS
DOMINICAN Western Sahara
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REPUBLIC
Hawaii CUBA HAITI
MEXICO Puerto Rico (U.S.)
20°N (U.S.) ST. KITTS AND NEVIS
JAMAICA CAPE MAURITANIA
Guadeloupe (Fr.) ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA
BELIZE DOMINICA VERDE
HONDURAS Martinique (Fr.) ST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES SENEGAL
GUATEMALA
ST. LUCIA BARBADOS
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TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO GUINEA-BISSAU
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GUINEA
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0° Equator Galápagos Is. ECUADOR BURKINA FASO
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0 1,500 3,000 miles OCEAN
ARGENTINA
0 1,500 3,000 kilometers
40°S
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160°W 140°W 120°W 100°W 80°W 60°W 40°W 20°W
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GREECE TURKEY ST TAJIKISTAN JAPAN
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LEBANON AFGHANISTAN
C H I N A
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UNITED ARAB OMAN MYANMAR
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NIGER (U.S.)
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CHAD YEM
ERITREA DJIBOUTI CAMBODIA Guam MARSHALL
NIGERIA (U.S.) IS.
BENIN SRI
TOGO CENTRAL SOUTH ETHIOPIA MALDIVES LANKA
AFRICAN REP.SUDAN BRUNEI PALAU
CAMEROON SOMALIA FEDERATED STATES
M A L AY S I A OF MICRONESIA
EQ. UGANDA
GUINEA RWANDA
O
KENYA
NG
BURUNDI PAPUA
THE CONGO TUVALU
TANZANIA I N D O N E S I A NEW
SÃO TOMÉ COMOROS GUINEA SOLOMON
SEYCHELLES INDIAN OCEAN IS.
& PRÍNCIPE EAST TIMOR
ANGOLA
ZAMBIA MALAWI
VANUATU FIJI
ZIMBABWE MADAGASCAR
NAMIBIA MAURITIUS New Caledonia
BOTSWANA (Fr.)
A U S T R A L I A
MOZAMBIQUE
SOUTH SWAZILAND
AFRICA LESOTHO
NEW
ZEALAND
Abbreviations Tasmania
(Aust.)
ALB. ALBANIA
AUS. AUSTRIA
BEL. BELGIUM
B.H. BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
CR. CROATIA
CZ. REP. CZECH REPUBLIC
DEN. DENMARK
HUNG. HUNGARY
A N TA RC T I C A KOS. KOSOVO
20°E 40°E 60°E 80°E 100°E LUX. 140°E
120°E LUXEMBOURG
160°E
MAC. MACEDONIA
MONT. MONTENEGRO
NETH. NETHERLANDS
SERB. SERBIA
SLK. SLOVAKIA
SLN. SLOVENIA
SWITZ. SWITZERLAND
N Bergen NORWAY
W Oslo SWEDEN
E
S
Stockholm
NORTHERN SCOTLAND
IRELAND Göteborg
Glasgow Edinburgh
a
Se
Belfast North Sea
ic
Aarhus
lt
Dublin UNITED DENMARK Copenhagen Ba
IRELAND Liverpool RUSSIA
Kaliningrad
KINGDOM
Cork Birmingham Gdansk
WALES
ENGLAND NETHERLANDS
El
be
Thames R. R.
Amsterdam Vi
Berlin stu Warsaw
Rotterdam la R
London .
Antwerp
POLAND
nel
English Chan Brussels GERMANY
Rhi
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R.
Frankfurt
R.
Prague Cracow
Paris
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in Luxembourg
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CZECH REP.
LUXEMBOURG Brno
Loire R. SLOVAKIA
LIECHTENSTEIN Munich D Vienna
anube R. Bratislava
Zürich Vaduz
Bay of FRANCE Bern AUSTRIA
Innsbruck Budapest
Biscay SWITZERLAND Graz
Lyon P S HUNGARY
L SLOVENIA
R.
A Milan Ljubljana
e
Zagreb
Rhôn
Po R. CROATIA Belgrade
San
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Madrid Se
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Barcelona Corsica
a
PO
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Lisbon Rome ITALY
SPAIN Tirana
Naples ALBANIA
Sardinia Tyrrhenian
Seville Balearic Is. Sea
Gibraltar Palermo
Ionian
(Br.) Algiers Sea
Sicily
Tunis
Rabat
Valletta
MALTA
ALGERIA
MOROCCO TUNISIA M e d i t e r r a n e a n
Elevation Tripoli
Feet Meters
Over 13,120 Over 4,001
6,561–13,120 2,001–4,000
1,641–6,560 501–2,000
661–1640 201–500 LIBYA
0–660 0–200
Below sea level Below sea level
0 150 300 miles
National capital
0 150 300 kilometers
Major city
FINLAND
U R
Helsinki
St. Petersburg
A L
Tallinn
ESTONIA
M T
Pärnu
S .
Moscow
Riga
R.
LATVIA al
Ur
R U S S I A N F E D E R A T I O N
LITHUANIA
R.
l ga
Kaunas
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Minsk KAZAKHSTAN
BELARUS
Gomel
Brest
Kiev Kharkiv
Dnie
p e r R.
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Chisinau
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ia
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Odessa
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C A U C A
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S U S a
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ROMANIA M T S .
Baku
Bucharest Tbilisi
GEORGIA
Danube R. Black Sea
ARMENIA
SERBIA
BULGARIA Yerevan
Pristina
Sofia
KOSOVO Plovdiv
Skopje
Istanbul AZERBAIJAN
MACEDONIA
Salonica Ankara
Athens
.
SYRIA
Baghdad
Crete
CYPRUS
Beirut
Damascus
IRAQ
Eu
LEBANON ph
rate
s R.
S e a
ISRAEL
Tel Aviv Amman
KUWAIT
Jerusalem
JORDAN
Alexandria
K
ings in ancient Egypt believed the gods judged them in the afterlife. In
Instructions for Merikare, written around 2100–2000 b.c.e., a king advises his
son: “Secure your place in the cemetery by being upright, by doing justice,
upon which people’s hearts rely. . . . When a man is buried and mourned, his deeds
are piled up next to him as treasure.” Being judged pure of heart led to an eternal
reward: “abiding [in the afterlife] like a god, roaming [free] like the lords of time.”
Ordinary Egyptians, too, believed they should live justly by worshipping the
gods and obeying the king. A guidebook instructing mummies about the under-
world, the Book of the Dead, said the jackal-headed god Anubis would weigh the
dead person’s heart against the goddess Maat
and her feather of Truth, with the bird-headed
The Afterlife in Egyptian Religion god Thoth recording the result. Pictures in the
This illustration comes from the
book show the Swallower of the Damned —
ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead,
a collection of illustrated instruc-
with a crocodile’s head, a lion’s body, and a
tions and magic spells buried with hippopotamus’s hind end — crouching ready
dead people to help them in the to eat the heart of anyone who failed. Egyptian
afterlife. It shows the deceased mythology thus taught that living a just life
standing in front of offerings made was the most important human goal because
to Osiris, the god of the underworld.
it won a blessed existence after death.
He is seated on a throne with his
sister and wife, the goddess Isis, This belief — that there is a divine world
and her sister standing behind him. more powerful than the human — goes back to
The myth of Osiris, who died and the time before civilization, when people in
was cut up into pieces but then the Stone Age lived as hunter-gatherers. Ten to
reassembled and resurrected by
twelve thousand years ago, when a global warm-
Isis, expressed Egyptians’ belief in
an eternal life after death. (Egyptian
ing led to the invention of agriculture and the
Museum, Cairo / Alfredo Dagli Orti / The Art domestication of animals, human life changed
Archive at Art Resource, NY.) in revolutionary ways that still affect our lives
today. Civilization first emerged around 4000–
3000 b.c.e. in cities in Mesopotamia (the region
between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, today Iraq). Historians define civilization
as a way of life based on agriculture and trade, with cities containing large buildings
for religion and government; technology to produce metals, textiles, pottery, and
3
4 Chapter 1 Early Western Civilization
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
other manufactured objects; and knowledge of writing. Current archaeological
research indicates that those conditions first existed in Mesopotamia.
Civilization always arose with religion at its core. In Mesopotamian civilization,
rulers believed they were judged for maintaining order on earth and honoring the gods.
Egyptian civilization, which began about 3100–3000 b.c.e., built enormous temples and
pyramids. Civilizations emerged starting about 2500 b.c.e. in India, China, and the
Americas. By 2000 b.c.e., civilizations appeared in Anatolia (today Turkey), on islands
in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, and in Greece. The formation of civilization pro-
duced intended and unintended consequences. The spread of metallurgy (using high
heat to extract metals from ores), for example, created better tools and weapons but
also increased preexisting social hierarchy (ranking people as superiors or inferiors).
The peoples of Mesopotamia, Egypt, the eastern Mediterranean, and Greece created
Western civilization by exchanging ideas, technologies, and objects through trade, travel,
and war. Building on concepts from the Near East, Greeks originated the idea of the
West as a separate region, identifying Europe as the West (where the sun sets) and
different from the East (where the sun rises). The making of the West depended on
cultural, political, and economic interaction
CHAPTER FOCUS What changes did Western
among diverse groups. The West remains
civilization bring to human life? an evolving concept, not a fixed region with
unchanging borders and members.
ually populated the rest of the earth. Anthropologists call this time the Stone Age
because people made tools and weapons from stone as well as from bone and wood;
they did not yet know how to work metals. The Stone Age is divided into an early
part, the Paleolithic (“Old Stone”), and a later part, the Neolithic (“New Stone”).
In the Paleolithic Age, people existed as hunter-gatherers who originally lived
in mostly egalitarian bands (meaning all adults enjoyed a rough equality in making
group decisions). They roamed in groups of twenty to fifty, hunting animals, catch-
ing fish and shellfish, and gathering plants, fruits, and nuts. Women with young
children foraged for plants close to camp; they provided the group’s most reliable
supply of nourishment. Men did most of the hunting of wild animals far from camp,
although recent archaeological evidence shows that women also participated, espe-
cially in hunting with nets. Objects from distant regions found in burials show that
hunter-gatherer bands traded with one another. Trade spread knowledge — especially
technology, such as techniques for improving tools, and art for creating beauty and
expressing beliefs. The use of fire for cooking was a major innovation because it
allowed people to eat wild grains that they could not digest raw.
Evidence from graves shows that hierarchy emerged in Paleolithic times. Some
Paleolithic burial sites contain weapons, tools, animal figurines, ivory beads, sea-
shells, and bracelets alongside the corpses; the objects indicate that certain dead
persons had greater status and wealth than others. Hierarchy probably began when
men acquired prestige from bringing back meat after long hunts and from fighting
in wars. (The many traumatic wounds seen in male skeletons show warfare was
frequent.) Older women and men also earned status from their experience and lon-
gevity, in an age when illness or accidents killed most people before age thirty. The
decoration of corpses with red paint and valuable objects suggests that Paleolithic
people thought about the mystery of death and perhaps believed in an afterlife.
Paleolithic artists also sculpted statuettes of human figures, probably for religious
purposes.
Climate and geography — the fundamental features of our natural environment —
defined a new way of life for human beings beginning about 10,000 b.c.e. A slow
process of transformation started when climate change in the late Paleolithic period
brought warmer temperatures and more rainfall at higher elevations. This weather
increased the amount of wild grains people could gather in the foothills of the Near
East’s Fertile Crescent, an arc of territory extending up from the Jordan valley in
Israel, through eastern Turkey, and down into the foothills and plains of Iraq and
Iran (Map 1.1).* Paleolithic hunter-gatherers came to settle where wild grains grew
abundantly and game animals grazed. Recent archaeological excavation in Turkey
suggests that around eleven thousand years ago, groups organized to erect stone
monuments to worship gods who they believed helped them to survive, and they
started growing food nearby. A more reliable food supply allowed people to raise
*In this book, we observe the common usage of the term Near East to mean the lands of southwest-
ern Asia and Egypt.
6 Chapter 1 Early Western Civilization
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
Fertile Crescent Black Sea
Battle
N
Ca
spia
Hattusas W E
HITTITE KINGDOM
n Sea
S
ANATOLIA
ASSYRIAN
KINGDOM
M
ES
SYRIA
O
Ebla Euph
P
GUTIANS
O
rat
Tigr
es
TA
Cyprus Kadesh R.
is
M
c. 1274 B.C.E.
R.
Med
IA
CIA
iterr AKKADIA/
anean
ENI
Babylon
NILE
DELTA CANAAN/ Nippur
PALESTINE SUMER Presumed
ancient coastline
Uruk
Giza Memphis Ur
Eridu
LOWER SINAI
.
eR
EGYPT PENINSULA
Nil
Tell
el-Amarna ARABIAN
Pe
DESERT ia
rs
n
SAHA R A DESERT
Re
G
Thebes ul
dS
more children, and increased social organization promoted larger settlements. The
more people that were born, however, the greater the need for food became.
After thousands of years of trial and error, people in the Fertile Crescent invented
reliable agriculture by sowing seeds from wild grains to produce harvests year after
year. This marked the start of the Neolithic Age. Since women had the most experi-
ence gathering plants, they probably played the major role in developing farming,
while men continued to hunt. Recent research suggests that people also learned to
domesticate animals about the same time. By nine thousand years ago, keeping herds
for food was widespread in the Near East, which was home to wild animals that
could be domesticated, such as sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle.
Historians call agriculture and the domestication of animals the “farming pack-
age”; this package created the Neolithic Revolution. The farming package had revo-
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
] From the Stone Age to Mesopotamian Civilization, 400,000–1000 b.c.e. 7
lutionary effects because it produced many permanent settlements and food sur-
pluses. Some Neolithic people lived as pastoralists (herders moving around to find
grazing land for their animals), while others were farmers who had to reside in a
settled location to raise crops. Fixed settlements marked a turning point in the rela-
tion between human beings and the environment, as farmers increasingly channeled
streams for irrigation. DNA evidence from ancient bones and modern populations
shows that by 4000 b.c.e., immigrants and traders from the Fertile Crescent had
helped spread knowledge of agriculture and domestication as far as the European
shores of the Atlantic Ocean. When farmers began producing more food than they
needed, the surpluses allowed other people in the settlement to specialize in archi-
tecture, art, crafts, metalwork, textile production, and trade.
8 Chapter 1 Early Western Civilization
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
The Neolithic Revolution generated more hierarchy because positions of authority
were needed to allow some people to supervise the complex irrigation system that sup-
ported agricultural surpluses, and because greater economic activity created a stricter
division of labor by gender. Men began to dominate agriculture following the invention
of heavy wooden plows pulled by oxen, sometime after 4000 b.c.e. Not having to bear
and nurse babies, men took over long-distance trade. Women and older children mas-
tered new domestic tasks such as turning milk from domesticated animals into cheese
and yogurt and making clothing for themselves and their families. This gendered
division of labor arose as an efficient response to the conditions and technologies of
the time, but it had the unintended consequence of increasing men’s status.
ruling families controlled large farms and gangs of laborers. Some private households
also became rich.
Increasingly rigid forms of hierarchy evolved in Sumerian society. Slaves, owned
by temple officials and by individuals, had the lowest status. People were enslaved
by being captured in war, being born to slaves, voluntarily selling themselves or their
children (usually to escape starvation), or being sold by their creditors when they
could not repay loans (debt slavery). Children whose parents dedicated them as slaves
to the gods could rise to prominent positions in temple administration. In general,
however, slaves existed in near-total dependence on other people and were excluded
from normal social relations. They usually worked without pay and lacked almost
all legal rights. Considered as property, they could be bought, sold, beaten, or even
killed by their masters.
Slaves worked in domestic service, craft production, and farming, but historians
dispute whether slaves or free laborers were more important to the economy. Free
persons performed most government labor, paying their taxes with work rather than
with money, which was measured in amounts of food or precious metal (currency
was not invented until much later). Although some owners liberated slaves in their
wills and others allowed slaves to keep enough earnings to purchase their freedom,
most slaves had little chance of becoming free.
10 Chapter 1 Early Western Civilization
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
Hierarchy became so strong in Mesopotamian society that it led to monarchy —
the political system that became the most widespread form of government in the
ancient world. In a monarchy, the king was at the top of the hierarchy, like the ruler
of the gods. His male descendants inherited his position. To display their exalted
status, royal families lived in elaborate palaces that served as administrative centers
and treasure houses. Archaeologists excavating royal graves in Ur have revealed the
rulers’ dazzling riches — spectacular possessions crafted in gold, silver, and precious
stones. These graves also have yielded grisly evidence of the top-ranking status of
the king and queen: servants killed to care for their royal masters after death.
Patriarchy — domination by men in political, social, and economic life — already
existed in Mesopotamian city-states, probably as an inheritance from the development
of hierarchy in Paleolithic times. A Sumerian queen was respected because she was the
king’s wife and the mother of the royal children, but her husband held supreme power.
The king formed a council of older men as his advisers, but he publicly acknowledged
the gods as his rulers; this concept made the state a theocracy (government by gods)
and gave priests and priestesses public influence. The king’s greatest responsibility was
to keep the gods happy and to defeat attacks from rival cities. The king collected taxes
from the working population to support his family, court, palace, army, and officials.
The kings, along with the priests of the large temples, regulated most of the economy
in their kingdoms by controlling the exchange of food and goods between farmers
and craft producers in a system known as a redistributive economy.
In religion, Mesopotamians continued earlier traditions by practicing polytheism:
worshipping many gods thought to control different aspects of life, including the
weather, fertility, and war. People believed that their safety depended on the goodwill
of the gods, and each city-state honored a deity as its special protector. To please the
gods, city dwellers offered sacrifices and built ziggurats (temple towers) soaring as high
as ten stories. Mesopotamians believed that if human beings angered the gods, divin-
ities such as the sky god, Enlil, and the goddess of love and war, Inanna (also called
Ishtar), would punish them by sending disease, floods, famine, and defeats in war.
Myths told in long poems such as the Epic of Creation and the Epic of Gilgamesh
expressed Mesopotamian ideas about the challenges and violence that human beings
faced in struggling with the natural environment and creating civilization. Gilgamesh
was a legendary king of Uruk who forced the young men of Uruk to labor like slaves
and the young women to sleep with him. When his subjects begged the mother of
the gods to grant them a protector, she created Enkidu, “hairy all over . . . dressed as
cattle are.” A week of sex with a prostitute tamed this brute, preparing him for civi-
lization: “Enkidu was weaker; he ran slower than before. But he had gained judgment,
was wiser.” After wrestling to a draw, Gilgamesh and Enkidu became friends; together
they defeated Humbaba (the ugly giant of the Pine Forest) and the Bull of Heaven.
The gods doomed Enkidu to die soon after these triumphs. Depressed about the
human condition and longing to cheat death, Gilgamesh sought the secret of immor-
tality, but a thieving snake ruined his quest. He decided that the only immortality for
mortals was winning fame for deeds. Only memory and gods could live forever.
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
] From the Stone Age to Mesopotamian Civilization, 400,000–1000 b.c.e. 11
Mesopotamian myths told in poetry, song, and art greatly influenced other
peoples. A version of the Gilgamesh story recounted how the gods sent a huge flood
over the earth. They warned one man, instructing him to build a boat. He loaded
his vessel with his relatives, workers, and possessions; domesticated and wild ani-
mals; and “everything there was.” After a week of torrential rains, they left the boat
to repopulate the earth and regenerate civilization. This story recalled the frequent
floods of the Mesopotamian environment and was echoed later in the biblical account
of the great flood covering the globe and Noah’s ark.
The invention of writing in Mesopotamia transformed the way people exchanged
stories and ideas. Sumerians originally invented this new technology to do account-
ing. Before writing, people drew small pictures on clay tablets to keep count of
objects or animals. Writing developed when people created symbols to represent the
sounds of speech instead of pictures to represent concrete things. Sumerian writing
did not use an alphabet (a system in which each symbol represents the sound of a
letter), but rather a system of wedge-shaped marks pressed into clay tablets to repre-
sent the sounds of syllables and entire words (Figure 1.1). Today this form of writing
is called cuneiform (from cuneus, Latin for “wedge”). For a long time, writing was
SAG
Head
NINDA
bread
GU7
eat
AB2
cow
APIN
plough
SUHUR
)
carp
c. 3100 B.C.E. c. 3000 B.C.E. c. 2500 B.C.E. c. 2100 B.C.E. c. 700 B.C.E. Sumerian
(Neo- reading +
Assyrian) meaning
Syria
metals led the kings of Akkad to create by force the
ea
GUTIANS
ES
Tigri
Eu
O
ean S
Ebla phra
PO
tes
s
M
R.
R.
rran
IA
Akkad? Presumed
ancient single power rules formerly independent peoples).
dite
coastline
Me
SUMERIAN
Uruk
It began around 2350 b.c.e., when Sargon, king of
CIVILIZATION
Akkad, launched invasions north and south of his
Per
Red
0 125 250 kilometers lf
u
Sea
Sumer and the regions all the way westward to the
The Akkadian Empire, Mediterranean Sea, creating the Akkadian Empire.
2350–2200 b.c.e. A poet of around 2000 b.c.e. credited Sargon’s
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
] From the Stone Age to Mesopotamian Civilization, 400,000–1000 b.c.e. 13
success to the favor of the god Enlil: “To Sargon the king of Akkad, from below to
above, Enlil had given him lordship and kingship.”
Sargon’s grandson Naram-Sin also conquered distant places to gain resources
and glory. By around 2250 b.c.e., he had reached Ebla, a large city in Syria. Archae-
ologists have unearthed many cuneiform tablets at Ebla; these discoveries suggest
that the city was a center for learning and trade.
The process of building an empire by force had the unintended consequence
of spreading Mesopotamian literature and art and promoting cultural interaction.
The Akkadians spoke a language unrelated to Sumerian, but in conquering Sumer
they adopted much of that region’s religion, literature, and culture. Other peoples
conquered by the Akkadians were then exposed to Sumerian beliefs and traditions,
which they in turn adapted to suit their own purposes.
Civil war ended the Akkadian Empire. A newly resurgent Sumerian dynasty
called Ur III (2112–2004 b.c.e.) seized power in Sumer. The Ur III rulers created a
centralized economy, presided over a flourishing of Sumerian literature, published
the earliest preserved law code, and justified their rule by proclaiming their king
to be divine. The best-preserved ziggurat was built in their era. Royal hymns, a new
literary form, glorified the king; one example reads: “Your commands, like the word
of a god, cannot be reversed; your words, like rain pouring down from heaven, are
without number.”
Mesopotamia remained politically unstable, however. When civil war weakened
the Ur III kingdom, nearby Amorite marauders conducted damaging raids. The Ur III
dynasty collapsed after only a century of rule.
widow . . . let the victim of injustice see the law which applies to him, let his heart
be put at ease.”
The laws on surgery reveal that doctors treated patients in the cities. Because
people believed that angry gods or evil spirits caused serious diseases, Mesopota-
mian medicine included magic: a doctor might prescribe an incantation along with
potions and diet recommendations. Magicians or exorcists offered medical treat-
ment that depended on spells and interpreting signs, such as the patient’s dreams or
hallucinations.
Babylonian cities had many taverns and wine shops, often run by women pro-
prietors. Contaminated drinking water caused many illnesses because sewage disposal
was rudimentary. Citizens found relief from a city’s odors and crowding in its open
spaces. The world’s oldest known map, an inscribed clay tablet showing the outlines
of the city of Nippur about 1500 b.c.e., indicates a large park.
Cities involved large numbers of people from different places in many different
interactions, which stimulated intellectual developments. Mesopotamian achieve-
ments in mathematics and astronomy had an enduring effect. Mathematicians
devised algebra, including the derivation of roots of numbers. They invented place-
value notation, which makes a numeral’s position in a number indicate ones, tens,
hundreds, and so on. The system of reckoning based on sixty, still used in the divi-
sion of hours and minutes and in the degrees of a circle, also comes from Mesopo-
tamia. Mesopotamian expertise in recording the paths of the stars and planets prob-
ably arose from the desire to make predictions about the future, following the
astrological belief that the movement of celestial bodies directly affects human life.
The charts and tables compiled by Mesopotamian stargazers underlay later advances
in astronomy.
In Canaan (ancient Palestine), west of Mesopotamia, the population grew by
absorbing foreign merchants. The interaction of traders and travelers from many dif-
ferent cultures encouraged innovation in recording business transactions. This multi-
lingual business environment produced the alphabet about 1600 b.c.e. In this new
writing system, a simplified picture — a
letter — stood for only one sound in the lan-
REVIEW QUESTION How did life change for
guage, a large change from cuneiform. The
people in and nearby Mesopotamia, first after
Canaanite alphabet later became the basis the Neolithic Revolution and then when they
for the Greek and Roman alphabets and began to live in cities?
therefore of modern Western alphabets.
*Since the Egyptians did not include vowel sounds in their writing, we are not sure how to spell their
names. The spelling of names here is taken from The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, edited by
Donald B. Redford (2001), with alternate names given in cases where they seem more familiar. Dates
are approximate and uncertain, and scholars bitterly disagree about them. (For an explanation of the
problems, see Redford, “Chronology and Periodization,” The Oxford Encyclopedia, vol. 1, 264–68.) The
dates appearing in this book are compiled with as much consistency as possible from articles in The
Oxford Encyclopedia and in the “Egyptian King List” given at the back of each of its volumes.
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
] Egypt, the First Unified Country, 3050–1000 b.c.e. 17
CANAAN/
Mediterranean Sea PALESTINE
E .)
.C.
NILE
4B
DELTA
66
Avaris
.1
LOWER (c
Hy ion
EGYPT k s o s i n va s
Giza
Saqqara Memphis
R.
Nile
N
EA
SINAI
W E
PENINSULA
ST
ER
S Tell
N
el-Amarna
DE
SE
RT
WESTERN
DESERT UPPER MAP 1.2 Ancient Egypt
Re
EGYPT
Large deserts enclosed the Nile
d
Deir el-Bahri
Thebes
Se
Old Kingdom
River on the west and the east. The
a
seven hundred miles southward from the Mediterranean Sea. The deserts flanking the
fields on the west and the east protected Egypt; invasion was possible only through
the northern Nile delta and from Nubia in the south. The deserts also were sources
of wealth because they contained large deposits of metal ores. Egypt’s geography also
contributed to its prosperity by supporting seaborne commerce in the Mediterranean
Sea and the Indian Ocean, as well as overland trade with central Africa.
Agriculture was Egypt’s most important economic resource. Usually, the Nile
River overflowed its channel for several weeks each year, when melting snow from
central African mountains swelled its waters. This predictable annual flood enriched
the soil with nutrients from the river’s silt and diluted harmful mineral salts, thereby
making farming more productive and supporting strong population growth. Unlike
the unpredictable floods that harmed Mesopotamia, the regular flooding of the Nile
benefited Egyptians. Trouble came in Egypt only if the usual flood did not take place,
as happened when too little winter precipitation fell in the mountains.
The plants and animals raised by Egypt’s farmers fed a fast-growing population.
Egypt had expanded to perhaps several million people by around 1500 b.c.e. Date
18 Chapter 1 Early Western Civilization
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
palms, vegetables, grass for pasturing animals, and grain grew in abundance. The
Egyptians loved beer, which people of all ages consumed. Thicker and more nutritious
than modern brews, Egyptian beer was such an important food that it could be used
to pay workmen’s wages. Egyptians, like other ancient societies, often flavored their
beer with fruits.
Egypt’s population included people whose skin color ranged from light to dark.
Although many ancient Egyptians would be regarded as black by modern racial
classification, ancient peoples did not observe such distinctions. The modern con-
troversy over whether Egyptians were people of color is therefore not an issue that
ancient Egyptians would have considered. If asked, they would probably have identi-
fied themselves by geography, language, religion, or traditions rather than skin color.
Like many other ancient groups, the Egyptians called themselves simply The People.
Later peoples, especially the Greeks, recognized the ethnic and cultural differences
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
] Egypt, the First Unified Country, 3050–1000 b.c.e. 19
between themselves and the Egyptians, but they deeply admired Egyptian civilization
for its long history and strongly religious character.
Although Egyptians absorbed knowledge from both the Mesopotamians and the
Nubians, their African neighbors to the south, they developed their own written
scripts. For official documents they used a pictographic script known as hieroglyphic
(Figure 1.2). They developed other, simpler scripts for everyday purposes.
quail chick W
foot B
stool P
horned viper F
FIGURE 1.2 Egyptian Hieroglyphs
owl M Ancient Egyptians used pictures such
as these to develop their own system
water N of writing around 3000 B.C.E. Egyptian
hieroglyphs include around seven
mouth R
hundred pictures in three categories:
reed shelter H ideograms (signs indicating things or
ideas), phonograms (signs indicating
twisted flax slightly guttural sounds), and determinatives (signs clari-
placenta (?) H as in “loch” fying the meaning of the other signs).
Because Egyptians employed this formal
animal’s belly slightly softer script mainly for religious inscriptions on
than h buildings and sacred objects, Greeks
door bolt S referred to it as ta hieroglyphica (“the
sacred carved letters”), from which
folded cloth S comes the modern word hieroglyphic,
used to designate this system of writ-
pool SH ing. Eventually, Egyptians also developed
hill Q the handwritten cursive script called
demotic (Greek for “of the people”),
basket with K a much simpler and quicker form of
handle writing. The hieroglyphic writing system
continued until about 400 C.E., when
jar stand G
it was replaced by the Coptic alphabet.
loaf T Compare hieroglyphs with cuneiform
shapes (see page 11).
20 Chapter 1 Early Western Civilization
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
Some scholars believe that Nubian society was the outside influence that most
deeply affected early Egypt. A Nubian social elite lived in dwellings much grander
than the small huts housing most of the population. Egyptians interacted with
Nubians while trading for raw materials such as gold, ivory, and animal skins, and
Nubia’s hierarchical political and social organization possibly influenced the develop-
ment of Egypt’s politically centralized Old Kingdom. Eventually, however, Egypt’s
greater power led it to dominate its southern neighbor.
Keeping Egypt unified and stable was difficult. When the kings were strong,
as during the Old Kingdom, the country was peaceful, with flourishing international
trade. Regional governors rebelling against weak kings, however, could create politi-
cal turmoil. Kings gained strength by fulfilling their public religious obligations. Egyp-
tians worshipped a great variety of gods, often shown in paintings and sculptures as
creatures with both human and animal features, such as the head of a jackal or a
bird atop a human body. These images reflected the belief that the gods each had
a particular animal through which they revealed themselves to human beings. Egyp-
tian gods were associated with powerful natural objects, emotions, qualities, and
technologies — examples are Re, the sun god; Isis, the goddess of love and fertility;
and Thoth, the god of wisdom and the inventor of writing. People worshipped the
gods with rituals, prayers, and festivals that expressed their respect and devotion to
these divine powers.
Egyptians regarded their king as a helpful divinity in human form, identified
with the hawk-headed god Horus. They saw the king’s rule as divine because he
helped generate maat (“what is right”), the supernatural force that brought order and
harmony to human beings if they maintained a stable hierarchy. The goddess Maat —
the embodiment of the divine force of justice — therefore oversaw a society that
the Egyptians believed would fall apart violently if the king ruled unjustly. The
king therefore had the duties of pleasing the gods, making law, and waging war on
enemies.
Art expressed the king’s legitimacy as ruler by representing him doing his reli-
gious and military duties. The requirement to show piety (proper religious belief and
behavior) demanded strict regulation of the king’s daily activities: he had specific
times to take a bath, go for a walk, and make love to his wife. Most important, he
had to ensure the country’s fertility and prosperity. If the Nile flood failed to occur,
this was seen as the king’s fault and weakened his authority by leaving many people
hungry and angry, thus encouraging rebellions by rivals.
Successful Old Kingdom rulers used expensive building programs to demon-
strate their piety and status. They erected huge tombs — the pyramids — in the desert
outside Memphis. Temples and halls accompanied the tombs for religious ceremo-
nies and royal funerals. Although the pyramids were not the first monuments built
from enormous worked stones (the temples, admittedly enormously smaller in scale,
on the Mediterranean island of Malta are earlier), they rank as the grandest, much
larger even than the Great Sphinx.
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
] Egypt, the First Unified Country, 3050–1000 b.c.e. 21
Old Kingdom rulers spent vast resources on these giant complexes to proclaim
their divine status and protect their mummified bodies for existence in the after-
life. King Khufu (r. 2609–2584 b.c.e.; also known as Cheops) commissioned the
hugest monument of all — the Great Pyramid at Giza. Taller than a forty-story sky-
scraper at 480 feet high, it covered thirteen acres and stretched 760 feet long on each
side. It required more than two million blocks of limestone, some of which weighed
fifteen tons. Its exterior blocks were quarried along the Nile, floated down the river
on barges, and pulled to the site on sleds over sand dampened to reduce friction. Free
workers then dragged the blocks up ramps into position using rollers and wooden
pads.
The Old Kingdom rulers’ expensive preparations for death reflected their
belief in the afterlife. One text says: “O [god] Atum, put your arms around King
Neferkare Pepy II [r. c. 2300–2206 b.c.e.], around this construction work, around
this pyramid. . . . May you guard lest anything happen to him evilly throughout the
22 Chapter 1 Early Western Civilization
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
course of eternity.” The royal family equipped their tombs with many comforts to
use in the underworld. The kings had gilded furniture, sparkling jewelry, and pre-
cious objects placed alongside the coffins holding their mummies. Archaeologists
have even uncovered two full-sized cedar ships buried next to the Great Pyramid,
meant to carry King Khufu on his journey into eternity.
The Old Kingdom ranked Egyptians in a strict hierarchy to preserve their kings’
authority and support what they regarded as the proper order of a just society. Egyp-
tians, believing their ordered society was superior to any other, despised foreigners.
The king and queen headed the hierarchy. Brothers and sisters in the royal family
could marry each other, perhaps because such matches were thought to preserve the
purity of the royal line and imitate the gods’ marriages. The priests, royal adminis-
trators, provincial governors, and army commanders ranked second. Then came the
free common people, most of whom worked in agriculture. Free workers had heavy
obligations to the state. In a system called corvée labor, the kings commanded com-
moners to work on the pyramids during slack times in farming. The state fed,
housed, and clothed the workers while they performed this seasonal work; their
labor was a way of paying taxes. Taxation reached 20 percent on the farmers’ pro-
duce. Slaves captured in foreign wars served the royal family and the priests; privately
owned slaves became numerous only after the Old Kingdom. The king hired mer-
cenaries, many from Nubia, to form the majority of the army.
Egyptians preserved more of the gender equality of the early Stone Age than did
their neighbors. Women generally enjoyed the same legal rights as free men. They
could own land and slaves, inherit property, pursue lawsuits, transact business, and
initiate divorces. Portrait statues show the equal status of wife and husband: each
figure is the same size and sits on the same kind of chair. Men dominated public
life, while women devoted themselves mainly to private life, managing their house-
holds and property. When their husbands went to war or were killed in battle, how-
ever, women often took on men’s work. Women could serve as priestesses, farm
managers, or healers in times of crisis.
The formal style of Egyptian art illustrates the high value placed on order and
predictability. Statues represent the subject either standing stiffly with the left leg
advanced or sitting on a chair or throne, stable and poised. The concern for deco-
rum (suitable behavior) also appears in the Old Kingdom literature called wisdom
literature — texts giving instructions for appropriate behavior. One text instructs a
young man to seek advice from ignorant people as well as the wise, and to avoid
arrogant overconfidence. This kind of literature had a strong influence on later civi-
lizations, especially the ancient Israelites.
civil war between a northern and a southern dynasty ripped the country apart. This
disunity allowed regional governors to increase their power, and some now seized
independence for their regions. Famine and civil unrest during the so-called First
Intermediate Period (2190–2061 b.c.e.) prevented the reestablishment of political
unity.
The kings of the Middle Kingdom (2061–1665 b.c.e.) restored the strong central
authority their Old Kingdom predecessors had lost. They waged war to extend
Egypt’s southern boundaries, and they expanded diplomatic and trade contacts in
the eastern Mediterranean region and with the island of Crete. Middle Kingdom
literature reveals that restored unity contributed to a deeply felt pride in the home-
land. The Egyptian narrator of The Story of Sinuhe, for example, reports that he lived
luxuriously during a forced stay in Syria but still longed to return: “Whichever god
you are who ordered my exile, have mercy and bring me home! Please allow me to
see the land where my heart dwells! Nothing is more important than that my body
be buried in the country where I was born!” For this lonely man, love for Egypt
outranked personal riches and comfort in a foreign land.
The Middle Kingdom lost its unity during the Second Intermediate Period
(1664–1570 b.c.e.), when the kings proved too weak to control foreign migrants who
had established independent communities in Egypt. By 1664 b.c.e., diverse bands of
a Semitic people originally from the eastern Mediterranean coast seized power. The
Egyptians called these foreigners Hyksos (“rulers of the foreign countries”). Hyksos
settlers transplanted foreign cultural elements to Egypt: their capital, Avaris, boasted
wall paintings done in the Minoan style of the island of Crete. The Hyksos promoted
frequent contact between Egypt and other Near Eastern states and possibly intro-
duced bronze-making technology, new musical instruments, humpbacked cattle, and
olive trees. Hyksos rulers strengthened Egypt’s military capacity by increasing the
use of war chariots and more powerful bows.
The leaders of Thebes, in southern Egypt, reunited the kingdom after long
struggles with the Hyksos. The series of dynasties they founded is called the New
Kingdom (1569–1081 b.c.e.). Thebes may have drawn strength from its connections
with prosperous settlements that emerged far out in the western desert, such as at
Kharga Oasis. Oases featured abundant water from underground aquifers in the
middle of a scorching environment. Oasis settlements flourished by providing stop-
ping points for the caravans of merchants who endured dangerously harsh desert
conditions to profit from commerce. Thebes’s expansion of contact with the western
desert settlements reveals that Egyptian society did not remain unchanged by com-
pletely shutting itself off behind its natural boundaries along the Nile. Similarly,
contacts with peoples to the east across the Red Sea and along the Indian Ocean
expanded in the New Kingdom.
The kings of the New Kingdom, known as pharaohs, rebuilt central authority
by restricting the power of regional governors and promoting national identity. To
prevent invasions, the pharaohs created a standing army, another significant change
in Egyptian society. These kings still employed mercenaries, but they formed an
24 Chapter 1 Early Western Civilization
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
Egyptian military elite as commanders. Recognizing that knowledge of the rest of
the world was necessary for safety, the pharaohs promoted diplomacy with neighbor-
ing monarchs to increase their international contacts. The pharaohs exchanged offi-
cial letters with their “brother kings,” as they called them, in Mesopotamia, Anatolia,
and the eastern Mediterranean region.
The New Kingdom pharaohs sent their army into foreign wars to gain territory
and show their superiority. Their imperialism has earned them the title “warrior
pharaohs.” They waged many campaigns abroad and presented themselves in offi-
cial propaganda and art as the incarnations of warrior gods. They invaded lands to
the south to win access to gold and other precious materials, and they fought up
and down the eastern Mediterranean coast to control that crucial land route into
Egypt.
Massive riches supported the power of these aggressive pharaohs. Egyptian trad-
ers exchanged local fine goods, such as ivory, for foreign luxury goods, such as wine
and olive oil transported in painted pottery from Greece. Egyptian
rulers displayed their wealth most conspicuously in the enormous
sums spent to build stone temples. Queen Hatshepsut (r. 1502–
1482 b.c.e.), for example, built her massive mortuary temple at
Deir el-Bahri, near Thebes, including a temple dedicated to the
god Amun (or Amen), to express her claim to divine birth and
the right to rule. After her husband (who was also her half
brother) died, Hatshepsut proclaimed herself “female king” as
co-ruler with her young stepson. In this way, she sidestepped
the restrictions of Egyptian political tradition, which did not
recognize the right of a queen to reign by herself. Hatshepsut
also had herself represented in official art as a king, with a
royal beard and male clothing. Hatshepsut succeeded in her unusual rule because
she demonstrated that a woman could ensure safety and prosperity by maintaining
the goodwill of the gods toward the country and its people.
Egyptians believed that the gods oversaw all aspects of life and death and built
large temples and festivals to honor them. A calendar based on the moon governed
the dates of religious ceremonies. (The Egyptians also developed a calendar for
administrative and fiscal purposes that had 365 days, divided into 12 months of 30
days each, with the extra 5 days added before the start of the next year. Our modern
calendar comes from this source.) The early New Kingdom pharaohs promoted their
state god Amun-Re (a combination of Thebes’s patron god and the sun god) so
energetically that he became far more important than the other gods. This Theban
cult subordinated the other gods, without denying their existence or the continued
importance of their priests. The pharaoh Akhenaten (r. 1372–1355 b.c.e.) went a step
further, however: he proclaimed that official religion would concentrate on worship-
ping Aten, who represented the pure power of the sun. Akhenaten made the king and
the queen the only people with direct access to the cult of Aten; ordinary people had
no part in it. Some scholars identify Akhenaten’s religious reform as a step toward
monotheism, with Aten meant to be the state’s sole god.
To showcase the royal family and the concentration of power that he desired,
Akhenaten moved 40,000 Egyptians to construct a new capital for Aten at Tell el-
Amarna (Map 1.2, page 17). Archaeology shows that the workers had very hard lives,
suffering from poor nutrition and dangerous labor conditions. The pharaoh tried to
force his revised religion on the priests of the old cults, who resisted fiercely. His-
torians have blamed Akhenaten’s religious zeal for leading him to neglect his king-
dom’s defense, but international correspondence found at Tell el-Amarna has shown
that the pharaoh tried to use diplomacy to turn foreign enemies against one another
so that they would not become strong enough to threaten Egypt. His policy failed,
however, when the Hittites from Anatolia defeated the Mitanni, Egypt’s allies in
eastern Syria. Akhenaten’s religious reform also died with him. During the reign of
his successor, Tutankhamun (r. 1355–1346 b.c.e.) — famous today through the dis-
covery in 1922 of his rich, unlooted tomb — the cult of Amun-Re reclaimed its lead-
ing role. The crisis created by Akhenaten’s attempted reform emphasizes the over-
whelming importance of religious conservatism in Egyptian life and the control of
religion by the ruling power.
Most New Kingdom Egyptians’ lives revolved around their labor and the annual
flood of the Nile. During the months when the river stayed between its banks, they
worked their fields, rising early in the morning to avoid the searing heat. When the
flooding halted agricultural work, the king required laborers to work on his building
projects. They lived in workers’ quarters erected next to the construction sites.
Although slaves became more common as household workers in the New King-
dom than they had been before, free workers — who were obliged to perform a cer-
tain amount of labor for the king — did most of the work on this period’s mammoth
26 Chapter 1 Early Western Civilization
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
royal construction projects. Workers lightened their burden by singing songs, telling
adventure stories, and drinking a lot of beer. They accomplished a great deal: the
majority of the ancient temples remaining in Egypt today were built during the New
Kingdom.
Ordinary people worshipped many different gods, especially those believed to
protect them in their daily existence. They venerated Bes, for instance, a dwarf with
the features of a lion, as a protector of the household. They carved his image on
amulets, beds, headrests, and mirror handles. By this time, ordinary people believed
that they could have a blessed afterlife and put great effort into preparing for it.
Those who could afford it arranged to have their tombs outfitted with all the goods
needed for the journey in the underworld. Most important, they paid burial experts
to turn their corpses into mummies so that they could have a complete body for
eternity. Making a mummy required removing the brain (through the nose with a
long-handled spoon), cutting out the internal organs to store separately in stone jars,
drying the body with mineral salts to the consistency of old leather, and wrapping
the shrunken flesh in linen soaked with ointments.
Every mummy had to travel to the afterlife with a copy of the Book of the Dead,
which included magic spells for avoiding dangers along the way, as well as instruc-
tions on how to prepare for the judgment-day trial before the gods. To prove that
they deserved a good fate, the dead had to convincingly recite claims such as the
following: “I have not committed crimes against people; I have not mistreated cattle;
I have not robbed the poor; I have not caused pain; I have not caused tears.”
Magic played a large role in the lives of Egyptians. Professional magicians sold
spells and charms, both written and oral, which the buyers used to promote eternal
salvation, protect against demons, smooth the rocky course of love, exact revenge on
enemies, and find relief from disease and injury. Egyptian doctors knew many
medicinal herbs (knowledge they passed on to later civilizations) and could perform
major surgeries, including opening the
skull. Still, no doctor could cure severe
REVIEW QUESTION How did religion guide
the lives of both rulers and ordinary people in infections; as in the past, sick people con-
ancient Egypt? tinued to rely on the help of supernatural
forces through prayers and spells.
From this migration, the rich civilization of the Minoans gradually emerged on Crete
and other islands in the Aegean Sea by around 2200 b.c.e. In mainland Greece, civi-
lization eventually arose among peoples who had moved into the area thousands of
years before, again most likely from southwestern Asia.
The Hittites, the Minoans, and the Mycenaeans had advanced military technolo-
gies, elaborate architecture, striking art, a desire for luxury, and extensive trade con-
tacts with Egypt and the Near East. The Hittites, like the Egyptians, created a unified
state under a single central authority. The Minoans and the Mycenaeans, like the
Mesopotamians, established separate city-states. All three peoples inhabited a dan-
gerous world in which repeated raids and violent disruptions lasting from around
1200 to 1000 b.c.e. ultimately destroyed their prosperous cultures. Nevertheless, their
accomplishments paved the way for the later civilization of Greece, which greatly
influenced Western civilization.
Palace at Knossos
The Minoans on the island of Crete
and neighboring islands in the Medi-
terranean Sea south of mainland
Greece constructed large, multilevel
buildings called palaces containing
many rooms, corridors, worship
spaces, and porches. They housed
royal families, servants, administra-
tors, and managers of enormous
storage complexes. The walls were
decorated with colorful paintings
showing diverse scenes of nature,
elaborately dressed people, and cer-
emonies. Urban settlements grew up
around these palaces. The palace at
Knossos is the largest known. It con-
trolled a fertile agricultural area that
provided the rulers with a luxurious
lifestyle. (DEA / A. VERGANI / De Agostini
Editore / age footstock.)
N
Aegean
W E Sea
S
Gulf o ANATOLIA
f Cor Gla
inth
GREECE Athens
Mycenae
Ionian
PELOPONNESE
Sea CYCLADES IS.
Pylos
Thera
0 50 100 miles
0 50 100 kilometers
Knossos
Mycenaean civilization Crete
Minoan civilization Mediterranean Sea
gods inside their walled communities. When the Mycenaeans started building palaces
in the fourteenth century b.c.e., they (unlike the palace-society Minoans) designed
them around megarons — rooms with prominent ceremonial hearths and thrones for
the rulers. Some Mycenaean palaces had more than one megaron, which could soar
two stories high with columns to support a roof above the second-floor balconies.
Documents found in the palace at Knossos reveal that by around 1400 b.c.e. the
Mycenaeans had acquired dominance over Crete, possibly in a war over commerce
in the Mediterranean. The documents were tablets written in Linear B, a pictographic
script based on Linear A (which scholars still cannot fully decipher). The twentieth-
century architect Michael Ventris (1922–1956) proved that Linear B was used to
write not Minoan, but Greek. Because the Linear B tablets date from before the final
destruction of Knossos in about 1370 b.c.e., they show that the palace administration
had been keeping its records in this foreign language for some time and therefore
that Mycenaeans were controlling Crete well before the end of Minoan civilization.
By the middle of the fourteenth century b.c.e., then, the Mycenaeans had displaced
the Minoans as the Aegean region’s preeminent civilization.
By the time Mycenaeans took over Crete, war at home and abroad was the prin-
cipal concern of well-off Mycenaean men, a tradition that they passed on to later Greek
civilization. Contents of Bronze Age tombs in Greece reveal that no wealthy man
went to his grave without his war equipment. Armor and weapons were so central
to a Mycenaean man’s identity that he could not do without them, even in death.
Warriors rode into battle on revolutionary transport — lightweight two-wheeled
chariots pulled by horses. These expensive vehicles, perhaps introduced by Indo-
Europeans migrating from Central Asia, first appeared in various Mediterranean and
trade routes for raw materials. Invaders razed its capital city, Hattusas, which never
revived. Egypt’s New Kingdom turned back the Sea Peoples after a tremendous mili-
tary effort, but the raiders destroyed the Egyptian long-distance trade network. By
the end of the New Kingdom, around 1081 b.c.e., Egypt had shrunk to its original
territorial core along the Nile’s banks. These problems ruined the Egyptian state’s
credit. For example, when an eleventh-century b.c.e. Theban temple official traveled
to Phoenicia to buy cedar for a ceremonial boat, the city’s ruler demanded cash in
advance. Although the Egyptian monarchy hung on, power struggles between pha-
raohs and priests, made worse by frequent attacks from abroad, prevented the re-
establishment of centralized authority. No Egyptian dynasty ever again became an
expansionist international power.
In Greece, homegrown conflict apparently generated a tipping point for Myce-
naean civilization at the time when the Sea Peoples became a threat. The Mycenaeans
reached the zenith of their power around 1400–1250 b.c.e. The enormous domed
tomb at Mycenae, called the Treasury of Atreus, testifies to the riches of this period.
The tomb’s elaborately decorated front and soaring roof reveal the pride and wealth
of the Mycenaean warrior princes. The last phase of the extensive palace at Pylos on
the west coast of the Peloponnese also dates from this time. It boasted vivid wall
paintings, storerooms bursting with food, and a royal bathroom with a built-in tub
and intricate plumbing. But these prosperous Mycenaeans did not escape the wide-
spread violence that began around 1200 b.c.e. Linear B tablets record the disposition
of troops to the coast to guard the palace at Pylos from raids from the sea. The
palace inhabitants of eastern Greece constructed defensive walls so massive that the
later Greeks said giants had built them. These fortifications would have protected
coastal palaces against seafaring attackers, who could have been either outsiders or
Greeks. The wall around the inland palace at Gla in central Greece, however, which
foreign raiders could not easily reach, confirms that Mycenaean communities also
had to defend themselves against other Mycenaean communities.
The internal conflict probably did more damage to Mycenaean civilization than the
raids of the Sea Peoples. Major earthquakes also struck at this time, spreading further
destruction among the Mycenaeans. Archaeology offers no evidence for the ancient
tradition that Dorian Greeks invading from the north caused this damage. Rather, near-
constant civil war by jealous local Mycenaean rulers overburdened the complicated
administrative balancing system necessary for the palaces’ redistributive economies
and hindered recovery from earthquake damage. The violence killed many Mycenae-
ans, and the disappearance of the palace-based redistributive economy put many others
on the road to starvation. The rulers’ loss of power left most Greeks with no organized
way to defend or feed themselves and forced
them not only to wander abroad in search
REVIEW QUESTION How did war determine
of new places to settle but also to learn to the fate of early Western civilization in Anatolia,
farm. Like people from the earliest times, Crete, and Greece?
they had to move to build a better life.
36 Chapter 1 Early Western Civilization
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
]
Conclusion
The best way to create a meaningful definition of Western civilization is to study
its history, which begins in Mesopotamia and Egypt; early societies there influenced
the later civilization of Greece. Cities first arose in Mesopotamia around 4000 to
3000 b.c.e. Hierarchy had characterized society from the very beginning, but it,
along with patriarchy, grew more prominent once civilization, larger populations,
and political states with centralized authority became widespread.
Trade and war were constants, both aiming in different ways at profit and glory.
Indirectly, they often generated cultural interaction by putting civilizations into close
contact. Technological innovation was also a prominent characteristic of this long
period. The invention of metallurgy, monumental architecture, mathematics, and
alphabetic writing greatly affected people’s lives. Religion was at the center of society;
people believed that the gods demanded everyone, from king to worker, to display
just and righteous conduct. But not even their faith could protect the people of the
early civilizations of the Mediterranean from the destruction inflicted by the Sea
Peoples and from their own internal conflicts in a period of prolonged violence.
Neither hierarchy nor central authority could preserve their prosperity, and a Dark
Age began around 1000 b.c.e.
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
] Conclusion 37
Da
Hittite homeland
Black Sea
CAU Egyptian homeland
CAS
US Babylonian kingdom
MT
S.
Mycenaean Greece
GREECE . Movements of Sea Peoples
Troy
sR
H aly
ANATOLIA .
TS
Gla Caspian
Athens
Mycenae M Sea
S
RU
T AU
M
ES
Pylos
Ti g
O
Ebla sR Nineveh
ri
O
.
TA
SYRIA ASSYRIA
M
Crete PHOENICIA
IA
Cyprus Eup
hra
ZA
Medi tes KASSITE GR
terran R. KINGDOM
OS
ean Sea Akkad? MT
Babylon S.
CANAAN/
PALESTINE
BABYLONIA Presumed
ancient coastline
Ur
Memphis
SINAI ARABIAN
LOWER PENINSULA DESERT
EGYPT
Tell
SAHARA DESERT el-Amarna
Pe
rs
N ia
nG
Re
Ni
u lf
d
le
Sea
R.
MAPPING THE WEST The Violent End to Early Western Civilization, 1200–1000 b.c.e.
Bands of wandering warriors and raiders set the eastern Mediterranean aflame at the end of
the Bronze Age. This violence displaced many people and ended the power of the Egyptian,
Hittite, and Mycenaean kingdoms. Even some of the Near Eastern states well inland from the
eastern Mediterranean coast felt the effects of this period of unrest, whose causes remain
mysterious. The Mediterranean Sea was a two-edged sword for the early civilizations that grew
up around and near it: as a highway for transporting goods and ideas, it was a benefit; as an
easy access corridor for attackers, it was a danger. The raids of the Sea Peoples smashed the
prosperity of the eastern Mediterranean region around 1200–1000 B.C.E. and set in motion the
forces that led to the next step in our story, the reestablishment of civilization in Greece. Inter-
nal conflict among Mycenaean rulers turned the regional unrest of those centuries into a local
catastrophe; fighting each other for dominance, they so weakened their monarchies that their
societies could not recover from the effects of battles and earthquakes.
Chapter 1 Review
Key Terms and People
Be sure that you can identify the term or person and explain its historical significance.
civilization (p. 3) polytheism (p. 10) wisdom literature (p. 22)
hierarchy (p. 4) cuneiform (p. 11) palace society (p. 29)
hunter-gatherers (p. 5) empire (p. 12) Mediterranean polyculture
city-state (p. 8) Hammurabi (p. 14) (p. 30)
patriarchy (p. 10) hieroglyphic (p. 19) Linear B (p. 33)
redistributive economy (p. 10) Maat (p. 20) Sea Peoples (p. 34)
Review Questions
1. How did life change for people in and nearby Mesopotamia, first after the Neolithic
Revolution and then when they began to live in cities?
2. How did religion guide the lives of both rulers and ordinary people in ancient Egypt?
3. How did war determine the fate of early Western civilization in Anatolia, Crete, and
Greece?
Making Connections
1. Compare and contrast how the environmental factors in Mesopotamia and Egypt affected
the emergence of the world’s first civilizations.
2. What were the advantages and disadvantages of living in a unified country under a single
central authority compared to living in a region with separate city-states?
3. Which were more important in influencing the development of early Western civilization:
the intentional or the unintentional consequences of change?
Suggested References
The combination of archaeological and linguistic research informs scholarship on the history of
the ancient Near East, Egypt, and Greece. New discoveries and new ideas both help historians
achieve a clearer understanding of these earliest societies of Western civilization.
Bertman, Stephen. Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. 2003.
Bryce, Trevor. Life and Society in the Hittite World. 2004.
——— The Routledge Handbook of the Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia. 2009.
*Chavalas, Mark W., ed. The Ancient Near East. Historical Sources in Translation. 2006.
Cline, Eric H. 1171 B.C. The Year Civilization Collapsed. 2010.
Crouch, Carly L. War and Ethics in the Ancient Near East. 2009.
*Dalley, Stephanie, trans. Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others.
1991.
Ikram, Salima. Ancient Egypt: An Introduction. 2010.
Mieroop, Marc Van De. King Hammurabi of Babylon: A Biography. 2005.
Partridge, Robert B. Fighting Pharaohs: Weapons and Warfare in Ancient Egypt. 2002.
Podany, Amanda H. Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near
East. 2010.
*Primary source.
38
[ 400,000–1000 b.c.e.
] Chapter 1 Review 39
Important Events
50,000–45,000 B.C.E. Homo sapiens migrate from Africa into southwest Asia and
Europe
10,000–8000 B.C.E. Neolithic Revolution in Fertile Crescent and Sahara
4000–3000 B.C.E. Mesopotamians invent writing and establish first cities
4000–1000 B.C.E. Bronze Age in southwestern Asia, Egypt, and Europe
3050 B.C.E. Narmer (Menes) unites Upper and Lower Egypt into one
kingdom
2687–2190 B.C.E. Old Kingdom in Egypt
2350 B.C.E. King Sargon of Akkad establishes world’s first empire
2300–2200 B.C.E. Enheduanna, princess of Akkad, composes poetry
2200 B.C.E. Minoans build their first palaces
2061–1665 B.C.E. Middle Kingdom in Egypt
1792–1750 B.C.E. Hammurabi rules Babylon and issues his law code
1569–1081 B.C.E. New Kingdom in Egypt
1400 B.C.E. Mycenaeans build their first palaces in Greece and take over
Minoan Crete
1200–1000 B.C.E. Period of violence ends many kingdoms
Consider three events: Mesopotamians invent writing and establish first cities (4000–
3000 B.C.E.), King Sargon of Akkad establishes the world’s first empire in Akkadia
(2350 B.C.E.), and Enheduanna composes poetry (2300–2200 B.C.E.). How might the
invention of writing have promoted the growth of stronger city-states and the first empire?
How might the creation of the Akkadian Empire have fostered the development of
literature?
Sanders, N. K. The Sea Peoples: Warriors of the Ancient Mediterranean, 1250–1150 B.C. Rev. ed.
1985.
Scarre, Chris. The Human Past: World Prehistory and the Development of Human Societies. 2009.
*Simpson, William Kelly, ed. The Literature of Ancient Egypt. An Anthology of Stories, Instructions,
and Poetry. 3rd ed. 2003.
Szapakowska, Kasia. Daily Life in Ancient Egypt: Recreating Lahun. 2008.
Tyldesley, Joyce. Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh. 1998.
Near East Empires and the
2
Reemergence of Civilization
in Greece
1000–500 b.c.e.
I
n The Iliad, the eighth-century b.c.e. Greek poet Homer narrates bloody
tales of the Trojan War. The story is rich with legends born from Greek and Near
Eastern traditions, such as that of the Greek hero Bellerophon. Driven from his
home by a false charge of sexual assault, Bellerophon has to serve as an enforcer for
a foreign king, fighting his most dangerous
Black-Figure Vase from Corinth enemies. In his most famous combat, Bel-
This vase was made in Corinth about lerophon is pitted against “the Chimera, an
600 B.C.E., painted in the so-called inhuman freak created by the gods, horrible
black-figure style, in which artists with its lion’s head, goat’s body, and dragon’s
carved details into the dark-baked clay. tail, breathing fire all the time.” Bellerophon
In the late sixth century B.C.E., this style
triumphs by mounting the winged horse
gave way to red-figure, in which artists
painted details in black on a reddish Pegasus and swooping down on the Chimera
background instead of engraving them; with an aerial attack. To reward such hero-
the result was finer detail (compare this ics, the king gives Bellerophon his daughter
vase painting with that on page 58). in marriage and half his kingdom.
The animals and mythical creatures
Homer’s story provides evidence for the
on the vase shown here follow Near
Eastern models, which inspired Archaic
intercultural contact between the Near East
Age Greek artists to put people and and Greece that helped Greek civilization
animals into their designs again after reemerge after 1000 b.c.e. Both the Chimera
their absence during the Dark Age. and the winged beast painted on the vase
Why do you think the artist depicted from Corinth shown in the chapter-opening
the animal at the lower right with two
illustration were creatures from Near Eastern
bodies but only one head? (© The Trust-
ees of the British Museum / Art Resource, NY.) myth that Greeks adapted. Greece’s geogra-
phy allowed it many ports, which promoted
contacts by sea through trade, travel, and
war with the Near East. From 1000 to 500 b.c.e., these contacts — combined with
the Greeks’ value of competitive individual excellence, their sense of a communal
identity, and their belief that people in general were responsible for maintaining
41
42 Chapter 2 Near East Empires
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
justice and the goodwill of the gods toward the community — aided Greeks in re-
inventing their civilization.
Western peoples’ desire for trade and cross-cultural contact increased as condi-
tions improved after 1000 b.c.e. The Near East, which retained monarchy as its
traditional form of government, recovered more quickly than Greece. Near Eastern
kings extracted surpluses from subject populations to fund their palaces and armies.
They also pursued new conquests to win glory, exploit the labor of conquered
peoples, seize raw materials, and conduct long-distance trade.
During Greece’s initial recovery from poverty and depopulation from 1000 to
750 b.c.e., new political and social traditions arose that rejected the rule of kings.
In this period, Greeks maintained trade and cross-cultural contact with the Near
East. Their mythology, as in Homer, and their art, as on the Corinthian vase, reveal
that Greeks imported ideas and technology from that part of the world. By the eighth
century b.c.e., Greeks had begun to create their own kind of city-state, the polis.
The polis was a radical innovation because it made citizenship — not subjection to
kings — the basis for society and politics, and included the poor as citizens. Women
in the polis had legal, though not political, rights; slaves still had neither. With the
exception of occasional tyrannies, Greek city-states governed themselves by having
male citizens share political power. In some places, small groups of upper-class men
dominated, but in other city-states the polis shared power among all free men, even
the poor, eventually creating the world’s first democracies. The Greeks’ invention of
democratic politics, limited though it might have been by modern standards, stands
as a landmark in the history of Western civilization.
New ways of belief and thought also developed in the Near East and Greece
that deeply influenced Western civilization. In religion, the Persians developed beliefs
that saw human life as a struggle between
good and evil, and the Israelites evolved
CHAPTER FOCUS How did the forms of
their monotheism. In philosophy, the
political and social organization that Greece
developed after 1000 B.C.E. differ from those
Greeks began to use reason and logic to
of the Near East? replace mythological explanations of
nature.
oped monotheism and produced the Hebrew Bible (as it is known today), later called
the Old Testament by Christians.
N Aral
Sea
D a nube R .
W E
Black Sea
S
Cas
CA
THRACE UC
pian
AS
US
Sea
Aegean
Sea
ANATOLIA
L. Van L. Urmia
GREECE
Harran
Crete
NEO- MEDIA
Cyprus BABYLONIA
Ti g
ANT
Mediterranean Sea
ri s
.
Eu
R
LEV
ph
Babylon
rat
Jerusalem
es
R.
Memphis
Persepolis
R.
PERSIA
us
Pe
nd
rsi I
a n
EGYPT Gu
lf
Thebes
Re
R.
d
le
Ni
Sea
Arabian Sea
greatest empire. Darius assigned each region taxes payable in precious metals, grain,
horses, and slaves. Royal roads and a courier system provided communication among
the far-flung provincial centers. The Greek historian Herodotus reported that neither
snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor darkness slowed the couriers from completing their
routes as swiftly as possible.
Persian kings ruled as the agents of Ahura Mazda, the supreme god of Persia.
Persian religion, Zoroastrianism, made Ahura Mazda the center of its devotion and
took its doctrines from the teachings of the legendary prophet Zarathustra. Zara-
thustra taught that Ahura Mazda demanded purity from his worshippers and helped
46 Chapter 2 Near East Empires
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
those who lived truthfully and justly. The most important doctrine of Zoroastrianism
was moral dualism, which saw the world as a battlefield between the divine forces
of good and evil. Ahura Mazda, the embodiment of good and light, struggled against
the evil darkness represented by the Satan-like figure Ahriman. Human beings had
to choose between the way of the truth and the way of the lie, between purity and
impurity. In Persian religion only those judged righteous after death made it across
“the bridge of separation” to heaven and avoided falling from its narrow span into
hell. Persian religion’s emphasis on ethical behavior and on a supreme god had a
lasting influence on others, especially the Israelites.
his followers migrated from the Mesopotamian city of Ur to Canaan, perhaps around
1900 b.c.e. Traditionally believed to have been divided into twelve tribes, the Isra-
elites never formed a political state in this period. The Canaanites remained the
political and military power in the region.
Abraham’s grandson Jacob, the story continues, moved to Egypt when his son
Joseph brought his family there to escape famine. Joseph had previously used his
intelligence and charisma to rise to an important position in the Egyptian adminis-
tration. In fact, Israelites had probably drifted into Egypt during the seventeenth or
sixteenth century b.c.e. as part of the movement of peoples there under Hyksos rule.
By the thirteenth century b.c.e., the pharaohs had forced the Israelite men into slave-
labor gangs.
According to the biblical Book of Exodus, the Israelite deity, Yahweh, instructed
Moses to lead the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt against the will of the pharaoh,
perhaps around the mid-thirteenth century b.c.e. Yahweh sent ten plagues to compel
the Egyptian king to free the Israelites, but he still tried to recapture them during
their flight. Yahweh therefore miraculously parted the sea to allow them to escape
eastward; the water swirled back together and drowned the pharaoh’s army as it tried
to follow.
Next in the biblical narrative comes the crucial event in the history of the Isra-
elites: the formalizing of a contractual agreement (a covenant) between them and
their deity, who revealed himself to Moses on Mount Sinai in the desert northeast
of Egypt. This contract between the Israelites and Yahweh specified that, in return
for their worshipping him exclusively as their only god and living by his laws, Yahweh
would make them his chosen people and lead them into a promised land of safety
and prosperity. The form of the covenant with Yahweh followed the ancient Near
Eastern tradition of treaties between a superior and subordinates, but its content
differed from that of other ancient Near Eastern religions because it made Yahweh
the exclusive deity of his people.
This binding agreement demanded human obedience to divine law and prom-
ised punishment for unrighteousness. Yahweh described himself to Moses as “com-
passionate and gracious, patient, ever constant and true . . . forgiving wickedness,
rebellion, and sin,” yet he also declared that he was “one who punishes sons and grand-
sons to the third and fourth generation for their fathers’ iniquity” (Exod. 34:6–7).
The Hebrew Bible sets forth the religious and moral code the Israelites had to
follow. The Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, called the Pentateuch by
Christians) recorded laws for righteous living. Most famous are the Ten Command-
ments, which required Israelites to worship Yahweh exclusively; make no idols; keep
from misusing Yahweh’s name; honor their parents; refrain from work on the seventh
day of the week (the Sabbath); and abstain from murder, adultery, theft, lying, and
covetousness. Many of the Israelites’ laws shared the traditional form and content of
earlier Mesopotamian laws, such as those of Hammurabi. Like his code, Israelite law
protected the lower classes and people without power, including strangers, widows,
and orphans.
48 Chapter 2 Near East Empires
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
Israelite law and thus Israelite justice differed significantly from their Mesopo-
tamian precedent, however, in applying the same rules and punishments to everyone
regardless of social rank. Israelite law also eliminated eye-for-an-eye punishment — a
Mesopotamian tradition ordering, for example, that a rapist’s wife be raped, or that
the son of a builder be killed if his father’s negligent work caused the death of some-
one else’s son. Crimes against property did not carry the death penalty, as in other
Near Eastern societies. Israelite laws also protected slaves against flagrant mistreat-
ment. Slaves who lost an eye or a tooth from a beating were to be freed. Like free
people, slaves enjoyed the right to rest on the Sabbath. Israelite women and children,
however, had fewer legal rights than men did.
According to the Bible, the Israelites who fled from Egypt with Moses made their
way back to Canaan, joining their relatives who had remained there and somehow
carving out separate territories for themselves. The twelve Israelite tribes remained
politically distinct under the direction of separate leaders, called judges, until the
eleventh century b.c.e., when according to tradition their first monarchy emerged.
Their monotheism gradually developed over the succeeding centuries.
Controversy rages about the accuracy of the biblical account, which reports that
the Israelites created a monarchy in the late eleventh century b.c.e. when Saul became
the Israelites’ first king. His successors David (r. 1010–970 b.c.e.) and Solomon (r. c. 961–
922 b.c.e.) brought the Israelite kingdom to the height of its prosperity. The kingdom’s
wealth, based on international commerce, supported the great temple that Solomon
built in Jerusalem as the house of Yahweh. The temple, richly decorated with gold
leaf, and the daily animal sacrifices to God that priests performed on the altar there
became the center of the Israelites’ religion.
After Solomon’s death, the monarchy split into two kingdoms: Israel in the north
and Judah in the south. The Assyrians destroyed Israel in 722 b.c.e. and deported
its population to Assyria. In 597 b.c.e., the Babylonians conquered Judah and cap-
tured its capital, Jerusalem. In 586 b.c.e., they destroyed the temple to Yahweh and
banished the Israelite leaders, along with much of the population, to Babylon. In
exile the Israelites learned about Persian religion. Zoroastrianism and Judaism came
to share ideas, such as the existence of God and Satan, angels and demons, God’s day
of judgment, and the arrival of a messiah (an “anointed one,” that is, a divinely cho-
sen leader with special powers).
When the Persian king Cyrus overthrew the Babylonians in 539 b.c.e., he per-
mitted the Israelites to return to their part of Canaan. The Bible proclaimed Cyrus
a messiah of the Israelites chosen by Yahweh as his “shepherd . . . to accomplish all
his purpose” in restoring his people to their previous home (Isa. 44:28–45:1). This
region was called Yehud, from the name of the southern Israelite kingdom, Judah.
From this geographical term came the word Jew, a designation for the Israelites after
their Babylonian exile. Cyrus allowed them to rebuild their main temple in Jerusalem
and to practice their religion.
Jewish prophets, both men and women, preached that their defeats were divine
punishment for neglecting the Sinai covenant and mistreating their poor. Some
[1000–500 b.c.e.
] From Dark Age to Empire in the Near East, 1000–500 b.c.e. 49
prophets also predicted the end of the present world following a great crisis, a judg-
ment by Yahweh, and salvation leading to a new and better world. This apocalypti-
cism (“uncovering,” or revelation), recalling Babylonian prophetic wisdom literature,
would later provide the worldview of Christianity.
Jewish leaders developed complex religious laws to maintain ritual and ethical
purity. Marrying non-Jews and working on the Sabbath were forbidden. Fathers had
legal power over the household, subject to intervention by the male elders of the
community; women gained honor as mothers. Only men could initiate divorce pro-
ceedings. Jews had to pay taxes and offerings to support and honor the sanctuary of
Yahweh, and they had to forgive debts every seventh year.
Gradually, Jews created their monotheism by accepting that Yahweh was the only
god and that they had to obey his laws. Jews retained their identity by following this
religion regardless of their personal fate or their geographical location. Therefore,
Jews who did not return to their homeland could maintain their Jewish identity by
following Jewish law while living among foreigners. In this way, the Diaspora (“dis-
persion of population”) came to characterize the history of the Jewish people.
Israelite monotheism made the preservation and understanding of a sacred text,
the Hebrew Bible, the center of religious life. Making scripture the focus of religion
50 Chapter 2 Near East Empires
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
proved the most crucial development for the history not only of Judaism but also of
Christianity and Islam, because these later religions made their own sacred texts —
the Christian Bible and the Qur’an, respectively — the centers of their belief and
practice. Through the continuing vitality of Judaism and its impact on the doctrines
of Christianity and Islam, the early Jews
passed on ideas — chiefly monotheism and
REVIEW QUESTION In what ways was religion
the notion of a covenant bestowing a
important in the Near East from c. 1000 B.C.E. divinely ordained destiny on a people if
to c. 500 B.C.E.? they obey divine will — whose effects have
endured to this day.
1000 B.C.E. Almost all important Mycenaean sites except Athens are destroyed
by now
1000–900 B.C.E. Greatest depopulation and economic loss
900–800 B.C.E. Early revival of population and agriculture; beginning use of iron tools
and weapons
800 B.C.E. Greek trading contacts are initiated with Al Mina in Syria
776 B.C.E. First Olympic Games are held
775 B.C.E. Euboeans from Greece establish trading post on island in the Bay of
Naples
750 B.C.E. Homeric poetry is recorded in writing after Greeks learn to write again;
Hesiod composes his poetry
Dark Age Greece did, however, retain a small but wealthy social elite. On the
island of Euboea, for example, archaeologists have discovered the tenth-century b.c.e.
grave of a couple who took such enormous riches with them to the next world that
the woman’s body was covered in gold ornaments. They had done well in the compe-
tition for prestige and wealth; most people of the time were, by comparison, desper-
ately poor.
Geography allowed the Greeks to continue seaborne trade with the civilizations
of the eastern Mediterranean even during their Dark Age. Trade promoted cultural
interaction, and the Greeks learned to write again about 800 b.c.e., adopting and
adapting the alphabet from the Phoenicians, seafaring traders from Canaan. Near
Eastern art inspired Greeks to resume the production of ceramics with figural designs
(as on the Corinthian vase on page 40). Seaborne commerce encouraged better-off
Greeks to produce agricultural surpluses and goods they could trade for luxuries
such as gold jewelry and gems from Egypt and Syria.
Most important, trade brought the new technology of iron metallurgy. Greeks
learned this skill through their eastern trade contacts and mined their own iron ore,
which was common in Greece. Iron eventually replaced bronze in agricultural tools,
swords, and spear points. (The Greeks still used bronze for shields and armor, how-
ever, because it was easier to shape into thin, curved pieces.) The iron tools’ lower
cost allowed more people to acquire them. Because iron is harder than bronze, imple-
ments kept their sharp edges longer. Better and more plentiful farming implements
of iron helped increase food production, which sustained population growth. In this
way, technology imported from the Near East improved people’s chances for survival
and thus helped Greece recover from the Dark Age’s depopulation.
With the Mycenaean rulers gone, leadership became an open competition in
Dark Age Greece. Individuals who proved themselves excellent in action, words, cha-
risma, and religious knowledge joined the social elite, enjoying higher prestige and
52 Chapter 2 Near East Empires
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
authority in society. Excellence — aretê in Greek — was earned by competing. Men
competed with others for aretê as warriors and persuasive public speakers. Women
won their highest aretê by managing a household of children, slaves, and storerooms.
Members of the elite accumulated wealth by controlling agricultural land, which
people of lower status worked for them as tenants or slaves.
The Iliad and The Odyssey, the eighth-century b.c.e. poems of Homer, reflect
the social elite’s ideals. Homer was the last in a long line of poets who, influenced
by Near Eastern mythology, had been singing these stories for centuries, orally trans-
mitting cultural values from one generation to the next. In telling the story of the
Greek army in the Trojan War, The Iliad focuses on the greatest Greek warrior, Achil-
les, who proves his aretê by choosing to die in battle rather than accept the gods’
offer to return home safely but without glory. The Odyssey recounts not only the
hero Odysseus’s ten-year adventure sailing home after the fall of Troy but also the
struggle of his wife, Penelope, to protect their household from the schemes of rivals.
Homer reveals that the white-hot emotions inflamed by the competition for
excellence could provoke a disturbing level of inhumanity. Achilles, in preparing to
duel Hector, the prince of Troy, brutally rejects the Trojan’s proposal that the winner
return the loser’s corpse to his family and friends: “Do wolves and lambs agree to
cooperate? No, they hate each other to the roots of their being.” The victor, Achilles,
mutilates Hector’s body. When Hecuba, the queen of Troy and Hector’s mother, sees
this outrage, she bitterly shouts, “I wish I could sink my teeth into his liver to eat it
raw.” The endings of Homer’s poems suggest that the gods could sometimes help
people achieve reconciliation after violent conflict, but human suffering in his stories
shows that the pursuit of excellence is painful.
Athletic Competition
Greek vase painters often showed male athletes in action or training, perhaps in part because
athletes were customers who would buy pottery with such scenes. As in this painting of an
Athenian foot race from around 530 B.C.E., the athletes were usually shown nude, which was
how they competed, revealing their superb physical condition and strong musculature. Being in
excellent shape was a man’s ideal for several reasons: it was regarded as beautiful, it enabled
him to compete for individual glory in athletic contests, and it allowed him to fulfill his commu-
nity responsibility by fighting as a well-conditioned soldier in the city-state’s citizen militia. Why
do you think the figure at the far left does not have a full beard? (Euphiletos Painter [sixth century
B.C.E.], Panathenaic prize amphora, c. 530 B.C.E. Reverse. Terracotta, h. 24½ in. [62.2 cm]. Archaic Greek, Attic.
Rogers Fund, 1914. [14.130.12]. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, U.S.A. Image copyright © The Metro-
politan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY.)
athletes dominated the Olympics, earning their living from appearance fees and
prizes at games held throughout the Greek world.
Once every four years an international truce of several weeks was declared so
that competitors and fans from all Greek communities could safely travel to and from
Olympia. The games were open to any socially elite Greek male. These rules repre-
sented beginning steps toward a concept of collective Greek identity. The Olympics
helped channel the competition for individual excellence into a new context of social
cooperation and community values, essential preconditions for the creation of
Greece’s new political form, the city-state ruled by citizens.
Greeks dispersed around the Mediterranean to settle hundreds more trading com-
munities that often grew into new city-states. Individuals’ drive for profit from trade,
especially in raw materials, and for free farmland probably started this process of
founding new settlements.
Though it took varying forms, the Greek polis differed from the Mesopotamian
city-state primarily in being a community of citizens making laws and administering
justice among themselves instead of being the subjects of a king. Another difference
was that poor citizens of Greek city-states enjoyed a rough legal and political equality
with the rich. Not different, however, were the subordination of women and the
subjugation of slaves.
Danub
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.
N
ATLANTIC
OCEAN W E
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Black Sea
BALKAN
PENINSULA
Naples
Pithecusae
Athens
Corinth Ti
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is R
Carthage Syracuse Sparta Al Mina
Strait of
.
Gibraltar
Me
dite Byblos Eu
rran p
ean Sea
hr
at
Tyre
es
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Greek city-states, c. 750 B.C.E. Greek shipping Naucratis
routes
Phoenicia, c. 750 B.C.E.
Phoenician shipping
Coast and settlements routes
Ni l
under Greek influence
Re
eR
0 250 500 miles
dS
.
Coast and settlements
ea
under Phoenician influence
0 250 500 kilometers
man seized control of the city-state, at least some degree of shared governing was
normal.
Power sharing reached its widest form in democratic Greek city-states. The most
famous ancient analyst of Greek politics and society, the philosopher Aristotle (384–
322 b.c.e.), argued, “Humans are beings who by nature live in a city-state.” Anyone
who existed outside such a community, Aristotle remarked, must be either a simple
fool or superhuman. The polis’s innovation in making shared power the basis of gov-
ernment did not immediately change the course of history — monarchy later became
once again the most common form of government in ancient Western civilization —
but it was important as proof that power sharing was a workable system of political
organization.
Greek city-states were officially religious communities. As well as worshipping
many deities, each city-state honored a particular god or goddess as its special pro-
tector, such as Athena at Athens. Different communities could choose the same deity:
Sparta, Athens’s chief rival in later times, also chose Athena as its defender. Greeks
58 Chapter 2 Near East Empires
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
A Greek Woman at an Altar
This red-figure vase painting (contrast the black-figure
vase on page 40) from the center of a large drinking
cup shows a woman in rich clothing pouring a liba-
tion to the gods onto a flaming altar. In her other
arm, she carries a religious object that has
not been securely identified. This scene illus-
trates the most important and frequent role
of women in Greek public life: participating
in religious ceremonies, both at home and
in community festivals. Greek women (and
men) commonly wore sandals; why do
you think they are usually depicted without
shoes in vase paintings? (Attributed to Makron
[painter] and Hieron [potter], [Greek, from Athens],
Kylix [Drinking Vessel], detail, Tondo: Woman Sacrificing
at an Altar, c. 490–480 B.C.E., wheel-thrown, slip-decorated
earthenware, red-figure technique, h. 47⁄16 in. [11.3 cm].
Toledo Museum of Art [Toledo, Ohio]. Purchased with funds
from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey
[1972.55].)
envisioned the twelve most important gods banqueting atop Mount Olympus, the
highest peak in mainland Greece. Zeus headed this pantheon; the others were Hera,
his wife; Aphrodite, goddess of love; Apollo, sun god; Ares, war god; Artemis, moon
goddess; Athena, goddess of wisdom and war; Demeter, earth goddess; Dionysus,
god of pleasure, wine, and disorder; Hephaestus, fire god; Hermes, messenger god;
and Poseidon, sea god. The Greeks believed that their gods occasionally experienced
temporary pain or sadness but were immune to permanent suffering because they
were immortal.
Greek religion’s core beliefs were that humans must honor the gods to thank them
for blessings received and to receive more blessings in return, and that the gods sent
both good and bad into the world. Gods could punish offenders by sending disasters
such as floods, famines, earthquakes, epidemic diseases, and defeats in battle. The
relationship between gods and humans generated sorrow as well as joy, and only a
limited hope for favored treatment in this life and in the underworld after death even
for the gods’ favorites. Ordinary Greeks did not expect the gods to take them to a
paradise at some future time when evil forces would be eliminated forever. An inscrip-
tion on a seventh-century b.c.e. bronze statuette sums up the reciprocity that charac-
terized Greek religious ideas: “Mantiklos gave this from his share to [the god Apollo]
the Far Darter of the Silver Bow; now you, Apollo, do something for me in return.”
Mythology hinted at the gods’ expectations of proper human behavior. For
example, gods demanded hospitality for strangers and proper burial for family mem-
bers. Other acts such as performing a sacrifice improperly, violating the sanctity of
a temple area, or breaking an oath or sworn agreement counted as disrespect for the
[1000–500 b.c.e.
] The Creation of the Greek City-State, 750–500 b.c.e. 59
gods. Humans had to police most crimes themselves. Homicide was such a serious
offense, however, that the gods were thought to punish it by casting a miasma (ritual
contamination) on the murderer and on all those around. Unless the members of
the affected group purified themselves by punishing the murderer, they could all
expect to suffer divine punishment, such as bad harvests or disease.
Oracles, dreams, divination, and the interpretations of prophets provided clues
about what humans might have done to anger the gods. The most important oracle
was at Delphi, in central Greece, where a priestess in a trance provided Apollo’s
answers — in the form of riddles that had to be interpreted — to questions posed by
city-states as well as individuals.
City-states honored gods by sacrificing animals such as cattle, sheep, goats, and
pigs; decorating their sanctuaries with works of art; and celebrating festivals with
songs, dances, prayers, and processions. Both city-states and individuals worshipped
each god and goddess through a cult, a set of official, publicly funded religious
activities overseen by priests and priestesses. People prayed, sang hymns of praise,
offered sacrifices, and presented gifts at the deity’s sanctuary. In these holy places a
person could honor and thank the deities for blessings and beg them for relief when
misfortune struck the community or the individual. People could also offer sacrifices
at home with the household gathered around; sometimes the family’s slaves were
allowed to participate.
Priests and priestesses chosen from the citizen body performed the sacrifices of
public cults; they did not use their positions to influence political or social matters.
They were not guardians of correct religious thinking because Greek polytheism had
no scripture or uniform set of beliefs and practices. It required its worshippers only
to support the community’s local rituals and to avoid religious pollution.
The concept of citizenship in the Greek city-state meant free people agreeing
to form a political community that was a partnership of privileges and duties in
common affairs under the rule of law. Citizenship was a remarkable political concept
because, even in Greek city-states organized as tyrannies or oligarchies (rule by a
small group), it meant a basic level of political equality among citizens. Most impor-
tant, it carried the expectation of equal treatment under the law for male citizens
regardless of their social status or wealth. The degree of power sharing varied. In
oligarchic city-states, small groups from the social elite or even a single family could
dominate the process of legislating. Women had the protection of the law, but they
were barred from participation in politics on the grounds that female judgment was
inferior to male. Regulations governing sexual behavior and control of property were
stricter for women than for men.
In democratic city-states, all free adult male citizens shared in governing by
attending and voting in a political assembly, where the laws and policies of the com-
munity were decided, and by serving on juries. Citizens did not enjoy perfect poli-
tical equality. The right to hold office, for example, could be restricted to citizens
possessing a certain amount of property. Equality prevailed most strongly in the
justice system, in which all male citizens were treated the same, regardless of wealth
60 Chapter 2 Near East Empires
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
or status. Making equality of male citizens the principle for the reorganization of
Greek society and politics in the Archaic Age was a radical innovation. The polis —
with its emphasis on equal protection of the laws for rich and poor alike — remained
the preeminent form of political and social organization in Greece until the begin-
ning of Roman control six centuries later.
How the poor originally gained the privileges of citizenship remains a mystery.
The population increase in the late Dark Age and the Archaic Age was greatest
among the poor. These families raised more children to help farm more land, which
had been vacant after the depopulation brought on by the worst of the Dark Age.
There was no precedent in Western civilization for extending even limited political
and legal equality to the poor.
Historians have customarily believed that a hoplite revolu-
tion was the reason for expanded political rights. A hoplite was
an infantryman who wore metal body armor and attacked with
a thrusting spear. Hoplites formed the basis of the citizen mili-
tias that defended Greek city-states. Staying in line and working
together were the secrets to successful hoplite tactics. In the
eighth century b.c.e., a growing number of men became pros-
perous enough to buy metal weapons and train as hoplites,
especially because the use of iron had made such weapons more
readily available.
According to the hoplite revolution theory, these new
hoplites — feeling that they should enjoy political rights in
exchange for buying their own equipment and training hard —
forced the social elite to share political power by threatening to
refuse to fight, which would have crippled military defense. This
interpretation correctly assumes that the hoplites had the power
to demand and receive a voice in politics but ignores that hoplites
were not poor. Furthermore, archaeology shows that not many
men were wealthy enough to afford hoplite armor until the middle
of the seventh century b.c.e., well after the earliest city-states had
emerged. How then did poor men, too, win political rights?
The most likely explanation is that the poor earned respect
by fighting to defend the community, just as hoplites did. Fight-
ing as lightly armed troops, poor men could disrupt an enemy’s line by slinging rocks
and shooting arrows. It is also possible that tyrants — sole rulers who seized power
for their families in some city-states — boosted the status of poor men. Tyrants may
have granted greater political rights to poor men as a means of gathering popular
support.
The growth of freedom and equality for citizens in Greece produced a corre-
sponding expansion of slavery, as free citizens protected their status by establishing
clear distinctions between themselves and slaves. Many slaves were war captives.
Pirates or raiders also seized people from non-Greek regions to sell into slavery. Rich
families prized educated Greek-speaking slaves, who could tutor their children (no
public schools existed yet).
City-states as well as individuals owned slaves. Publicly owned slaves enjoyed
limited independence, living on their own and performing specialized tasks. In Ath-
ens, for example, special slaves were trained to detect counterfeit coinage. Temple
slaves belonged to the deity of the sanctuary, for whom they worked as servants.
Slaves made up about one-third of the total population in some city-states by
the fifth century b.c.e. They became cheap enough that even middle-class people
could afford one or two. Still, small landowners and their families continued to do
much work themselves. Not even wealthy Greek landowners acquired large numbers
of agricultural slaves because maintaining gangs of hundreds of enslaved workers
year-round was too expensive. Most crops required short periods of intense labor
punctuated by long stretches of inactivity, and owners did not want to feed slaves
who had no work.
Slaves did all kinds of jobs. Household slaves, often women, cleaned, cooked,
fetched water from public fountains, helped the wife with the weaving, watched the
children, accompanied the husband as he did the marketing, and performed other
domestic chores. Neither female nor male slaves could refuse if their masters
demanded sexual favors. Owners often labored alongside their slaves in small manu-
facturing businesses and on farms. Slaves toiling in the narrow, landslide-prone tun-
nels of Greece’s silver and gold mines had the most dangerous work.
Since slaves existed as property, not people, owners could legally beat or even
kill them. But injuring or executing slaves made no economic sense — the master
would have been damaging or destroying his own property. Under the best condi-
tions, household workers could live free of violent punishment. They sometimes
were allowed to join their owners’ families on excursions and attend religious rituals.
However, without families of their own, without property, and without legal or politi-
cal rights, slaves remained alienated from regular society. Sometimes owners freed
their slaves, and some promised freedom at a future date to encourage their slaves to
work hard. Those slaves who gained their freedom did not become citizens in Greek
city-states but instead mixed into the population of noncitizens officially allowed to
live in the community.
Greek slaves rarely rebelled on a large scale, except in Sparta, because they were
usually of too many different origins and nationalities and too scattered to organize.
62 Chapter 2 Near East Empires
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
No Greeks called for the abolition of slavery. The expansion of slavery in the Archaic
Age reduced more and more people to a state of absolute dependence.
Although only free men had the right to participate in city-state politics and to
vote, free women counted as citizens legally, socially, and religiously. Citizenship gave
women security and status because it guaranteed them access to the justice system
and a respected role in a cult. Free women had legal protection against being kid-
napped for sale into slavery and access to the courts in disputes over property,
although they usually had to have a man speak for them. The traditional paternalism
of Greek society required that all women have male guardians to regulate their lives
and safeguard their interests (as defined by men). Before a woman’s marriage, her
father served as her legal guardian; after marriage, her husband took over that duty.
The expansion of slavery added new responsibilities for women. While their hus-
bands farmed, participated in politics, and met with their male friends, well-off wives
managed the household: raising the children, supervising the preservation and prep-
aration of food, keeping the family’s financial accounts, weaving fabric for clothing,
directing the work of the slaves, and tending them when they were ill. Poor women
worked outside the home, laboring in the fields or selling produce and small goods
such as ribbons and trinkets in the market. Women’s labor ensured the family’s eco-
nomic self-sufficiency and allowed male citizens the time to participate in public life.
Women’s religious functions gave them prestige and freedom of movement.
Women left the home to attend funerals, state festivals, and public rituals. They had
access, for example, to the initiation rites of the popular cult of Demeter at Eleusis,
near Athens. Women had control over cults reserved exclusively for them and also
performed important duties in other official cults. In fifth-century b.c.e. Athens, for
example, women officiated as priestesses for more than forty different deities, with
benefits including salaries paid by the state.
Marriages were arranged, and everyone was expected to marry. A woman’s guard-
ian would often engage her to another man’s son while she was still a child, perhaps
as young as five. The engagement was a public event conducted in the presence of
witnesses. The guardian on this occasion repeated the statement that expressed the
primary aim of the marriage: “I give you this woman for the plowing [procreation]
of legitimate children.” The wedding took place when the girl was in her early teens
and the groom ten to fifteen years older.
A legal wedding consisted of the bride moving to her husband’s dwelling; the
procession to his house served as the ceremony. The bride’s father bestowed on her
a dowry (a certain amount of family property a daughter received at marriage); if she
was wealthy, this could include land yielding an income as well as personal posses-
sions that formed part of her new household’s assets and could be inherited by her
children. The husband was legally obliged to preserve the dowry, use it to support
his wife and their children, and return it in case of a divorce.
Except in certain cases in Sparta, monogamy was the rule, as was a nuclear fam-
ily (husband, wife, and children living together without other relatives in the same
house). Citizen men, married or not, were free to have sexual relations with slaves,
[1000–500 b.c.e.
] The Creation of the Greek City-State, 750–500 b.c.e. 63
A Bride’s Preparation
This special piece of pottery was designed to fit over a woman’s thigh to protect it while she sat
down to spin wool. As a woman’s tool, it appropriately carried a picture from a woman’s life: a
bride being helped to prepare for her wedding by her family, friends, and servants. The inscrip-
tions indicate that this fifth-century B.C.E. piece shows the mythological bride Alcestis, famous
for sacrificing herself to save her husband and then being rescued from Death by the hero Hera-
cles. (onos or epinetron, painted terracotta by Diosphos, Greece, Greek Civilization, 5th Century B.C. / De Agostini
Picture Library / G. Dagli Orti / Bridgeman Images.)
expected to put service to their city-state before personal concerns because their state’s
survival was continually threatened by its own economic foundation: the great mass
of Greek slaves, called helots, who did almost all the work for Spartan citizens.
A helot was a slave owned by the Spartan city-state. Helots were Greeks cap-
tured in neighboring parts of Greece that the Spartans defeated in war. Most helots
lived in Messenia, to the west, which Sparta had conquered by around 700 b.c.e.
The helots outnumbered Sparta’s free citizens. Harshly treated by their Spartan mas-
ters, helots constantly looked for chances to revolt.
Helots had some family life because they were expected to produce children
to maintain their population, and they could own some personal possessions and
practice their religion. They labored as farmers and household slaves so that Spartan
citizens would not have to do nonmilitary work. Spartan men wore their hair very
long to show they were warriors rather than laborers.
Helots lived under the constant threat of officially approved violence by Spartan
citizens. Every year the ephors formally declared war between Sparta and the helots,
allowing any Spartan to kill a helot without legal penalty or fear of offending the
gods. By beating the helots frequently, forcing them to get drunk in public as an
object lesson to young Spartans, and humiliating them by making them wear dog-
skin caps, the Spartans emphasized their slaves’ “otherness.” In this way Spartans
created a justification for their harsh abuse of fellow Greeks. A later Athenian
observed, “Sparta is the home of the freest of the Greeks, and of the most enslaved.”
With helots to work the fields, male citizens could devote themselves full-time
to preparation for war, training to protect their state from both hostile neighbors
and its own slaves. Boys lived at home until their seventh year, when they were sent
to live in barracks with other males until they were thirty. They spent most of their
time exercising, hunting, practicing with weapons, and learning Spartan values by
listening to tales of bravery and heroism at shared meals, where adult males in
groups of about fifteen usually ate instead of at home. Discipline was strict, and the
boys were purposely underfed so that they would learn stealth tactics by stealing
food. If they were caught, punishment and disgrace followed immediately. One
famous Spartan tale reported that a boy hid a stolen fox under his clothing and let
the panicked animal rip out his insides rather than allow himself to be detected in
the theft. A Spartan male who could not survive the tough training was publicly
disgraced and denied the status of being an Alike.
Spending so much time in shared quarters schooled Sparta’s young men in their
society’s values. The community took the place of a Spartan boy’s family when he
was growing up and remained his main social environment even after he reached
adulthood. There he learned to call all older men “Father,” to emphasize that his
primary loyalty was to the group instead of his biological family. This way of life
trained him for the one honorable occupation for Spartan men: obedient soldier. A
seventh-century b.c.e. poet expressed the Spartan male ideal: “Know that it is good
for the city-state and the whole people when a man takes his place in the front row
of warriors and stands his ground without flinching.”
66 Chapter 2 Near East Empires
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
An adolescent boy’s life often involved what in today’s terminology would
be called a homosexual relationship, although the ancient concepts of heterosexual-
ity and homosexuality do not match modern notions. An older male would choose
a teenager as a special favorite, in many cases engaging him in sexual relations.
Their bond was meant to make each ready to die for the other in battle. Numerous
Greek city-states included this form of sexuality among their customs, although
some thought it disgraceful and made it illegal. The Athenian author Xenophon
(c. 430–355 b.c.e.) wrote a work on the Spartan way of life denying that sex with
boys existed there because he thought it a stain on the Spartans’ reputation for
virtue. However, other sources testify that such relationships did exist in Sparta and
elsewhere.
In such relationships the elder partner (the “lover”) was supposed to help edu-
cate the young man (the “beloved”) in politics and community values, and not just
exploit him for physical pleasure. Once they became adults, beloveds were expected
to find a wife to start a family; they could also at that point become the “lover” of
an adolescent “beloved.” Sex between adult males was considered disgraceful, as was
sex between females of all ages (at least according to men).
Spartan women were known throughout the Greek world for their personal
freedom. Since their husbands were so rarely at home, women totally controlled the
households, which included servants, daughters, and sons who had not yet left for
their communal training. Consequently, Spartan women exercised even more power
at home than did women elsewhere in Greece. They could own property, including
land. Wives were expected to stay phys-
ically fit so that they could bear
healthy children to keep up the pop-
ulation. They were also expected to
drum Spartan values into their chil-
dren. One mother became legendary
for handing her son his shield on the eve of
battle and sternly telling him, “Come back with
it or [lying dead] on it.”
his eligibility for government office. The higher a man’s ranking, the higher the post
to which he could be elected, but higher also was the contribution he was expected
to make to the community with his service and his money. Men at the poorest level,
called laborers, were not eligible for any office. Solon did, however, confirm the
laborers’ right to vote in the legislative assembly. His classification scheme was con-
sistent with democratic principles because it allowed for upward social mobility: a
man who increased his income could move up the scale of eligibility for office.
The creation of a smaller council to prepare the agenda for the assembly was a crucial
development in making Athenian democracy efficient. Four hundred council members
were chosen annually from the adult male citizenry by lottery — the most democratic
method possible — which prevented the social elite from capturing too many seats.
Solon’s two reforms in the judicial system promoted democratic principles of equal-
ity. First, he directed that any male citizen could start a prosecution on behalf of any
crime victim. Second, he gave people the right to appeal an archon’s judgment to the
assembly. With these two measures, Solon empowered ordinary citizens in the admin-
istration of justice. Characteristically, he balanced these democratic reforms by granting
broader powers to the Areopagus Council (“council that meets on the hill of the god
of war Ares”). This select body, limited to ex-archons, held great power because its
members judged the most important cases — accusations against archons themselves.
Solon’s reforms extended power through the citizen body and created a system
of law that applied more equally than before to all the community’s free men. A critic
once challenged Solon, “Do you actually believe your fellow citizens’ injustice and
greed can be kept in check this way? Written laws are more like spiders’ webs than
anything else: they tie up the weak and the small fry who get stuck in them, but the
rich and the powerful tear them to shreds.” Solon replied that communal values ensure
the rule of law: “People abide by their agreements when neither side has anything to
gain by breaking them. I am writing laws for the Athenians in such a way that they
will clearly see it is to everyone’s advantage to obey the laws rather than to break them.”
Some elite Athenians wanted oligarchy and therefore bitterly disagreed with
Solon. The unrest they caused opened the door to tyranny at Athens. Peisistratus,
helped by his upper-class friends and the poor whose interests he championed, made
himself tyrant in 546 b.c.e. Like the Corinthian tyrants, he promoted the economic,
cultural, and architectural development of Athens and bought the masses’ support.
He helped poorer men, for example, by hiring them to build roads, a huge temple
to Zeus, and fountains to increase the supply of drinking water. He boosted Athens’s
economy and its image by minting new coins stamped with Athena’s owl (a symbol
of the goddess of wisdom; see the illustration on page 115) and organizing a great
annual festival honoring the god Dionysus that attracted people from near and far
to see its musical and dramatic performances.
Peisistratus’s eldest son, Hippias, ruled harshly and was denounced as unjust by
a rival elite family. These rivals convinced the Spartans, the self-proclaimed cham-
pions of Greek freedom, to “liberate” Athens from tyranny by expelling Hippias and
his family in 510 b.c.e.
70 Chapter 2 Near East Empires
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
Peisistratus’s support of ordinary people evidently had the unintended conse-
quence of making them think that they deserved political equality. Tyranny at Athens
thus opened the way to the most important step in developing Athenian democracy,
the reforms of Cleisthenes. A member of the social elite, Cleisthenes found himself
losing against rivals for election to office in 508 b.c.e. He turned his electoral cam-
paign around by offering more political participation to the masses; he called his
program “equality through law.” Ordinary people so strongly favored his plan that
they spontaneously rallied to repel a Spartan army that Cleisthenes’ bitterest rival
had convinced Sparta’s leaders to send to block his reforms.
By about 500 b.c.e., Cleisthenes had engineered direct participation in Athens’s
democracy by as many adult male citizens as possible. First he created constituent units
for the city-state’s new political organization by grouping country villages and urban
neighborhoods into units called demes. The demes chose council members annually
by lottery in proportion to the size of their populations. To allow for greater partici-
pation, Solon’s Council of Four Hundred was expanded to five hundred members.
Finally, Cleisthenes required candidates for public office to be spread widely through-
out the demes.
The creation of demes suggests that Greek democratic notions stemmed from
traditions of small-community life, in which each man was entitled to his say in run-
ning local affairs and had to persuade — not force — others to agree. It took another
fifty years of political struggle, however, before Athenian democracy reached its full
development with the democratization of its judicial system.
Other poets criticized traditional values, such as strength in war. Sappho, a lyric poet
from Lesbos born about 630 b.c.e. and famous for her poems on love, wrote, “Some
would say the most beautiful thing on our dark earth is an army of cavalry, others
of infantry, others of ships, but I say it’s whatever a person loves.” In this poem
Sappho was expressing her longing for a woman she loved, who was now far away.
Archilochus of Paros, who probably lived in the early seventh century b.c.e., became
famous for poems mocking militarism, lamenting friends lost at sea, and regretting
love affairs gone wrong. He became infamous for his lines about throwing away his
shield in battle so that he could run away to save his life: “Oh, the hell with it; I can
get another one just as good.” When he taunted a family in verse after the father had
ended Archilochus’s affair with one of his daughters, the power of his ridicule report-
edly caused the father and his two daughters to commit suicide.
The study of philosophy (“love of wisdom”) began in the seventh and sixth cen-
turies b.c.e. when some Greek thinkers created prose writing to express their innovative
Hoplite Shield
This detail from a painting on an Archaic-Age Greek vase shows warriors carrying the large circu-
lar shields and long thrusting spears characteristic of Greek heavy infantry (hoplites). To make
the warriors look more heroic, they are shown without the torso armor that they wore in battle.
Shields were composites of metal, wood, and hide, with a decoration on the outer side to
express the warrior’s pride. Hoplites held their heavy shields by putting their left arm through
one strap in the middle of the reverse side and grasping another one at the edge. They kept
their shields in place as protection when lined up in the battle line next to their fellow soldiers,
but they could also swing them around as weapons in close combat. (Detail of a Corinthian vase,
c. 600 B.C.E. [terracotta] / Louvre, Paris, France / Peter Willi / Bridgeman Images.)
72 Chapter 2 Near East Empires
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
]
ideas, above all their new explanations of the human
world and its relation to the gods. Some also com-
posed poetry to explain their theories. Most of these
Aegean philosophers lived in Ionia, on Anatolia’s western
Sea Lesbos coast, where they came in contact with Near Eastern
knowledge in astronomy, mathematics, and myth.
GREECE Chios
IONIA Because there were no formal schools, philosophers
Colophon
Athens Samos communicated their ideas by teaching privately and
Paros Miletus giving public lectures. People who studied with
these philosophers or heard their presentations
0 50 100 miles
helped spread the new ideas.
0 50 100 kilometers Rhodes Working from Babylonian discoveries about the
regular movements of the stars and planets, Ionian
Ionia and the Aegean,
philosophers such as Thales (c. 625–545 b.c.e.) and
750–500 b.c.e.
Anaximander (c. 610–540 b.c.e.), both of Miletus,
reached the revolutionary conclusion that unchanging laws of nature (rather than
gods’ wishes) governed the universe. Pythagoras, who emigrated from the island of
Samos to the Greek city-state Croton in southern Italy about 530 b.c.e., taught that
numerical relationships explained the world. He began the Greek study of high-level
mathematics and the numerical aspects of musical harmony.
Ionian philosophers insisted that natural phenomena were neither random nor
arbitrary. They applied the word cosmos — meaning “an orderly arrangement that is
beautiful” — to the universe. The cosmos included not only the motions of heavenly
bodies but also the weather, the growth of plants and animals, and human health.
Because the universe was ordered, it was knowable; because it was knowable, thought
and research could explain it. Philosophers therefore looked for the first or universal
cause of all things, a quest that scientists still pursue. These first philosophers believed
they needed to give reasons for their conclusions and to persuade others by argu-
ments based on evidence. That is, they believed in logic. This new way of thought,
called rationalism, became the foundation for the study of science and philosophy.
This rule-based view of the causes of events and physical phenomena contrasted
sharply with the traditional mythological view. Many people had difficulty accepting
such a startling change in their understanding of the world, and the older tradition
of explaining events as the work of deities lived on alongside the new approach.
The early Greek philosophers deeply influenced later times by being the first
to clearly separate scientific thinking from myth and religion. Their idea that people
must give reasons to justify their beliefs, rather than simply make assertions that
others must accept without evidence, was their most important achievement. This
insistence on rationalism, coupled with the belief that the world could be understood
as something other than the plaything of the gods, gave people hope that they could
improve their lives through their own efforts. Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 570–
c. 478 b.c.e.) concluded, “The gods have not revealed all things from the beginning
to mortals, but, by seeking, human beings find out, in time, what is better.” This
[ 1000–500 b.c.e.
] Conclusion 73
Conclusion
After its Dark Age, the Near East revived its traditional pattern of social and political
organization: empire under a strong central authority. The Neo-Assyrians, the Neo-
Babylonians, and the Persians succeeded one another as imperial powers. The moral
dualism of Persian religion, Zoroastrianism, influenced later religions. The Israelites’
development of monotheism based on scripture changed the course of religious his-
tory in Western civilization.
Greece’s recovery from its Dark Age produced a new form of political and social
organization: the polis, a city-state based on citizenship and shared governance. The
growing population of the Archaic Age developed a communal sense of identity,
Dn
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ATLANTIC P S
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LY S
OCEAN CELTS A R IA
Marseille ETRUSCANS NS SARMATIANS
(Massila)
BALK Black Sea
Eb AN
ro
R
Corsica Rome MT
. S
.
Naples Taras
IBERO-CELTS Pithecusae GREECE A N ATO L I A
Sardinia Troy
Lefkandi Sardis PERSIAN EMPIRE
Corinth Athens Miletus Ti
Hippo
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Cádiz Sicily
is R
Syracuse Sparta
Strait of Carthage
.
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ean S r
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Babylon
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Phoenician settlements
ea
Chapter 2 Review
Key Terms and People
Be sure that you can identify the term or person and explain its historical significance.
Cyrus (p. 44) Homer (p. 52) Solon (p. 68)
moral dualism (p. 46) polis (p. 54) demes (p. 70)
Torah (p. 47) cult (p. 59) Sappho (p. 71)
Diaspora (p. 49) hoplite (p. 60) rationalism (p. 72)
aretê (p. 52) helot (p. 65)
Review Questions
1. In what ways was religion important in the Near East from c. 1000 B.C.E. to c. 500 B.C.E.?
2. What factors proved most important in the Greek recovery from the troubles of the Dark Age?
3. How did the physical, social, and intellectual conditions of life in the Archaic Age promote
the emergence of the Greek city-state?
4. What were the main differences among the various forms of government in the Greek
city-states?
Making Connections
1. What characteristics made the Greek city-state differ in political and social organization
from the Near Eastern city-state?
2. How were the ideas of the Ionian philosophers different from mythic traditions?
3. To what extent were the most important changes in Western civilization in this period
intentional or unintentional?
Suggested References
Scholars today emphasize the importance of contact and intercultural influence among different
peoples around the Mediterranean in helping us understand the history of the region as it
recovered from the economic troubles and depopulation of the Dark Age.
[1000–500 b.c.e.
] Chapter 2 Review 75
Important Events
Consider three events: Ionian philosophers develop rationalism (700–500 B.C.E.), the
lyric poet Sappho is born (630 B.C.E.), and Solon’s reforms promote early democracy in
Athens (594 B.C.E.). How did the development of the Greek city-state (polis) encourage
new modes of thinking and expression in science, philosophy, and literature?
*Primary source.
The Greek Golden Age
3
c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
I
n 507 b.c.e., Athens feared an attack from Sparta (its more powerful rival) and
therefore sent ambassadors to the Persian king Darius I (r. 522–486 b.c.e.) to ask
for help. Athens and Sparta so mistrusted each other that the Athenians chose to
appeal to a foreign superpower for help against fellow Greeks. Darius’s representative
asked, “But who in the world are these people and where do they live that they are
begging for an alliance with the Persians?” Even so, the Persian king offered the Athe-
nians help on his standard terms: that they acknowledge his superiority. Darius was
eager to make more Greek city-states his subjects because their trade and growing
wealth made them desirable prizes. The Athenian democratic assembly rejected his offer.
This incident reveals why war domi-
nated Greece’s history throughout the fifth
Greek against Persian in century b.c.e., first with Greeks fighting
Hand-to-Hand Combat (detail)
Persians and then with Greeks fighting
This red-figure painting appears on the
interior of a Greek wine cup. Painted
Greeks. Conflicting interests and misun-
about 480 B.C.E. (during the Persian derstandings between Persia and Greece
Wars), it shows a Greek hoplite (armored at the start of the century ignited a great
infantryman) striking a Persian warrior conflict: the Persian Wars (499–479 b.c.e.),
in hand-to-hand combat with swords. which culminated with Persia invading
The Greek has lost his principal weapon,
mainland Greece. Some Greek states tem-
a spear, and the Persian can no longer
shoot his, the bow and arrow. The Greek porarily laid aside their competition and
artist has designed the painting to united to defeat the Persians, surprising
express multiple messages: the Per- the world. In victory, however, they lost
sian’s colorful outfit with sleeves and their unity and fought one another. Despite
pants stresses the “otherness” of the
nearly constant warfare, fifth-century b.c.e.
enemy in Greek eyes, and the soldiers’
serene expressions at such a desperate
Greeks (especially in Athens) created their
moment dignify the horror of killing in most famous innovations in architec-
war. Greek warriors often had heroic sym- ture, art, and theater. This Golden Age,
bols painted on their shields, such as as historians later named it, is the first
the winged horse Pegasus, an allusion part of the period called the Classical Age
to the brave exploits of Bellerophon.
(The Triptolemos Painter / © National Museums
of Greece, which lasted from around
of Scotland / Bridgeman Images.) 500 b.c.e. to the death of Alexander the
Great in 323 b.c.e.
77
78 Chapter 3 The Greek Golden Age
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
New ideas in education and philosophy that were deeply controversial in the
fifth century b.c.e. have had a lasting influence on Western civilization. The contro-
versies arose because many people saw the changes as attacks on ancient traditions,
especially religion; they feared the gods would punish their communities for aban-
doning ancestral beliefs. Political change also characterized the Athenian Golden
Age. First, Athenian citizens made their city-state government more democratic than
ever. Second, Athens grew internationally powerful by using its navy to establish rule
over other Greeks in a system dubbed “empire” by modern scholars. This naval
power also promoted seaborne trade, and profits from rule and trade brought Athens
enormous prosperity. Athens’s citizens voted to use their revenues to finance new
public buildings, art, and competitive theater festivals, and to pay for poorer men to
serve as officials and jurors in an expanded democratic government.
The Golden Age ended when Sparta defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian
War (431–404 b.c.e.) and the Athenians
CHAPTER FOCUS Did war bring more benefit
then fought a brief but bloody civil war
or more harm — politically, socially, and intellec- (404–403 b.c.e.). The Peloponnesian War
tually — to Golden Age Athens? and its aftermath bankrupted and divided
Athens.
TH R AC E
MACEDONIA Hellespont
Propontis
Thasos
Canal dug
by Persians
Lemnos
Corcyra Lesbos
THESSALY Aegean
Thermopylae Sea ANATOLIA
480 B.C.E.
Boeotia Eretria Lydia
Sardis
Chios 498 B.C.E.
Ion
Plataea Thebes Marathon
ia
479 B.C.E. 490 B.C.E.
Attica
Athens
Samos Ephesus
Olympia Corinth Salamis Mt. Mycale
480 B.C.E. 479 B.C.E.
Troizen Miletus
494 B.C.E. Caria
PELOPONNESE
CYCLADES IS.
Sparta
Laconia
hail of Persian arrows. In the hand-to-hand combat, the Greek hoplites used their
long spears to overwhelm the Persian infantry.
The Athenian infantry then hurried the twenty-six miles to Athens to guard the
city against the Persian navy. (Today’s marathon races commemorate the legend of
a runner speeding ahead to announce the victory, and then dropping dead.) Their
80 Chapter 3 The Greek Golden Age
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
ranean’s western trading routes. The tyrant ruling Syracuse rejected the allies’ appeal
for help because he was fighting his own war against Carthage, a Phoenician city in
North Africa, over control of the profitable trade routes.
The Greek allies chose Sparta as their leader because of its military excellence. The
Spartans demonstrated their courage in 480 b.c.e. when three hundred of their infantry
(and a few thousand other fighters) blocked Xerxes’ army for several days at the pass
called Thermopylae in central Greece. Told the Persian archers were so numerous that
their arrows darkened the sun, one Spartan reportedly remarked, “That’s good news;
we’ll get to fight in the shade.” They did — to the death. Their tomb’s memorial pro-
claimed, “Go tell the Spartans that we lie buried here obedient to their orders.”
When the Persians marched south, the Athenians, knowing they could not
defend the city, evacuated their residents to the Peloponnese region rather than sur-
render. The Persians then burned Athens. Themistocles and his political rival Aris-
tides (c. 530–c. 468 b.c.e.) cooperated to convince the other city-states’ generals to
fight a naval battle. Themistocles tricked the Persian king into attacking the Greek
fleet in the narrow channel between the island of Salamis and the west coast of
Athens, where Xerxes could not send all his fleet (twice the size of the Greeks’) into
battle simultaneously. The heavier Greek warships won the battle by ramming the
flimsier Persian craft. The battle of Salamis induced Xerxes to return home. In
479 b.c.e., the Spartans commanded victories over the Persian land forces.
The Greeks won their battles against the Persians because their generals had better
strategic foresight, their soldiers had stronger weapons, and their warships were more
effective. Above all, the Greeks won the war because enough of them took the inno-
vative step of uniting to fight together to keep their independence. Because the Greek
forces included both the social elites and the
poorer men who rowed the warships, their REVIEW QUESTION How did the Greeks over-
success showed that rich and poor Greeks come the dangers of the Persian invasions?
alike treasured political freedom.
Over time, more and more Delian League members voluntarily paid cash because
it was easier. Athens then used this money to construct triremes and pay men to
row them; oarsmen who brought a slave to row alongside them earned double pay.
Drawn primarily from the poorest citizens, rowers gained both income and political
influence in Athenian democracy because the navy became the city-state’s main
force. These benefits made poor citizens eager to expand Athens’s power over other
Greeks. The increase in Athenian naval power thus promoted the development of a
wider democracy at home, but it undermined the democracy of the Delian League.
The Athenian assembly could use the league fleet to force disobedient allies to
pay cash dues. Athens’s dominance of the Delian League has led historians to use
the label Athenian Empire. By about 460 b.c.e., the Delian League’s fleet had expelled
all Persian garrisons from northern Greece and driven the enemy fleet from the
Aegean Sea. This sweep eliminated the Persian threat for the next fifty years.
Military success made Athens prosperous by bringing in spoils and cash dues
from the Delian League and making seaborne trade safe. The prosperity benefited
rich and poor alike — the poor rowers earned good pay, while elite commanders
enhanced their chances for election to high office by spending their spoils from war
on public festivals and buildings. In this way, the democracy of Golden Age Athens
supported what modern scholars often label imperialism.
“Certainly,” said Aristides. “What name shall I write?” “Aristides,” replied the
man. “All right,” said Aristides as he inscribed his own name, “but why do
you want to ostracize Aristides? What has he done to you?” “Oh, nothing.
I don’t even know him,” the man muttered. “I just can’t stand hearing every-
body refer to him as ‘the Just.’ ”
True or not, this tale demonstrates that most Athenians believed the right way to
support democracy was to trust a majority vote.
Some socially elite citizens bitterly criticized Athens’s democracy for giving
political power to the poor. These critics insisted that oligarchy — the rule of the
few — was morally superior to radical democracy because they believed that the poor
lacked the education and moral values needed for leadership and would use their
majority rule to strip the rich of their wealth by making them provide benefits to
poorer citizens.
Pericles convinced the assembly to pass reforms to strengthen citizens’ equality,
making him the most influential leader of his era. He introduced pay for the offices
filled by lottery and for jury ser vice so that the poor could serve as well as the
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
] Athenian Confidence in the Golden Age, 478–431 b.c.e. 85
wealthy. In 451 b.c.e., Pericles sponsored a law restricting citizenship to those whose
mother and father were both Athenian by birth. Previously, wealthy men had often
married foreign women from elite families. This change both increased the status of
Athenian women, rich or poor, as potential mothers of citizens and made Athenian
citizenship more valuable by reducing the number of people eligible for its legal and
financial benefits. Thousands had their citizenship revoked.
Pericles also convinced the assembly to launch naval campaigns when war with
Sparta broke out in the 450s b.c.e. The assembly was so eager to compete for power
and plunder against other Greeks and against Persians in the eastern Mediterranean
that it voted for up to three major expeditions at once. These efforts slowed in the
late 450s b.c.e. after a large naval force sent to aid an Egyptian rebellion against Per-
sian rule suffered a horrendous defeat, losing tens of thousands of oarsmen. In 446–
445 b.c.e., Pericles arranged a peace treaty with Sparta for thirty years, to preserve
Athenian control of the Delian League.
s
be
The
To
0 2 miles Agora
Acropolis
0 2 kilometers
W all
o ng
N. L ll
Wa
ong
S. L
ll
Wa
n
ro
ale
Ph
Piraeus
Phaleron
rivals slammed him for spending too much public money on the project and diverting
Delian League funds to beautify Athens; recent research suggests this accusation was
false and that the buildings were financed by Athens’s own revenues.
The Parthenon is the foremost symbol of Athens’s Golden Age. It honored
Athena, the city’s chief deity. Inside the temple, a gold-and-ivory statue nearly forty
feet high depicted the goddess in armor, holding a six-foot-tall statue of Nike, the
goddess of victory.
Like all other Greek temples, the Parthenon was a divinity’s residence, not a hall
for worshippers. Its design was standard: a rectangular box on a raised platform lined
with columns, a plan probably taken from Egypt. The Parthenon’s soaring columns
fenced in a porch surrounding the interior chamber. They were carved in the simple
style called Doric, in contrast to the more elaborate Ionic and Corinthian styles
(Figure 3.2).
The Parthenon’s massive size and innovative style proclaimed the self-confidence
of Golden Age Athens and its competitive drive to build a monument more spec-
tacular than any other in Greece. Constructed from twenty thousand tons of local
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
] Athenian Confidence in the Golden Age, 478–431 b.c.e. 87
marble, the temple stretched 230 feet long and 100 feet wide. Its complex architecture
demonstrated the Athenian ambition to use human skill to improve nature: because
perfectly rectilinear architecture appears curved to the human eye, subtle curves and
inclines were built into the Parthenon to produce an illusion of completely straight
lines and emphasize its massiveness.
The Parthenon’s many sculptures communicated confident messages: the gods
ensure triumph over the forces of chaos, and Athenians enjoy the gods’ goodwill more
than anyone else. The sculptures in each pediment (the triangular space atop the
columns at either end of the temple) portrayed Athena as the city-state’s benefactor.
The metopes (panels sculpted in relief above the outer columns around all four sides)
portrayed victories over hostile centaurs (creatures with the body of a horse but torso
and head of a man) and other enemies of civilization. Most strikingly of all, a frieze
(a continuous band of figures carved in relief) ran around the top of the walls inside
the porch and was painted in bright colors to make it more visible. The Parthenon’s
frieze was special because usually only Ionic-style buildings had one. The frieze
showed Athenian men, women, and children parading before the gods, the proces-
sion shown in motion like the pictures in a graphic novel today.
No other Greeks had ever adorned a temple with representations of themselves.
The Parthenon staked a claim of unique closeness between the city-state and the gods,
reflecting the Athenians’ confidence after helping turn back the Persians, achieving
leadership of a powerful naval alliance, and accumulating great wealth. Their success,
the Athenians believed, proved that the gods were on their side, and their fabulous
buildings displayed their gratitude.
Like the unique Parthenon frieze, the innovations that Golden Age artists made
in representing the human body shattered tradition. By the time of the Persian Wars,
Greek sculptors had begun replacing the stiffly balanced style of Archaic Age statues
88 Chapter 3 The Greek Golden Age
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
with statues in motion in new poses. This style of movement in stone expressed an
energetic balancing of competing forces, echoing radical democracy’s principles.
Sculptors began carving anatomically realistic but perfect-looking bodies, sug-
gesting that humans could be confident about achieving beauty and perfection.
Female statues now displayed the shape of the curves underneath clothing, while male
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
] Tradition and Innovation in Athens’s Golden Age 89
ones showed athletic muscles. The faces showed a more relaxed and self-confident
look in place of the rigid smiles of Archaic Age statues.
Freestanding Golden Age statues, whether paid for with private or government
funds, were erected to be seen by the public. Privately commissioned statues of gods
were placed in sanctuaries as symbols of devotion. Wealthy families paid for stat-
ues of their deceased relatives, especially
if they had died young in war, to be placed REVIEW QUESTION What factors produced
above their graves as memorials of their political change in fifth-century B.C.E. Athens?
excellence and signs of the family’s social
status.
family line; married daughters became members of their husband’s family. The goal
of keeping property in the possession of male heirs shows up most clearly in Athe-
nian law about heiresses (daughters whose fathers died without any sons, which
happened in about one of every five families): the closest male relative of the heiress’s
father — her official guardian after her father’s death — was required to marry her.
The goal was to produce a son to inherit the father’s property. This rule applied
regardless of whether either party was already married (unless the heiress had sons);
the heiress and the male relative were both supposed to divorce their present spouses
and marry each other. In real life, however, people often used legal technicalities to
get around this requirement so that they could remain with their chosen partners.
Tradition restricted women’s freedom of movement to protect them, men said,
from seducers and rapists. Men wanted to ensure that their family property went
only to their biological children. Well-off city women were expected to avoid contact
with male strangers. Modern research has discredited the idea that Greek homes had
a defined “women’s quarter” to which women were confined. Rather, women were
granted privacy in certain rooms. In their homes women would spin wool for cloth-
ing, converse with visiting friends, direct their children, supervise the slaves, and
present opinions on everything, including politics, to their male relatives. Poor women
had to leave the house, usually a crowded rental apartment, to sell bread, vegetables,
simple clothing, or trinkets they had made.
92 Chapter 3 The Greek Golden Age
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
An elite woman left home for religious festivals, funerals, childbirths at the
houses of relatives and friends, and shopping. Often her husband escorted her, but
sometimes she took only a slave, setting her own itinerary. Most upper-class women
probably viewed their limited contact with men as a badge of superior social status.
For example, a pale complexion, from staying inside much of the time, was much
admired as a sign of an enviable life of leisure and wealth.
Women who bore legitimate children gained increased respect and freedom, as
an Athenian man explained in his speech defending himself for having killed his
wife’s lover:
After my marriage, I at first didn’t interfere with my wife very much, but
neither did I allow her too much independence. I kept an eye on her. . . .
But after she had a baby, I started to trust her more and put her in charge
of all my things, believing we now had the closest of relationships.
Bearing male children brought a woman special honor because sons meant security.
Sons could appear in court to support their parents in lawsuits and protect them in
the streets of Athens, which for most of its history had no regular police force. By
law, sons were required to support elderly parents.
Some women escaped traditional restrictions by working as a hetaira (“compan-
ion”). Hetairas, usually foreigners, were unmarried, physically attractive, witty in
speech, and skilled in music and poetry. Men hired them to entertain at a sympo-
sium (a drinking party to which wives were not invited). Their skill at clever teasing
and joking with men gave hetairas a freedom of speech denied to “proper” women.
Hetairas nevertheless lacked the social status and respectability that wives and moth-
ers possessed.
Sometimes hetairas also sold sex for a high price, and they could control their
own sexuality by choosing their clients. Athenian men (but not women) could buy
sex as they pleased without legal hindrance. Men (but not women) could also have
sex freely with female or male slaves, who could not refuse their masters.
The most skilled hetairas earned enough to live in luxury on their own. The
most famous hetaira in Athens was Aspasia from Miletus, who became Pericles’
lover and bore him a son. She dazzled men with her brilliant talk and wide knowl-
edge. Pericles fell so deeply in love with her that he wanted to marry her, despite
his own law of 451 b.c.e. restricting citizenship to the children of two Athenian
parents.
Great riches also freed a woman from tradition. The most outspoken rich Athe-
nian woman was Elpinike. She once publicly criticized Pericles by sarcastically remark-
ing in front of a group of women who were praising him for an attack on a rebellious
Delian League ally, “This really is wonderful, Pericles. . . . You have caused the loss
of many good citizens, not in battle against Phoenicians or Persians . . . but in sup-
pressing an allied city of fellow Greeks.”
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
] Tradition and Innovation in Athens’s Golden Age 93
Slaves and metics were considered outsiders. Both individuals and the city-state
owned slaves, who could be purchased from traders or bred in the household. Some
people picked up unwanted newborns abandoned by their parents (in an accepted
practice called infant exposure) and raised them as slaves. Athens’s commercial growth
increased the demand for slaves, who in Pericles’ time made up around 100,000 of
the city-state’s total of perhaps 250,000 inhabitants. Slaves worked in homes, on
farms, and in crafts shops; rowed alongside their owners in the navy; and toiled
in Athens’s dangerous silver mines. Unlike those in Sparta, slaves in Athens almost
never rebelled, probably because they originated from too many different places to
be able to unite.
Golden Age Athens’s wealth and cultural activities attracted many metics from
all around the Mediterranean. By the late fifth century b.c.e., metics constituted per-
haps 50,000 to 75,000 of the estimated 150,000 free men, women, and children in
the city-state. Metics paid for the privilege of living and working in Athens through
a special foreigners’ tax and army service, but they did not become citizens.
considered vital because it made men’s bodies handsome and prepared them to fight
in the militia (they could be summoned to war anytime between ages eighteen and
sixty). Men exercised nude every day in gymnasia, public open-air facilities paid for
by wealthy families. The daughters of wealthy families usually received instruction
at home from educated slaves. Young girls learned reading, writing, and arithmetic
to be able to help their future husbands by managing the household.
Poor girls and boys learned a trade and perhaps a little reading, writing, and
calculating by assisting their parents in their daily work or by serving as appren-
tices to skilled craft workers. Most people probably were weak readers, but they could
always find someone to read written texts aloud. Oral communication remained cen-
tral to Greek life, in political speeches, songs, plays, and stories about the past.
Prosperous young men learned to participate in public life by observing their
fathers, uncles, and other older men as they debated in the Council of Five Hundred
and the assembly, served in public office, and spoke in court. Often an older man
would choose an adolescent boy as his special favorite to educate. The teenager would
learn about public life by spending time with the older man. During the day the boy
would listen to his mentor talking politics in the agora, help him perform his duties
in public office, and work out with him in a gymnasium. They would spend their
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
] Tradition and Innovation in Athens’s Golden Age 95
evenings at a symposium, whose agenda could range from serious political and
philosophical discussion to riotous partying.
This older mentor/younger favorite relationship could lead to sexual relations
between the youth and the older (married) male. Sex between mentors and favorites
was considered acceptable in elite circles in many city-states, including Athens,
Sparta, and Thebes. Other city-states banned this behavior because they believed that
it reflected an adult man’s shameful inability to control his lustful desires.
By the time radical democracy emerged in Athens, young men could obtain higher
education in a new way: paying expensive professional teachers called Sophists
(“men of wisdom”). Sophists challenged tradition by teaching new skills of persuasion
in speaking and new ways of thinking based on rational arguments. Sophists became
notorious for using complex reasoning to make what many people considered decep-
tive arguments.
By 450 b.c.e., Athens was attracting Sophists from around the Greek world.
These entrepreneurs competed with one another to pull in pupils who could pay the
hefty tuitions they charged. Sophists strove for excellence by offering specialized
training in rhetoric — the skill of speaking persuasively. Every ambitious man wanted
rhetorical training because it promised power in Athens’s assembly, councils, and
courts. The Sophists alarmed those who feared their teachings would destroy the
tradition that preserved democracy. Speakers trained by silver-tongued Sophists,
they believed, might be able to mislead the assembly while promoting their personal
interests.
The most notorious Sophist was Protagoras (c. 490–c. 420 b.c.e.), a contemporary
of Pericles. Emigrating to Athens from Abdera, in northern Greece, around 450 b.c.e.,
Protagoras expressed views on the nature of truth and morality that outraged many
Athenians. He argued that there could be no absolute standard of truth because every
issue had two irreconcilable sides. For example, if one person feeling a breeze thinks
it warm but another person thinks it cool, neither judgment can be absolutely correct
because the wind simply is warm to one and cool to the other. Protagoras summed
up this subjectivism — the belief that there is no absolute reality behind and inde-
pendent of appearances — in his work Truth: “The human being is the measure of
all things, of the things that are that they are, and of the things that are not that they
are not.”
The subjectivism of Protagoras and other Sophists contained two main ideas:
(1) human institutions and values are only matters of nomos (“statute law, tradition,
or convention”) and not creations of physis (“nature”), and (2) since truth is subjec-
tive, speakers should be able to argue either side of a question with equal persuasive-
ness and rationality. The first view implied that traditional human institutions were
arbitrary and changing rather than natural and permanent, while the second seemed
to many people to make questions of right and wrong irrelevant.
The Sophists’ critics accused them of teaching moral relativism and threatening
the shared public values of the democratic city-state. Aristophanes (c. 446–c. 386 b.c.e.),
96 Chapter 3 The Greek Golden Age
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
author of comic plays, satirized Sophists for harming Athens by instructing students
in persuasive techniques “to make the weaker argument the stronger.” Protagoras,
for one, energetically responded that his doctrines were not hostile to democracy,
arguing that every person had a natural capability for excellence and that human
society depended on the rule of law based on a sense of justice. Members of a com-
munity, he explained, must be persuaded to obey the laws, not because laws were
based on absolute truth, which did not exist, but because rationally it was advanta-
geous for everyone to be law-abiding. A thief, for example, who might claim that
stealing was a part of nature, would have to be persuaded by reason that a man-made
law forbidding theft was to his advantage because it protected his own property and
the community in which he, like all humans, had to live to survive.
Even more disturbing to Athenians than the Sophists’ ideas about truth were
their ideas about religion. Protagoras angered people with his agnosticism (the belief
that supernatural phenomena are unknowable): “Whether the gods exist I cannot
discover, nor what their form is like, for there are many impediments to knowledge,
[such as] the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life.” He upset those
who thought he was saying that conventional religion had no meaning. They worried
that his words would provoke divine anger against the community where he now
lived.
Other fifth-century b.c.e. philosophers and thinkers also proposed controver-
sial new scientific theories about the nature of the cosmos and the origin of religion.
A philosopher friend of Pericles, for example, argued that the sun was a lump of
flaming rock, not a god. Another philosopher invented an atomic theory of matter
to explain how change was constant in the universe. Everything, he argued, consisted
of tiny, invisible particles in eternal motion. Their random collisions caused them to
combine and recombine in an infinite variety of forms, with no divine purpose guid-
ing their collisions and combinations. These ideas seemed to invalidate traditional
religion, which explained events as governed by the gods’ will. Even more provocative
was a play written by the wealthy aristocrat Critias that denounced religion as a
clever but false system invented by powerful men to fool ordinary people into obey-
ing moral standards through fear of divine punishment.
Many poorer citizens saw the Sophists and the philosophers as threats to Athe-
nian democracy because only wealthy men could afford their classes or spend time
conversing with them, thereby gaining yet more advantages by learning to speak
persuasively in the assembly’s debates or in court speeches. Moral relativism and the
physical explanation of the universe also struck many Athenians as dangerous: they
feared such teachings would destroy the gods’ goodwill toward their city-state. These
ideas so infuriated some Athenians that in the 430s b.c.e. they sponsored a law
allowing citizens to bring charges of impiety against “those who fail to respect divine
things or teach theories about the cosmos.” Not even Pericles could prevent his
philosopher friend from being convicted on this charge and expelled from Athens.
Socrates (469–399 b.c.e.), the most famous philosopher of the Golden Age,
became well-known during this troubled time of the 430s, when people were anxious
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
] Tradition and Innovation in Athens’s Golden Age 97
not just about new ways of thinking but also about war with Sparta. Socrates devoted
his life to questioning people about their beliefs, but he insisted he was not a Sophist
because he took no pay. Above all, he rejected the view that justice in fact amounted
to power over others. Insisting that true justice was always better than injustice, he
created an emphasis on ethics (the study of ideal human values and moral duties)
in Greek philosophy.
Socrates lived an eccentric life attracting constant attention. Sporting a stomach
that he called “a bit too big to be convenient,” he wore the same cheap cloak sum-
mer and winter and always went barefoot no matter how cold the weather. His physi-
cal stamina — including both his tirelessness as a soldier and his ability to outdrink
anyone — was legendary. He lived in poverty and disdained material possessions,
though he supported a wife and several children by accepting gifts from wealthy
admirers.
Socrates spent his time in conversations all over Athens: participating in sym-
posia, strolling in the agora, or watching young men exercise in a gymnasium.
He wrote nothing. Our knowledge of his ideas comes from others’ writings, espe-
cially those of his famous follower Plato (c. 428–348 b.c.e.). Plato portrays Socrates
as a relentless questioner of his fellow citizens, foreign friends, and leading Sophists.
Socrates pushed his conversational partners to examine their basic assumptions
about life. Giving few answers, Socrates never directly instructed anyone. Instead, he
led people to draw conclusions in response to his probing questions and refutations
of their unexamined beliefs. Today this procedure is called the Socratic method.
Socrates frequently outraged people because his method made them feel igno-
rant and baffled. His questions forced them to admit that they did not in fact know
what they had assumed they knew very well. Even more painful to them was Socrates’
fiercely argued view that the way they lived their lives — pursuing success in politics
or business or art — was merely an excuse for avoiding the hard work of understand-
ing and developing genuine aretê (“excellence”). Socrates insisted that he was igno-
rant of the definition of excellence and what was best for human beings, but that his
wisdom consisted of knowing that he did not know. He vowed he wanted to improve,
not undermine, people’s ethical beliefs, even though, as a friend put it, a conversation
with Socrates made a man feel numb — as if a jellyfish had stung him.
Socrates especially wanted to use reasoning to discover universal, objective stan-
dards for individual ethics. He attacked the Sophists for their relativistic claim that
conventional standards of right and wrong were merely “the chains that handcuff
nature.” This view, he protested, equated human happiness with power and “getting
more.”
Socrates insisted that the only way to achieve true happiness was to behave
according to a universal, transcendent standard of just behavior that people could
understand rationally. He argued that just behavior and excellence were identical to
knowledge, and that true knowledge of justice would inevitably lead people to choose
good over evil. They would therefore have truly happy lives, regardless of how rich
or poor they were. Since Socrates believed that ethical knowledge was all a person
98 Chapter 3 The Greek Golden Age
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
needed for the good life, he argued that no one knowingly behaved unjustly and that
behaving justly was always in the individual’s interest. It was simply ignorant to believe
that the best life was the life of unlimited power to pursue whatever one desired.
The most desirable human life was concerned with excellence and guided by reason,
not by dreams of personal gain.
Though very different from the Sophists’ doctrines, Socrates’ ideas proved just
as disturbing to the masses because they rejected the Athenians’ traditional way of
life. His ridicule of commonly accepted ideas about the importance of wealth and
public success angered many people. Unhappiest of all were the fathers whose sons,
after listening to Socrates’ questions reduce someone to utter bewilderment, came
home to try the same technique on their parents, employing the Socratic method to
criticize their parents’ values as old-fashioned and worthless. Men who experienced
this reversal of the traditional educational hierarchy — the father was supposed to
educate the son — felt that Socrates was undermining the stability of society by mak-
ing young men question Athenian traditions. Socrates evidently did not teach women,
but Plato portrays him as ready to learn from exceptional women, such as Pericles’
companion Aspasia.
The worry that Socrates’ ideas presented a danger to conventional society inspired
Aristophanes to write his comedy The Clouds (423 b.c.e.). This play portrays Socrates
as a cynical Sophist who, for a fee, offers instruction in Protagoras’s technique of
making the weaker argument the stronger. When Socrates’ school transforms a youth
into a public speaker arguing persuasively that a son has the right to beat his parents,
his father burns the place down. None of these plot details was real, but people did
have a genuine fear that Socrates’ radical views on individual morality endangered
the city-state’s traditional practices.
Just as the Sophists and Socrates antagonized many people with their new ideas,
the men who first wrote Greek history created controversy because they took a criti-
cal attitude in their descriptions of the past. Herodotus of Halicarnassus (c. 485–
425 b.c.e.) and Thucydides of Athens (c. 455–399 b.c.e.) became Greece’s most
famous historians and established Western civilization’s tradition of writing history.
The fifth-century b.c.e.’s unprecedented events — a coalition Greek victory over the
world’s greatest power and then the longest war ever between Greeks — inspired
them to create history as a subject based on strenuous research. They explained that
they wrote histories because they wanted people to remember the past and to under-
stand why wars had taken place.
Herodotus’s long, groundbreaking work The Histories (“Inquiries” in Greek)
explained the Persian Wars as a clash between the cultures of the East and West.
A typically competitive Greek intellectual, Herodotus — who by Roman times had
become known as the Father of History — made the justifiable claim that he sur-
passed all those who had previously recorded the past by taking an in-depth and
investigative approach to evidence, examining the culture of non-Greeks as well as
Greeks, and expressing explicit and implicit judgments about people’s actions.
Because Herodotus recognized the necessity (and the delight) of studying other cul-
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
] Tradition and Innovation in Athens’s Golden Age 99
tures with respect, he pushed his inquiries deep into the past, looking for long-
standing cultural differences to help explain the Persian-Greek conflict. He showed
that Greeks and non-Greeks were equally capable of good and evil. Unlike poets and
playwrights, he focused on human psychology and interactions, not the gods, as the
driving forces in history.
Thucydides innovated — and competed with Herodotus — by writing contempo-
rary history and creating the kind of analysis of power that today underlies political
science. His History of the Peloponnesian War made power politics, not divine inter-
vention, history’s primary force. Deeply affected by the war’s brutality, Thucydides
used his experiences as a politician and failed military commander (he was exiled
for losing a key outpost) to make his narrative vivid and frank in describing human
moral failings. His insistence that historians should energetically seek out the most
reliable sources and evaluate their testimony with objectivity set a high standard
for later writers. Like Herodotus, he challenged tradition by revealing that Greek
history included not just glorious achievements but also some share of shameful acts
(such as the Athenian punishment of the Melians in the Peloponnesian War — see
page 106).
Hippocrates (c. 460–c. 370 b.c.e.) of Cos, a contemporary of Thucydides, chal-
lenged tradition by grounding medical diagnosis and treatment in clinical observa-
tion. His fame continues today in the oath bearing his name (the Hippocratic Oath),
which doctors swear at the beginning of their professional careers. Previously, medi-
cine had depended on magic and ritual. People believed that evil spirits caused dis-
eases, and various cults offered healing to patients through divine intervention.
Competing to refute these earlier doctors’ theories, Hippocrates insisted that only
physical factors caused illnesses. He may have been the author of the view, dominant
in later medicine, that four humors (fluids) made up the human body: blood, phlegm,
black bile, and yellow bile. Health depended on keeping the proper balance among
them; being healthy was to be “in good humor.” This system for understanding the
body corresponded to the division of the inanimate world into four elements: earth,
air, fire, and water.
Hippocrates taught that the physician’s most important duty was to base his
knowledge on careful observation of patients and their response to different treat-
ments. Clinical experience, not abstract theory or religious belief, was the proper
foundation for establishing effective cures. By putting his innovative ideas and prac-
tices to the test in competition with those of traditional medicine, Hippocrates estab-
lished the truth of his principle, which later became a cornerstone of scientific
medicine.
their own plays. In their lives as citizens, playwrights fulfilled the military and politi-
cal obligations of Athenian men. The best-known Athenian tragedians — Aeschylus
(525–456 b.c.e.), Sophocles (c. 496–406 b.c.e.), and Euripides (c. 485–406 b.c.e.) —
all served in the army, and Sophocles was elected to Athens’s highest board of offi-
cials. Authors of plays competed from a love of honor, not money. The prizes, deter-
mined by a board of judges, awarded high prestige but little cash. The competition
was regarded as so important that any judge who took a bribe in awarding prizes
was put to death.
Tragedy’s plots set out the difficulties of telling right from wrong when humans
came into conflict and the gods became involved. Even though most tragedies were
based on stories that referred to a legendary time before city-states existed, such as
the period of the Trojan War, the plays’ moral issues were relevant to the society and
obligations of citizens in a city-state. The plays suggest that human beings learn only
by suffering but that the gods provide justice in the long run. For example, Aeschy-
lus’s trilogy Oresteia (458 b.c.e.) explains the divine origins of democratic Athens’s
court system through the story of the gods finally stopping the murderous violence
in the family of Orestes, son of King Agamemnon, the Greek leader against Troy.
Sophocles’ Antigone (441 b.c.e.) presents the story of the cursed family of Oedi-
pus of Thebes as a drama of harsh conflict between a courageous woman, Antigone,
102 Chapter 3 The Greek Golden Age
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
and the city-state’s stern male leader, her uncle Creon. After her brother dies in a
failed rebellion, Antigone insists on her family’s moral obligation to bury its dead in
obedience to divine command. Creon, however, takes harsh action to preserve order
and protect community values by prohibiting the burial of his traitorous nephew. In
a horrifying story of raging anger and suicide that features one of the most famous
heroines of Western literature, Sophocles exposes the right and wrong on each side
of the conflict. His play offers no easy resolution of the competing interests of
divinely sanctioned moral tradition and the state’s political rules.
Ancient sources report that audiences reacted strongly to the messages of these
tragedies. For one thing, spectators realized that the plays’ central characters were
figures who fell into disaster even though they held positions of power and pres-
tige. The characters’ reversals of fortune came about not because they were abso-
lute villains but because, as humans, they were susceptible to a lethal mixture of
error, ignorance, and hubris (violent arrogance that transformed one’s competitive
spirit into a self-destructive force). The Athenian Empire was at its height when
audiences at Athens attended the tragedies written by competing playwrights.
Thoughtful playgoers could reflect on the possibility that Athens’s current power
and prestige, managed as they were by humans, might fall victim to the same kinds
of mistakes and conflicts that brought down the heroes and heroines of tragedy.
Thus, these publicly funded plays both entertained through their spectacle and edu-
cated through their stories and words. In particular, they reminded male citizens —
who governed the city-state in its assembly, council, and courts — that success created
complex moral problems that self-righteous arrogance turned into community-wide
catastrophes.
Athenian comedies often made fun of political leaders. As the leading politician
of radical democracy, Pericles was the subject of fierce criticism in comedy. Comic
playwrights ridiculed his policies, his love life, even the shape of his skull (“Old
Turnip Head” was a favorite insult). Aristophanes (c. 455–385 b.c.e.), Athens’s most
famous comic playwright, so fiercely satirized Cleon, the city’s most prominent
leader early in the Peloponnesian War, that Cleon sued him. A citizen jury ruled in
Aristophanes’ favor, upholding the Athenian tradition of free speech.
In several of Aristophanes’ comedies, the main characters are powerful women
who force the men of Athens to change their policy to preserve family life and the
city-state. These plays even criticize the assembly’s policy during wartime. Most
famous is Lysistrata (411 b.c.e.), named after the female lead character of the play.
In this fantasy, the women of Athens and Sparta unite to force their husbands to end
the Peloponnesian War. To make the men agree to a peace treaty, they first seize the
acropolis, where Athens’s financial reserves are kept, to prevent the men from squan-
dering them further on the war. They then use sarcasm and pitchers of cold water
to beat back an attack on their position by the old men who have remained in Ath-
ens while the younger men are away at war with Sparta. Above all, the women steel
themselves to refuse to sleep with their husbands returning from battle. The effects
of their sex strike on the men, portrayed in a series of explicit episodes, finally drive
the warriors to make peace.
Lysistrata presents women acting bravely and aggressively against men who seem
bent on destroying traditional family life — the men are absent from home for long
stretches while on military campaigns and ruin the city-state by prolonging a pointless
war. Lysistrata insists that women have the intelligence and judgment to make political
decisions: “I am a woman, and, yes, I have brains. And I’m pretty good in my judg-
ment. My education hasn’t been bad: it came from my listening often to the conver-
sations of my father and the elders among the men.” Lysistrata’s old-fashioned train-
ing and good sense allow her to see what needs to be done to protect the community.
Like the heroines of tragedy, Lysistrata is a conservative, even a reactionary. She wants
to put things back the way they were before the war fractured family life. To do that,
she has to act like an impatient revolutionary. That irony sums up the challenge that
fifth-century b.c.e. Athens faced in trying to resolve the tension between the dynamic
innovation of its Golden Age and the importance of tradition in Greek life.
The remarkable freedom of speech of Athenian comedy allowed frank, even
brutal, commentary on current issues and personalities. It cannot be an accident
that this energetic, critical drama emerged in Athens at the same time as radical
democracy, in the mid-fifth century b.c.e. The feeling that all citizens should have
a stake in determining their government’s
policies evidently fueled a passion for
REVIEW QUESTION How did new ways of
using biting humor to keep the commu- thinking in the Golden Age change traditional
nity’s leaders from becoming arrogant and ways of life?
aloof.
104 Chapter 3 The Greek Golden Age
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
]
The End of Athens’s Golden Age, 431–403 b.c.e.
A war between Athens and Sparta (431–404 b.c.e.) ended the Golden Age. This long
conflict is called the Peloponnesian War because it matched Sparta’s Peloponnese-
based alliance against Athens and the Delian League. The war started, according to
Thucydides, because the growth of Athenian power alarmed the Spartans, who feared
that their interests and allies would fall to the Athenians’ restless energy. Pericles
persuaded Athens’s assembly to take a hard line when the Spartans demanded that
Athens ease restrictions on city-states allied with Sparta. Corinth and Megara, crucial
Spartan allies, complained bitterly to Sparta about Athens. Finally, Corinth told Sparta
to attack Athens, or else Corinth and its navy would change sides to the Athenian
alliance. Sparta’s leaders therefore gave Athens an ultimatum — stop mistreating our
allies. Pericles convinced the Athenian voters to reject the ultimatum on the grounds
that Sparta had refused to settle the dispute through the third-party arbitration pro-
cess called for by the 446–445 b.c.e. treaty. Pericles’ critics claimed he was insisting
on war against Sparta to revive his fading popularity. His supporters replied that he
was defending Athenian honor and protecting foreign trade, a key to the economy.
By 431 b.c.e., these disputes had shattered the peace treaty between Athens and
Sparta that Pericles had negotiated fifteen years before.
If we do go to war, have no thought that you went to war over a trivial affair.
For you this trifling matter is the assurance and the proof of your determi-
nation. If you yield to their demands, they will immediately confront you
with some larger demand, since they will think that you only gave way on
the first point out of fear. But if you stand firm, you will show them that
they have to deal with you as equals. . . . When our equals, without agreeing
to arbitration of the matter under dispute, make claims on us as neighbors
and state those claims as commands, it would be no better than slavery to
give in to them, no matter how large or how small the claim may be.
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
] The End of Athens’s Golden Age, 431–403 b.c.e. 105
W E THRACE
A
RI
S
LY
ITAL Y Amphipolis
MACEDONIA
IL
422 B.C.E.
Cyzicus
Aegospotami 410 B.C.E.
405 B.C.E.
EPIRUS
THESSALY
Corcyra Dodona Lesbos
Aegean ANATOLIA
Arginusae Islands
Euboea Sea 406 B.C.E.
Delphi Chalcis
Ionia
Delium 424 B.C.E.
PERSIAN
Thebes Marathon Chios EMPIRE
Megara
Corinth Athens
Mantinea Argos Samos
Attica
Sicily 418 B.C.E.
Syracuse PELOPONNESE
413 B.C.E. Salamis Delos
Sparta Aegina
Pylos
Melos
416 B.C.E.
Delian League and allies
Rhodes
Sparta and allies Mediterranean S ea
Neutral states
Athenian route to Sicily, 415 B.C.E. Crete
Spartan campaigns
0 50 100 miles
Battle
0 50 100 kilometers
in the Athenian countryside for year-round raids, now that Athens was too weak to
drive them out. Constant Spartan attacks devastated Athenian agriculture, and
twenty thousand slave workers crippled production in Athens’s silver mines by
deserting to the enemy. The democratic assembly became so upset over these losses
that in 411 b.c.e. it voted itself out of existence in favor of an emergency government
run by the wealthier citizens. When an oligarchic group illegally took charge, how-
ever, the citizens restored the radical democracy and kept fighting for another seven
years. They even recalled Alcibiades, seeking better generalship, but the end came
when Persia gave the Spartans money to build a navy. The Persian king thought it
served his interests to have Athens defeated. Aggressive Spartan naval action forced
Athens to surrender in 404 b.c.e. After twenty-seven years of near-continuous war,
the Athenians were at their enemy’s mercy.
S EPIRUS
THESSALY Aegean
Sea ANATOLIA
Acarnania Euboea
S ea
Ion
Aetolia Boeotia Sardis
tic
ia
Achaea Athens
North
al
B Elis Corinth Attica
S
Sea Arcadia Miletus
LE
IERNE E OP PELOPONNESE
(IRELAND) I CP Ionian Messenia Sparta
B ALT
ALBION TEUTONS Sea Pylos Laconia
(ENGLAND)
CELTS
Mediterranean Sea Rhodes
0 50 100 miles
SLAVS Knossos
0 50 100 kilometers Crete
Olbia
ATLANTIC S
L P SCYTHIANS
TH
OCEAN A ANS IL D an
RA
RI ET LY ube
U
CI
R
PY Massilia LIG U R .
AN
Ca
RE SC Black Sea
RI
NE A
S
AN
ES CA
spia
NS Sinope
Corsica UC
S
ITALIC Byzantium AS
US
n Sea
PEOPLES
MT
IBERIANS Sardinia GREECE ARMENIA S.
Balearic Corinth Athens ANATOLIA
Is. Sicily
E iterra Sidon Eu
HO PERSIAN EMPIRE
AN
r is
BERBERS nean Sea ph
P Tyre r
R.
LEV
at
Cyrene Babylon
es
EGYPT
MAPPING THE WEST Greece, Europe, and the Mediterranean, 400 b.c.e.
No single power controlled the Mediterranean region at the end of the fifth century B.C.E. In the
west, the Phoenician city of Carthage and the Greek cities on Sicily and in southern Italy were
rivals for the riches to be won by trade. In the east, the Spartans, confident after their recent
victory over Athens in the Peloponnesian War, tried to become an international power outside
the mainland for the first time in their history by sending campaigns into Anatolia. This aggres-
sive action aroused stiff opposition from the Persians because it threatened their westernmost
imperial provinces. There was to be no peace and quiet in the Mediterranean even after the
twenty-seven years of the Peloponnesian War.
Chapter 3 Review
Key Terms and People
Be sure that you can identify the term or person and explain its historical significance.
Themistocles (p. 79) ostracism (p. 84) hetaira (p. 92)
Delian League (p. 82) agora (p. 85) Sophists (p. 95)
triremes (p. 82) Parthenon (p. 85) Socratic method (p. 97)
Pericles (p. 83) mystery cults (p. 90) hubris (p. 102)
radical democracy (p. 83) metic (p. 90)
Review Questions
1. How did the Greeks overcome the dangers of the Persian invasions?
2. What factors produced political change in fifth-century B.C.E. Athens?
3. How did new ways of thinking in the Golden Age change traditional ways of life?
4. What factors determined the course of the Peloponnesian War?
Making Connections
1. What were the most significant differences between Archaic Age Greece and Golden Age
Greece?
2. For what sorts of things did Greeks of the Golden Age spend public funds? Why did they
believe these things were worth the expense?
3. What price, in all senses, did Athens and the rest of Greece pay for the Golden Age? Was it
worth it?
Suggested References
The Greek city-states, especially Athens, reached the height of their political, economic, and
military power in the fifth century B.C.E. following the defeat of the Persian invasion of main-
land Greece; scholars continue to investigate how the frequent wars of this period influenced
not only the democracy of Athens but also the famous dramatists and philosophers of this
so-called Golden Age.
Blundell, Sue. Women in Ancient Greece. 1995.
Briant, Pierre. From Cyrus to Alexander: History of the Persian Empire. Trans. Peter Daniels. 2006.
Camp, John M. The Archaeology of Athens. 2004.
*Dillon, John, and Tania Gergel. The Greek Sophists. 2003.
Foxhall, Lin. Studying Gender in Classical Antiquity. 2013.
*Grene, David, and Richmond Lattimore, eds. The Complete Greek Tragedies. 1992.
Herman, Gabriel. Morality and Behavior in Democratic Athens. 2006.
*Herodotus. The Histories. Trans. Aubrey de Sélincourt. Revised by John Marincola. Rev. ed. 2003.
Mitchell-Boyask, Robin. Plague and the Athenian Imagination: Drama, History, and the Cult of
Asclepius. 2008.
Parker, Robert. Athenian Religion: A History. 1996.
Patterson, Cynthia B. The Family in Greek History. 1998.
*Primary source.
110
[ c. 500–c. 400 b.c.e.
] Chapter 3 Review 111
Important Events
Consider three events: Ephialtes reforms Athenian court system (461 B.C.E.),
Protagoras and other Sophists begin to teach in Athens (450 B.C.E.), and Aristophanes
presents the comedy Lysistrata (411 B.C.E.). How did the principles of radical democracy
during the Athenian Golden Age help to make possible these different events?
*Strassler, Robert B., ed. The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian
War. 1996.
Strauss, Barry. The Battle of Salamis: The Naval Encounter That Saved Greece — and Western Civili-
zation. 2005.
Thorley, John. Athenian Democracy. 2004.
Wees, Han van, ed. War and Violence in Ancient Greece. 2000.
From the Classical to the
4
Hellenistic World
400–30 b.c.e.
A
bout 255 b.c.e., an Egyptian camel trader far from home sent a letter
of complaint to his Greek employer back in Egypt:
You know that when you left me in Syria with Krotos I followed all
your instructions concerning the camels and behaved blamelessly towards
you. But Krotos has ignored your orders to pay me my salary; I’ve received
nothing despite asking him for my
money over and over. He just tells
The Rosetta Stone
Dug out of the wall of a fort in 1799 me to go away. I waited a long time
by a soldier in Napoleon’s army near for you to come, but when I no
Rosetta, in the Nile River delta, this longer had life’s necessities and
Hellenistic inscription in two different couldn’t get help anywhere, I had to
languages and three different forms of
run away . . . to keep from starving
writing unlocked the lost secrets of how
to read Egyptian hieroglyphs. The
to death. . . . I am desperate summer
bands of text repeat the same mes- and winter. . . . They have treated
sage (priests praising King Ptolemy V me like dirt because I am not a
in 196 B.C.E.) in hieroglyphs, demotic Greek. I therefore beg you, please,
(a cursive form of Egyptian invented order them to pay me so that I won’t
around 600 B.C.E.), and Greek. Bilingual
go hungry just because I don’t know
texts were necessary to reach the
mixed population of Hellenistic Egypt. how to speak Greek.
Scholars deciphered the hieroglyphs by
comparing them to the Greek version. The trader’s plea for help from a foreigner
They started with the hieroglyphs sur- living in his homeland reflects the changes
rounded by an oval, which they guessed in the eastern Mediterranean world dur-
were royal names. (Art Resource, NY.)
ing the Hellenistic Age (323–30 b.c.e.). The
movement of Greeks into the Near East
increased the cultural interaction between the Greek and the Near Eastern worlds
and set a new course for Western civilization in politics, art, philosophy, science, and
religion. Above all, Alexander the Great (356–323 b.c.e.) changed the course of his-
tory by conquering the Persian Empire, leading an army of Greeks and Macedonians
113
114 Chapter 4 From the Classical to the Hellenistic World
[ 400–30 b.c.e.
]
to the border of India, taking Near Easterners into his army and imperial admin-
istration, and planting colonies of Greeks as far east as Afghanistan. His amazing
expedition shocked the world and spurred great change in Western civilization by
combining Near Eastern and Greek traditions as never before.
Politics changed in the Greek world when Alexander’s successors (who had been
commanders in his army) created new kingdoms that became the dominant powers
of the Hellenistic Age. The existing Greek city-states retained local rule but lost their
independence in international affairs. The Hellenistic kings imported Greeks to fill
royal offices, man their armies, and run businesses, generating tension with their
non-Greek subjects. Egyptians, Syrians, or Mesopotamians who wanted to rise in
Hellenistic society had to win the support of these Greeks and learn their language.
The Near East’s local cultures interacted with the Greek overlords’ culture to
spawn a multicultural synthesis. Although Hellenistic royal society always remained
hierarchical, its kings and queens did finance innovations in art, philosophy, religion,
and science that combined Near Eastern and Greek traditions. The Hellenistic king-
doms fell in the second and first centuries b.c.e. when the Romans overthrew them
one by one. But the cultural interaction
between diverse peoples and the emergence
CHAPTER FOCUS What were the major
political and cultural changes in the
of new ideas — unintended consequences of
Hellenistic Age? Alexander’s military campaigns — would
strongly influence Roman civilization.
to provide for them and their children, many war widows had to work outside the
home. The only jobs open to them — such as wet-nursing, weaving, or laboring in
vineyards — were low-paying.
Resourceful Athenians found ways to profit from women’s skills. The family of
one of Socrates’ friends, for example, fell into poverty when several widowed sisters,
nieces, and female cousins moved in. The friend complained to Socrates that he was
too poor to support his new family of fourteen plus their slaves. Socrates replied that
the women knew how to make clothing, so they should sell it. This plan succeeded
financially, but the women then complained that Socrates’ friend was the household’s
only member who ate without working. Socrates advised the man to reply that the
women should think of him as sheep did a guard dog — he earned his share of the
food by keeping the wolves away.
Athens’s postwar economy recovered as international trade was revived once its
Long Walls, which protected the transportation corridor from the city to the port,
were rebuilt and mining for silver to produce the city’s coinage resumed. Greek busi-
nesses producing manufactured goods were small
Academy
and usually family-run; the largest known was a
R.
Lyceum
us
R.
us
an
Kep
Athens
Eri
.
W all us R defined by gender. For example, men began work-
s
ong ll Ilis
N. L Wa
ng
all
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ro
reach of the human senses). Plato wrote dialogues, to provoke readers into thought-
ful reflection, not to prescribe a set of beliefs. Nevertheless, he always maintained
one essential idea based on his view of reality: ultimate moral qualities are universal,
unchanging, and absolute, not relative.
Plato’s dialogues explore his theory that justice, goodness, beauty, and equality
exist on their own in a higher realm beyond the daily world. He used the word Forms
(or Ideas) to describe the abstract, invariable, and ultimate realities of such ethical
qualities. According to Plato, the Forms are the only genuine reality. All things that
humans perceive with their senses on earth are only dim and imperfect copies of these
metaphysical, ultimate realities.
Plato believed that humans possess immortal souls distinct from their bodies;
this idea established the concept of dualism, a separation between soul (or mind)
and body. Plato further explained that the human soul possesses preexisting knowl-
edge put there by a god. Humans’ present, impure existence is only a temporary stage
in cosmic existence because, while the body does not last, the soul is immortal. Plato
argued that people must seek perfect order and purity in their souls by using rational
thought to control irrational and therefore harmful desires. People who yield to irra-
tional desires fail to consider the future of their body and soul. The desire to drink
too much alcohol, for example, is irrational because the binge drinker fails to consider
the painful hangover that will follow.
Plato presented his most famous ideas on politics and justice in his dialogue The
Republic. This work, whose Greek title means “system of government,” discusses the
nature of justice and the reasons people should never commit injustice. Democracy,
Plato wrote, does not produce justice because people cannot rise above their own
self-interest to knowledge of the transcendent reality of universal truth. Justice can
come only under the rule of an enlightened oligarchy or monarchy.
Plato’s Republic describes an ideal society with a hierarchy of three classes dis-
tinguished by their ability to grasp the truth of Forms. Plato did not think humans
could actually create the model society described in The Republic, but he did believe
that imagining it was an important way to help people learn to live justly. The highest
class in his envisioned hierarchy consists of the rulers, or “guardians,” who must be
educated in mathematics, astronomy, and metaphysics. Next come the “auxiliaries,”
who defend the community. “Producers” make up the bottom class; they grow food
and make objects for everyone. According to Plato’s Republic, women can be guard-
ians because they possess the same virtues and abilities as men, except that the
average woman has less physical strength than the average man. To minimize distrac-
tion, guardians have neither private property nor nuclear families. Male and female
guardians live in houses shared in common, eat in the same dining halls, and exercise
in the same gymnasia. They have sex with various partners so that the best women
can mate with the best men to produce the best children. The children are raised
together by special caretakers, not their parents. Guardians who achieve the highest
level of knowledge can rule as philosopher-kings.
118 Chapter 4 From the Classical to the Hellenistic World
[ 400–30 b.c.e.
]
Aristotle, Scientist and Philosopher
After studying with Plato, Aristotle (384–322 b.c.e.) founded his own school, the
Lyceum, in Athens. He taught his own life-guiding philosophy, emphasizing practical
reasoning. Like Plato, he thought Athenian democracy was a bad system because it
did not restrict decision making to the most educated and moderate citizens. His
vast writings made him one of the world’s most influential thinkers.
Aristotle’s achievements included scientific investigation of the natural world,
development of systems of logical argument, and practical ethics based on experi-
ence. He believed that the search for knowledge brought the good life and genuine
happiness. His teachings covered biology, botany, zoology, medicine, anatomy, psy-
chology, meteorology, physics, chemistry, mathematics, music, metaphysics, rhetoric,
literary criticism, political science, and ethics. By creating a system of logic for precise
argumentation, Aristotle also established grounds for determining whether an argu-
ment was logically valid. Aristotle’s thought process stressed rationality and common
sense, not metaphysics. He rejected Plato’s theory of Forms and insisted that under-
standing depended on observation. He coupled detailed investigation with careful
reasoning in biology, botany, and zoology. He collected information on more than
five hundred different kinds of animals, including insects. His recognition that whales
and dolphins are mammals was not rediscovered for another two thousand years.
Some of Aristotle’s observations justified inequalities that were characteristic of
his time. He argued that some people were slaves by nature because their souls lacked
the rationality to be fully human. Mistaken biological information led Aristotle to
evaluate females as incomplete males, judging them as inferior. At the same time, he
believed that human communities could be successful and happy only if women and
men both contributed.
In ethics, Aristotle emphasized the need to develop practical habits of just behavior
in order to achieve happiness. Ethics, he taught, cannot work if they consist only of
abstract reasons for just behavior. People should achieve self-control by training their
minds to overcome instincts and passions. Self-control meant finding “the mean,” or
balance, between denying and indulging physical pleasures.
sion to the Persian Empire. Athens rebuilt its navy, again becoming the leader of a
naval alliance. In the 370s b.c.e., Thebes attacked Sparta and freed many helots to
weaken the enemy. The Theban success alarmed the Athenians, who allied with their
hated enemies, the Spartans. The allied armies confronted the Thebans in the battle
of Mantinea in the Peloponnese in 362 b.c.e. Thebes won the battle but lost the war
when its best general was killed and no capable replacement could be found. This
stalemate left the Greek city-states disunited and weak. By the 350s b.c.e., no Greek
city-state controlled anything except its
own territory. By failing to cooperate with
REVIEW QUESTION How did daily life, philos-
one another, the Greeks opened the way ophy, and the political situation change in
for the rise of a new power — the kingdom Greece during the period 400–350 B.C.E.?
of Macedonia.
CAU Battle
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The Hellenistic period reintroduced monarchy into Greek culture for the first
time in a thousand years. Commanders from Alexander’s army created the kingdoms
by seizing portions of his empire and proclaiming themselves kings. This process of
state formation took more than fifty years of war. The self-proclaimed kings — called
Alexander’s successors — had to transform their families into dynasties and accumu-
late enough power to force the Greek city-states to obey them. Eventually, wars with
the Romans ended the Hellenistic kingdoms.
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to mix with locals. Greeks and non-Greeks therefore tended to live in separate
communities.
Administrators’ principal responsibilities were to maintain order and to direct
the kingdoms’ tax systems. The Ptolemaic administration used methods of central
planning and control inherited from earlier Egyptian history. Its officials continued
to administer royal monopolies, such as that on vegetable oil, to maximize the king’s
revenue. They decided how much land farmers could sow in oil-bearing plants,
supervised production and distribution of the oil, and set prices for every stage of
the oil business. The king, through his officials, also often entered into partnerships
with private investors to produce more revenue.
Cities were the Hellenistic kingdoms’ economic and social hubs. Many Greeks
and Macedonians lived in new cities founded by Alexander and the Hellenistic kings
in Egypt and the Near East, and they also immigrated to existing cities there. Hel-
lenistic kings promoted this urban immigration by adorning their new cities with
the features of classical Greek city-states, such as gymnasia and theaters. Although
these cities often retained the city-state’s political institutions, such as councils and
assemblies for citizen men, the need to follow royal policy limited their freedom;
they made no independent decisions on foreign policy. The cities taxed their popula-
tions to send money demanded by the king.
The crucial element in the Hellenistic kingdoms’ political and social structure
was the system of mutual rewards by which the kings and their leading urban sub-
jects became partners in government and public finance. Wealthy people in the cities
were responsible for collecting taxes from the people in the surrounding countryside
as well as from the city dwellers and sending the money on to the royal treasury. The
kings honored and flattered the cities’ Greek and Macedonian social elites because
they needed their cooperation to ensure a steady flow of tax revenues. When writing
to a city’s council, a king would issue polite requests, but the recipients knew he was
giving commands.
This system thus continued the Greek tradition of requiring the wealthy elite to
contribute financially to the common good. Cooperative cities received gifts from
the king to pay for expensive public works like theaters and temples or for reconstruc-
tion after natural disasters such as earthquakes. Wealthy men and women in turn
helped keep the general population peaceful by subsidizing teachers and doctors,
financing public works, and providing donations and loans to ensure a reliable sup-
ply of grain to feed the city’s residents.
To keep their vast kingdoms peaceful and profitable, the kings established rela-
tionships with well-to-do non-Greeks living in the old cities of Anatolia and the Near
East. In addition, non-Greeks and non-Macedonians from eastern regions began
moving westward to the new Hellenistic Greek cities in increasing numbers. Jews in
particular moved from their ancestral homeland to Anatolia, Greece, and Egypt. The
Jewish community eventually became an influential minority in Egyptian Alexan-
dria, the most important Hellenistic city. In Egypt, as the Rosetta stone shows, the
126 Chapter 4 From the Classical to the Hellenistic World
[ 400–30 b.c.e.
]
king also had to build good relationships with the priests who controlled the temples
of the traditional Egyptian gods because the temples owned large tracts of rich land
worked by tenant farmers.
(c. 316–270 b.c.e.), the daughter of Ptolemy I, first married the Macedonian succes-
sor Lysimachus, who gave her four towns as her personal domain. After his death
she married her brother Ptolemy II of Egypt and was his partner in making policy.
Public praise for a queen reflected traditional Greek values for women. A city decree
from about 165 b.c.e. honored Queen Apollonis of Pergamum by praising her piety
toward the gods, her reverence toward her parents, her distinguished conduct toward
her husband, and her harmonious relations with her “beautiful children born in
wedlock.”
Some queens paid special attention to the condition of women. About 195 b.c.e.,
for example, the Seleucid queen Laodice gave a ten-year endowment to a city to
provide dowries for needy girls. Laodice’s gift shows that she recognized the impor-
tance to women of controlling property, which was the surest guarantee of respect.
Most women remained under the control of men. A common saying by men
was “Who can judge better than a father what is to his daughter’s interest?” Most of
the time, elite women continued to be separated from men outside their families,
while poor women worked in public. Greeks continued to abandon infants they did
not want to raise — girls more often than boys — but other populations, such as the
Egyptians and the Jews, did not practice infant exposure. Exposure differed from
infanticide in that the parents expected someone to find the child and rear it, usually
as a slave. A third-century b.c.e. comic poet overstated the case by saying, “A son,
one always raises even if one is poor; a daughter, one exposes, even if one is rich.”
Daughters of wealthy parents were not usually abandoned, but scholars have esti-
mated that up to 10 percent of other infant girls were.
A woman of exceptional wealth could enter public life by making donations or
loans to her city and in return be rewarded with an official post in local government.
In Egypt, women of all classes acquired greater say in married life as the marriage
contract evolved from an agreement between the bride’s parents and the groom to
one in which the bride made her own arrangements with the groom.
Rich people showed increasing concern for the welfare of poorer people during
the Hellenistic period. They were following the lead of the royal families, who empha-
sized philanthropy to build a reputation for generosity that would support their
legitimacy in ruling. Sometimes wealthy citizens funded a foundation to distribute
free grain to eliminate food shortages, and they also funded schools for children in
various Hellenistic cities, the first public schools in the Greek world. In some places,
girls as well as boys could attend school. Many cities also began sponsoring doctors
to improve medical care: patients still had to pay, but at least they could count on
finding a doctor.
The donors funding these services were repaid by the respect and honor they
earned from their fellow citizens. When an earthquake devastated Rhodes, many cities
joined kings and queens in sending donations to help the residents recover. In return,
the citizens of Rhodes showered honors on their benefactors by appointing them to
prestigious municipal offices and erecting inscriptions expressing the city’s gratitude.
128 Chapter 4 From the Classical to the Hellenistic World
[ 400–30 b.c.e.
]
In this system, the masses’ welfare depended more and more on the generosity of the
rich. Lacking democracy, the poor had no political power to demand support.
Hellenistic Culture
Hellenistic culture reflected three principal influences: (1) the overwhelming impact
of royal wealth, (2) increased emphasis on private life and emotion, and (3) greater
interaction of diverse peoples. The kings drove developments in literature, art, science,
and philosophy by deciding which scholars and artists to put on the royal payroll.
The obligation of authors and artists to the kings meant that they did not have free-
dom to criticize public policy; their works mostly concentrated on everyday life and
personal feelings.
Cultural interaction between Near Eastern and Greek traditions occurred most
prominently in language and religion. These developments deeply influenced the
Romans as they took over the Hellenistic world. The Roman poet Horace (65–8 b.c.e.)
described the effect of Hellenistic culture on his own Roman culture by saying that
“captive Greece captured its fierce victor.”
and also a tourist attraction in the city of Cnidos, which had commissioned it. The
king of Bithynia offered to pay off the citizens’ entire public debt if he could have
the work of art. They refused.
Scientific Innovation
Historians have called the Hellenistic period the golden age of ancient science. Sci-
entific innovation flourished because Alexander’s expedition had encouraged curios-
ity and increased knowledge about the world’s extent and diversity, royal families
supported scientists financially, and the concentration of scientists in Alexandria
promoted the exchange of ideas.
The greatest advances in scientific knowledge came in geometry and mathemat-
ics. Euclid, who taught at Alexandria around 300 b.c.e., made revolutionary discov-
eries in analyzing two- and three-dimensional space. Euclidean geometry is still use-
ful. Archimedes of Syracuse (287–212 b.c.e.) calculated the approximate value of pi
and invented a way to manipulate very large numbers. He also invented hydrostatics
(the science of the equilibrium of fluid systems) and mechanical devices, such as a
134 Chapter 4 From the Classical to the Hellenistic World
[ 400–30 b.c.e.
]
screw for lifting water to a higher elevation and cranes to disable enemy warships.
Archimedes’ shout of delight when he solved a problem while soaking in his bathtub
has been immortalized in the expression Eureka! meaning “I have found it!”
Advances in Hellenistic mathematics energized other fields that required com-
plex computation. Early in the third century b.c.e., Aristarchus was the first to pro-
pose the correct model of the solar system: the earth revolving around the sun. Later
astronomers rejected Aristarchus’s heliocentric model in favor of the traditional geo-
centric one (with the earth at the center) because conclusions drawn from his cal-
culations of the earth’s orbit failed to correspond to the observed positions of celestial
objects. Aristarchus had assumed a circular orbit instead of an elliptical one, an
assumption not corrected until much later. Eratosthenes (c. 275–194 b.c.e.) pio-
neered mathematical geography. He calculated the circumference of the earth with
astonishing accuracy by measuring the length of the shadows cast by widely separated
but identically tall structures. Together, these researchers gave Western scientific
thought an important start toward its fundamental procedure of reconciling theory
with observed data through measurement and experimentation.
Hellenistic science and medicine made gains even though no technology existed
to measure very small amounts of time or matter. The science of the age was as
quantitative as it could be, given these limitations. Ctesibius invented pneumatics by
creating machines operated by air pressure. He also built a working water pump, an
organ powered by water, and the first accurate water clock. Hero of Alexandria also
built a rotating sphere powered by steam. As in most of Hellenistic science, these
inventions did not lead to usable applications in daily life. The scientists and their
royal patrons were more interested in new theoretical discoveries than in practical
results, and the technology did not exist to produce the pipes, fittings, and screws
needed to build metal machines.
Hellenistic science produced impressive military technology, such as more pow-
erful catapults and huge siege towers on wheels. The most famous large-scale appli-
cation of technology for nonmilitary purposes was the construction of the Pharos,
a lighthouse three hundred feet tall, for the harbor at Alexandria. Using polished
metal mirrors to reflect the light from a large bonfire, the Pharos shone many miles
out over the sea. Awestruck sailors called it one of the wonders of the world.
Medicine also benefited from the Hellenistic quest for new knowledge. Increased
contact between Greeks and people of the Near East made Mesopotamian and Egyp-
tian medical knowledge better known in the West and promoted research on what
made people ill. Hellenistic medical researchers discovered the value of measuring
the pulse in diagnosing illness and studied anatomy by dissecting human corpses.
It was rumored that they also dissected condemned criminals while they were still
alive; they had access to these subjects because the king authorized the research.
Some of the terms then invented are still used, such as diastolic and systolic for blood
pressure. Other Hellenistic advances in anatomy included the discovery of the nerves
and nervous system.
[400–30 b.c.e.
] Hellenistic Culture 135
Greek-Style Buddha
The style of this statue of the founder of Buddhism, who
expounded his doctrines in India, shows the mingling of
Eastern and Western art. The Buddha’s appearance,
gaze, and posture stem from Indian artistic traditions,
while the flowing folds of his garment recall Greek tra-
ditions. This combination of styles is called Gandharan,
after the region in northwestern India where it began.
What do you think are the possible motives for combin-
ing different artistic traditions? (National Museum, New Delhi,
India / Borromeo / Art Resource, NY.)
King Ptolemy III and Queen Berenice, his sister and wife, the Benefactor
Gods, . . . have provided good government . . . and [after a drought] sacri-
ficed a large amount of their revenues for the salvation of the population,
and by importing grain . . . they saved the inhabitants of Egypt.
The Hellenistic monarchs’ tremendous power and wealth gave them the status of
gods to the ordinary people who depended on their generosity and protection. The
idea that a human being could be a god, present on earth to save people from evils,
was now firmly established and would prove influential later in Roman imperial
religion and Christianity.
Healing divinities offered another form of protection to anxious individuals. The
cult of the god Asclepius, who offered cures for illness and injury at his many shrines,
grew in popularity during the Hellenistic period. Suppliants seeking Asclepius’s help
would sleep in special locations at his shrines to await dreams in which he prescribed
healing treatments. These prescriptions emphasized diet and exercise, but numerous
inscriptions commissioned by grateful patients also testified to miraculous cures and
surgery performed while the sufferer slept. The following example is typical:
Ambrosia of Athens was blind in one eye. . . . She . . . ridiculed some of the
cures [described in inscriptions in the sanctuary] as being incredible and
impossible. . . . But when she went to sleep, she saw a vision; she thought
the god was standing next to her. . . . He split open the diseased eye and
poured in a medicine. When day came she left cured.
[400–30 b.c.e.
] Hellenistic Culture 137
People’s faith in divine healing gave them hope that they could overcome the con-
stant danger of illness, which appeared to strike at random; there was no knowledge
of germs as causing infections.
Mystery cults promised initiates secret knowledge for salvation. The cults of the
Greek god Dionysus and the Egyptian goddess Isis attracted many people. Isis became
the most popular female divinity in the Mediterranean because her powers protected
her worshippers in all aspects of their lives. Her cult involved rituals and festivals
mixing Egyptian religion with Greek elements. Disciples of Isis strove to achieve per-
sonal purification and the goddess’s aid in overcoming the demonic power of Tychê.
This popularity of an Egyptian deity among Greeks (and, later, Romans) is clear
evidence of the cultural interaction of the Hellenistic world.
138 Chapter 4 From the Classical to the Hellenistic World
[ 400–30 b.c.e.
]
Cultural interaction between Greeks and Jews influenced Judaism during the Hel-
lenistic period. King Ptolemy II made the Hebrew Bible accessible to a wide audience
by having his Alexandrian scholars produce a Greek translation — the Septuagint.
Many Jews, especially those in the large Jewish communities that had grown up in
Hellenistic cities outside their homeland, began to speak Greek and adopt Greek
culture. These Greek-style Jews mixed Jewish and Greek customs, while retaining
Judaism’s rituals and rules and not worshipping Greek gods.
Internal conflict among Jews erupted in second-century b.c.e. Palestine over
how much Greek tradition was acceptable for traditional Jews. The Seleucid king
Antiochus IV (r. 175–164 b.c.e.) intervened to support Greek-style Jews in Jerusa-
lem, who had taken over the high priesthood that ruled the Jewish community. In
167 b.c.e., Antiochus converted the great Jewish temple in Jerusalem into a Greek
temple and outlawed Jewish religious rites such as observing the Sabbath and per-
forming circumcision. This action provoked a revolt led by Judah the Maccabee,
which won Jewish independence from Seleucid control after twenty-five years of war.
The most famous episode in this revolt was the retaking of the Jerusalem temple and
its rededication to the worship of the Jewish god, Yahweh, commemorated by the
Hanukkah holiday.
That Greek culture attracted some Jews in the first place provides a striking
example of the transformations that affected many — though far from all — people
of the Hellenistic world. By the time of the Roman Empire, one of those transforma-
tions would be Christianity, whose theol-
ogy had roots in the cultural interaction of
REVIEW QUESTION How did the political
changes of the Hellenistic period affect art,
Hellenistic Jews and Greeks and their ideas
science, and religion? on apocalypticism (religious ideas reveal-
ing the future) and divine human beings.
Conclusion
The aftermath of the Peloponnesian War led ordinary people as well as philosophers
like Plato and Aristotle to question the basis of morality. The disunity of Greek
international politics allowed Macedonia’s aggressive leaders Philip II and Alexander
the Great to make themselves the masters of the competing city-states. Inspired by
Greek heroic ideals, Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire and set in
motion the Hellenistic period’s enormous political, social, and cultural changes.
When Alexander’s commanders transformed themselves into Hellenistic kings
after his death, they reintroduced monarchy into the Greek world, adding an admin-
istrative layer of Greek and Macedonian officials to the conquered lands’ existing
governments. Local elites cooperated with the new Hellenistic monarchs in govern-
ing and financing their hierarchical society, which was divided along ethnic lines,
with the Greek and Macedonian elite ranking above local elites. To enhance their
own reputations, Hellenistic kings and queens funded writers, artists, scholars, phi-
[400–30 b.c.e.
] Conclusion 139
losophers, and scientists, thereby energizing intellectual life. The traditional city-
states continued to exist in Hellenistic Greece, but their freedom extended only to
local governance; the Hellenistic kings controlled foreign policy.
Increased contacts between diverse peoples promoted greater cultural interac-
tion in the Hellenistic world. Artists and writers expressed emotion in their works,
philosophers discussed how to achieve true happiness, and scientists conducted
research with royal support. More anxious than ever about the role of chance in life,
many people looked for new religious experiences, especially in cults promising
secret knowledge to initiates. What changed most of all was the Romans’ culture
once they took over the Hellenistic kingdoms’ territory and came into close contact
with their diverse peoples’ traditions. Rome’s rise to power took centuries, however,
because Rome originated as a tiny, insignificant place that no one except Romans
ever expected to amount to anything in the wider world.
D an
ube R.
GAUL S
ATLANTIC L P
A
OCEAN
ILLYRIA
PY
RE Black Sea
NE IA
ES ON
Corsica ROMAN LAG
IA
PH
THRACE PA IA
OC
REPUBLIC MACEDONIA EN
AD
(ANTIGOID KINGDOM)
BITHYNIA M
Sardinia PONTUS
AR
PP
LEAGUE Sparta
ES
Syracuse Antioch
O
PO
Rhodes Eu
Tigri
ph
TA
Med Crete ra
SYRIA tes
M
iterr Cyprus
s R.
R.
IA
anean Sea
NUMIDIA Seleucia
Babylon
Alexandria PALESTINE
EGYPT ARABIA
0 250 500 miles (PTOLEMAIC KINGDOM)
Red
Ni
Review Questions
1. How did daily life, philosophy, and the political situation change in Greece during the period
400–350 B.C.E.?
2. What were the accomplishments of Alexander the Great, and what were their effects both
for the ancient world and for later Western civilization?
3. How did the political and social organization of the new Hellenistic kingdoms compare with
that of the earlier Greek city-states?
4. How did the political changes of the Hellenistic period affect art, science, and religion?
Making Connections
1. What made ancient people see Alexander as “great”? Would he be regarded as “great” in
today’s world?
2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of governmental support of the arts and
sciences? Compare such support in the Hellenistic kingdoms to that in the United States
today (e.g., through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment
for the Arts, and the National Science Foundation).
3. Is inner personal tranquility powerful enough to make a difficult or painful life bearable?
Suggested References
After the Peloponnesian War, the structure of international relations changed radically in the
Greek world as the city-states became secondary in political power to the kingdom of Macedo-
nia, and then to the kingdoms of the Hellenistic period. Long-lasting cultural changes
accompanied this political transformation.
*Aristotle. Complete Works. Ed. Jonathan Barnes. 1985.
Briant, Pierre. Alexander the Great and His Empire: A Short Introduction. Trans. Amélie Kuhrt.
2010.
Chaniotis, Angelos. War in the Hellenistic World. 2005.
Collins, John Joseph. Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora.
1999.
Erskine, Andrew, ed. A Companion to the Hellenistic Age. 2003.
Evans, J. A. S. Daily Life in the Hellenistic Age: From Alexander to Cleopatra. 2008.
Martin, Thomas R., and Christopher W. Blackwell. Alexander the Great: The Story of an Ancient
Life. 2012.
Mikalson, Jon D. Religion in Hellenistic Athens. 1998.
*Primary source.
140
[400–30 b.c.e.
] Chapter 4 Review 141
Important Events
Consider three events: Alexander the Great leads Greeks and Macedonians to conquer
Persian Empire (334–323 B.C.E.), Epicurus founds his philosophical group in Athens
(307 B.C.E.), and Euclid teaches geometry at Alexandria (c. 300 B.C.E.). How might
Alexander’s expeditions have influenced developments in politics, philosophy, and
science?
*Plato. The Collected Dialogues. Ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. 1963.
*Plutarch. The Age of Alexander. Trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert. 1973.
Pollitt, J. J. Art in the Hellenistic Age. 1986.
Ptolemaic Egypt: http://www.houseofptolemy.org/
Sharples, R. W. Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics: An Introduction to Hellenistic Philosophy. 1996.
Shipley, Graham. The Greek World after Alexander 323–30 B.C. 1999.
Snyder, Jane M. The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome. 1989.
The Rise of Rome
5
and Its Republic
753– 44 b.c.e.
T
he Romans treasured legends about their state’s transformation from a
tiny village to a world power. They especially loved stories about their city’s
legendary first king, Romulus. When early Rome needed more women to bear
children to increase its population and build a strong army, Romulus begged Rome’s
neighbors for permission for its men to marry their women. Everyone turned him
down, mocking Rome’s poverty and weakness. Enraged, Romulus hatched a plan to
use force where diplomacy had failed. Invit-
The Wolf Suckling Romulus
ing the neighboring Sabines to a religious
and Remus festival, he had his men kidnap the unmar-
This bronze statue relates to the myth ried women who attended. The Roman kid-
that a she-wolf nursed the twin broth- nappers immediately married these Sabines,
ers Romulus and Remus, the offspring promising to cherish them as beloved wives
of the war god Mars and the future
and new citizens. When the Sabine men
founders of Rome. Romans treasured
this story because it meant that Mars attacked Rome to rescue their kin, the women
loved their city so dearly that he sent a rushed into the midst of the bloody battle,
wild animal to nurse its founders after begging their brothers, fathers, and new
a cruel tyrant had forced their mother husbands either to stop slaughtering one
to abandon the infants. The myth also another or to kill them — their devoted sis-
taught Romans that their state had
been born in violence: Romulus killed
ters, daughters, and wives — to end the war.
Remus in an argument over who would The men on both sides made peace on the
lead their new settlement. The wolf is spot and agreed to merge their populations
an Etruscan sculpture from the fifth under Roman rule.
century B.C.E.; the babies were added This legend emphasizes that Rome,
in the Renaissance. (Musei Capitolini,
Rome, Italy / Scala / Art Resource, NY.)
unlike the city-states of Greece, expanded by
absorbing outsiders into its citizen body.
Rome’s growth was the ancient world’s great-
est expansion of population and territory, as a people originally housed in a few huts
gradually created a state that fought countless wars and relocated an unprecedented
number of citizens to gain control of most of Europe, North Africa, Egypt, and the
eastern Mediterranean region. The social, cultural, political, legal, and economic
143
144 Chapter 5 The Rise of Rome and Its Republic
[ 753–44 b.c.e.
]
traditions that Romans developed to rule this vast area created greater connections
between diverse peoples than had ever existed before. Unlike the Greeks and Mace-
donians, the Romans maintained the unity of their state for centuries. The empire’s
long existence allowed many Roman values and traditions to become essential com-
ponents of Western civilization.
Greek literature, art, and philosophy influenced Rome’s culture greatly. Romans
learned from their neighbors, adapting foreign traditions to their own purposes and
forging their own cultural identity.
The legend about Romulus belongs to Rome’s earliest history, when kings ruled
(753–509 b.c.e.). Rome’s later history is divided into the republic and the empire.
Under the republic (founded 509 b.c.e.), male citizens elected government officials
and passed laws (although an oligarchy of the social elite controlled politics). Under
the empire, monarchs once again ruled. Rome’s greatest expansion came during the
republic. Romans’ belief in a divine destiny fueled this tremendous growth. They
believed that the gods wanted them to rule the world and improve it by making
everyone adhere to their social and moral values.
Roman values emphasized family loyalty, selfless political and military service
to the community, individual honor and public status, the importance of the law, and
shared decision making. By the first cen-
tury b.c.e., power-hungry leaders such as
CHAPTER FOCUS How did traditional Roman
Sulla and Julius Caesar had plunged Rome
values affect both the rise and the downfall of into civil war. By putting their personal
the Roman republic? ambition before the good of the state, they
destroyed the republic.
could possess virtus. In the second century b.c.e., the Roman poet Lucilius defined
it this way:
Virtus is to know the human relevance of each thing,
To know what is humanly right and useful and honorable,
And what things are good and what are bad, useless, shameful,
and dishonorable. . . .
And, in addition, virtus is putting the country’s interests first,
Then our parents’, with our own interests third and last.
Fides (FEE dehs, “faithfulness”) meant keeping one’s obligations no matter the
cost. Failing to meet an obligation offended the community and the gods. Faithful
women remained virgins before marriage and monogamous afterward. Faithful men
kept their word, paid their debts, and treated everyone with justice — which did not
mean treating everyone equally, but rather appropriately, according to whether the
person was a social superior, an equal, or an inferior. Showing respect and devotion
to the gods and to one’s family was the supreme form of faithfulness. Romans
believed they had to worship the gods faithfully to maintain the divine favor that
protected their community.
Roman values required that each person maintain self-control and limit displays
of emotion. So strict was this value that not even wives and husbands could kiss in
public without seeming emotionally out of control. It also meant that a person should
never give up no matter how hard the situation.
The reward for living these values was respect from others. Women earned respect
by bearing legitimate children and educating them morally. Respected men relied on
their reputations to help them win election to the republic’s government posts. A man
of the highest reputation commanded so much respect that others would obey him
regardless of whether he held an office with formal power over them. A man with this
much prestige was said to possess authority. The concept of authority based on respect
reflected the Roman belief that some people were by nature superior to others and
that society had to be hierarchical to be just. Romans believed that aristocrats, people
born into the “best” families, automatically deserved high respect. In return, aristo-
crats were supposed to live strictly by the highest values to serve the community.
In legends about the early days of Rome, a person could be poor and still remain
a proud aristocrat. Over time, however, money became overwhelmingly important
to the Roman elite, to spend on showy luxuries, large-scale entertaining, and costly
gifts to the community. In this way, wealth became necessary to maintain high social
status.
A Roman woman had to grow up fast. Tullia (c. 79–45 b.c.e.), daughter of Rome’s
most famous politician and orator, Cicero, was engaged at twelve, married at sixteen,
and widowed by twenty-two. Like every other wealthy married Roman woman, she
managed the household slaves, monitored the nurturing of the young children by
wet nurses, kept account books to track the property she personally owned, and
accompanied her husband to dinner parties — something a Greek wife never did.
A mother’s responsibility for shaping her children’s values constituted the foun-
dation of female virtue. Women like Cornelia, a famous aristocrat of the second
century b.c.e., won enormous respect for loyalty to family. When her husband died,
Cornelia refused an offer of marriage from King Ptolemy VIII of Egypt so that she
could continue to oversee the family estate and educate her surviving daughter and
two sons. (Her other nine children had died.) The boys, Tiberius and Gaius Grac-
chus, grew up to be among the most influential political leaders in the late republic.
The number of children Cornelia bore reveals the fertility and stamina required of
a Roman wife to ensure the survival of her husband’s family line. Cornelia also
became famous for her stylishly worded letters, which were still being read a century
later.
Roman women could not vote or hold political office, but wealthy women like
Cornelia influenced politics by expressing their opinions to men at home and at
dinner parties. Marcus Porcius Cato (234–149 b.c.e.), a famous politician and author,
described this clout: “All mankind rule their wives, we [Roman men] rule all man-
kind, and our wives rule us.”
148 Chapter 5 The Rise of Rome and Its Republic
[ 753–44 b.c.e.
]
Women could acquire property through inheritance and entrepreneurship.
Archaeological discoveries reveal that by the end of the republic some women owned
large businesses. Prenuptial agreements determining the property rights of husband
and wife were common. In divorce fathers kept the children. Most poor women
worked as field laborers or in shops. Women and men both worked in manufac-
turing, which mostly happened in the home. The men worked the raw materials —
cutting, fitting, and polishing wood, leather, and metal — while the women sold the
finished goods. The poorest women earned money through prostitution, which was
legal but considered disgraceful.
which guaranteed the state’s permanent existence. The Vestal Virgins, six unmarried
women sworn to chastity and Rome’s only female priests, tended Vesta’s shrine. They
earned high status and freedom from their fathers’ control by performing their most
important duty: keeping the flame from going out. If the flame went out, the Romans
assumed that one of the Vestal Virgins had had sex and buried her alive.
Religion was important in Roman family life. Each household maintained small
indoor shrines that housed statuettes of the spirits of the household and those of the
ancestors, protectors of the family’s health and morality. Upper-class families kept
death masks of famous ancestors hanging in the main room and wore them at funer-
als to display their status.
Religious rituals accompanied everyday activities such as breast-feeding babies
or fertilizing crops. Many public religious gatherings promoted the community’s
health and stability. For example, during the Lupercalia festival (whose name recalled
the wolf, luper in Latin, that had reared Romulus and his twin, Remus, according to
legend), near-naked young men streaked around the Palatine hill, lashing any woman
they met with strips of goatskin. Women who had not yet borne children would run
out to be struck, believing this would help them become fertile.
The Romans did not regard the gods as guardians of human morality. As Cicero
explained, “We call Jupiter the Best and Greatest not because he makes us just or
sober or wise but, rather, healthy, unharmed, rich, and prosperous.” Roman officials
preceded important actions with the ritual called taking the auspices, in which they
sought Jupiter’s approval by observing natural signs such as birds’ flight direction or
eating habits, or the appearance of thunder and lightning.
Romans regarded values as divine forces. Pietas (“piety”), for example, meant
devotion and duty to family, friends, the state, and the gods; a temple at Rome held
a statue personifying pietas as a female divinity. The personification of abstract moral
qualities provided a focus for cult rituals.
The duty of Roman religious officials was to maintain peace with the gods.
Socially prominent men served as priests, conducting sacrifices, festivals, and prayers.
Priests were citizens performing public service, not religious professionals. The chief
priest, the pontifex maximus (“greatest bridge-builder”), served as the head of state
religion, a position carrying political prominence. The most prominent religious
ceremonies at which priests presided were sacrifices of large animals, whose meat
would be shared among the worshippers.
Disrespect for religious tradition brought punishment. Admirals, for example,
took the auspices by feeding sacred chickens on their warships: if the birds ate ener-
getically, Jupiter favored the Romans and an attack could begin. In 249 b.c.e., the
commander Publius Claudius Pulcher grew frustrated when his chickens, prob-
ably seasick, refused to eat. Determined to
attack, he finally hurled the birds over-
REVIEW QUESTION What common themes
board in a rage, sputtering, “Well then, let underlay Roman values, and how did Romans’
them drink!” When he promptly suffered behavior reflect those values?
a huge defeat, he was fined heavily.
150 Chapter 5 The Rise of Rome and Its Republic
[ 753–44 b.c.e.
]
From Monarchy to Republic
Romans’ values and their belief in a divine destiny fueled their astounding growth
from a tiny settlement into the Mediterranean’s greatest power. The Romans spilled
much blood as they gradually expanded their territory through war. From the eighth
to the sixth century b.c.e., they were ruled by kings, but the later kings’ violence
provoked members of the social elite to overthrow the monarchy and create the
republic, which lasted until the first century b.c.e. The republic — res publica (“the
people’s matter” or “the public business”) — distributed power among elected officials
and assemblies of voters. This model of republican government, rather than Athens’s
direct democracy, influenced the founders of the United States in organizing their new
nation as a federal republic. The Roman Republic gained land and population by
winning aggressive wars and by absorbing other peoples. Its economic and cultural
growth depended on contact with many other peoples around the Mediterranean.
Etruscans
G A U L
People of Latium
P S Greeks
A L Early Romans
Gauls (Celts)
Carthaginians (Phoenicians)
Po R.
ET
Rubicon R. IL
RU
LY
RI
R
UM Tiber R.
A
Greece, admiring its literature and art but looking down on its lack of military unity.
Romans adopted many elements from Greek culture — from the deities for their
national cults to the models for their poetry, prose, and architectural styles.
The Etruscans, a people to the north, also influenced Roman culture. Brightly
colored wall paintings in tombs, portraying funeral banquets and festive games,
reveal the splendor of Etruscan society. In addition to producing their own art, jew-
elry, and sculpture, the Etruscans imported luxurious objects from Greece and the
Near East. Most of the intact Greek vases known today were found in Etruscan tombs,
and Etruscan culture was deeply influenced by that of Greece.
Romans adopted ceremonial features of Etruscan culture, such as musical instru-
ments, religious rituals, and lictors (attendants who walked before the highest offi-
cials carrying the fasces, a bundle of rods around an ax, symbolizing the officials’
right to command and punish). The Romans also borrowed from the Etruscans the
ritual of divination — determining the will of the gods by examining organs of slaugh-
tered animals. Other prominent features of Roman culture were probably part of the
ancient Mediterranean’s shared practices, such as the organization of the Roman
152 Chapter 5 The Rise of Rome and Its Republic
[ 753–44 b.c.e.
]
army (a citizen militia of heavily armed infantry troops fighting in formation) and
the use of an alphabet.
orders. The struggle finally ended in 287 b.c.e. when plebeians won the right to make
laws in their own assembly.
Patricians constituted a tiny percentage of the population — numbering only
about 130 families — but in the beginning of the republic their inherited status enti-
tled them to control public religion and to monopolize political office. Many patri-
cians were much wealthier than most plebeians. Some plebeians, however, were also
rich, and they resented the patricians’ dominance, especially their ban on intermar-
riage with plebeians. Poor plebeians demanded farmland and relief from crushing
debts. Patricians inflamed tensions by wearing special red shoes to set themselves apart;
later they changed to black shoes adorned with a small metal crescent. To pressure
the patricians, the plebeians periodically refused military service. This tactic worked
because Rome’s army depended on plebeian manpower.
E
n
Brid
S
Republican Colline
ge
Wall Gate
MAP 5.2 The City of Rome
Via F
LL
AL
LL L
IR
CAMPUS
ology shows that the first wall en-
VI
MARTIUS
circling the city’s center and seven
LL
HI
CAPITOLINE
IN
HILL
Senate House
QU
Jupiter
Temple of Vesta
PA about seven miles. By the second
L AT Regia Via
Via Aurelia IN Sac
ra
century B.C.E., the wall had been
EH
ILL extended to soar fifty-two feet high
Temple of LL
Hercules HI and had been fitted with catapults
IAN
.
L
rR
CAE
to protect the large gates. Like the
be
Ti
Circus
AV Maximus open agora surrounded by buildings
E
HI NT
LL INE at the heart of a Greek city, the
Vi forum remained Rome’s political
a
Via
sis
Ap
pi and social heart. Do you think that
ten
a
Ost
Republican
Os
Via
is
consul among their ancestors were honored as nobles. By 367 b.c.e., the plebeians
had forced passage of a law requiring that at least one of the two consuls be a plebe-
ian. Ex-consuls competed to become one of the censors, elected every five years to
conduct censuses of the citizen body and to appoint new senators. To be eligible for
selection to the Senate, a man had to have been at least a quaestor.
The patricians tried to monopolize the highest offices, but after violent struggle
from about 500 to 450 b.c.e., the plebeians forced the patricians to create ten annually
elected plebeian officials, called tribunes, who could stop actions that would harm
plebeians or their property. The tribunate did not count as a regular ladder office.
Tribunes based their special power on the plebeians’ sworn oath to protect them, and
on their authority to block officials’ actions, prevent laws from being passed, suspend
elections, and contradict the Senate’s advice. The tribunes’ extraordinary power to
veto government action often made them agents of political conflict.
Men competed in elections to win respect and glory, not money. Only well-off
men could serve in government because officials earned no salaries and were
expected to spend their own money to pay for public works and for expensive shows
featuring gladiators and wild animals. In the early republic, officials’ only reward was
respect, but as Romans conquered overseas territory, the desire for money from
plunder overcame many men’s adherence to traditional Roman values of faithfulness
and honesty. By the second century b.c.e., military officers were also enriching them-
selves by extorting bribes as administrators of conquered territories.
The Senate directed government policy by giving advice to the consuls. The
senators’ social standing gave their opinions great weight. To make their status vis-
ible, the senators wore black high-top shoes and robes with a broad purple stripe. If
a consul rejected the Senate’s advice, a political crisis ensued.
Three different assemblies made legislation, conducted elections, and rendered
judgment in certain trials. The Centuriate Assembly, which elected praetors and
consuls, was dominated by patricians and rich plebeians. The Plebeian Assembly,
which excluded patricians, elected the tribunes. In 287 b.c.e., its resolutions, called
plebiscites, became legally binding on all Romans. The Tribal Assembly mixed patri-
cians with plebeians and became the republic’s most important assembly. Each
assembly was divided into groups, with each group comprising a different number
of men based on status and wealth; each group had one vote.
Before assembly meetings, orators gave speeches about issues. Everyone, includ-
ing women and noncitizens, could listen to these pre-vote speeches. The crowd
expressed its opinions by either applauding or hissing. This process mixed a small
measure of democracy with the republic’s oligarchy.
Early on, the praetors decided most legal cases. A separate jury system arose in
the second century b.c.e., and senators repeatedly clashed with other upper-class
Romans over whether these juries should consist exclusively of senators. Accusers
and accused had to speak for themselves in court, or have friends speak for them.
Priests dominated in legal knowledge until the third century b.c.e., when senators
with legal expertise, called jurists, began to offer advice about cases.
156 Chapter 5 The Rise of Rome and Its Republic
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]
The Roman Republic’s complex political and judicial system evolved in response to
conflicts over power. Laws could emerge from different assemblies, and legal cases
could be decided by various institutions. Rome had no single highest court, such as the
U.S. Supreme Court, to give final verdicts.
The republic’s stability therefore depended
on maintaining the mos maiorum. Because
REVIEW QUESTION How and why did the
Roman republic develop its complicated they defined this tradition, the most socially
political and judicial systems? prominent and richest Romans dominated
politics and the courts.
Gauls (Celts) from beyond the Alps made Romans 0 100 200 miles
forever fearful of foreign invasion. By around Po R. 0 100 200 kilometers
a
Se
ltic
Roman territory:
North B a
Sea c. 500 B.C.E. (victory over Latium)
264 B.C.E. (start of First Punic War)
BRITAIN 241 B.C.E. (end of First Punic War)
Rh
201 B.C.E. (end of Second Punic War)
ine
R.
N 146 B.C.E. (end of Third Punic War)
GERMANIA
133 B.C.E. (territory in Asia Minor given to Rome)
W E
44 B.C.E. (death of Julius Caesar)
S
GAUL S Battle
ATLANTIC L P
A o R.
.
Rhône R
OCEAN P
ILLYRIA
Tiber R.
PY D a nube R.
RE Black Sea
NE Tarquinia
ES Arpinum
Corsica Rome MACEDONIA Byzantium
SPAIN Cannae ARMENIA
EP
Sardinia 216 B.C.E. Pharsalus
IR
48 B.C.E.
U
Pergamum ASIA MINOR
S
Messana
Sicily Corinth Athens
Carthage Carrhae
Rhodes
Tigri
NUMIDIA Zama Med Crete SYRIA
n e a n S e a Cyprus
iterra
s R.
202 B.C.E. Eu
ph
ra
te
s
NORTH AFRICA Jerusalem
R.
0 250 500 miles R.
EGYPT
Nile
the Romans to fight on a second front in Greece. Still, they refused to crack despite
Hannibal’s ravaging of Italy from 218 to 203 b.c.e. Invading the Carthaginians’
homeland, the Roman army won the battle of Zama in 202 b.c.e. The Senate forced
Carthage to scuttle its navy, pay huge war indemnities, and hand over its Spanish
territory, rich with silver mines.
The Third Punic War (149–146 b.c.e.) began when the Carthaginians retali-
ated against the aggression of the king of Numidia, a Roman ally. After winning the
war, the Romans heeded the senator Cato’s demand, “Carthage must be destroyed!”
They obliterated the city and converted its territory into a province. This disaster
did not destroy Carthaginian culture, however, and under the Roman Empire this
part of North Africa flourished economically and intellectually, creating a synthesis
of Roman and Carthaginian traditions.
160 Chapter 5 The Rise of Rome and Its Republic
[ 753–44 b.c.e.
]
The aftermath of the Punic Wars extended Roman power to Spain, North Africa,
Macedonia, Greece, and western Asia Minor. Hannibal’s alliance with the king of
Macedonia had brought Roman troops east of Italy for the first time. After defeating
the Macedonian king for revenge and to prevent any threat of his invading Italy, the
Roman commander proclaimed the “freedom of the Greeks” in 196 b.c.e. to show
respect for Greece’s glorious past. The Greek cities and federal leagues understood
the proclamation to mean that they, as “friends” of Rome, could behave as they liked.
They were mistaken. The Romans expected them to behave as clients and follow
their new patrons’ advice.
The Romans repeatedly intervened to make the kingdom of Macedonia and the
Greeks observe their obligations as clients. The Senate in 146 b.c.e. ordered Corinth
destroyed for asserting its independence and converted Macedonia and Greece into
a province. In 133 b.c.e., a Hellenistic king increased Roman power with a stupen-
dous gift: in his will he bequeathed to Rome his kingdom in western Asia Minor. In
121 b.c.e., the Romans made the lower part of Gaul across the Alps (modern south-
ern France) into a province. By the late first century b.c.e., then, Rome governed
and profited from two-thirds of the Mediterranean region; only the easternmost
Mediterranean lay outside its control (see Map 5.3, page 159).
meant the dissolving of the union of atoms, which had come together temporarily
to make up a person’s body. There could be no eternal punishment or pain after death
because a person’s soul perished along with the body.
Hellenistic Greek authors inspired Catullus in the first century b.c.e. to write
witty poems ridiculing prominent politicians for their sexual behavior and lamenting
his own disastrous love life. His most famous love poems revealed his obsession with
a married woman named Lesbia. The orator and politician Cicero (106–43 b.c.e.)
wrote speeches, letters, and treatises on political science, philosophy, ethics, and
theology. He adapted Greek philosophy to Roman life and stressed the need to appre-
ciate each person’s uniqueness. His doctrine of humanitas (“humaneness,” “the qual-
ity of humanity”) expressed an ideal for human life based on generous and honest
treatment of others and a commitment to morality based on natural law (the rights
that belong to all people because they are human beings, independent of the differing
laws and customs of different societies).
Greece also influenced Rome’s art and architecture. Hellenistic sculptors had
pioneered a realistic style showing the ravages of age and pain on the human body.
They portrayed only stereotypes, however, such as the “old man” or the “drunken
woman,” not specific people. Their portrait sculpture presented actual individuals in
the best possible light, much like a digitally enhanced photograph today. By contrast,
Roman artists applied Greek realism to male portraiture, as contemporary Etruscan
sculptors also did. They sculpted men without hiding their unflattering features: long
noses, receding chins, deep wrinkles, bald heads, and worried looks. Portraits of
women, by contrast, were more idealized, probably representing the traditional
vision of the bliss of family life. Because the men depicted in the portraits (or their
families) paid for the busts, they may have wanted their faces sculpted realistically —
showing the damage of age and effort — to emphasize how hard they had worked to
serve the republic.
abroad created opportunities for successful generals to enrich their families. The elite
enhanced their reputations by spending their gains to finance public works that ben-
efited the general population. Building new temples, for example, won praise because
the Romans believed it pleased their gods to have many shrines.
The troubles of small farmers enriched landowners who could buy bankrupt farms
to create large estates. Some landowners also illegally occupied public land carved out
of territory seized from defeated enemies. The rich worked their huge farms, called
latifundia, with free laborers as well as slaves who had been taken captive in the same
wars that displaced so many farmers. The size of the latifundia slave crews made their
periodic revolts so dangerous that the army had to fight hard to suppress them.
The elite profited from Rome’s expansion by filling the governing offices in the
new provinces. Some governors ruled honestly, but others used their power to extort
the locals. Since martial law ruled, no one in the provinces could curb a greedy
governor’s appetite for graft and extortion. Often such offenders escaped punishment
because their fellow senators excused their crimes.
The new opportunities for rich living strained the traditional values of modera-
tion and frugality. Previously, a man could become legendary for his life’s simplicity:
Manius Curius (d. 270 b.c.e.), for example, boiled turnips for his meals in a humble
hut despite his glorious military victories.
Now the elite acquired showy luxuries, REVIEW QUESTION What advantages and
such as large country villas for entertaining disadvantages did Rome’s victories over
friends and clients. Money had become foreign peoples create for both rich and poor
more valuable to them than the republic’s Romans?
ancestral values.
The wild beasts that roam over Italy have their dens. . . . But the men who
fight and die for Italy enjoy nothing but the air and light. They wander about
homeless with their wives and children. . . . They fight and die to protect the
wealth and luxury of others. They are called masters of the world, but have
not a lump of earth they call their own.
When Tiberius became tribune in 133 b.c.e., he took the radical step of blocking
the Senate’s will by having the Plebeian Assembly vote to redistribute public land to
landless Romans and to spend the Attalid king’s gift of his kingdom to equip new
farms on the land. Tiberius next announced he would run for reelection as tribune
for the following year, violating the prohibition against consecutive terms. His oppo-
nents therefore led a band of senators and their clients to kill him and many of his
clients, shouting, “Save the Republic.”
Gaius, elected tribune for 123 b.c.e. and, contrary to tradition, again for the next
year, also pushed measures that outraged his fellow elite: more farming reforms,
subsidized prices for grain, public works projects to employ the poor, and colonies
abroad with farms for the landless. His most revolutionary measures proposed
Roman citizenship for many Italians, and new courts to try senators accused of cor-
ruption as provincial governors. The new juries would be manned by equites (“eques-
trians” or “knights”). These were wealthy businessmen whose focus on commerce
instead of government made their interests different from the senators’. Because they
did not serve in the Senate, the equites could convict senators for crimes without
having to face peer pressure.
When the senators blocked Gaius’s plans in 121 b.c.e., he threatened violent
resistance. The senators then advised the consuls “to take all measures necessary to
defend the republic,” meaning they should kill anyone identified as dangerous to
public order. When his enemies came to murder him, Gaius committed suicide by
having a slave cut his throat. The senators then killed hundreds of his supporters.
The conflict over reforms introduced factions (aggressive interest groups) into
Roman politics. Members of the elite now identified themselves as either supporters
of the people, the populares faction, or supporters of “the best,” the optimates fac-
tion. Some chose a faction from genuine allegiance to its policies; others supported
whichever side better promoted their own political advancement. The elite’s splinter-
ing into bitterly hostile factions remained a source of murderous political violence
until the end of the republic.
upper-class man without a consul among his ancestors, whose ability led him to
fame, fortune, and — his ultimate goal — the consulship.
Gaius Marius (c. 157–86 b.c.e.), from the equites class, set the pattern for the
influential “new man.” Gaining fame for his brilliant military record, Marius won
election as a consul for 107 b.c.e. Marius’s success as a commander, first in North
Africa and next against German tribes attacking southern France and Italy, led the
people to elect him consul six times, breaking all tradition.
For his victories, the Senate voted Marius a triumph, Rome’s ultimate military
honor. In this ceremony, crowds cheered as he rode a chariot through Rome’s streets.
His soldiers shouted obscene jokes about him, to ward off the evil eye at his moment
of supreme glory. Despite Marius’s triumph, the optimates never accepted him as an
equal. His support came from the common people, whom he had won over with his
revolutionary reform of entrance requirements for the army. Previously, only men with
property could usually enroll as soldiers. Marius opened the ranks to proletarians, men
who had no property and could not afford weapons. For them, serving in the army
meant an opportunity to better their life by acquiring plunder and a grant of land.
Marius’s reform created armies that were more loyal to their commander than
to the republic. Poor Roman soldiers behaved like clients following their commander
as patron, who benefited them with plunder. They in turn supported his political
ambitions. Commanders after Marius used client armies to advance their careers
more ruthlessly than he had, accelerating the republic’s internal conflict.
rebelled against Roman control and high taxation, Sulla seized his chance. Victory
against Mithridates would mean capturing unimaginable riches from Asia Minor’s
cities and allow him to restore his patrician but impoverished family’s status. When
the Senate gave Sulla the command, Marius had it transferred to himself by plebi-
scite. Outraged, Sulla marched his client army against Rome. All his officers except
one deserted him in horror at this shameful attack, but his common soldiers followed
him. After capturing Rome, Sulla killed or exiled his opponents. He let his men
rampage through the city and then led them off to Asia Minor, ignoring a summons
to stand trial and sacking Athens on the way. In Sulla’s absence, Marius embarked
on his own reign of terror in Rome to try to regain his former power. In 83 b.c.e.,
Sulla returned victorious, having allowed his soldiers to plunder Asia Minor. Civil
war erupted for two years until Sulla crushed his enemies at home.
Sulla then exterminated his opponents. He used proscription — posting a list of
people accused of being traitors so that anyone could hunt them down and execute
them. Because proscribed men’s property was confiscated, the victors fraudulently
added to the list anyone whose wealth they coveted. The terrorized Senate appointed
Sulla dictator — an emergency office supposed to be held only temporarily — and
gave him permanent immunity from prosecution. Sulla reorganized the government
to favor the optimates — his social class — by making senators the only ones allowed
to judge cases against their colleagues and forbidding tribunes from sponsoring leg-
islation or holding any other office after their term.
Sulla’s career revealed the strengths and weaknesses of Roman values. First, the
purpose of war had changed from defending the community to accumulating plun-
der for common soldiers as well as commanders. Second, the patron-client system
led proletarian soldiers to feel stronger ties of loyalty to their generals than to the
republic.
Finally, the traditional competition for status worked both for and against politi-
cal stability. When that value motivated men to seek office to promote the commu-
nity’s welfare, it promoted social unity and prosperity. But pushed to its extreme, the
contest for individual prestige and wealth destroyed the republic.
[753–44 b.c.e.
] Civil War and the Destruction of the Republic 167
N
BRITAIN
GERMANIA W E
Alesia Danub S
eR
52 B.C.E. BOSPORAN
KINGDOM
.
GAUL Bibracte S
58 B.C.E. L P
ATLANTIC Avaricum A
52 B.C.E.
OCEAN Gergovia
52 B.C.E.
Arar River Po R.
58 B.C.E.
Rubicon
PY R E Black Sea
NEE R.
S
Ilerda
49 B.C.E.
Rome
Dyrrhacium Philippi ARMENIA
48 B.C.E. 42 B.C.E. Zela
SPAIN GREECE
47 B.C.E.
Pharsalus ASI A MI NO R
48 B.C.E. Carrhae
Munda
EM
ES
TH E r i s
Carthage
O
Med SYRIA
IAN R.
PO
NUMIDIA Thapsus iter
TA r
46 B.C.E. ranea Eu
n
M ate
Sea ph
MAURETANIA
Alexandria Jerusalem
NO RTH AFR ICA 47 B.C.E.
JUDAEA
CYRENAICA
Ni l
Roman client states EG Y PT
Red
eR
.
Caesar’s major battles in Gaul 0 250 500 miles
Sea
Major battles of the civil war 0 250 500 kilometers
MAPPING THE WEST The Roman World at the End of the Republic, 44 b.c.e.
By the time of Julius Caesar’s assassination in 44 B.C.E., the territory that would be the Roman
Empire was almost complete. Caesar’s young relative Octavian (the future Augustus) would
conquer and add Egypt in 30 B.C.E. Geography, distance, and formidable enemies were the
primary factors inhibiting further expansion — which Romans never stopped wanting, even when
lack of money and political discord rendered it purely theoretical. The deserts of Africa and the
once again powerful Persian kingdom in the Near East worked against expansion southward or
eastward, while trackless forests and fierce resistance from local inhabitants made expansion
into central Europe and the British Isles impossible to maintain.
Chapter 5 Review
Key Terms and People
Be sure that you can identify the term or person and explain its historical significance.
mos maiorum (p. 144) Twelve Tables (p. 154) equites (p. 164)
patron-client system (p. 145) ladder of offices (p. 154) populares (p. 164)
patria potestas (p. 146) plebiscites (p. 155) optimates (p. 164)
res publica (p. 150) Cicero (p. 161) proletarians (p. 165)
orders: patricians and humanitas (p. 161) First Triumvirate (p. 167)
plebeians (p. 152)
Review Questions
1. What common themes underlay Roman values, and how did Romans’ behavior reflect
those values?
2. How and why did the Roman Republic develop its complicated political and judicial
systems?
3. What advantages and disadvantages did Rome’s victories over foreign peoples create
for both rich and poor Romans?
4. What factors generated the conflicts that caused the Roman Republic’s destruction?
Making Connections
1. How did the political and social values of the Roman Republic compare to those of the
Greek city-state in the Classical Age?
2. What were the positive and the negative consequences of war for the Roman republic?
3. How can people decide what is the best balance between individual advancement and
communal stability?
Suggested References
Scholars continue to debate the causes and the effects of the rise and fall of the Roman
Republic, focusing in particular on the intended and unintended political, social, and cultural
consequences of the many wars that the Romans fought in this period.
Beard, Mary, et al. Religions of Rome. 2 vols. 1998.
Billows, Richard. Julius Caesar: The Colossus of Rome. 2008.
*Caesar. The Civil War. Trans. John Carter. 1997.
*Cicero. On the Good Life. Trans. Michael Grant. 1971.
Cornell, Tim. The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars
(c. 1000–264 B.C.). 1995.
Daily life (and more): http://www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/romanpages.html
Earl, Donald. The Moral and Political Tradition of Rome. 1967.
Flower, Harriet. Roman Republics. 2009.
Gardner, Jane. Women in Roman Law and Society. 1986.
Goldworthy, Adrian. The Punic Wars. 2000.
Haynes, Sybill. Etruscan Civilization: A Cultural History. 2005.
*Primary source.
172
[753–44 b.c.e.
] Chapter 5 Review 173
Important Events
Consider two events: Cato writes The Origins (168–149 B.C.E.) and Carthage and
Corinth are destroyed (146 B.C.E.). What attitudes prompted Cato’s writings, and how
were similar ideas reflected in the destruction of Carthage and Corinth?
I
n 203 c.e., Vibia Perpetua, wealthy and twenty-two years old, was confined in a
Carthage jail, nursing her infant. She had been condemned to death for treason after
refusing to sacrifice to the gods for the Roman emperor’s health and safety. Perpetua
recorded what happened when the local governor tried to persuade her to save her life:
My father came carrying my son,
Mosaic of Chariot Racing shouting “Perform the sacrifice; take
Racing four-horse chariots was the pity on your baby!” Then the governor
most popular (and most expensive) said, “Think of your old father; show
sport in the Roman Empire. This
pity for your little child! Offer the sac-
mosaic, a picture made from thou-
sands of tiny colored tiles put rifice for the imperial family’s well
together like a giant jigsaw puzzle, being.” “I refuse,” I answered. “Are you
shows a driver holding a branch signi- a Christian?” asked the governor. “Yes.”
fying that he has just won a big race. When my father would not stop try-
Two attendants or race officials are in
ing to change my mind, the governor
the background. Hundreds of thou-
sands of spectators attended the
ordered him thrown to the earth and
largest races at the Circus Maximus whipped with a rod. I felt sorry for my
in Rome, but many cities across the father; it seemed they were beating me.
empire had tracks. Romans loved the I pitied his pathetic old age.
races’ action and potential violence,
as chariots swerved at top speed Gored by a wild cow and stabbed by a gladi-
around and around the tight turns of ator, Perpetua died because she placed her
the track and sometimes collided in faith above her duty of loyalty to her family
bloody accidents. (Museo Arqueologico
Nacional, Madrid, Spain / De Agostini Picture
and the state.
Library / Gianni Dagli Orti / Bridgeman Images.) Rome’s rulers during what we call the
Roman Empire punished disloyalty because
it threatened to reignite the civil wars that
had destroyed the Roman Republic. The refusal of some Christians such as Perpetua
to perform traditional sacrifice was considered treason because Romans believed the
gods would punish them for sheltering people who refused to worship them and
rejected the traditional religion.
175
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The transformation from republic to empire opened with seventeen years of civil
war after Julius Caesar’s death in 44 b.c.e. Finally, in 27 b.c.e., his adopted son,
Octavian (thereafter known as Augustus), created a disguised monarchy to end the
violence, declaring that he had restored the republic. Augustus’s new system retained
traditional institutions for sharing power — the Senate, the consuls, the courts — but
in reality he and his successors governed like kings ruling an empire.
Augustus’s innovations brought peace for two hundred years, except for a struggle
between generals for rule in 69 c.e. This Pax Romana (“Roman Peace”) allowed
agriculture and trade to flourish in the provinces, but paying for the military eventu-
ally weakened Rome. Previously, foreign wars had won Romans huge amounts of
land and money, but now the distances were too great and the enemies too strong.
The army was no longer an offensive weapon for expansion that brought in new
taxes but instead a defense force that had to be paid for out of existing revenues.
The financial strain drained the treasury and destabilized the government. Chris-
tianity emerged as a new religion that would slowly transform the Roman world, but
it also created tension because the growing
presence of Christians made other Romans
CHAPTER FOCUS How did Augustus’s
worry about punishment from the gods.
“restored republic” successfully keep the
peace for more than two centuries, and why In the third century c.e., a crisis developed
did it fail in the third century? when generals competing to rule reignited
civil war that lasted fifty years.
ment. They murdered many of their enemies, including some of their own relatives,
and seized their property.
Octavian and Antony then forced Lepidus out and fought each other. Antony
controlled the eastern provinces by allying with the ruler of Egypt, Queen Cleopa-
tra VII (69–30 b.c.e.), who had earlier allied with Julius Caesar. Dazzled by her
intelligence and magnetism, Antony, who was married to Octavian’s sister, fell in love
with Cleopatra. Octavian rallied support by claiming that Antony planned to make
this foreign queen Rome’s ruler. He made the residents of Italy and the western
provinces swear an oath of allegiance to him. Octavian’s victory in the naval battle
of Actium in northwest Greece in 31 b.c.e. won the war. Cleopatra and Antony fled
to Egypt, where they both committed suicide in 30 b.c.e. The general Mark Antony
first stabbed himself, bleeding to death in his lover’s embrace. Queen Cleopatra then
ended her life by allowing a poisonous snake to bite her. Octavian’s revenues from
the capture of Egypt made him Rome’s richest citizen.
on whom Rome relied for public service, Augustus granted privileges to the parents
of three or more children. He criminalized adultery, even exiling his own daughter —
his only child — and a granddaughter for sex scandals. His legislation failed, however,
and the prestigious old families dwindled over time. With each generation, three-
quarters of senatorial families lost their official status by either spending all their
money or dying off without having children. The emperors filled the open places in
the social hierarchy and in the Senate with equites and provincials.
Since imperial Rome still gave citizenship to freed slaves, all slaves hoped some-
day to become a free Roman citizen, regardless of how they had originally become
enslaved (by being captured in war, stolen from their home region by slave trad-
ers, or born to slave women as the owner’s property). Freed slaves’ descendants, if
they became wealthy, could become members of the social elite. This policy of giv-
ing citizenship to former slaves meant that eventually most Romans had slave
ancestors.
The harshness of slaves’ lives varied widely. Slaves in agriculture and manu-
facturing had a grueling existence, while household slaves lived more comfortably.
Modestly prosperous families owned one or two slaves, while rich houses and the
imperial palace owned large numbers. Domestic slaves were often women, working
as nurses, maids, kitchen helpers, and clothes makers. Some male slaves ran businesses
for their masters and were often allowed to keep part of the profits, which they could
save to purchase their freedom. Women had less opportunity to earn money, though
masters sometimes granted tips for sexual favors to both female and male slaves.
Many female prostitutes were slaves working for their owner in a brothel. Slaves with
savings would sometimes buy other slaves, especially to have a mate; they were
barred from legal marriage, because they and their children remained their master’s
property, but they could live as a shadow family. Some masters’ tomb inscriptions
express affection for a slave, but if slaves attacked their owner, the punishment was
death.
Violence featured in much of Roman public entertainment. The emperors pro-
vided shows featuring hunters killing wild beasts, animals mangling condemned
criminals, mock naval battles in flooded arenas, gladiatorial combats, and wreck-
filled chariot races. Spectators were seated according to their social rank and gen-
der. The emperor and senators sat up front, while women and the poor were in the
upper tiers.
Criminals and slaves could be forced to fight as gladiators, but free people also
voluntarily competed, hoping to become celebrities and win prizes. Most gladiators
were men, though women could fight other women until such matches were banned
around 200 c.e. Gladiators were often wounded or killed in the fights, but their
contests rarely required a fight to the death, unless they were captives or criminals.
To make the bouts unpredictable, pairs of gladiators often competed with different
weapons. One favorite match pitted a lightly armored “net man” with a net and a
trident against a heavily armored “fish man,” so named from his helmet design. Bet-
ting was popular, and the crowds were rowdy.
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Public entertainment supported communication between the ruler and the ruled.
Emperors provided gladiatorial combats, chariot races, and theater productions for
the masses, and ordinary citizens staged protests at them to express their wishes.
Poor Romans, for example, rioted to protest shortfalls in the free grain supply.
private elementary schools to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic. Some went on
to study literature, history, and grammar. Only a few boys then proceeded to study
advanced literature and history, rhetoric, ethical philosophy, law, and dialectic (rea-
soned argument). Mathematics and science were rarely studied as separate subjects,
but engineers and architects became proficient at calculation.
Scholars call the Augustan period the Golden Age of Latin literature. The emperor
was the patron for writers and artists. Augustus’s favorite authors were Horace (65–
8 b.c.e.) and Virgil (70–19 b.c.e.). Horace’s poem celebrating Augustus’s victory at
Actium became famous for its opening line: “Now it’s time to drink!” Virgil’s epic
poem The Aeneid became Rome’s most famous work of literature. Inspired by Homer,
Virgil told the drama-filled story of the Trojan Aeneas, whom the Romans regarded
as their heroic ancestor, as he established a community in Italy after fleeing from the
burning ruins of his home city. Virgil balanced his praise for Roman civilization with
the acknowledgment that peace existed at the cost of freedom.
Livy (54 b.c.e.–17 c.e.) wrote a history of Rome recording Augustus’s ruthless-
ness in the civil war after Caesar’s murder. The emperor only scolded him, because
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Livy’s work proclaimed that stability and prosperity depended on traditional values
of loyalty and self-sacrifice. The poet Ovid (43 b.c.e.–17 c.e.), however, wrote Art
of Love and Love Affairs to mock the emperor’s moral legislation with witty advice
on sexual affairs and adultery. Ovid’s work Metamorphoses undermined the idea of
natural hierarchy with stories of supernatural shape-changes, with people becoming
animals and mixing the human and the divine. Augustus exiled the poet in 8 b.c.e.
for his alleged involvement in the scandal involving the emperor’s granddaughter.
Changes in public sculpture also reflected the emperor’s supremacy. Augustus
preferred sculpture that had an idealized style. In the Prima Porta statue, Augustus
had himself portrayed as serene and dig-
nified, not weary and sick, as he often was.
As he did with architecture, Augustus used
REVIEW QUESTION How did the peace gained
through Augustus’s “restoration of the Roman
sculpture to project a calm and competent
Republic” affect Romans’ lives in all social image of himself as the “Restorer of the
classes? Roman Republic” and founder of a new age
for Rome.
Tiberius (r. 14–37 c.e.) was able to stay in power for twenty-three years because
he retained the army’s loyalty. He built the praetorian guard a fortified camp in Rome
to help its soldiers protect the emperor. The guards would influence all future
successions — no emperor could come to power without their support.
Tiberius’s long reign made permanent the compromise between the elite and the
emperor that promoted political stability. The offices of consul, senator, and provin-
cial governor continued, with elite Romans filling them and enjoying their prestige,
but the emperors not only decided who received the offices but also controlled law
and government policy. The social elite supported the regime by staying loyal and
managing the collection of taxes while governing provinces. (The emperor used his
own assistants to govern the provinces that housed strong military forces.) Everyone
saved face by pretending that the republic’s traditional offices retained their original
power.
Tiberius paid a bitter price to rule. To strengthen their family tie, Augustus had
forced Tiberius to divorce his beloved wife, Vipsania, to marry Augustus’s daugh-
ter, Julia — a marriage that proved disastrously unhappy. When Tiberius’s sadness led
him to spend his reign’s last decade in seclusion far from Rome, his neglect of the
government permitted abuses in the capital and kept him from training a decent
successor.
Tiberius designated Gaius, better known as Caligula (r. 37–41 c.e.), to be the
next emperor, and the Senate approved him because the young man was Augustus’s
great-grandson. The third Julio-Claudian emperor might have been successful
because he knew about soldiering: Caligula means “baby boots,” the nickname the
soldiers gave him as a child because he wore little leather shoes like theirs when he
was growing up in the military garrisons his father commanded. Caligula, however,
bankrupted the treasury to satisfy his desires. His biographer labeled him a monster
for his murders and sexual crimes, which some said included incest with his sisters.
He outraged the elite by fighting in mock gladiatorial combats and appearing in
public in women’s clothing or costumes imitating gods. He once said, “I’m allowed
to do anything.” The praetorian commanders murdered him in his fourth year of
rule to avenge personal insults.
The senators then debated the idea of truly restoring the republic by refusing to
approve a new emperor. They backed down, however, when Claudius (r. 41–54 c.e.),
Augustus’s grandnephew, bribed the praetorian guard to support him. The soldiers’
insistence on having an emperor so that they would have a patron signaled that the
original republic was never coming back.
Claudius was an active emperor, commanding a successful invasion of Britain
in 43 c.e. that made much of the island into a Roman province. He promoted pro-
vincial elites’ participation in government by enrolling men from Gaul in the Senate.
In return for keeping their regions peaceful and ensuring tax payments, upper-class
provincials received offices and prestige at Rome. Claudius also transformed imperial
bureaucracy by employing freed slaves as powerful administrators who owed loyalty
only to the emperor.
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Claudius’s successor, Nero (r. 54–68 c.e.), became emperor at sixteen. He loved
music and acting, not governing. The poor loved him for his public entertainments
and distributions of cash. His generals suppressed a revolt in Britain led by the woman
commander Boudica in 60 c.e. and fought the Jewish rebels against Roman rule in
Judaea beginning in 66 c.e., but he had no military career. A giant fire in 64 c.e.
(the event behind the legend that Nero fiddled while Rome burned) aroused suspi-
cions that he ordered the city burned to make space for a new palace. Nero emptied
the treasury by building a huge palace. To raise money, he faked treason charges
against senators and equites to seize their property. When his generals toppled his
regime in 68 c.e., Nero had a servant help him cut his own throat.
Nero’s death sparked a civil war in 69 c.e. during which four generals competed
for power. Vespasian (r. 69–79 c.e.) won. To give his new dynasty (the Flavians)
legitimacy, Vespasian had a law passed granting him the powers of previous good
emperors, pointedly leaving Caligula and Nero off the list. He encouraged the impe-
rial cult (worship of the emperor as a living god and sacrifices for his household’s
welfare) in the provinces beyond Italy but not in Italy itself, where it would have
disturbed traditional Romans. The imperial cult communicated the image of the
emperor as a superhuman who deserved Roman citizens’ loyalty because he provided
benefactions and salvation for them.
Vespasian’s sons, Titus (r. 79–81 c.e.) and Domitian (r. 81–96 c.e.), conducted
hardheaded fiscal policy and wars. Titus had suppressed the Jewish revolt, capturing
Jerusalem in 70 c.e. In his role as “first man” protecting the people, Titus sent relief
to Pompeii and Herculaneum when, in 79 c.e., Mount Vesuvius’s volcanic eruption
buried these towns. He built Rome’s Colosseum, outfitting the fifty-thousand-seat
amphitheater with awnings to shade the crowd. The Colosseum was constructed on
the site of the private fishpond in Nero’s palace to demonstrate the Flavian dynasty’s
commitment to the people.
When Titus died suddenly after only two years as emperor, his brother, Domi-
tian, stepped in. Domitian balanced the budget and campaigned against the Ger-
manic tribes threatening the empire’s northern frontiers. Domitian’s arrogance turned
the senators against him; once he sent them a letter announcing, “Our lord god,
myself, orders you to do this.” Domitian executed numerous upper-class citizens as
disloyal. Fearful that they, too, would become victims, his wife and members of his
court murdered him in 96 c.e.
The next five emperors gained reputations for ruling well: Nerva (r. 96–98 c.e.),
Trajan (r. 98–117 c.e.), Hadrian (r. 117–138 c.e.), Antoninus Pius (r. 138–161 c.e.),
and Marcus Aurelius (r. 161–180 c.e.). Historians call this period the Roman political
Golden Age because it had peaceful successions for nearly a century. Wars and
rivalry among the elite continued, however. Trajan fought to expand Roman control
across the Danube River into Dacia (today Romania) and eastward into Mesopota-
mia (Map 6.1); Hadrian executed several senators as alleged conspirators, punished
a Jewish revolt by turning Jerusalem into a military colony, and withdrew Roman
[ 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
] Politics and Society in the Early Roman Empire 187
a
Se
Roman Empire at the end of Trajan’s reign, 117 C.E.
tic
North l
Sea Ba Conquered and lost by Trajan, 114–117 C.E.
Battle
BRITAIN
N
Cologne
G E R M A N IA W E
Trier
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. SAR
MA
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A
ATLANTIC
Lyon
OCEAN
Ca
ITALY Black Sea
spia
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n Se
Naples
a
SPAIN Mt. Vesuvius
Actium
31 B.C.E. Athens
Corinth
M
ES
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MAURETANIA ranea Eu
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forces from Mesopotamia; and Marcus Aurelius fought off invaders from the Danube
region as the dangers to imperial territory along the northern frontiers kept
increasing.
Still, the five “good emperors” did preside over a political and economic Golden
Age. They succeeded one another without murder or conspiracy — the first four,
having no surviving sons, used adoption to find the best possible successor. The
188 Chapter 6 The Creation of the Roman Empire
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Roman Colosseum
The Roman Emperor Titus finished the construction of the Colosseum, so named because it
stood on the spot where the Emperor Nero had earlier erected a colossal statue of himself.
Seating some 50,000 spectators, with the most important men granted the best seats in the
lower rungs, it was used for gladiatorial combats and other forms of public entertainment. A
giant awning stretched out from the topmost level of the seats to protect spectators from the
sun. The ruins today reveal in the center the underground rooms and corridors used, for one
thing, to house wild animals that were raised by manual elevators to the sandy floor above to
be killed in bloody hunts. (© Alinari Archives / The Image Works.)
economy provided enough money to finance building projects such as the fortifica-
tion wall Hadrian built across Britain. Most important, the army remained obedient.
These reigns marked Rome’s longest stretch without a civil war since the second
century b.c.e.
a
Se
c 0 250 500 miles
North lti
Sea Ba 0 250 500 kilometers
CELTIC
BRITAIN N
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ES Rome
ITALY BALKA
THRACIAN
SPAIN ARMENIAN
LATIN CELTIC
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Athens
RU S
Carthage TAU ISAURIAN
GREEK
PUNIC CILICIAN Antioch ARAMAIC/
LIBYAN Med
iterra SYRIA SYRIAC
nean Sea
ARAMAIC
HEBREW
N O RT H A F R I C A LIBYAN Alexandria
NABATAEAN
EGYPT
Main division between Latin and Greek as COPTIC/ ARABIC
predominant language of government and commerce DEMOTIC
CELTIC Local language
A R A B IA N
Northern limit of vine growing (for wine)
DE SE RT
S A H A R A
Re
Distribution of cities
as well as Roman law and customs there. Eventually, emperors came from citizen-
families in the provinces; Trajan, from Spain, was the first.
Romanization, the spread of Roman law and culture in the provinces, raised
the standard of living by providing roads and bridges, increasing trade, and establish-
ing peaceful conditions for agriculture. The army’s need for supplies created business
for farmers and merchants. The prosperity that provincials enjoyed under Roman
rule made Romanization acceptable. In addition, Romanization was not a one-way
street. In western regions as diverse as Gaul, Britain, and North Africa, interaction
between the local people and Romans produced mixed cultural traditions, especially
in religion and art. Therefore, Romanization merged Roman and local culture.
The eastern provinces, however, largely retained their Greek and Near Eastern
characteristics. Huge Hellenistic cities such as Alexandria (in Egypt) and Antioch
(in Syria) rivaled Rome in size and splendor. The eastern provincial elites readily
accepted Roman governance because Hellenistic royal traditions had prepared them
to see the emperor as their patron and themselves as his clients.
The continuing vitality of Greek language and culture contributed to new trends
in Roman literature. Lucian (c. 117–180 c.e.) composed satirical dialogues in Greek
mocking stuffy and superstitious people. The essayist and philosopher Plutarch
(c. 50–120 c.e.) also used Greek to write paired biographies of Greek and Roman
men. His exciting stories made him favorite reading for centuries; William Shake-
speare based several plays on Plutarch’s biographies.
The late first century and early to mid-second century c.e. can be called the Silver
Age of Latin literature. Tacitus (c. 56–120 c.e.) wrote historical works that exposed
the Julio-Claudian emperors’ ruthlessness. Juvenal (c. 65–130 c.e.) wrote poems ridi-
culing pretentious Romans while complaining about living broke in the capital. Apu-
leius (c. 125–170 c.e.) excited readers with a sexually explicit novel called The Golden
Ass, about a man turned into a donkey who regains his body and his soul through
the kindness of the Egyptian goddess Isis.
The emperors made the laws for the entire empire based on the principle of
equity. This meant doing what was “good and fair” even if that required ignoring the
letter of the law. This principle taught that a contract’s intent outweighed its words,
and that accusers should prove the accused guilty because it was unfair to make
defendants prove their innocence. In dealing with accusations against Christians, the
emperor Trajan ruled that no one should be convicted on the grounds of suspicion
alone because it was better for a guilty person to go unpunished than for an innocent
person to be condemned.
The importance of hierarchy led Romans to continue formal distinctions in soci-
ety based on wealth. The elites constituted a tiny portion of the population. Only
about one in every fifty thousand had enough money to qualify for the senatorial
order, the highest-ranking class, while about one in a thousand belonged to the eques-
trian order, the second-ranking class. Different purple stripes on clothing identified
these orders. The third-highest order consisted of decurions, the local Senate mem-
bers in provincial towns.
192 Chapter 6 The Creation of the Roman Empire
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The legal distinction between the elite and the rest of the population now became
stricter. “Better people” included senators, equites, decurions, and retired army vet-
erans. Everybody else — except slaves, who counted as property — made up the vastly
larger group of “humbler people.” The law imposed harsher penalties on them than
on “better people” for the same crime. “Humbler people” convicted of serious crimes
were regularly executed by being crucified or torn apart by wild animals before a
crowd of spectators. “Better people” rarely received the death penalty, and those who
did were allowed a quicker and more dignified execution by the sword. “Humbler
people” could also be tortured in criminal investigations, even if they were citizens.
Romans regarded these differences as fair on the grounds that an elite person’s higher
status required of him or her a higher level of responsibility for the common good.
As one provincial governor expressed it, “Nothing is less equitable than mere equality
itself.”
Nothing mattered more to the empire’s strength than steady population levels.
Concerns about marriage and reproduction thus filled Roman society; remaining
single and childless represented social failure for both women and men. The proper-
tied classes usually arranged marriages. Girls often married in their early teens, to
Midwife’s Sign
Childbirth carried the danger of death from infection or internal hemorrhage. This terra-cotta
sign from Ostia, the ancient port city of Rome, probably hung outside a midwife’s room to
announce her expertise in helping women give birth. It shows a pregnant woman clutching the
sides of her chair, with an assistant supporting her from behind and the midwife crouched in
front to help deliver the baby. Why do you think the woman is seated for delivery instead of lying
down? Such signs were especially effective for people who were illiterate; a person did not have
to read to understand the ser vices that the specialist inside could provide. (Museo Ostiense, Ostia,
Italy / Scala / Art Resource, NY.)
[44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
] The Emergence of Christianity in the Early Roman Empire 193
have as many years as possible to bear children. Because so many babies died young,
families had to produce numerous offspring to keep from disappearing. The tomb-
stone of Veturia, a soldier’s wife, tells a typical story: “Here I lie, having lived for
twenty-seven years. I was married to the same man for sixteen years and bore six
children, five of whom died before I did.”
The social pressure to bear numerous children created many health hazards for
women. Doctors possessed metal instruments for surgery and physical examinations,
but many were poorly educated former slaves with only informal training. There was
no official licensing of medical personnel. Complications in childbirth could easily
kill the mother because doctors and midwives could not stop internal bleeding or
cure infections. Romans controlled reproduction with contraception (by obstructing
the vagina or by administering drugs to the female partner) or by abandoning
unwanted infants.
The emperors tried to support reproduction. They gave money to feed needy
children, hoping they would grow up to have families. Wealthy people often adopted
children in their communities. One North
African man supported three hundred boys REVIEW QUESTION In the early Roman Empire,
and three hundred girls each year until what was life like in the cities and in the country
they grew up. for the elite and for ordinary people?
themselves faithful Jews and continued to follow the commandments of Jewish law.
Their leader was Peter, who won acclaim as the greatest miracle worker of the Apos-
tles, an ambassador to Jews interested in the Jesus movement, and the most impor-
tant messenger proclaiming Jesus’s teachings in the imperial capital. The later Chris-
tian church called him the first bishop of Rome.
A turning point came with the conversion of Paul of Tarsus (c. 10–65 c.e.), a
pious Jew and a Roman citizen who had violently opposed Jews who accepted Jesus
as the Messiah. A spiritual vision on the road to Damascus in Syria, which Paul
196 Chapter 6 The Creation of the Roman Empire
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]
interpreted as a divine revelation, inspired him to become a follower of Jesus as the
Messiah, or Christ — a Christian, as members of the movement came to be known.
Paul taught that accepting Jesus as divine and his crucifixion as the ultimate sacrifice
for the sins of humanity was the only way of becoming righteous in the eyes of God.
In this way alone could one expect to attain salvation in the new world to come. Paul’s
mission opened the way for Christianity to become a new religion separate from
Judaism.
Seeking converts outside Judaea, Paul traveled to preach to Jews and Gentiles
(non-Jews) who had adopted some Jewish practices in Asia Minor (today Turkey),
Syria, and Greece. Although he stressed the necessity of ethical behavior as defined
by Jewish tradition, especially the rejection of sexual immorality and polytheism,
Paul also taught that converts did not have to live strictly according to Jewish law.
To make conversion easier, he did not require male converts to undergo the Jewish
initiation rite of circumcision. He also told his congregations that they did not have
to observe Jewish dietary restrictions or festivals. These teachings generated tensions
with Jewish authorities in Jerusalem as well as with followers of Jesus living there,
who still believed that Christians had to follow Jewish law. Roman authorities arrested
Paul as a troublemaker and executed him in 65 c.e.
Hatred of Roman rule provoked Jews to revolt in 66 c.e. After crushing the
rebels in 70 c.e., the Roman emperor Titus destroyed the Jerusalem temple and sold
most of the city’s population into slavery. Following this catastrophe, which cost Jews
their religious center, Christianity began to separate more and more clearly from
Judaism. The destruction of the Jerusalem temple created a crisis for Judaism that
eventually led to a reorientation of its teachings and interpretations through Jewish
oral law being committed to writing.
Paul’s importance in early Christianity shows in the number of letters — thirteen —
attributed to him among the twenty-seven Christian writings that were eventually put
together as the New Testament. Christians came to regard the New Testament as
having equal authority with the Jewish Bible, which they then called the Old Testa-
ment. Since teachers like Paul preached mainly in the cities, congregations of Chris-
tians sprang up in urban areas. In early Christianity, women in some locations could
be leaders — such as Lydia, a businesswoman who founded the congregation in
Philippi in Greece — but many men, including Paul, opposed women’s leadership.
Roman law therefore granted them no special treatment, as it did Jews out of respect
for the great age of Judaism. Most Romans feared that Christians’ denial of the old
gods and the imperial cult would bring divine punishment upon the empire. Secret
rituals in which Christians symbolically ate the body and drank the blood of Jesus
during communal dinners, called Love Feasts, led to accusations of cannibalism and
sexual promiscuity.
Romans were quick to blame Christians for disasters. Nero declared that Chris-
tian arsonists set Rome’s great fire, and he covered Christians in animal skins to be
torn to pieces by dogs or fastened to crosses and set on fire at night. Nero’s cruelty,
however, earned Christians sympathy from Rome’s population.
Persecutions like Nero’s were infrequent. There was no law specifically prohibit-
ing Christianity, but officials could punish Christians, as they could anyone, to pro-
tect public order. Pliny’s actions as a provincial governor in Asia Minor illustrated
the situation. In about 112 c.e., Pliny asked a group of people accused of following
this new religion if they were really Christians. When some said yes, he asked them
to reconsider. He freed those who denied Christianity, so long as they sacrificed to
the gods, swore loyalty to the imperial cult, and cursed Christ. He executed those
who refused these actions. Christians argued that Romans had nothing to fear from
their faith. Christianity, they insisted, taught morality and respect for authority. It
was the true philosophy, combining the best features of Judaism and Greek thought.
The occasional persecutions in the early empire did not stop Christianity. Chris-
tians like Vibia Perpetua regarded public executions as an opportunity to become a
martyr (Greek for “witness”), someone who dies for his or her religious faith. Mar-
tyrs’ belief that their deaths would send them directly to paradise allowed them to
face torture. Some Christians actively sought to become martyrs. Tertullian (c. 160–
240 c.e.) proclaimed that “martyrs’ blood is the seed of the Church.” Ignatius (c. 35–
107 c.e.), bishop of Antioch, begged Rome’s congregation, which was becoming the
most prominent Christian group, not to ask the emperor to show him mercy after
his arrest: “Let me be food for the wild animals [in the arena] through which I can
reach God,” he pleaded. “I am God’s wheat, to be ground up by the teeth of beasts
so that I may be found pure bread of Christ.” Stories reporting the martyrs’ courage
showed that the new religion gave its believers spiritual power to endure suffering.
First-century c.e. Christians expected Jesus to return to pass judgment on the
world during their lifetimes. When that did not happen, they began transforming
their religion from an apocalyptic Jewish sect expecting the immediate end of the
world into one that could survive indefinitely. This transformation was painful
because early Christians fiercely disagreed about what they should believe, how they
should live, and who had the authority to decide these questions. Some insisted
Christians should withdraw from the everyday world to escape its evil, abandoning
their families and shunning sex and reproduction. Others believed they could follow
Christ’s teachings while living ordinary lives. Many Christians worried they could
not serve as soldiers without betraying their faith because the army participated in
the imperial cult. This dilemma raised the further issue of whether Christians could
198 Chapter 6 The Creation of the Roman Empire
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ea
Christian majority
cS
North
lti
Sea Ba Strong Christian minority
N
Christian minority
BRITAIN
W E Areas with few or no Christians
Borders of the Roman Empire
S
Danub
e
The missionary journeys of
.
Loire R Paul of Tarsus, 46–62 C.E.
R.
ATLANTIC GAUL
.
eR
Rhôn
OCEAN Ad
r
ITALY iatic Black Sea
Rome Se
a Philippi
Naples
SPAIN ASIA
Ephesus MINOR
Córdoba Sicily
Carthage Corinth Athens
Syracuse Tarsus Antioch
Cirta Me Crete Syria
dite Cyprus
rrane Tyre
an Sea
Cyrene Caesarea
Alexandria Jerusalem
NO RT H AF R I C A Palestine
EGYPT
0 250 500 miles
0 250 500 kilometers
remain loyal subjects of the emperor. Disagreement over these doctrinal questions
raged in the many congregations that arose in the early empire around the Mediter-
ranean, from Gaul to Africa to the Near East (Map 6.3).
The need to deal with such tensions, to administer the congregations, and to
promote spiritual communion among believers led Christians to create an official
hierarchy of men, headed by bishops. They spearheaded the drive to build the con-
nection between congregations and Christ that promised salvation to believers. Bish-
ops possessed authority to define Christian doctrine and administer practical affairs
for congregations. The emergence of bishops became the most important institu-
tional development in early Christianity. Bishops received their positions accord-
ing to the principle later called apostolic succession, which states that the Apostles
appointed the first bishops as their successors, granting these new officials the
authority Jesus had originally given to the Apostles. Those designated by the Apostles
in turn appointed their own successors. Bishops had authority to ordain ministers
with the holy power to administer the sacraments, above all baptism and commu-
[44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
] The Emergence of Christianity in the Early Roman Empire 199
nion, which believers regarded as necessary for achieving eternal life. Bishops also
controlled their congregations’ memberships and finances. The money financing the
early church came from members’ donations.
The bishops tried to suppress the disagreements that arose in the new religion.
They used their authority to define orthodoxy (true doctrine) and heresy (false doc-
trine). The meetings of the bishops of different cities constituted the church’s organi-
zation in this period. Today this loose organization is referred to as the early Catho-
lic (Greek for “universal”) church. Since the bishops often disagreed about doctrine
and about which bishops should have greater authority than others, unity remained
impossible to achieve.
When the male bishops came to power, they demoted women from positions of
leadership. This change reflected their view that in Christianity women should be sub-
ordinate to men, just as in Roman imperial society in general. Some congregations took
a long time to accept this shift, however, and women still claimed authority in some
groups in the second and third centuries c.e. In late-second-century c.e. Asia Minor,
for example, Prisca and Maximilla declared themselves prophetesses with the power
to baptize believers in anticipation of the coming end of the world. They spread the
apocalyptic message that the heavenly Jerusalem would soon descend in their region.
Excluded from leadership posts, many women chose a life without sex to demon-
strate their devotion to Christ. Their commitment to celibacy gave these women the
power to control their own bodies. Other Christians regarded women who reached
this special closeness to God as holy and socially superior. By rejecting the traditional
roles of wife and mother in favor of spiritual excellence, celibate Christian women
achieved independence and status otherwise denied them.
cults such as the mystery cults of Demeter and Persephone outside Athens remained
popular.
The cults of Isis and Mithras demonstrate how polytheism could provide a reli-
gious experience arousing strong emotions and demanding a moral way of life. The
Egyptian goddess Isis had already attracted Romans by the time of Augustus, who
tried to suppress her cult because it was Cleopatra’s religion. But the fame of Isis as
a kind, compassionate goddess who cared for her followers made her cult too popu-
lar to crush: the Egyptians said it was her tears for starving humans that caused the
Nile to flood every year and bring them good harvests. Her image was that of a loving
mother, and in art she was often depicted nursing her son. Her cult’s central doctrine
concerned the death and resurrection of her husband, Osiris. Isis also promised her
believers a life after death.
[44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
] The Emergence of Christianity in the Early Roman Empire 201
The increased demand for pay and supplies strained imperial finances. The army
had become a source of negative instead of positive cash flow to the treasury, and
the economy had not expanded to make up the difference. To make matters worse,
inflation had driven up prices. The principate’s long period of peace promoted infla-
tion by increasing demand for goods and services to a level that outstripped the
supply.
In desperation, some emperors attempted to curb inflation by debasing imperial
coinage. Debasement of coinage meant putting less precious metal in each coin and
adding more metal of less worth without changing the coin’s face value. In this way,
the emperors created more cash from the same amount of precious metal. But mer-
chants soon raised prices to make up for the debased coinage’s reduced value; this
in turn produced more inflation, causing prices to rise even more. Still, the soldiers
demanded that their patrons, the emperors, pay them well. This pressure drove impe-
rial finances into collapse by the 250s c.e.
Conclusion
Augustus created the principate and the Pax Romana by constructing a disguised
monarchy while insisting that he was restoring the republic. He succeeded by ensur-
ing the loyalty of both the army and the people to him by becoming their patron.
He bought off the upper class by letting them keep their traditional offices and status.
The imperial cult provided a focus for building and displaying loyalty to the emperor.
The emperors provided food to the poor, built baths and arenas for public enter-
tainment, paid their troops well, and gave privileges to the elite. By the second century,
206 Chapter 6 The Creation of the Roman Empire
[ 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
]
peace and prosperity created a Golden Age. Long-term financial difficulties set in,
however, because the army, now concentrating on defense, no longer brought in
money from conquests. Severe inflation made the situation desperate. Ruined by the
demand for more tax revenues, provincial elites lost their public-spiritedness and
avoided their communal responsibilities.
The emergence of Christianity generated tension because Romans doubted Chris-
tians’ loyalty. The new religion had evolved from Jewish apocalypticism to a hierar-
chical organization. Its believers argued with one another and with the authorities.
Martyrs such as Vibia Perpetua worried the government by placing their beliefs ahead
of loyalty to the state.
When financial ruin, natural disasters, and civil war combined to create a politi-
cal crisis in the mid-third century c.e., the emperors lacked the money and the
popular support to solve it. Not even their persecution of Christians had convinced
the gods to restore Rome’s good fortunes. Threatened with the loss of peace, pros-
perity, and territory, the empire needed a political transformation to survive. That
process began under the emperor Diocletian (r. 284–305 c.e.). Under his successor,
Constantine (r. 306–337 c.e.), the Roman Empire also began the slow process of
becoming officially Christian.
[ 44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
] Conclusion 207
N
Roman Empire
W E Principal trade routes
ea
cS
S Principal trade products:
lti
North
Sea Ba Grain
Wine
BRITAIN
Slaves
SAXONS FRANKS Olive oil
London
Cologne VANDALS Raids on the Roman Empire, c. 250–285
ALAMANNI
JUTHUNGI VISIGOTHS
JAZYGES GOTHS
CARPI
GAUL
ATLANTIC
OCEAN DACIA
Ad D a n u b e R.
ri Black Sea
Massilia ITALY atic
Se
a
Corsica Rome
Tarraco Byzantium
Athens Ephesus
Gades
Carthage Sicily Antioch
Me
dit Cyprus
erra Crete Palmyra
nean Damascus
Sea
Leptis
Magna Cyrene
SASANID
Caesarea
NORTH AFRICA EMPIRE
NOMADIC Alexandria
RAIDERS
Review Questions
1. How did the peace gained through Augustus’s “restoration of the Roman Republic” affect
Romans’ lives in all social classes?
2. In the early Roman Empire, what was life like in the cities and in the country for the elite
and for ordinary people?
3. Which aspects of social, cultural, and political life in the early Roman Empire supported
the growth of Christianity, and which opposed it?
4. What were the causes and the effects of the Roman crisis in the third century C.E.?
Making Connections
1. What were the similarities and differences between the crisis in the first century B.C.E. that
undermined the Roman Republic and the crisis in the third century C.E. that undermined
the principate?
2. If you had been a first-century Roman emperor under the principate, what would you have
done about the Christians and why? What if you had been a third-century emperor?
3. Do you think that the factors that caused the crisis in the Roman Empire could cause a
similar crisis in the Western world of today?
Suggested References
Scholars continue to debate the nature and the significance of the many social, cultural, and
(especially) religious changes that occurred under the early Roman Empire. Perhaps the most
difficult question to answer is to what extent life became better or worse for most people — and
indeed how to define better and worse in this context — once the empire stopped expanding into
new territories.
Ando, Clifford. The Matter of the Gods: Religion and the Roman Empire. 2008.
Challet, Claude-Emmanuelle C. Like Man, Like Woman: Roman Women, Gender Qualities, and
Conjugal Relationships at the Turn of the First Century. 2013.
Crossan, Dominic, and Jonathan Reed. In Search of Paul: How Jesus’s Apostle Opposed Rome’s
Empire with God’s Kingdom. 2005.
Dennison, Matthew. Livia: Empress of Rome. 2010.
Denzey, Nicola. The Bone Gatherers: The Lost Worlds of Early Christian Women. 2007.
*Futrell, Allison. The Roman Games: Historical Sources in Translation. 2006.
*Primary source.
208
[44 b.c.e.–284 c.e.
] Chapter 6 Review 209
Important Events
Consider three events: Great fire in Rome; Nero blames Christians (64 C.E.), New
Testament Gospels are written (70–90 C.E.), and Decius persecutes Christians (249–
251 C.E.). How were these events similar to and different from one another, and what
attitudes did they illustrate? How might polytheist and Christian ideas have contributed to
these events?
Galinsky, Karl, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus. 2005.
Goldsworthy, Adrian. The Complete Roman Army. 2003.
Green, Bernard. Christianity in Ancient Rome: The First Three Centuries. 2010.
Harris, W. V. Rome’s Imperial Economy. 2010.
*Kraemer, Ross Shephard. Her Share of the Blessings: Women’s Religion among Pagans, Jews,
and Christians in the Greco-Roman World. 1992.
*Marcus Aurelius. Meditations. Trans. Robin Hard. Intro. Christopher Gill. 2011.
Mattingly, David J. Imperialism, Power, and Identity: Experiencing the Roman Empire. 2010.
Matz, David. Life of the Ancient Romans: Daily Life through History. 2008.
Roman emperors: http://www.roman-emperors.org/startup.htm
*Suetonius. Lives of the Caesars. Trans. Catharine Edwards. 2009.
*Tacitus. The Complete Works. Trans. Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb. 1964.
The Transformation
7
of the Roman Empire
284 – 600 c.e.
A
round 300,* Emperor Diocletian (r. 284–305) proclaimed the reason why
the Roman Empire was endangered: “The immortal gods in their foresight
have taken care to proclaim and prescribe what is good and true, which the
sayings of many good and distinguished men have approved and confirmed, along
with the reasoned judgments of the wisest.
Vandal General Stilicho
It is wrong to oppose and resist these tradi-
and His Family tions, and a new cult should not find fault
This diptych (“folding tablet”) made of with ancient religion. It is a serious crime to
ivory around 400 shows Stilicho, the question matters that our ancestors estab-
top general in the Roman army in lished and fixed once and for all. . . . There-
Europe and close adviser to the western
fore, we are eager to punish the obstinate
Roman emperor, with his wife, Serena,
and their son Eucherius. Stilicho’s life and perverse thinking of these utterly worth-
reveals the mixing of cultures in the less people.”
later Roman Empire: his father was Diocletian had ended the third-century
from the Vandal tribe in Germany, and political crisis and kept the Roman Empire
his mother was Roman; he himself rose
from breaking into warring parts by appoint-
to prominence in Roman imperial gov-
ernment and society. Serena was the
ing a co-emperor and two assistant emper-
adoptive daughter of the emperor, and ors. Still, suspicions endured that nontradi-
Stilicho and Serena’s daughter Maria tional worshippers were responsible for the
married the emperor’s son. Stilicho is divine anger that, everyone believed, had
shown dressed in the richly decorated sent the crisis. Diocletian convinced his
clothing appropriate for a member of
co-rulers first to persecute the pagan Mani-
the Roman elite, and he wears a metal
clasp to fasten his robe, a symbol of chaeans (followers of the Iranian prophet
his father’s ethnicity. The images on his Mani and the objects of his proclamation)
shield of the two emperors then ruling and then the Christians. His successor
the divided Roman Empire proclaim his Constantine (r. 306–337) ended the perse-
loyalty even as they point to the political
cution by converting to Christianity and
and geographic fragmentation of the
time. (Basilica di San Giovanni Battista, Monza,
Italy / Bridgeman Images.) *From this point on, dates are c.e. unless otherwise
indicated.
211
212 Chapter 7 The Transformation of the Roman Empire
[ 284–600 c.e.
]
supporting his new faith with imperial funds and a policy of religious freedom.
Nevertheless, it took a century more for Christianity to become the state religion.
The social and cultural transformations produced by the Christianization of the
Roman Empire came slowly because many Romans clung to their ancestral beliefs.
Diocletian’s reform of government only postponed the division of imperial terri-
tory. In 395, Emperor Theodosius I split the empire in two to try to provide better
defense against the barbarians pressing into Roman territory, especially from the
north. He appointed one of his sons to rule the west and the other the east. The two
emperors were supposed to cooperate, but in the long run this system of divided
rule could not cope with the different pressures affecting the two regions.
In the western Roman Empire, military and political events provoked social and
cultural change when barbarian immigrants began living side by side with Romans.
Both groups underwent changes: the barbarians created kingdoms and laws based
on Roman traditions yet adopted Christianity, and the wealthy Romans fled from
cities to seek safety in country estates when the western government became inef-
fective. These changes in turn transformed the political landscape of western Europe
in ways that foreshadowed the later development of nations there. In the east, how-
ever, the empire lived on for another thou-
sand years, passing on the memory of clas-
CHAPTER FOCUS What were the most impor-
sical traditions to later Western civilization.
tant sources of unity and of division in the
Roman Empire from the reign of Diocletian to The eastern half endured as the continu-
the reign of Justinian, and why? ation of the Roman Empire until Turkish
invaders conquered it in 1453.
through the ranks until the army made him emperor in 284. He ended a half a century
of civil war by imposing the most autocratic system of rule in Roman history.
Historians refer to Roman rule from Diocletian onward as the dominate because
he took the title dominus (“lord” or “master”) — what slaves called their owners. The
emperors of the dominate continued to refer to their government as the Roman
Republic, but in truth they ruled autocratically. This new system eliminated the prin-
cipate’s ideal of the princeps (“first man”) as the social equal of the senators. The
emperors of the dominate now recognized no equals. The offices of senator, consul,
and other traditional positions continued, but only as posts of honor. These officials
had the responsibility to pay for public services, especially chariot races and festivals,
but no power to govern. Imperial administrators were increasingly chosen from
lower ranks of society according to their competence and their loyalty to the emperor.
The dominate’s emperors took ideas for emphasizing their superiority from the
Sasanids in Persia, whose empire (224–651) they recognized as equal to their own
in power and whose king and queen they addressed as “our brother” and “our sister.”
The Roman Empire’s masters broadcast their majesty by surrounding themselves with
courtiers and ceremony, presiding from a raised platform, and sparkling in jeweled
crowns, robes, and shoes. Constantine took from Persia the tradition that emperors
set themselves apart by wearing a diadem, a purple gem-studded headband. In another
echo of Persian monarchy, a series of veils separated the palace’s waiting rooms from
the interior room where the emperor listened to people’s pleas for help or justice.
Officials marked their rank by wearing special shoes and belts and claiming grandi-
ose titles such as “Most Perfect.”
The dominate’s emperors also asserted their supreme power through laws and
punishments. They alone made law. To impose order, they raised punishments to
brutal levels. New punishments included Constantine’s order that the “greedy hands”
of officials who took bribes “shall be cut off by the sword.” The guardians of a young
girl who allowed a lover to seduce her were executed by having molten lead poured
into their mouths. Penalties grew ever harsher for the majority of the population,
legally designated as “humbler people,” who were punished more severely than the
“better people” for comparable offenses. In this way, the dominate strengthened the
divisions between ordinary people and the rich.
Diocletian appointed three “partners” (a co-emperor, Maximian, and two assis-
tant emperors, Constantius and Galerius, who were the designated successors) to
join him in ruling the empire in a tetrarchy (“rule by four”). Each ruler controlled
one of four districts. Diocletian served as supreme ruler and was supposed to receive
the loyalty of the others. He also created smaller administrative units, called dioceses,
under separate governors, who reported to the four emperors’ assistants, the prae-
torian prefects (Map 7.1). This system was Diocletian’s attempt to put imperial gov-
ernment into closer contact with the empire’s frontier regions, where the dangers of
invasion and rebellious troops loomed.
Diocletian’s reforms ended Rome’s thousand years as the empire’s most impor-
tant city. Diocletian did not even visit Rome until 303, nearly twenty years after
214 Chapter 7 The Transformation of the Roman Empire
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]
a
Se
c District of Constantius
North lt i
Sea Ba N District of Maximian
District of Galerius
BRITANNIAE W E
District of Diocletian
S ITALIA Dioceses and boundary
BRITAIN
GERMANIC
Rh
District capitals
ine
PEOPLES
Trier .R
Ravenna Sirmium
OCEAN
VIENNENSIS DA Da n u b e R .
ITALIA LM
AT BA L K A N M T S .
IA Black Sea
Nursia
Corsica Rome MOESIAE THRACIA
Byzantium
Thessalonika Chalcedon ARMENIA
SPAIN Nicomedia
Sardinia MACEDONIA Nicaea
PONTICA
E
ASIANA Caesarea
ANIA
Athens
Ephesus Tyana
M
Hippo Carthage
ES
HISP
O
Antioch
PO
Med Crete SYRIA
TA
AFRICA iterra Cyprus
M
nean Sea ORIENS
IA
PALESTINE
Bethlehem
Alexandria
ARABIA
EGYPT
0 250 500 miles
Ni
becoming emperor. Italy became just another section of the empire, now subject to
the same taxation as everywhere else.
Diocletian resigned in 305 for unknown reasons, after which rivals for power
abandoned the tetrarchy and fought a civil war until 324, when Constantine finally
won. At the end of his reign in 337, Constantine designated his three sons to rule as
co-emperors. Failing to cooperate, they waged war against one another.
Constantine’s warring sons unofficially split the empire on a north–south line
along the Balkan peninsula, a division that Theodosius made permanent in 395. In the
long run, the empire’s halves would be governed largely as separate territories despite
the emperors’ insistence that the empire remained one state.
[284–600 c.e.
] From Principate to Dominate in the Late Roman Empire, 284–395 215
PANNONIAE
0 100 200 miles Each half had its own capital city. Constanti-
0 200 kilometers nople (“Constantine’s City”) — formerly the ancient
ILLYRIA D a nu b e R . city of Byzantium (today Istanbul, Turkey) — was
Ravenna
the eastern capital. Constantine made it his capi-
ITALIA THRACIA tal, a “new Rome,” because of its strategic military
MOESIAE
Constantinople and commercial location: it lay at the mouth of the
Black Sea guarding principal routes for trade and
Sicily troop movements. To recall the glory of Rome,
Line of division
Constantine constructed a forum, an imperial pal-
between east and west
Crete ace, a hippodrome for chariot races, and monumen-
Mediterranean Sea
tal statues of the traditional gods in his refounded
city. Constantinople grew to be the most impor-
EGYPT tant city in the Roman Empire.
AFRICA ITALIA Dioceses
Honorius, Theodosius’s son and successor in the
west, wanted a headquarters that was easy to defend.
The Empire’s East/West
Division, 395
In 404, he chose the port of Ravenna, a commercial
center on Italy’s northeastern coast housing a naval
base. Marshes and walls protected Ravenna by land, while its harbor kept it from being
starved out in a siege. Though the emperors enhanced Ravenna with churches covered
in multicolored mosaics, it never rivaled Constantinople in size or splendor.
ishing small farmers. Financial troubles, especially severe in the west, kept the empire
from ever regaining the prosperity of its Golden Age.
want to associate with such people? In short, as the Greek philosopher Porphyry
argued, Christians had no right to claim they possessed the sole version of religious
truth, for no one had ever discovered a doctrine that provided “the sole path to the
liberation of the soul.”
The slow pace of Christianization revealed how strong polytheism remained in
this period, especially at the highest social levels. In fact, the emperor known as
Julian the Apostate (r. 361–363) rebelled against his family’s Christianity — the word
apostate means “renegade from the faith” — by trying to reverse official support of
the new religion in favor of his own less traditional and more philosophical inter-
pretation of polytheism. Like Christians, he believed in a supreme deity, but he based
his religious beliefs on Greek philosophy when he said, “This divine and completely
beautiful universe, from heaven’s highest arch to earth’s lowest limit, is tied together
by the continuous providence of god, has existed ungenerated eternally, and is imper-
ishable forever.”
Emperors after Julian provided financial support for Christianity, dropped the
title pontifex maximus, and stopped paying for sacrifices. Symmachus (c. 340–402),
a polytheist senator who also served as prefect (mayor) of Rome, objected to the
suppression of religious diversity: “We all have our own way of life and our own way
of worship. . . . So vast a mystery cannot be approached by only one path.”
Christianity officially replaced polytheism as the state religion in 391 when
Theodosius I (r. 379–395) enforced a ban on privately funded polytheist sacrifices.
In 395, he also announced that all polytheist temples had to close. Nevertheless, some
famous shrines, such as the Parthenon in Athens, remained open for a long time.
Pagan temples were gradually converted to churches during the fifth and sixth cen-
turies. Non-Christian schools were not forced to close — the Academy, founded by
Plato in Athens in the early fourth century b.c.e., endured for 140 years more.
Jews posed a special problem for the Christian emperors. They seemed entitled
to special treatment because Jesus had been a Jew. Previous emperors had allowed
Jews to practice their religion, but the rulers now imposed legal restrictions. They
banned Jews from holding office but still required them to assume the financial
burdens of curials without the status. By the late sixth century, the law barred Jews
from marrying Christians, making wills, receiving inheritances, or testifying in
court.
These restrictions began the long process that turned Jews into second-class citi-
zens in later European history, but they did not destroy Judaism. Magnificent syna-
gogues had been built in Palestine, though most Jews had been dispersed throughout
the cities of the empire and the lands to the east. Written Jewish teachings and
interpretations proliferated in this period, culminating in the vast fifth-century c.e.
texts known as the Palestinian and the Babylonian Talmuds (learned opinions on
the Mishnah, a collection of Jewish law) and the Midrash (commentaries on parts
of Hebrew Scripture).
As the official religion, Christianity attracted more believers, especially in the mili-
tary. Soldiers could convert and still serve in the army. Previously, some Christians
220 Chapter 7 The Transformation of the Roman Empire
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]
N
Extent of Christianity, c. 300 C.E.
W
Extent of Christianity, 300–600 C.E.
BRITAIN
a
E
Se
N ort h Monastic community
S Sea ti
c
IRELAND l Expansion of monasticism, 4th–6th centuries C.E.
Ba
Canterbury
Rhi
Do
n R.
Cologne ne Vol
R GERMANIC Dni ga
Paris . eper R.
ATLANTIC Tours PEOPLES R.
OCEAN
GAUL ILLYRIA
Ca
CAU
R.
sp
Milan CAS
ia
Rhône
Po R . Ravenna US
n
.
R MT
Se
E Narbonne Marseille DA D anube Bl ac k S e a
S.
a
L M Sinope
THRACE
br
IA Chalcedon
R.
Tig
Hippo Carthage Corinth Athens MINOR Antioch SO
ris
Sicily PO
TA
R.
Syracuse M
SYRIA IA Ctesiphon
Seleucia
Crete Cyprus Damascus
Tyre Eup
Mediterranean Sea hrates R.
Caesarea Nazareth
Leptis
NORTH AFRICA Magna Cyrene PALESTINE
Alexandria Jerusalem
Bethlehem
Memphis AR ABIA
0 200 400 miles EGYPT
N ile
Re
0 200 400 kilometers R.
dS
ea
had felt a conflict between the military oath and their allegiance to Christ. Once the
emperors were Christians, however, soldiers viewed military duty as serving Christ’s
regime.
Christianity’s social values contributed to its appeal by offering believers a strong
sense of shared identity and community. When Christians traveled, they could find
a warm welcome in the local congregation (Map 7.2). The faith also won converts
by promoting the tradition of charitable works characteristic of Judaism and some
polytheist cults, which emphasized caring for poor people, widows, and orphans. By
the mid-third century, Rome’s Christian congregation was supporting fifteen hun-
dred widows and poor people.
[
284–600 c.e.
] The Official Christianization of the Empire, 312–c. 540 221
Women were deeply involved in the new faith. Augustine (354–430), bishop
of Hippo in North Africa and perhaps the most influential theologian in Western
civilization, recognized women’s contribution to the strengthening of Christianity in
a letter he wrote to the unbaptized husband of a baptized woman: “O you men, who
fear all the burdens imposed by baptism! Your women easily best you. Chaste and
devoted to the faith, it is their presence in large numbers that causes the church to
grow.” Women could earn respect by giving their property to their congregation or
by renouncing marriage to dedicate themselves to Christ. Consecrated virgins reject-
ing marriage and widows refusing to remarry joined donors of large amounts of
money as especially admired women. Their choices challenged the traditional social
order, in which women were supposed to devote themselves to raising families. Even
these sanctified women, however, were largely excluded from leadership positions as
the church’s hierarchy came more closely to resemble the male-dominated world of
imperial rule. There were still some women leaders in the church even in the fourth
century, but they were a small minority.
The hierarchy of male bishops replaced early Christianity’s relatively loose com-
munal organization, in which women held leadership posts. Over time, the bishops
replaced the curials as the emperors’ partners in local rule, taking control of the dis-
tribution of imperial subsidies to the people. Regional councils of bishops appointed
new bishops and addressed doctrinal disputes. Bishops in the largest cities became
the most powerful leaders in the church. The bishop of Rome eventually emerged
as the church’s supreme leader in the western empire, claiming for himself a title
previously applied to many bishops: pope (from pappas, a child’s word for “father”
in Greek), the designation still used for the head of the Roman Catholic church.
Christians in the eastern empire never conceded this title to the bishop of Rome.
The bishops of Rome claimed they had leadership over other bishops on the
basis of the New Testament, where Jesus addresses Peter, his head apostle: “You are
Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church. . . . I will entrust to you the keys
of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.
Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 16:18–19). Noting
that Peter’s name in Greek means “rock” and that Peter had founded the Roman
church, bishops in Rome eventually argued that they had the right to command the
church as Peter’s successors.
that God the Father begot (created) his son Jesus from nothing and gave him his
special status. Thus, Jesus was not identical with God the Father and was, in fact,
dependent on him. Arianism found widespread support — the emperor Valens and
his barbarian opponents were Arian Christians. Many people found Arianism appeal-
ing because it eliminated the difficulty of understanding how a son could be the
equal of his father and because its subordination of son to father corresponded to
the norms of family life. Arius used popular songs to make his views known, and
people everywhere became engaged in the controversy. “When you ask for your
change from a shopkeeper,” one observer remarked in describing Constantinople,
“he harangues you about the Begotten and the Unbegotten. If you inquire how much
bread costs, the reply is that ‘the Father is superior and the Son inferior.’ ”
Disputes such as this led Constantine to try to determine religious truth. In 325,
he convened 220 bishops at the Council of Nicaea to discuss Arianism. The majority
voted to banish Arius to the Balkans and declared in the Nicene Creed that the
Father and the Son were homoousion (“of one substance”) and co-eternal. So difficult
were the issues, however, that Constantine later changed his mind twice, first recall-
ing Arius from exile and then reproaching him again not long after.
Numerous other disputes divided believers. Orthodoxy taught that Jesus’s divine
and human natures commingled within his person but remained distinct. Monophy-
sites (a Greek term for “single-nature believers”) argued that the divine took prece-
dence over the human in Jesus and that he therefore had essentially only a single
nature. They split from the orthodox hierarchy in the sixth century to found inde-
pendent churches in Egypt (the Coptic church), Ethiopia, Syria, and Armenia.
Nestorius, made bishop of Constantinople in 428, argued that Mary, in giving
birth to Jesus, had produced the human being who became the temple for God
dwelling within him. Nestorianism therefore offended Christians who accepted the
designation of theotokos (Greek for “bearer of God”) for Mary. The bishops of Alex-
andria and Rome had Nestorius deposed and his doctrines officially rejected at coun-
cils held in 430 and 431. Nestorian bishops then established a separate church cen-
tered in the Persian Empire, where for centuries Nestorian Christians flourished
under the tolerance of non-Christian rulers. They later became important agents of
cultural diffusion by establishing communities that still endure in Arabia, India, and
China.
The heresy of Donatism best illustrates the ferocity that Christian disputes could
generate. A conflict erupted in North Africa over whether to readmit to their old
congregations Christians who had cooperated with imperial authorities during the
Great Persecution. The Donatists (followers of the North African priest Donatus)
insisted that the church should not be polluted with such “traitors.” So bitter was the
clash that it even broke apart Christian families. One son threatened his mother, “I
will join Donatus’s followers, and I will drink your blood.”
A council organized in Chalcedon (a suburb of Constantinople) in 451 to settle
the still-raging disagreement over Nestorius’s views was the most important attempt
to clarify orthodoxy. The conclusions of the Council of Chalcedon form the basis of
224 Chapter 7 The Transformation of the Roman Empire
[ 284–600 c.e.
]
the doctrine of most Christians in the West today. At the time, however, it failed to
create unanimity, especially in the eastern empire, where Monophysites flourished.
By around 500, Augustine and other influential theologians such as Ambrose
(c. 339–397) and Jerome (c. 345–420) earned the informal title church fathers because
their views were cited as authoritative in disputes over orthodoxy. Augustine became
the most famous of this group of patristic (from pater, Greek for “father”) authors,
[284–600 c.e.
] The Official Christianization of the Empire, 312–c. 540 225
and for the next thousand years his many works would be the most influential texts
in western Christianity aside from the Bible.
In The City of God, Augustine expressed his views on the need for order in
human life and asserted that the basic human dilemma lay in the conflict between
desiring earthly pleasures and desiring spiritual purity. Emotion, especially love, was
natural and commendable, but only when directed toward God. Humans were mis-
guided to look for any value in life on earth. Only life in God’s eternal city at the
end of time had meaning.
Nevertheless, Augustine wrote, law and government are required on earth
because humans are imperfect. God’s original creation was perfect, but after Adam
and Eve disobeyed God, humans lost their initial perfection and inherited a perma-
nently flawed nature. According to this doctrine of original sin — a subject of theo-
logical debate since at least the second century — Adam and Eve’s disobedience
passed down to human beings a hereditary moral disease that made the human will
a divisive force. This corruption necessitated governments that could suppress evil.
The state therefore had a duty to compel people to remain loyal to the church, by
force if necessary.
Christians, he argued, had a duty to obey the emperor and participate in political
life. Soldiers, too, had to follow their orders. Order was so essential, Augustine
argued, that it even justified what he admitted was the unjust institution of slavery.
Although he detested slavery, he believed it was a lesser evil than the social disorder
that he thought its abolition would create.
In The City of God, Augustine argued that history has a divine purpose, even if
people could not see it. History progressed toward an ultimate goal, but only God
knew the meaning of his creation:
To be truthful, I myself fail to understand why God created mice and frogs,
flies and worms. Nevertheless, I recognize that each of these creatures is
beautiful in its own way. For when I contemplate the body and limbs of any
living creature, where do I not find proportion, number, and order exhibit-
ing the unity of concord? Where one discovers proportion, number, and
order, one should look for the craftsman.
The question of how to understand and regulate sexual desire perplexed Chris-
tians in the search for religious truth. Augustine wrote that sex trapped human
beings in evil and that they should therefore strive for asceticism, the practice of
self-denial and spiritual discipline. Augustine knew from personal experience how
difficult it was to accept this doctrine. In his autobiographical work Confessions,
written about 397, he described the deep conflict he felt between his sexual desires
and his religious beliefs. Only after a long period of reflection and doubt, he wrote,
did he find the inner strength to commit to chastity as part of his conversion to
Christianity.
226 Chapter 7 The Transformation of the Roman Empire
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He advocated sexual abstinence as the highest course for Christians because he
believed that Adam and Eve’s disobedience had forever ruined the perfect harmony
God created between the human will and human passions. According to Augustine,
God punished his disobedient children by making sexual desire a disruptive force
that human will would always struggle to control. He reaffirmed the value of mar-
riage in God’s plan, but he insisted that sexual intercourse even between loving
spouses carried the unhappy reminder of humanity’s fall from grace. Reproduction,
not pleasure, was the only acceptable reason for sex.
This doctrine ennobled virginity and sexual renunciation as the highest virtues.
By the end of the fourth century, Christians valued virginity so highly that congrega-
tions began to request virgin ministers and bishops.
healing. The power associated with the relics of saints (people venerated after their
deaths for their holiness) gave believers faith in divine favor.
In about 323, an Egyptian Christian named Pachomius organized the first
monastic community, establishing the tradition of single-sex settlements of male or
female monks. This communal monasticism dominated Christian asceticism ever
after. Communities of men and women were often built close together to share labor,
with women making clothing, for example, while men farmed.
Some monasteries imposed military-style discipline, but there were large differ-
ences in the degree of control of the monks and the extent of contact allowed with
the outside world. Some groups strove for complete self-sufficiency and strict rules
to avoid transactions with outsiders. Basil of Caesarea (c. 330–379), in Asia Minor,
started an alternative tradition of monasteries in service to society. Basil (later dubbed
“the Great”) required monks to perform charitable deeds, especially ministering to
228 Chapter 7 The Transformation of the Roman Empire
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]
the sick, a development that led to the foundation of the first hospitals, which were
attached to monasteries.
A milder code of monastic conduct became the standard in the west beginning
about 540. Called the Benedictine rule after its creator, Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–
553), it mandated the monastery’s daily routine of prayer, scriptural readings, and
manual labor. This was the first time in Greek and Roman history that physical work
was seen as noble, even godly. The rule divided the day into seven parts, each with
a compulsory service of prayers and lessons, called the office. Unlike the harsh regula-
tions of other monastic communities, Benedict’s code did not isolate the monks from
the outside world or deprive them of sleep, adequate food, or warm clothing. Although
it gave the abbot (the head monk) full authority, it instructed him to listen to other
members of the community before deciding important matters. He was not allowed
to beat disobedient monks. Communities of women, such as those founded by Basil’s
sister Macrina and Benedict’s sister Scholastica, generally followed the rules of the
male monasteries, with an emphasis on the decorum thought necessary for women.
Monastic piety held special appeal for women and the rich because women could
achieve greater status and respect for their holiness than ordinary life allowed them,
and the rich could win fame on earth and hope for favor in heaven by endowing
monasteries with large gifts of money. Jerome wrote, “[As monks,] we evaluate
people’s virtue not by their gender but by their character, and judge those to be
worthy of the greatest glory who have renounced both status and riches.” Some
monks did not choose their life; monasteries took in children from parents who
could not raise them or who, in a practice called oblation, gave them up to fulfill
pious vows. Jerome once advised a mother regarding her young daughter:
Let her be brought up in a monastery, let her live among virgins, let her learn
to avoid swearing, let her regard lying as an offense against God, let her be
ignorant of the world, let her live the angelic life, while in the flesh let her be
without the flesh, and let her suppose that all human beings are like herself.
When the girl reached adulthood as a virgin, he added, she should avoid the baths
so that she would not be seen naked or give her body pleasure by dipping in the
warm pools. Jerome emphasized traditional values favoring males when he promised
that God would reward the mother with the birth of sons in compensation for the
dedication of her daughter.
Monasteries could come into conflict with the church leadership. Bishops
resented members of their congregations who withdrew into monasteries, especially
because they then gave money and property to their new community instead of to
their local churches. Monks represented a threat to bishops’ authority because holy
men and women earned their special sta-
REVIEW QUESTION How did Christianity both
tus not by having it bestowed from the
unite and divide the Roman Empire? church hierarchy but through their own
actions.
[
284–600 c.e.
] Non-Roman Kingdoms in the Western Roman Empire, c. 370–550s 229
The first non-Roman group that created a new identity and society inside the
empire were barbarians from the north. Their history illustrates the pattern of the
migrations: desperate barbarians in barely organized groups with no uniform ethnic
identity, who sought protection in the Roman Empire in return for military service
but were brutalized, and then rebelled to form their own, new kingdom. Abused by
the officers of the emperor Valens, these barbarians defeated and killed him at the
battle of Adrianople in 378 (Map 7.3).
Dnieper
LOMBARDS
Rhi
358
ne
HUNS
Rouen
R.
375
ATLANTIC 406
R
486 340
.
OSTROGOTHS
Paris 400
OCEAN 451 –50 VANDALS
0
L oir
HUNS
eR
.
Lyon 568
409 Da
489 nub
452 e R.
Ravenna VISIGOTHS
397 Bla ck Sea
Toulouse Ad 375
410 ria Adrianople
Corsica tic 378 378
Rome Se
a THRACE Constantinople
418 455 Nicaea
Sardinia
395 EASTERN
ROMAN EMPIRE Eu p
Ephesus
Sicily
hr
Hippo ate
s R.
Carthage
429 439
Cyprus
Crete
Me d iterranean S ea
NORTH AFRICA
MAP 7.3 Migrations and Invasions of the Fourth and Fifth Centuries
The movements of non-Roman peoples into imperial territory transformed the Roman Empire.
These migrations had begun as early as the reign of Domitian (r. 81–96), but in the fourth cen-
tury they increased greatly when the Huns’ attacks pushed numerous barbarian bands into the
empire’s northern provinces. Print maps offer only a static representation of dynamic processes
such as movements of populations, but this map helps illustrate the variety of peoples involved,
the wide extent of imperial territory that they affected, and their prominence in the western
empire.
232 Chapter 7 The Transformation of the Roman Empire
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When the emperor Theodosius died in 395, the barbarians whom he had allowed
to settle in the empire rebelled. United by the Gothic chief Alaric into a tribe known
as the Visigoths, they fought their way into the western empire. In 410, they stunned
the world by sacking Rome itself. For the first time since the Gauls eight hundred
years before, a foreign force occupied the ancient capital. They terrorized the popula-
tion: “What will be left to us?” the Romans asked when Alaric demanded all the
citizens’ goods. “Your lives,” he replied.
Too weak to fend off the invaders, the western emperor Honorius in 418 reluc-
tantly agreed to settle the newcomers in southwestern Gaul (present-day France),
where they completed their unprecedented transition from tribe to kingdom, orga-
nizing a political state and creating their identity as Visigoths. They had no prece-
dents to follow from their previous existence, so they adapted the only model avail-
able: Roman tradition, including a code of written law. The Visigoths established
mutually beneficial relations with local Roman elites, who used time-tested ways of
flattering their new superiors to gain advantages. Sidonius Apollinaris (c. 430–479),
for example, a well-connected noble from Lyon, once purposely lost a backgammon
game to the Visigothic king as a way of winning a favor.
How the new non-Roman kingdoms raised revenues is uncertain. Did the new-
comers become landlords by forcing Roman property owners to redistribute a por-
tion of their lands, slaves, and movable property as “ransom” to them? Or did
Romans directly pay the expenses of the kingdom’s soldiers, who lived mostly in
urban garrisons? Whatever the new arrangements were, the Visigoths found them
profitable enough to expand into Spain within a century of establishing themselves
in southwestern Gaul.
The western government’s concessions to the Visigoths led other groups to seize
territory and create new kingdoms and identities. In 406, the Vandals cut a swath
through Gaul all the way to the Spanish coast. (The modern word vandal, meaning
“destroyer of property,” perpetuates their reputation for destruction.)
In 429, eighty thousand Vandals ferried to North Africa, where they broke their
agreement to become federate allies with the western empire and captured the region.
They crippled the western empire by seizing North Africa’s tax payments of grain
and vegetable oil and disrupting the importation of food to Rome. They threatened
the eastern empire with their navy and in 455 sailed to Rome, plundering the city.
Back in the Roman province of Africa, the Vandals caused tremendous hardship for
local people by confiscating property rather than allowing owners to make regular
payments on the land. As Arian Christians, they persecuted North African Chris-
tians whose doctrines they considered heresy.
Small non-Roman groups took advantage of the disruption caused by bigger
bands to break off distant pieces of the empire. The Anglo-Saxons, for example, were
composed of Angles from what is now Denmark and Saxons from northwestern
Germany. This mixed group invaded Britain in the 440s after the Roman army had
been recalled from the province to defend Italy against the Visigoths. The Anglo-
[284–600 c.e.
] Non-Roman Kingdoms in the Western Roman Empire, c. 370–550s 233
Saxons captured territory from the local Celtic peoples and the remaining Roman
inhabitants. Gradually, their culture replaced the local traditions of the island’s east-
ern regions. The Celts there lost most of their language, and Christianity gave way
to Anglo-Saxon beliefs except in Wales and Ireland. Another barbarian group, the
Ostrogoths, carved out a kingdom in Italy in the fifth century. By the time their king
Theodoric (r. 493–526) came to power, there had not been a western Roman emperor
for nearly twenty years, and there never would be again.
The details of the change in the later fifth century that has traditionally, but
simplistically, been called the fall of the Roman Empire reveal the complexity of the
political transformation of the western empire under the new kingdoms. The weak-
ness of the western emperors’ army had obliged them to hire foreign officers to lead
the defense of Italy. By the middle of the fifth century, one non-Roman general after
another had come to decide who would serve as a puppet emperor under his
control.
The last such unfortunate puppet was only a child. His father, a former aide to
Attila, tried to establish a royal house by proclaiming his young son as western
emperor in 475. He gave the boy ruler the name Romulus Augustulus (“Romulus
the Little Augustus”) to match his young age and to recall both Rome’s founder and
its first emperor. In 476, following a dispute over pay, the boy emperor’s non-Roman
soldiers murdered his father and deposed him. Little Augustus was given refuge and
a pension. The rebels’ leader, Odoacer, had the Roman Senate petition Zeno, the
eastern emperor, to recognize his leadership in return for his acknowledging Zeno
as sole emperor over west and east. Odoacer thereafter oversaw Italy nominally as
the eastern emperor’s subordinate, but he ruled on his own.
Theodoric established the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy by eliminating Odoacer.
He and his nobles wanted to enjoy the luxurious life of the empire’s elite and to
preserve the empire’s prestige; they therefore left the Senate and consulships intact.
An Arian Christian, Theodoric announced a policy of religious freedom. Like the
other non-Romans, the Ostrogoths adopted and adapted Roman traditions that sup-
ported the stability of their own rule.
The Franks were especially significant in the reshaping of the western Roman
Empire because they transformed Roman Gaul into Francia (from which comes the
name France). In 507, their king Clovis (r. 485–511), with support from the eastern
Roman emperor, overthrew the Visigothic king in Gaul. When the emperor named
Clovis an honorary consul, Clovis celebrated this honor by having himself crowned
with a diadem in the style of the emperors. He established western Europe’s largest
new kingdom in what is today mostly France, overshadowing the neighboring and
rival kingdoms of the Burgundians and Alemanni in eastern Gaul. Probably per-
suaded by his wife, Clotilda, a Christian, to believe that God had helped him defeat
the Alemanni, Clovis proclaimed himself an orthodox Christian and renounced Ari-
anism. To build stability, he carefully fostered good relations with the bishops as the
regime’s intermediaries with the population.
234 Chapter 7 The Transformation of the Roman Empire
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]
Clovis’s dynasty, called Merovingian after the legendary Frankish ancestor Mer-
ovech, endured for another two hundred years, foreshadowing the kingdom that
would emerge much later as the forerunner of modern France. The Merovingians
survived so long because they successfully combined their own traditions of military
bravery with Roman social and legal traditions. In addition, their location in far
western Europe kept them out of the reach of the destructive invasions sent against
Italy by the eastern emperor Justinian in the sixth century to reunite the Roman
world.
At the start I wanted to erase the Romans’ name and turn their land into a
Gothic empire, doing myself what Augustus had done. But I have learned
that the Goths’ freewheeling wildness will never accept the rule of law, and
that state with no law is no state. Thus, I have more wisely chosen another
path to glory: reviving the Roman name with Gothic vigor. I pray that future
generations will remember me as the founder of a Roman restoration.
retinue brought a massive fine of six hundred gold coins, enough to buy six hundred
cattle. A woman past childbearing age (specified as sixty years), a young girl, or a
freeborn man was valued at two hundred gold coins. Ordinary slaves rated
thirty-five.
The migrations of new groups into Roman territory had the unintended conse-
quence of harming the empire’s already weakened economy. The Vandals’ violence
battered many towns in Gaul, hastening a decline in urban population. In the coun-
tryside, now beyond the control of any central government, wealthy Romans built
sprawling villas on extensive estates, staffed by tenants bound to the land like slaves.
These establishments aimed to operate as self-sufficient units by producing all they
needed, defending themselves against barbarian raids, and keeping their distance
from any authorities. The owners shunned municipal offices and tax collection, the
public services that had supplied the lifeblood of Roman administration. Provincial
government slowly disappeared.
and hippodromes on these lively occasions. Chariot racing aroused the hottest pas-
sions. Constantinople’s residents divided themselves into competitive factions called
Blues and Greens after the racing colors of their favorite charioteers. Emperors some-
times backed one gang or the other to intimidate potential rivals.
The eastern emperors worked to maintain Roman tradition and identity, believ-
ing that “Romanness” was the best defense against what they saw as the barbarization
of the western empire. They hired foreign mercenaries but also tried to keep their
subjects from adopting foreign ways. The emperors ordered Constantinople’s resi-
dents not to wear barbarian-style clothing (especially heavy boots and furs, which
the chariot racing fans favored) instead of traditional Roman attire (sandals or light
shoes and cloth robes).
The emperors’ push for cultural unity was doomed to failure because everyday
society in the eastern empire was widely multilingual and multiethnic. The inhabit-
ants referred to themselves as Romans, but most of them spoke Greek as their native
language and used Latin only for government and military communication. Many
people retained their traditional languages, such as Phrygian and Cappadocian in
western Asia Minor, Armenian farther east, and Syriac and other Aramaic dialects
along the eastern Mediterranean coast. The streets of Constantinople reportedly rang
with seventy-two languages.
Romanness definitely included Christianity, but the eastern empire’s theological
diversity rivaled its ethnic and linguistic complexity. Bitter controversies over doc-
trine divided eastern Christians; emperors used violence against Christians with dif-
ferent beliefs — heretics they called them — when persuasion failed. They had to
employ force, they believed, to save lost souls and preserve the empire’s religious
purity and divine goodwill.
Most women in eastern Roman society lived according to ancient Mediterranean
tradition, concentrating on their households and minimizing contact with men out-
side that circle. Law barred them from performing many public functions, such as
witnessing wills. Subject to the authority of their fathers and husbands, women veiled
their heads (though not their faces) to show modesty. The strict views of Christian
theologians on sexuality and reproduction made divorce more difficult and discour-
aged remarriage even for widows. Sexual offenses carried harsher legal penalties.
Female prostitution remained legal and common, but emperors raised the penalties
for those who forced girls or female slaves under their control into prostitution.
Women in the imperial family could achieve prominence unattainable for ordi-
nary women. Empress Theodora demonstrated the influence high-ranking women
could have in the eastern empire. Uninhibited by her humble origins (she was the
daughter of a bear trainer and had been an actress with a scandalous reputation),
she came to rival anyone in influence and wealth. She participated in every aspect
of Justinian’s rule, advising him on personnel for his administration, advocating for
her doctrinal views in Christian disputes, and rallying Justinian’s courage at times of
crisis. A contemporary called her “superior in intelligence to any man.”
238 Chapter 7 The Transformation of the Roman Empire
[ 284–600 c.e.
]
of property from the provinces who aspired to power and prestige could satisfy their
ambitions only by joining the imperial administration in the capital.
To streamline the mass of decisions that earlier emperors had made, Justinian
codified the laws. His Codex appeared in 529, with a revised version completed in
534. A team of scholars also condensed millions of words of regulations to produce
the Digest in 533, intended to expedite legal cases and provide a syllabus for law
schools. This collection, like the Codex written in Latin and therefore readable in
the western empire, influenced legal scholars for centuries. Justinian’s legal experts
also compiled a textbook for students, the Institutes, which appeared in 533 and
remained on law-school reading lists until modern times.
To fulfill the emperor’s sacred duty to the welfare of his people, Justinian acted
to enforce religious purity. He believed his world could not flourish if its god became
angered by the presence of religious offenders. As emperor, Justinian decided who
the offenders were. Zealously enforcing laws against polytheists, he compelled them
to be baptized or forfeit their lands and official positions. He also purged heretical
Christians opposing his version of orthodoxy.
Justinian’s laws made male homosexual relations illegal for the first time in
Roman history. Male same-sex unions had apparently been allowed, or at least
officially ignored, until they were prohibited in 342 after Christianity became the
emperors’ religion. There had never before been any civil penalties imposed on men
engaging in homosexual activity, perhaps because previous rulers considered it
impractical to regulate men’s sexuality, given that adult men lived their private lives
free of direct oversight. All the previous emperors had, for example, simply taxed
male prostitutes. The legal status of homosexual activity between women is uncer-
tain, but homosexual activity between married women probably counted as adultery
and thus as a crime.
Justinian tried to reconcile orthodox and Monophysite Christians by revising the
creed of the Council of Chalcedon. But the church leaders in Rome and Constanti-
nople could not agree. The eastern and western churches were therefore launched
on diverging courses that would result in formal schism five hundred years later.
Justinian’s own ecumenical council in Constantinople ended in conflict in 553 when
it jailed Rome’s defiant pope Vigilius while also managing to alienate Monophysite
bishops. Justinian’s efforts to impose religious unity only drove Christians further
apart and undermined his vision of a restored Roman world.
religion. Choricius, a Christian who held the official position of professor of rhetoric
in Gaza, wrote works based on subjects from pre-Christian Greek mythology and
history, such as the Trojan War or the Athenian general Miltiades. Similarly, Chris-
tian artists incorporated polytheist traditions in communicating their beliefs and
emotions in paintings, mosaics, and carved reliefs. A favorite artistic motif of Christ
with a sunburst surrounding his head, for example, took its inspiration from polythe-
ist depictions of the radiant Sun as a god. (See the illustration on page 222.)
The growth of Christian literature generated a technological innovation that
helped preserve classical literature. Polytheist scribes had written books on sheets of
parchment (made from animal skin) or paper (made from papyrus). They then glued
the sheets together and attached rods at both ends to form a scroll. Readers faced
an awkward task in unrolling scrolls to read. For ease of use, Christians produced
their literature in the form of the codex — a book with bound pages. Eventually the
codex became the standard form of book production.
Despite its continuing importance in education and rhetoric, classical Greek and
Latin literature barely survived the war-torn world dominated by Christians. Knowl-
edge of Greek in the west faded so drastically that by the sixth century almost no
one there could read the original versions of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the founda-
tions of a classical literary education. Latin fared better, and scholars such as Augus-
tine and Jerome knew Rome’s ancient literature extremely well. But they also saw its
classics as potentially too seductive for a pious Christian because the pleasure that
came from reading them could be a distraction from the worship of God. Jerome in
fact once had a nightmare of being condemned on Judgment Day for having been
more dedicated to Cicero than to Christ.
The closing around 530 of the Academy, founded in Athens by Plato more than
nine hundred years earlier, demonstrated the dangers for classical learning in the
later Roman Empire. This most famous of classical schools finally went out of busi-
ness when many of its scholars emigrated to Persia to escape Justinian’s tightened
restrictions on polytheist teachers and its revenues dwindled because the Athenian
elite, its traditional supporters, were increasingly Christianized. The Neoplatonist
school at Alexandria, by contrast, continued. Its leader John Philoponus (c. 490–570)
was a Christian. In addition to Christian theology, Philoponus wrote commentaries
on the works of Aristotle. Some of his ideas anticipated those of Galileo a thousand
years later. He achieved the kind of synthesis of old and new that was one of the
innovative outcomes of the cultural transformation of the late Roman world — he
was a Christian subject of the eastern Roman Empire in sixth-century Egypt, heading
a school founded long before by polytheists, studying the works of an ancient Greek
philosopher as the inspiration for his for-
ward-looking scholarship. The strong pos-
sibility that present generations could learn
REVIEW QUESTION What policies did Justin-
from the past would continue as Western ian undertake to try to restore and strengthen
civilization once again remade itself in the Roman Empire?
medieval times.
244 Chapter 7 The Transformation of the Roman Empire
[ 284–600 c.e.
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Conclusion
Diocletian ended the third-century crisis of the Roman Empire, but his reforms only
delayed its fragmentation. In the late fourth century, migrations of barbarians fleeing
the Huns weakened the Roman imperial government. Emperor Theodosius I divided
the empire into western and eastern halves in 395 to try to improve its administra-
tion and defense. When Roman authorities bungled the task of integrating barbarian
tribes into Roman society, the newcomers created kingdoms that eventually replaced
Roman rule in the west.
Large-scale and violent immigration transformed the western empire’s politics,
society, and economy. The political changes and economic deterioration accompany-
ing this transformation destroyed the public-spiritedness of the elite, as wealthy
nobles retreated to self-sufficient country estates and shunned municipal office.
The eastern empire fared better economically than the western and avoided the
worst violence of the migrations. Eastern emperors attempted to preserve “Roman-
ness” by maintaining Roman culture and political traditions. The financial pressure
of wars to reunite the empire drove tax rates to unbearable levels, while the concen-
tration of authority in the capital weakened local communities.
Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in 312 marked a turning point in West-
ern history. Christianization of the empire occurred gradually, and Christians dis-
agreed among themselves over doctrines of faith, even to the point of deadly vio-
lence. Monastic life redefined the meaning of holiness by creating communities of
“God’s heroes” who withdrew from this world to devote their service to glorifying
the next. In the end, the quest for unity fell short through the powerful effects of
political and social transformation. Nevertheless, the memory of Roman power and
culture remained potent, providing an influential inheritance to the peoples and
states that would become Rome’s heirs in the next stage of Western civilization.
[ 284–600 c.e.
] Conclusion 245
CELTS ANGLES No r th
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The eastern Roman Empire at the accession of Justinian, 527 C.E.
The eastern Roman Empire at the death of Justinian, 565 C.E.
MAPPING THE WEST Western Europe and the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire, c. 600
The eastern Roman emperor Justinian employed brilliant generals and expended huge sums of
money to reconquer Italy, North Africa, and part of Spain to reunite the western and eastern
halves of the former Roman Empire. His wars to regain Italy and North Africa eliminated the
Ostrogothic and Vandal kingdoms, respectively, but at a huge cost in effort, time — the war in
Italy took twenty years — and expense. The resources of the eastern empire were so depleted
that his successors could not maintain the reunification. By the early seventh century, the
Visigoths had taken back all of Spain. Africa, despite serious revolts by indigenous Berber
tribes, remained under imperial control until the Arab conquest of the seventh century. Within
five years of Justinian’s death, however, the Lombards had set up a new kingdom controlling a
large section of Italy. Never again would anyone in the ancient world attempt to reestablish a
universal Roman Empire.
Chapter 7 Review
Key Terms and People
Be sure that you can identify the term or person and explain its historical significance.
dominate (p. 213) Edict of Milan (p. 217) Nicene Creed (p. 223)
tetrarchy (p. 213) Julian the Apostate (p. 219) asceticism (p. 225)
coloni (p. 216) Theodosius I (p. 219) Visigoths (p. 231)
curials (p. 216) Augustine (p. 221) wergild (p. 234)
Great Persecution (p. 217) Arianism (p. 222) Justinian and Theodora
(p. 236)
Review Questions
1. What were Diocletian’s policies to end the third-century crisis, and how successful were
they?
2. How did Christianity both unite and divide the Roman Empire?
3. How did their migrations and invasions change the barbarians themselves and the Roman
Empire?
4. What policies did Justinian undertake to try to restore and strengthen the Roman Empire?
Making Connections
1. How did the principate and the dominate differ with regard to political appearance versus
political reality?
2. What were the main similarities and differences between polytheism and Christianity as
official state religions in the late Roman Empire?
3. What developments in the late Roman Empire would support the idea that it is possible for
a state to be too large to be well governed and to remain united indefinitely?
Suggested References
Some scholars regard the political, social, and cultural changes in the late Roman Empire as
evidence of a sad “decline and fall”; others judge them to have had mixed positive and nega-
tive consequences. The rise of Christianity to the status of an official religion also changed
Roman life in complex ways that are still being investigated.
Brown, Peter. The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity.
1988.
Cameron, Averil. The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity AD 395–700. 2nd ed. 2012.
Daryaee, Touraj. Sasanian Iran (224–651 C.E.): Portrait of a Late Antique Empire. 2008.
*Drew, Katherine Fischer, ed. The Laws of the Salian Franks. 1991.
Elsner, Jas. Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph: The Art of the Roman Empire, A.D. 100–450.
1998.
*Grubbs, Judith Evans. Women and Law in the Roman Empire: A Sourcebook on Marriage, Divorce,
and Widowhood. 2002.
Heather, Peter. Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe. 2010.
Jacobsen, Torsten Cumberland. A History of the Vandals. 2012.
Kelly, Christopher. Ruling the Later Roman Empire. 2006.
*Primary source.
246
[284–600 c.e.
] Chapter 7 Review 247
Important Events
Consider three events: Augustine publishes The City of God (426), Council of Chalcedon
attempts to forge agreement on Christian orthodoxy (451), and Justinian publishes law
code and handbooks (529–534). What connections can be drawn between these events
in terms of the attitudes that informed them, their goals, and their effects on society?
A
t the end of the sixth century, Gregory, bishop of Tours, wrote about
Clovis, the first king of the Franks. Under Clovis, the Franks took over Gaul
and turned it into a barbarian kingdom. Yet, about a century later, Gregory
insisted that Clovis was a legitimate Roman ruler. He described a day in which Clovis
stood in the church of Saint Martin at Tours:
a time). Their poetry, oral rather than written, expressed their esteem for honor,
friendship, bravery, and love.
Islam began as a religion of the sedentary, but it soon found support and military
strength among the nomads. It started in Mecca, an important commercial and reli-
gious center south of Medina. Mecca was the home of the Ka‘ba, a shrine that con-
tained the images of many gods. It was a sacred place within which war and violence
were prohibited. The tribe that dominated Mecca, the Quraysh, controlled access to
the shrine, taxing the pilgrims who flocked there. Visitors, assured of their safety,
bartered on the sacred grounds, transforming the plunder from raids into trade.
Qur’an
More than a holy book,
the Qur’an represents for
Muslims the very words of
God that were dictated to
Muhammad by the archangel
Gabriel. In the Umayyad period,
the Qur’an was written, as
here, on pages wider than
long. The first four lines on
the top give the last verses
of Sura 21. (The last verses of the
Sura, Qur’an, Abbasid Period, North
Africa, 9th century, ink, color and gold
on parchment / Freer Gallery of Art,
Smithsonian Institution, Washington,
D.C., USA / Bridgeman Images.)
252 Chapter 8 The Heirs of Rome: Islam, Byzantium, and Europe
[ 600–750
]
Beginning with the Fatihah, which praises God as the “lord sustainer of the
worlds,” the Qur’an continues with suras of gradually decreasing length. They cover
the gamut of human experience and the life to come after death. For Muslims, the
Qur’an contains the legal and moral code by which men and women should live:
“Do not set up another god with God. . . . Do not worship anyone but Him, and be
good to your parents.” It emphasizes the family — a man, his wife (or wives), and
children — as the basic unit of Muslim society. Islam replaced the identity and protec-
tion of the tribe with a new identity: the ummah, the community of believers, who
share both a belief in one God and a set of religious practices. Stressing individual
belief in God and adherence to the Qur’an, Islam had no priests or sacraments,
though in time it came to have authoritative religious leaders who interpreted the
Qur’an and related texts.
*Thus, 1 anno Hegirae (1 a.h.) on the Muslim calendar is equivalent to 622 c.e.
[600–750
] Islam: A New Religion and a New Empire 253
Medina and executed the male members of another. Although Muslims had origi-
nally prayed in the direction of Jerusalem, the center of Jewish worship, Muhammad
now had them turn in the direction of Mecca.
Around the same time, Muhammad instituted new religious obligations. Among
these were the zakat, a tax on possessions to be used for alms; the fast of Ramadan,
which took place during the ninth month of the Islamic year, the month in which
the battle of Badr had been fought; the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca during the last
month of the year, which each Muslim was to make at least once in his or her life-
time; and the salat, formal worship at least three times a day (later increased to five).
The salat could include the shahadah, or profession of faith: “There is no divinity
but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God.” Detailed regulations for these
practices, sometimes called the Five Pillars of Islam, were worked out in the eighth
and early ninth centuries.
Meanwhile, Muhammad sent troops to subdue Arabs north and south. In 630,
he entered Mecca with ten thousand men and took over the city. As the prestige of
Islam grew, clans elsewhere converted. Through a combination of force, conversion,
and negotiation, Muhammad was able to unite many, though not all, Arabic-speaking
tribes under his leadership by the time of his death in 632.
Muhammad was responsible for social as well as religious change. The ummah
included both men and women; Islam thus enhanced women’s status. At first, Mus-
lim women joined men during the prayer periods that punctuated the day, but, begin-
ning in the eighth century, women began to pray apart from men. Men were allowed
to have up to four wives at one time but were obliged to treat them equally; wives
received dowries and had certain inheritance rights. Islam prohibited all infanticide,
a practice that Arabs had long used largely against female infants. Like Judaism and
Christianity, however, Islam retained the practices of a patriarchal society in which
women’s participation in community life was limited.
The ummah functioned in many ways as a “supertribe,” obligated to fight com-
mon enemies, share plunder, and peacefully resolve any internal disputes. Bedouin
converts to Islam turned their traditional warrior culture to its cause. Unlike inter-
tribal fighting, warfare was now the jihad of people who were carrying out God’s
command against unbelievers as recorded in the Qur’an: “Strive, O Prophet, against
the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and deal with them firmly. Their final abode is
Hell: And what a wretched destination!”
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century and the beginning of the eighth, Islamic warriors extended their sway west-
ward to Spain and eastward to India.
How were such widespread conquests possible, especially in so short a time?
First, the Islamic forces came up against weakened empires. The Byzantine and Sasa-
nid states were exhausted from fighting each other. Second, discontented Christians
and Jews welcomed Muslims into both Byzantine and Persian territories. The Mono-
physite Christians in Syria and Egypt, for example, had suffered persecution under
the Byzantines and were glad to have new, Islamic overlords. There were also internal
reasons for Islam’s success. Inspired by jihad, Arab fighters were well prepared: fully
armed and mounted on horseback, using camel convoys to carry supplies and pro-
vide protection, they conquered with amazing ease. To secure their victories, they
built garrison cities from which their soldiers requisitioned taxes and goods.
Yet the solidarity of the Muslim community was threatened by disputes over the
successors to Muhammad, the caliphs. While the first two caliphs came to power
without serious opposition, the third, Uthman (r. 644–656), a member of the Umayyad
clan and son-in-law of Muhammad, aroused discontent among other members of
the inner circle and soldiers unhappy with his distribution of high offices and rev-
enues. Accusing Uthman of favoritism, they supported his rival, Ali, a member of
[600–750
] Islam: A New Religion and a New Empire 255
the Hashim clan (to which Muhammad had belonged) and the husband of Muham-
mad’s only surviving child, Fatimah. After a group of discontented soldiers murdered
Uthman, civil war broke out between the Umayyads and Ali’s faction. It ended when
Ali was killed by one of his own former supporters, and the caliphate remained in
Umayyad hands from 661 to 750.
Despite defeat, the Shi‘at Ali (“Ali’s faction”) did not fade away. Ali’s memory
lived on among Shi‘ite Muslims, who saw in him a symbol of justice and righteous-
ness. For them, Ali’s death was the martyrdom of the true successor to Muhammad.
They remained faithful to his dynasty, shunning the mainstream caliphs of Sunni
Muslims (whose name derived from the word sunna, the practices of Muhammad).
They awaited the arrival of the true leader — the imam — who in their view could
come only from the house of Ali.
Byzantium Besieged
The eastern Romans (the Byzantines) saw themselves as the direct heirs of Rome. In
fact, as we have seen, Emperor Justinian (r. 527–565) had tried to re-create the old
Roman Empire territorially. Under Justinian, vestiges of classical Roman society per-
sisted: an educated elite, town governments, and old myths and legends, which were
depicted in literature and art. Around 600, however, Byzantium began to undergo a
transformation as striking as the one that had earlier remade the western half of the
Roman Empire.
Constant war shrank the eastern empire’s territory drastically. Cultural and polit-
ical change followed. Cities decayed, and the countryside became the focus of gov-
ernment and military administration. In the wake of these shifts, the old elite largely
disappeared and classical learning gave way to new forms of education, mainly reli-
gious in content. The traditional styles of urban life, dependent on public gathering
places and community spirit, faded away.
Nevertheless, the transformations should not be exaggerated. A powerful emperor
continued to rule at Constantinople (today Istanbul, Turkey). Roman laws and taxes
remained in place. The cities, while shrunken, nevertheless survived, and Constan-
tinople itself had a flourishing economic and cultural life even in Byzantium’s darkest
hours. The Byzantines continued to call themselves Romans. For them, the empire
never ended: it just moved to Constantinople.
R
hi
ne
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. BULGARS
Loire R LOMBARDS
ATLANTIC FRANKISH (568) Venice AVARS SLAVS
D
OCEAN KINGDOM Ravenna an
ube
DA . R
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Ca
Rome AT
spi
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(572) Bari KANS Constantinople
an
VISIGOTHIC BAL
Sea
KINGDOM Calabria BYZANTINE
Sardinia
Ephesus EMPIRE
Sicily
Antioch
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.
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EST
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SASANID EMPIRE
up
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ate
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NORTH AFRICA Alexandria
N
Pe
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EGYPT Gu W E
0 250 500 miles lf
Re
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Mecca
Preoccupied by war with Persia, Byzantium was ill equipped to deal with other
groups who were pushing into parts of the empire at about the same time. The
Lombards, a Germanic people, entered northern Italy in 568 and by 572 were mas-
ters of the Po valley and parts of Italy’s south. In addition to Rome, the Byzantines
retained only Italy’s “foot,” the island of Sicily, and a narrow swath of land through
the middle of the peninsula called the Exarchate of Ravenna.
The Byzantine army could not contend any better with the Slavs and Bulgars
just beyond the Danube River. Joined by the Avars, the Slavs attacked both rural and
urban areas of Byzantium. Meanwhile, the Bulgars entered what is now Bulgaria in
the 670s, defeating the Byzantine army and in 681 forcing the emperor to recognize
their new state.
Even as the Byzantine Empire was facing military attacks on all fronts, its power
was being whittled away by more peaceful means. As Slavs and Avars, who were not
subject to Byzantine rulers, settled in the Balkans, they often intermingled with the
native peoples there, absorbing local agricultural techniques and burial practices while
imposing their language and religious cults.
[600–750
] Byzantium Besieged 259
Byzantium’s loss of control over the Balkans meant the shrinking of its empire
(see inset on Map 8.2, page 258). It also exacerbated the growing separation between
the eastern and western parts of the former Roman Empire. Avar and Slavic control
of the Balkans effectively cut off trade and travel between Constantinople and the
cities of the Dalmatian coast, while the new Bulgarian state served as a political bar-
rier across the Danube. The two halves of the former Roman Empire communicated
very little in the seventh century, a fact reflected in their different languages: Greek
in the East, Latin in the West.
.
Douai
Cologne
Laon
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NEUSTRIA sel Mainz
o
Paris Trier
M
AUSTRASIA
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L
oir
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BAVARIA
.
Dijon
ALAMANNIA
Salzburg
Limoges
BURGUNDY
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Bordeaux Lyon
Clermont
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ône
Rh
BASQ
U ES
Arles KINGDOM OF
THE LOMBARDS Adriatic
PROVENCE
KINGDOM OF Marseille Sea
THE VISIGOTHS Medite r ranean S ea
were still in fair repair, and because even large groups of travelers on the roads were
vulnerable to attacks by robbers. Traveling northward on the Rhône River, our voyag-
ers would have passed Roman walled cities and farmlands neatly and squarely laid
out by Roman land surveyors. The great stone palaces of villas would still have dotted
the countryside. Once at Trier, the travelers would have felt at home seeing the city’s
great gate (now called the Porta Nigra; see the illustration on page 264), its monu-
mental baths (some still standing today), and its cathedral, built on the site of a
Roman palace. Being in Trier was almost like being in Rome.
Nevertheless, these travelers would have noticed that the cities that they passed
through were not what they had been in the heyday of the Roman Empire. True, cities
still served as the centers of church administration. Bishops lived in them, and so did
clergymen, servants, and others who helped the bishops. Cathedrals (the churches
presided over by bishops) remained within city walls, and people were drawn to them
for important rituals such as baptism. Nevertheless, many urban centers had lost their
264 Chapter 8 The Heirs of Rome: Islam, Byzantium, and Europe
[ 600–750
]
commercial and cultural vitality. Largely depopulated, they survived as skeletons of
their former selves.
Whereas the chief feature of the Roman landscape had been cities, the Frankish
landscape was characterized by dense forests, acres of marshes and bogs, patches of
cleared farmland, and pastures for animals. These areas were not much influenced
by Rome; they more closely represented the farming and village settlement patterns
of the Franks.
On the vast plains between Paris and Trier, most peasants were only semi-free.
They were settled in family groups on small holdings called manses, which included
a house, a garden, and cultivable land. The peasants paid dues and sometimes owed
labor services to a lord (an aristocrat who owned the land). Some of the peasants were
descendants of the coloni (tenant farmers) of the late Roman Empire; others were
the sons and daughters of slaves, now provided with a small plot of land; and a few
were people of free Frankish origin who for various reasons had come down in the
world. At the lower end of the social scale, the status of Franks and Romans had
become identical.
Romans (or, more precisely, Gallo-Romans) and Franks had also merged at the
elite level. Although people south of the Loire River continued to be called Romans
and people to the north Franks, their cultures — their languages, their settlement pat-
terns, their newly military way of life — were strikingly similar.
The language that aristocrats spoke and (often) read depended on location, not
ethnicity. Among the many dialects in the Frankish kingdoms, some were Germanic,
especially to the east and north, but most were derived from Latin, yet no longer the
Latin of Cicero. At the end of the sixth century, the bishop Gregory of Tours (r. 573–
c. 594), wrote, “Though my speech is rude, . . . to my surprise, it has often been said
by men of our day, that few understand the learned words of the rhetorician but
many the rude language of the common people.” This beginning to Gregory’s Histo-
ries, a valuable source for the Merovingian period, testifies to Latin’s transformation;
Gregory expected that his “rude” Latin — the plain Latin of everyday speech — would
be understood and welcomed by the general public.
The Frankish elites, like Frankish peasants, tended to live in the countryside rather
than in cities. In fact, peasants and aristocrats tended to live together in villages. In
many cases, a village consisted of a large central building (probably for the aristocratic
household to use), sometimes with stone foundations. Surrounding the central build-
ing were smaller buildings, some of which were houses for peasant families, who lived
with their livestock. Such villages might boast populations a bit over a hundred.
The elites of the Merovingian period cultivated military — rather than civilian —
skills. They went on hunts and wore military-style clothing: the men wore trousers,
a heavy belt, and a long cloak; both men and women
bedecked themselves with jewelry. As hardened 0 750 1,500 feet
warriors, or wanting to appear so, aristocrats no 0 400 meters
longer lived in grand villas, choosing instead mod- L oire R .
Church of
est wooden structures without baths or heating sys- St. Martin Bishop’s
church
tems. That explains why the village great house and ¡
the smaller ones nearby looked very much alike. Bishop’s
palace
Sometimes villages formed around old villas. In Baptistery
However, some economic activity in this period was purely commercial and
impersonal. Long-distance traders transported slaves and raw materials such as furs
and honey from areas of northern Europe such as the British Isles and Sweden. These
they sold to traders in Byzantium and the Islamic world, returning home with luxu-
ries and manufactured goods such as silks and papyrus. Byzantine, Islamic, and
western European descendants of the Roman Empire kept in tenuous contact with
one another by making voyages for trade, diplomatic ventures, and pilgrimages.
Seventh- and eighth-century sources speak of Byzantines, Syrians, and Jews as the
chief intermediaries of such long-distance trade. Many of these merchants lived in
the still-thriving port cities of the Mediterranean. Gregory of Tours associated Jews
with commerce, complaining that they sold things “at a higher price than they were
worth.”
Although the population of the Merovingian world was overwhelmingly Chris-
tian, Jews were integrated into every aspect of secular life. They used Hebrew in
worship, but otherwise they spoke the same languages as Christians and used Latin
in their legal documents. Jews dressed as everyone else did, and they engaged in the
same occupations. Many Jews planted and tended vineyards, partly because of the
importance of wine in synagogue services and partly because they could easily sell
the surplus. Some Jews were rich landowners, with slaves and dependent peasants
working for them; others were independent peasants of modest means. Some Jews
lived in towns with a small Jewish quarter that included both homes and synagogues,
but most Jews, like their Christian neighbors, lived on the land.
A court of law ordered Tetradia to repay Eulalius four times the amount she had
taken from him, but she was allowed to keep and live on her own property.
Other women were able to exercise behind-the-scenes control through their
sons. A woman named Artemia, for example, used the prophecy that her son Nice-
tius would become a bishop to prevent her husband from becoming a bishop himself.
After Nicetius fulfilled the prophecy, he nevertheless remained at home with his
mother well into his thirties, working alongside the servants and teaching the younger
children to read the Psalms.
Some women exercised direct power. Rich widows with fortunes to bestow wielded
enormous influence. Some Merovingian women were abbesses, rulers in their own
right over female monasteries and sometimes over “double monasteries,” with sepa-
rate facilities for men and women. Monasteries under the control of abbesses could
be substantial centers of population: the convent at Laon, for example, had three
hundred nuns in the seventh century. Because women lived in populous convents
or were monopolized by rich men able to support several wives or mistresses at one
time, unattached aristocratic women were scarce.
Atop the aristocracy were the Merovingian kings, rulers of the Frankish kingdoms.
The Merovingian dynasty (c. 486–751) owed its longevity to good political sense: from
the start it allied itself with local lay aristocrats and ecclesiastical (church) authorities.
Bishops and abbots bolstered the power that kings also gained from their leadership
in war, their access to the lion’s share of plunder, and their takeover of the public lands
and legal framework of Roman administration. The kings’ courts functioned as schools
for the sons of the elite. When kings sent officials — counts and dukes — to rule in their
name in various regions of their kingdoms, these regional governors worked with and
married into the aristocratic families who had long controlled local affairs.
Both kings and aristocrats benefited from a powerful royal authority. The king
acted as arbitrator and intermediary for the competing interests of the aristocrats.
Gregory of Tours’s history of the sixth century is filled with stories of bitter battles
between Merovingian kings, as royal brothers fought continuously. Yet what seemed
to the bishop like royal weakness and violent chaos was in fact one way the kings
contained local aristocratic tensions, organizing them on one side or another, and
preventing them from spinning out of royal control. By the beginning of the seventh
century, three relatively stable Frankish kingdoms had emerged: Austrasia to the
northeast; Neustria to the west, with its capital city at Paris; and Burgundy, incor-
porating the southeast (see Map 8.3, page 263).
As the power of the kings in the seventh century increased, however, so did the
might of their chief court official, the mayor of the palace. As we shall see, one
mayoral family allied with the Austrasian aristocracy would in the following century
displace the Merovingian dynasty and establish a new royal line, the Carolingians.
270 Chapter 8 The Heirs of Rome: Islam, Byzantium, and Europe
[ 600–750
]
Christianity and Classical Culture in the British Isles
The Merovingian kingdoms exemplify some of the ways in which Roman and non-
Roman traditions combined; the British Isles show others. Ireland had never been
part of the Roman Empire, but the Irish people were early converts to Christianity,
as were people in Roman Britain and parts of Scotland. Invasions by various Celtic
and Germanic groups — particularly the Anglo-Saxons, who gave their name to
England (“land of the Angles”) — redrew the religious boundaries. Ireland, largely
free of invaders, remained Christian. Scotland, also relatively untouched by invad-
ers, had been slowly Christianized by the Irish from
0 100 200 miles
the west and in early years by the British from the
0 100 200 kilometers
south. England, which emerged from the invasions
as a mosaic of about a dozen kingdoms ruled by SCOTLAND
dom of heaven, Oswy chose the Roman date. His decision paved the way for the
triumph of the Roman brand of Christianity in England.
The authority of St. Peter was only one of the attractions of Roman Christianity.
Rome had great prestige as a treasure trove of knowledge, piety, and holy objects.
Benedict Biscop (c. 630–690), the founder of two important English monasteries,
made many difficult trips to Rome, bringing back relics, liturgical vestments, and
even a cantor to teach his monks the proper melodies in a time before written musi-
cal notation. Above all, he went to Rome to get books. At his monasteries in the
north of England, he built up a grand library. In Anglo-Saxon England, as in Scot-
land and Ireland, all of which lacked a strong classical tradition from Roman times,
a book was considered a precious object, to be decorated as finely as a jewel-studded
reliquary (see the chapter-opening image on page 248).
The Anglo-Saxons and Irish Celts had a thriving oral culture but extremely
limited uses for writing. Books became valuable only when these societies converted
to Christianity. Just as Islamic reliance on the Qur’an made possible a literary culture
under the Umayyads, so Christian dependence on the Bible, liturgy, and the writings
of the church fathers helped make England and Ireland centers of literature and
learning in the seventh and eighth centuries. Men like Benedict Biscop soon spon-
sored other centers of learning, using texts from the classical past. Although women
did not establish famous schools, many abbesses ruled over monasteries that stressed
Christian learning. Latin writings, even pagan texts, were studied diligently, in part
because Latin was so foreign a language on the British Isles that mastering it required
systematic and formal study. One of Benedict Biscop’s pupils was Bede (“the Ven-
erable,” 673–735), an Anglo-Saxon
monk and a historian of extraordi-
nary breadth. Bede in turn taught a
new generation of monks who became
advisers to eighth-century rulers.
Page from the Lindisfarne Gospels
The lavishly illuminated manuscript
known as the Lindisfarne Gospels, of
which this is one page, was probably
produced in the first third of the eighth
century. For the monks at Lindisfarne
(a tidal island off the northeast coast
of England) and elsewhere in the British
Isles, books were precious objects. The
page shown here depicts the Evangelist
St. Mark, writing while also holding a
book. Above his halo is his symbol, a
winged lion; it is blowing a trumpet while
its front paws rest on a book. What
books might St. Mark and the lion be
holding? (© The British Library / The Image
Works.)
272 Chapter 8 The Heirs of Rome: Islam, Byzantium, and Europe
[ 600–750
]
Much of the vigorous pagan Anglo-Saxon oral tradition was adapted to Chris-
tian culture. Bede encouraged and supported the use of the Anglo-Saxon language,
urging priests, for example, to use it when they instructed their flocks. In contrast
to other European regions, where Latin was the primary written language in the
seventh and eighth centuries, England made use of the vernacular — the language
normally spoken by the people. Written Anglo-Saxon (or Old English) was used in
every aspect of English life, from government to entertainment.
The decision at the Synod of Whitby to favor Roman Christianity tied the English
church to Rome by doctrine, friendship, and conviction. The Anglo-Saxon monk
and bishop Wynfrith took the Latin name Boniface to symbolize his loyalty to the
Roman church. Preaching on the continent, Boniface (680–754) set up churches in
Germany and Gaul that, like those in England, looked to Rome for leadership and
guidance. Boniface was one of those travelers from Rome who went to Trier to check
on the bishop’s piety. He found it badly wanting! Boniface’s efforts to reform the
Frankish church gave the papacy new importance in Europe.
the bishops in this way made the king’s cause their Lombard
own, their lay counterparts, the great landowners, Pavia Venice Byzantine
ria
lab
Sardinia
Ca
proved its undoing. When the Arabs arrived in 711,
they needed only to kill the king, defeat his army, 0 100 200 miles Sicily
Conclusion
The Islamic world, Byzantium, and western Europe were heirs to the Roman Empire,
but they built on its legacies in different ways. Muslims were the newcomers to the
Roman world, but their religion, Islam, was influenced by both Jewish and Christian
monotheism, each with roots in Roman culture. Under the guidance of Muhammad
the Prophet, Islam became both a coherent theology and a way of life. Once the
Muslim Arabs embarked on military conquests, they became the heirs of Rome in
other ways: preserving Byzantine cities, hiring Syrian civil servants, and adopting
Mediterranean artistic styles. Drawing on Roman and Persian traditions, the Umayyad
dynasty created a powerful Islamic state, with a capital city in Syria and a culture
that generally tolerated a wide variety of economic, religious, and social institutions
so long as the conquered paid taxes to their Muslim overlords.
Byzantium directly inherited the central political institutions of Rome: its people
called themselves Romans; its emperor was the Roman emperor; and its capital, Con-
[600–750
] Conclusion 275
stantinople, was considered to be the new Rome. Byzantium also inherited the taxes,
cities, laws, and Christian religion of Rome. The changes of the seventh and eighth
centuries — contraction of territory, urban decline, disappearance of the old elite, and
a ban on icons — whittled away at this Roman character. By 750, Byzantium was less
Roman than it was a new, resilient political and cultural entity, a Christian state.
Western Europe also inherited — and transformed — Roman institutions. The
Frankish kings built on Roman traditions that had earlier been modified by provin-
cial and Germanic custom. In the seventh century, Anglo-Saxon England reimported
the Roman legacy through Latin learning and the Christian religion. Visigothic kings
in Spain converted from Arian to Roman Christianity and allied themselves with the
Hispano-Roman elite. In Italy and at Rome itself, the traditions of the classical past
endured. The roads remained, the cities of Italy survived (although depopulated),
and both the popes and the Lombard kings ruled according to the traditions of
Roman government.
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Chapter 8 Review
Key Terms and People
Be sure that you can identify the term or person and explain its historical significance.
Muhammad (p. 250) Umayyad caliphate (p. 255) Merovingian dynasty (p. 262)
Qur’an (p. 251) Heraclius (p. 257) Gregory of Tours (p. 265)
Hijra (p. 252) Lombards (p. 258) Gregory the Great (p. 270)
jihad (p. 252) theme (p. 260) Synod of Whitby (p. 270)
Five Pillars of Islam (p. 253) icon (p. 261)
Shi‘ite (p. 255) iconoclasm (p. 261)
Review Questions
1. How and why did the Muslims conquer so many lands in the period 632–750?
2. What stresses did the Byzantine Empire endure in the seventh and eighth centuries, and
how was iconoclasm a response to those stresses?
3. What were the similarities and differences among the kingdoms that emerged in western
Europe, and how did their histories combine and diverge?
Making Connections
1. What were the similarities and the differences in political organizations of the Islamic,
Byzantine, and western European societies in the period 600–750?
2. Compare and contrast the roles of religion in the Islamic, Byzantine, and western European
worlds in the period 600–750.
3. Compare the material resources of the Islamic, Byzantine, and western European govern-
ments in the period 600–750.
[600–750
] Chapter 8 Review 277
Important Events
Consider three events: Papacy of Pope Gregory the Great (r. 590–604); Hijra to Medina,
year 1 of the Islamic calendar (622); and Emperor Leo III the Isaurian (r. 717–741).
How did these events reshape religious faith? What were the broader implications of
those changes for social and political life?
Suggested References
Donner’s book offers insight on Islam’s origins. Herrin gives a dazzling overview of Byzantine
history. Smith’s and Wickham’s books are essential for understanding the early medieval West.
*Bede. A History of the English Church and People. Trans. Leo Sherley-Price. 1991.
Berkey, Jonathan P. The Formation of Islam: Religion and Society in the Near East, 600–1800. 2003.
*Byzantine Sourcebook: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook1c.html
Cameron, Averil. The Byzantines. 2006.
Donner, Fred McGraw. Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam. 2010.
*Geanakoplos, Deno John, ed. and trans. Byzantium: Church, Society, and Civilization Seen through
Contemporary Eyes. 1984.
Geary, Patrick. Before France and Germany: The Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian
World. 1988.
*Gregory of Tours. The History of the Franks. Trans. Lewis Thorpe. 1976.
Haldon, J. F. Byzantium in the Seventh Century: The Transformation of a Culture. 1990.
Herrin, Judith. Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire. 2007.
*Islamic Sourcebook: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/islam/islamsbook.html
Kennedy, Hugh. The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the Sixth
to the Eleventh Century. 2nd ed. 2004.
Smith, Julia M. H. Europe after Rome: A New Cultural History 500–1000. 2005.
Whittow, Mark. The Making of Byzantium, 600–1025. 1996.
Wickham, Chris. Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–800. 2005.
*Primary source.
From Centralization
9
to Fragmentation
750–1050
I
n 841, a fifteen-year-old boy named William went to serve at the court of
Charles the Bald, king of the Franks. William’s father, Bernard, was an extremely
powerful noble. His mother, Dhuoda, was a well-educated, pious, and able woman;
she administered the family’s estates in the south of France while her husband was
occupied with politics at court. In 841, however, politics had become a dangerous
business. King Charles was fighting with his brothers over his portion of the Frank-
ish Empire, and he doubted Bernard’s loyalty. In fact, William was sent to Charles’s
court as a kind of hostage, to ensure Bern-
ard’s fidelity. Anxious about her son, Dhuoda
King Charles Receives a Bible wrote a handbook of advice for William,
The importance of loyalty is clear in
this ninth-century depiction of King
outlining his moral obligations. She empha-
Charles the Bald receiving a book. sized duty to his father even over loyalty to
The painting appears at the very end the king:
of the book (a large and splendid
bible) accompanied by two poems. Royal and imperial . . . power seem
In the painting, the king sits on a preeminent in the world, and the
throne. Two courtiers flank him on
either side, and beside each of them
custom of men is to [put] their names
is a warrior. Two canons hold the ahead of all others. . . . But despite
bible the king is about to receive, all this, I caution you to render first
while all the others make gestures of to him whose son you are special,
praise and prayer. Above, the hand of faithful, steadfast loyalty as long as
God reaches down to bless the king,
you shall live. . . . So I urge you . . .
whose throne touches the very scarf
of heaven. The first poem begins that first of all you love God. . . .
“Kind King Charles, flourish with the Then love, fear, and cherish your
power of the Almighty. . . . [You are] father.
the patron of the church, a solace to
the clergy and people.” (From the First William heeded his mother’s words, with
Bible of Charles the Bald, c. 843–851 / Biblio-
theque Nationale, Paris, France / Bridgeman
tragic results: when Bernard ran afoul of
Images.) Charles and was executed, William died in a
failed attempt to avenge his father.
279
280 Chapter 9 From Centralization to Fragmentation
[ 750–1050
]
Dhuoda’s handbook reveals the volatile political atmosphere of the mid-ninth
century, and her advice to her son points to one of its causes: a crisis of loyalty.
Loyalty to emperors, caliphs, and kings competed with allegiances to local authori-
ties, which, in turn, vied with family loyalties. The period from 600 to 750 had seen
the startling rise of Islam, the whittling away of Byzantium, and the beginnings of
stable political and economic development in an impoverished Europe. The period
from 750 to 1050 would see all three societies contend with internal issues of diver-
sity even as they became increasingly conscious of their unity and uniqueness. At
the beginning of this period, rulers built up and dominated strong, united political
communities. By the end, these realms had fragmented into smaller, more local
units.
In Byzantium, military triumphs brought emperors enormous prestige. A renais-
sance (French for “rebirth”) — that is, an important revival — of culture and art took
place at Constantinople. Yet at the same time new elites began to dominate the
Byzantine countryside. In the Islamic world, a dynastic revolution in 750 ousted the
Umayyads from the caliphate and replaced them with a new family, the Abbasids.
The Abbasid caliphs moved their capital to the east, from Damascus to Baghdad.
Even though the Abbasids’ power began to ebb as regional Islamic rulers came to
the fore, the Islamic world, too, saw a renaissance. In western Europe, Charlemagne —
a Frankish king from a new dynasty, the Carolingians — forged a huge empire and
presided over yet another cultural renaissance. Yet this newly unified kingdom was
fragile, disintegrating within a generation of Charlemagne’s death. In western Europe,
even more than in the Byzantine and Islamic worlds, power fell into the hands of
local lords.
Along the borders of these realms, new political entities began to develop, shaped
by the religion and culture of their more dominant neighbors. Rus, the ancestor of
Russia, grew up in the shadow of Byzantium, as did Bulgaria and Serbia. Western
Europe cast its influence over central Euro-
pean states. In the west, the borders of the
CHAPTER FOCUS What forces led to the
dissolution — or weakening — of centralized
Islamic world remained stable or were
governments in the period from 750 to 1050, pushed back. By the year 1050, the contours
and what institutions took their place? of what were to become modern Europe
and the Middle East were dimly visible.
Imperial Power
While the themes, with their territorial military organization (see page 260), took care
of attacks on Byzantine territory, tagmata — new mobile armies made up of the best
troops — moved aggressively outward, beginning around 850. By 1025, the Byzan-
tine Empire extended from the Danube in the north to the Euphrates in the south
(Map 9.1).
Military victories gave new prestige and wealth to the army and to the imperial
court. The Byzantine emperors drew revenues from vast and growing imperial
estates. They could demand services and money from the general population at will,
and they used their wealth to create a lavish court culture, surrounding themselves
with servants, slaves, family members, and civil servants. From their powerful posi-
tion, the emperors negotiated with other rulers, exchanging ambassadors and receiv-
ing and entertaining diplomats with elaborate ceremonies to express the serious,
sacred, concentrated power of imperial majesty.
Some of the emperors’ wealth derived from a prosperous agricultural economy
organized for trade. Byzantine commerce depended on a careful balance of state regu-
lation and individual enterprise. The emperor controlled craft and commercial guilds,
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homilies, and liturgical texts. But the merging of classical and Christian traditions
is clearest in manuscript illuminations (painted illustrations or embellishments in
hand-copied manuscripts). Here Byzantine artists showed how liberated they were
from the sober taboos of the iconoclastic period. For example, to depict King David,
the supposed poet of the Psalms, an artist illuminating a Psalter turned to a model of
Orpheus, the enchanting musician of ancient Greek mythology. Other artists worked
in a less classical style, as in the depiction of the decorative eagle on page 282.
the Rus made themselves heirs to Byzantium and its church, customs, art, and politi-
cal ideology. However, choosing the Byzantine form of Christianity, rather than the
Roman Catholic, later served to isolate the region from western Europe.
For more than fifty years, Rus remained united under one ruler. But after 1054,
civil wars broke out. Invasions by outsiders, particularly from the east, further weak-
ened the Kievan rulers, who were eventually displaced by princes from the north.
At the crossroads of East and West, Rus
could meet and absorb a great variety of REVIEW QUESTION In what ways did the
traditions, but its geographical position Byzantine emperor expand his power, and in
also opened it to unremitting military what ways was that power checked?
pressures.
.
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purchased, the Turks were freed and paid a salary. They were expert fighters, but the
Abbasids needed a good tax base to be able to pay them. This they did not have.
Serious uprisings just south of Baghdad kept huge swaths of territory outside the
control of the caliphs. Other regions of the Islamic world easily went their own way
when the caliphs lacked the money to keep them in line. In the tenth century, the
caliphs became figureheads only, while independent regional rulers collected taxes
and hired their own armies.
Thus, in the Islamic world, as in the Byzantine, new regional lords challenged
the power of the central ruler. But the process advanced more quickly in Islamic than
in Byzantine territories. Map 9.1 (page 281) correctly omits any indication of regional
dynatoi because the key center of power in the Byzantine Empire continued to be
Constantinople. Map 9.2, in contrast, shows how the Abbasid caliphate fragmented
as local dynasties established themselves.
Fatimid Tableware
The elites under the Fatimid rulers cultivated a luxuri-
ous lifestyle that included dining on lusterware —
porcelain tableware that was glazed and fired
several times to produce an iridescent metallic
sheen. Trade contacts with China inspired
the Islamic world to mimic Chinese pottery.
(Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, USA / Werner Forman
Archive / Bridgeman Images.)
*The Shi‘ites, originally followers of Ali, had by this time come to practice Islam differently from the
Sunni. Each faction adhered to its own interpretation of the prophet Muhammad’s life and message.
288 Chapter 9 From Centralization to Fragmentation
[ 750–1050
]
A Princely Pyxis
A pyxis is a small container, and this one, about six
inches high and carved out of ivory, was made for
the younger son of Abd al-Rahman III, the caliph of
Córdoba. The prince is depicted in a decorative loz-
enge, sitting on a rug and holding a bottle and a
flower. One servant sits beside him to cool him with
a fan; another stands and plays the lute. Under-
neath the rug are lions, symbols of power. Outside
the princely enclosure, falconers stand by, ready to
accompany the prince to the hunt. The whole scene
suggests order, skill, and elegance, all important fea-
tures of the Islamic renaissance. (Louvre, Paris, France /
Peter Willi / Bridgeman Images.)
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Pope Leo III (r. 795–816) upset the delicate balance among these three powers.
In 799, accused of adultery and perjury by a faction of the Roman aristocracy, Leo
narrowly escaped being blinded and having his tongue cut out. He fled northward
to seek Charlemagne’s protection. Charlemagne had the pope escorted back to Rome,
and he soon arrived there himself to an imperial welcome orchestrated by Leo. On
Christmas Day, 800, Leo put an imperial crown on Charlemagne’s head, and the
clergy and nobles who were present acclaimed the king Augustus, the title of the
first Roman emperor. The pope hoped in this way to exalt the king of the Franks, to
downgrade the Byzantine ruler, and to claim for himself the role of “emperor maker.”
At first, Charlemagne avoided using the imperial title. He may have hesitated
to adopt it because he feared the reaction of the Byzantines. Or perhaps he objected
[750–1050
] The Carolingian Empire 293
Charlemagne’s Chapel
Charlemagne was the first Frankish
king to build a permanent capital
city. He decided to do so in 789
and chose Aachen because of its
natural warm springs. There he built
a palace complex that, besides a
grand living area for himself and
his retinue, included a chapel (a
small semiprivate church). Today
the entire chapel is enclosed within
Aachen’s cathedral. (Aachen Cathedral,
Aachen, Germany / Bildarchiv Steffens /
Bridgeman Images.)
hoped in this way to ensure the unity of the empire while satisfying the claims of
all his sons. Should any son die, only his firstborn could succeed him, a measure
intended to prevent further splintering. But Louis’s hopes were thwarted by events.
Ermengard died, and Louis married Judith, reputed to be the most beautiful woman
in the kingdom. In 823, she and Louis had a son, Charles (later known as Charles
the Bald, to whose court Dhuoda’s son William was sent). The sons of Ermengard,
bitter over the birth of another royal heir, rebelled against their father and fought
one another for more than a decade.
Finally, after Louis the Pious died in 840, the Treaty of Verdun (843) divided
the empire among his three remaining sons (Pippin had died in 838). The arrange-
ment roughly defined the future political contours of western Europe (see the inset in
Map 9.3, page 292). The western third, bequeathed to Charles the Bald (r. 843–877),
would eventually become France, and the eastern third, handed to Louis the German
(r. 843–876), became Germany. The “Middle Kingdom,” which was given to Lothar
(r. 840–855) along with the imperial title, had a different fate: parts of it were absorbed
by France and Germany, and the rest eventually formed what became the modern
states of the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Italy.
Thus, by 843, the European-wide empire of Charlemagne had dissolved. Forged
by conquest, it had been supported by a small group of privileged aristocrats with
lands and offices stretching across its entire expanse. Their loyalty — based on shared
values, friendship, expectations of gain, and sometimes formal ties of vassalage and
oaths of fealty (faithfulness) — was crucial to the success of the Carolingians. The
empire had also been supported by an ideal, shared by educated laymen and church-
men alike, of conquest and Christian belief working together to bring good order to
the earthly state.
But powerful forces operated against the Carolingian Empire. Once the empire’s
borders were fixed and conquests ceased, the aristocrats could not hope for new lands
and offices. They put down roots in particular regions and began to gather their own
followings. Powerful local traditions such as different languages also undermined
imperial unity.
Finally, as Dhuoda revealed in the handbook she wrote for her son, some people
disagreed with the imperial ideal. By asking her son to put his father before the
emperor, Dhuoda demonstrated her belief in the primacy of the family and the per-
sonal ties that bound it together. Her ideal represented a new sensibility that saw real
value in the breaking apart of Charlemagne’s empire into smaller, more intimate local
units.
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king were divided up in the wake of the partitioning of the empire and new inva-
sions, the Carolingians’ dependence on manors scattered throughout their kingdom
proved to be a source of weakness.
Otto a great hero to his contemporaries. However, historians today think the contain-
ment of the Magyars had more to do with their internal transformation from nomads
to farmers than with their military defeat. Soon they converted to the Roman form
of Christianity. Hungary’s position between East and West made it a frontier region,
vulnerable to invasion and immigration but also open to new experiments in assimi-
lation and integration.
The Viking, Muslim, and Magyar invasions were the final onslaught western
Europe experienced from outsiders. In some ways they were a continuation of the
invasions that had rocked the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries. Loosely
organized in war bands, the new groups
entered western Europe looking for wealth REVIEW QUESTION What were the strengths
but stayed on to become absorbed in the and weaknesses of Carolingian institutions of
region’s post-invasion society. government, warfare, and defense?
*Names such as Germany, France, and Italy are used here for the sake of convenience. They refer to
regions, not to the nation-states that would eventually become associated with those names.
300 Chapter 9 From Centralization to Fragmentation
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]
arrangement tended to be permanent. From the Latin feodum (“fief ”) comes the
word feudal, and some historians use the term feudalism to describe the social and
economic system created by the relationship among vassals, lords, and fiefs.
Medieval people divided their society into three groups: those who prayed, those
who fought, and those who worked. All these groups were involved in hierarchies
of dependency and linked by personal bonds, but the upper classes — those who
prayed (monks) and those who fought (knights) — were free. Their brand of depen-
dency was prestigious, whether they were vassals, lords, or both. In fact, a typical
warrior was lord of several vassals even while serving as the vassal of another lord.
Monasteries normally had vassals to fight for them, and their abbots in turn were
often vassals of a king or other powerful lord.
Vassalage served both as an alternative to public power and as a way to strengthen
what little public power remained. Given the impoverished economic conditions of
western Europe, its primitive methods of communication, and its lack of unifying
traditions, lords of every sort needed faithful men to protect them and carry out
their orders. And vassals needed lords. At the low end of the social scale, poor vas-
sals depended on their lords to feed, clothe, house, and arm them. At the upper end
of the social scale, landowning vassals looked to lords to give them still more land.
Many upper-class laywomen participated in the society of “those who fought” as
wives and mothers of vassals and lords. A few women were themselves vassals, and
some were lords (or, rather, ladies). Other women entered convents and joined the
group of those who prayed. Through its abbess or a man standing in for her, a convent
often had vassals as well. Many elite women engaged in property transactions, whether
alone, with other family members, or as part of a group such as a convent.
Becoming a vassal involved both ritual gestures and verbal promises. In a cer-
emony witnessed by others, the vassal-to-be knelt and, placing his hands between
the hands of his lord, said, “I promise to be your man.” This act, known as homage,
was followed by the promise of fealty — fidelity, trust, and service — which the vassal
swore with his hand on relics or a Bible. Then the vassal and the lord kissed. In an
age when many people could not read, a public ceremony such as this represented
a visual and verbal contract. Vassalage bound the lord and vassal to one another with
reciprocal obligations, usually military. Knights, as the premier fighters of the day,
were the most desirable vassals.
At the bottom of the social scale were those who worked — the peasants. In the
Carolingian period, many peasants were free; they did not live on a manor or, if they
did, they owed very little to its lord. (Manors like Villeneuve were the exceptions.)
But as power fell into the hands of local rulers, fewer and fewer peasants remained
free. Rather, they were made dependent on lords, not as vassals but as serfs. A serf ’s
dependency was completely unlike that of a vassal. Serfdom was not voluntary. No
serf did homage or fealty to his lord; no serf kissed his lord as an equal. Whereas
vassals served their lords as warriors, serfs worked as laborers on their lord’s land and
paid taxes and dues to their lord. Peasants constituted the majority of the population,
but unlike knights, who were celebrated in song, they were barely noticed by the
[750–1050
] After the Carolingians: The Emergence of Local Rule 301
upper classes — except as a source of revenue. While there were still free peasants who
could lease land or till their own soil without paying dues to a lord, serfs — who could
not be kicked off their land but who were also not free to leave it — became the norm.
New methods of cultivation and a slightly warmer climate helped transform the
rural landscape, making it more productive and thus able to support a larger popula-
tion. But population increase meant more mouths to feed and the threat of food
shortages. Landlords began reorganizing their estates to run more efficiently. In the
tenth century, the three-field system became more prevalent; heavy plows that could
turn wet, clayey northern soils came into wider use, and horses (more effective than
oxen) were harnessed to pull the plows. The results were surplus food and a better
standard of living for nearly everyone.
In search of greater profits, some lords lightened the dues and services of peas-
ants, or turned them into fixed money payments that the lords could then use to
open up new lands by draining marshes and cutting down forests. Money payments
allowed lords to buy what they wanted, while peasants benefited because their dues
were fixed despite inflation.
By the tenth century, many peasants had begun living in populous rural settle-
ments, true villages. Surrounded by arable lands, meadows, woods, and wastelands,
villages developed a sense of community. Boundaries — sometimes real fortifications,
sometimes simple markers — told nonresidents to stay away or to find shelter in huts
located outside the village limits.
The church often formed the focal point of village activity. There people met,
received the sacraments, drew up contracts, and buried their dead. Religious feasts
and festivals joined the rituals of farming to mark the seasons. The church domi-
nated the village in another way: men and women owed it a tax called a tithe (one-
tenth of their crops or income, paid in money or in kind), which was first instituted
on a regular basis by the Carolingians.
Village peasants developed a sense of common purpose based on their interde-
pendence, as they shared oxen or horses for the teams that pulled the plow or turned
to village craftsmen to fix their wheels or shoe their horses. Village solidarity could
be compromised, however, by conflicting loyalties and obligations. A peasant in one
village might very well have one piece of land connected with a certain manor and
another piece on a different estate; and he or she might owe several lords different
kinds of dues. Even peasants of one village working for one lord might owe him
varied services and taxes.
Obligations differed even more strikingly across the regions of Europe than
within particular villages. The principal distinction was between free peasants —
such as small landowners in Saxony and other parts of Germany, who had no lords —
and serfs, who were especially common in France and England. In Italy, peasants
ranged from small independent landowners to leaseholders.
As landlords consolidated their power over their manors, they collected not only
dues and services but also fees for the use of their flour mills, bake houses, and brew-
eries. Some built castles, fortified strongholds, collected taxes, heard court cases, levied
302 Chapter 9 From Centralization to Fragmentation
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fines, and mustered men for defense. In France, for example, as the king’s power
waned, political control fell into the hands of counts and other princes. By 1000,
castles had become the key to their power. In the south of France, power was so
fragmented that each man who controlled a castle — a castellan — was a virtual ruler,
although often with a very limited reach. In northwestern France, territorial princes,
basing their rule on the control of many castles, dominated much broader regions.
The development of virtually independent local political units, dominated by a
castle and controlled by a military elite, marks an important turning point in western
Europe. Although this development did not occur everywhere simultaneously (and
in some places it hardly occurred at all), the social, political, and cultural life of Europe
was now dominated by landowners who were both military men and regional rulers.
system of inheritance in which the heir is the eldest son is called primogeniture.)
The heir, in turn, traced his lineage only through the male line, backward through
his father and forward through his own eldest son. Such patrilineal families left
many younger sons without an inheritance and therefore without the prospect of
marrying and founding a family; instead, the younger sons lived at the courts of the
great as youths, or they joined the church as clerics or monks. The development of
territorial rule and patrilineal families went hand in hand, as fathers passed down to
one son not only manors but also titles, castles, and authority over the peasantry.
Patrilineal inheritance tended to bypass daughters and so worked against aris-
tocratic women, who lost the power that came with inherited wealth. In families
without sons, however, widows and daughters did inherit property. And wives often
acted as lords of estates when their husbands were at war. Moreover, all aristocratic
women played an important role in this warrior society, whether in the monastery
(where they prayed for the souls of their families) or through their marriages (where
they produced children and helped forge alliances between their own natal families
and the families of their husbands).
the vernacular — the common spoken language. In most of ninth- and tenth-century
Europe, only the Latin language was used in writing. In England, however, the spoken
language became a written language as well.
Alfred’s reforms strengthened not only defense, education, and religion but also
royal power. He consolidated his control over Wessex and fought the Danish kings,
who by the mid-870s had taken Northumbria, northeastern Mercia, and East Anglia.
Eventually, as he successfully fought the Danes who were pushing south and west-
ward, he was recognized as king of all the English not under Danish rule. He issued
a law code for all of the English kingdoms, becoming, in effect, the first king of all
the English.
Alfred’s successors rolled back the Danish rule in England even though many
Vikings remained. Converted to Christianity, their great men joined Anglo-Saxons
in attending the English king at court. As peace returned, new administrative sub-
divisions for judicial and tax purposes were established throughout England: shires
(the English equivalent of counties) and hundreds (smaller units). The powerful men
of the kingdom swore fealty to the king, promising to be enemies of his enemies,
friends of his friends. England was united and organized to support a strong ruler.
Alfred’s grandson Edgar (r. 957–975) commanded all the possibilities early medi-
eval kingship offered. He was the sworn lord of all the great men of the kingdom.
He controlled appointments to the English church and sponsored monastic reform.
In 973, he was anointed king. The fortifications of the kingdom were in his hands,
as was the army, and he took responsibility for keeping the peace by proclaiming
certain crimes — arson and theft — to be under his special jurisdiction and by mobi-
lizing the machinery of the shire and the hundred to find and punish thieves.
Despite its apparent centralization, England was not a unified state in the mod-
ern sense, and the king’s control was often tenuous. Many royal officials were great
landowners who (as on the European continent) worked for the king because it was
in their best interest. When it was not, they allied with different claimants to the
throne. This political fragility may have helped the Danish king Cnut conquer England.
As king there from 1017 to 1035, Cnut reinforced the already strong connections
between England and Scandinavia while keeping intact much of the administrative,
ecclesiastical, and military apparatus already established in England by the Anglo-
Saxons. By Cnut’s time, Scandinavian traditions had largely merged with those of the
rest of Europe and the Vikings were no longer an alien culture.
Across the Channel, French kings had a harder time than the English coping with
invasions because their realm was much larger. They had no chance to build their
defenses slowly from one powerful base. During most of the tenth century, Caro-
lingian kings alternated on the throne with kings from a family that would later be
called the Capetian. As the Carolingian dynasty waned, the most powerful men of the
kingdom — dukes, counts, and important bishops — came together to elect as king
Hugh Capet (r. 987–996), a lord of great prestige yet relatively little power. His choice
marked the end of Carolingian rule and the beginning of the Capetian dynasty, which
would hand down the royal title from father to son until the fourteenth century.
306 Chapter 9 From Centralization to Fragmentation
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In the eleventh century, territorial lordships 0 150 300 miles
limited the reach of the Capetian kings. The king’s 0 150 300 kilometers
scattered but substantial estates lay in the north of
France, in the region around Paris — the Île-de-
France (“island of France”). His castles and his vas- Montmorency
Paris
sals were there. Independent castellans, however, Orléans
L oi
controlled areas nearby. In the sense that he was a Tours
re
. Cluny
R
neighbor of castellans and not much more power-
ful militarily than they, the king of the Franks — Bordeaux
sons; instead, like castellans in France, they created a patrilineal pattern of inheri-
tance. As a consequence, younger sons and other potential heirs felt cheated, and
disgruntled royal kin led revolt after revolt against the Ottonian kings.
Relations between the Ottonians and the German clergy were more harmonious.
Otto I appointed bishops, gave them extensive lands, and subjected the local peas-
antry to their overlordship. Like Charlemagne, Otto believed that the well-being of
the church in his kingdom depended on him. The Ottonians gave bishops the right
to collect revenues and call men to arms. Answering to the king and furnishing him
with troops, the bishops became royal officials, while also carrying out their religious
duties. German kings claimed the right to select bishops, even the pope at Rome,
and to “invest” them (install them in their office) by participating in the ceremony
that made them bishops.
Like all strong rulers of the day, the Ottonians presided over a renaissance of
learning. They brought learned churchmen to court to write and teach. To an extent
unprecedented elsewhere, noblewomen in Germany also acquired an education and
participated in the intellectual revival. Living at home with their kinfolk and servants
Conclusion
In 800, the three heirs of the Roman Empire all appeared to be organized like their
parent: centralized, monarchical, imperial. Byzantine emperors commissioning learned
books, Abbasid caliphs holding court in their new resplendent palace at Baghdad,
and Carolingian emperors issuing their directives for reform all mimicked the Roman
emperors. Yet leaders in the three realms confronted tensions and regional pressures
that tended to put political power into the hands of local lords. Byzantium felt this
fragmentation least, yet even there the emergence of a new elite, the dynatoi, weak-
ened the emperor’s control over the countryside. In the Islamic world, quarrels
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Chapter 9 Review
Key Terms and People
Be sure that you can identify the term or person and explain its historical significance.
dynatoi (p. 283) Treaty of Verdun (p. 295) Peace of God (p. 303)
Basil II (p. 284) fiefs (p. 299) Alfred the Great (p. 304)
Abbasids (p. 285) feudalism (p. 300) Capetian dynasty (p. 305)
Fatimids (p. 287) castellan (p. 302) Ottonian kings (p. 306)
Carolingian (p. 290) primogeniture (p. 303)
Charlemagne (p. 291) patrilineal (p. 303)
Review Questions
1. In what ways did the Byzantine emperor expand his power, and in what ways was that power
checked?
2. What forces contributed to the fragmentation of the Islamic world in the tenth and eleventh
centuries, and what forces held it together?
3. What were the strengths and weaknesses of Carolingian institutions of government, warfare,
and defense?
4. After the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire, what political systems developed in western,
northern, eastern, and central Europe, and how did these systems differ from one another?
Making Connections
1. How were the Byzantine, Islamic, and European economies similar? How did they differ?
How did these economies interact?
2. How did the powers and ambitions of castellans compare with those of the dynatoi of
Byzantium and of Muslim provincial rulers?
3. Compare the effects of the barbarian invasions into the Roman Empire with the effects of
the Viking, Muslim, and Magyar invasions into Carolingian Europe.
[750–1050
] Chapter 9 Review 311
Important Events
Consider two events: Peace of God movement begins (c. 990) and Stephen I (r. 997–
1038) crowned King of Hungary (1000 or 1001). How do these events illustrate Chris-
tianity’s ability to unify and mobilize people in this era?
Suggested References
A few books, like Brubaker and Smith’s, try to bridge the divides between the Byzantine, Islamic,
and western European worlds. Nevertheless, for the most part these regions are treated sepa-
rately. For Byzantium, Whittow is essential. For insight into the Islamic world, see especially
Cooperson. For the Carolingian world, De Jong provides a new approach.
Becher, Matthias. Charlemagne. 2003.
Berend, Nora. At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims, and “Pagans” in Medieval Hungary,
c. 1000–c. 1300. 2001.
Brubaker, Leslie, and Julia M. H. Smith. Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West,
300–900. 2004.
*Chronicle of Zuqnin, Parts III and IV, A.D. 488–775. Trans. Amir Harrak. 1999.
Cooperson, Michael. Al Ma’mun. 2005.
De Jong, Mayke. The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious,
814–840. 2009.
*Dutton, Paul Edward, ed. Carolingian Civilization: A Reader. 2004.
* ———, ed. and trans. Charlemagne’s Courtier: The Complete Einhard. 1998.
Franklin, Simon, and Jonathan Shepard. The Emergence of Rus, 750–1200. 1996.
Garver, Valerie L. Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World. 2009.
Jones, Anna Trumbore. Noble Lord, Good Shepherd: Episcopal Power and Piety in Aquitaine,
877–1050. 2009.
Kennedy, Hugh. The Armies of the Caliphs: Military and Society in the Early Islamic State. 2001.
*Psellus, Michael. Fourteen Byzantine Rulers: The Chronographia. Trans. E. R. A. Sewter. 1966.
Whittow, Mark. The Making of Byzantium, 600–1025. 1996.
*Primary source.
Commercial Quickening
10
and Religious Reform
1050–1150
A
bit after the year 1100, sculptors were hired to decorate the inner walls
of the cloister porch at Moissac, a monastery in southern France. For one
wall they depicted the New Testament story of the poor man Lazarus and
the rich man Dives. Their fates could not have been more different. While the soul
of Lazarus was carried to heaven by an angel, the rich man was shown plunging
down to hell.
The sculptor’s work reflected a widespread
Dives and Lazarus change in attitude toward money. In the Car-
At the time this sculpted depiction olingian and post-Carolingian period (up to,
of Dives and Lazarus was made, the say, 1050), people generally considered wealth
nearby city of Toulouse was expanding a very good thing. Rich kings were praised for
commercially. The parable of the rich
their generosity; expensively produced man-
man and the poor man (Luke 16:19-
31) spoke to the concerns of a money uscripts, illuminated with gold leaf and pre-
economy. At the top right, Dives, the cious colors, were highly prized; and splendid
rich man, feasts. To his left, the poor churches like Charlemagne’s chapel at Aachen
man, Lazarus, lies dying. Above Laza- were widely admired. Such views changed
rus is an angel who carries his soul over the course of the eleventh century.
to heaven. Further to the left, Laza-
rus’s soul lies in the lap of Abraham.
The most striking feature of the period
This is an image of heavenly bliss. from 1050 to 1150 was the rise of a money
By contrast, under the left-hand arch economy in western Europe. Agricultural pro-
below Abraham, devils are welcoming duction swelled, fueling the growth of trade
the soul of Dives into Hell. The monks and the expansion of cities. A new class of
of Moissac, like the townspeople of
well-heeled merchants, bankers, and entrepre-
Toulouse, by 1100 were attuned to
moneymaking and well aware of both neurs emerged. These developments were met
its pleasures and dangers. (South Por- with a wide variety of responses. Some people
tal, Church of St. Pierre, Moissac, France / fled the cities and their new wealth altogether,
Bridgeman Images.)
seeking isolation and poverty. Others, even the
participants in the new economy, condemned
it and emphasized its corrupting influence. Many people, however, embraced the new
money economy.
313
314 Chapter 10 Commercial Quickening and Religious Reform
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The development of a profit-based economy quickly transformed the landscape
and lifestyles of western Europe. Many villages and fortifications became cities where
traders, merchants, and artisans conducted business. In some places, town dwellers
began to determine their own laws and administer their own justice. Although most
people still lived in sparsely populated rural areas, the new cash economy touched
their lives in many ways. Economic concerns helped drive changes within the church,
where a movement for reform gathered steam and exploded in three directions: the
Investiture Conflict, new monastic orders
CHAPTER FOCUS How did the commercial
emphasizing poverty, and the crusades.
revolution affect religion and politics? Money allowed popes, kings, and princes
to redefine the nature of their power.
countryside — and this included monasteries — were eager to take advantage of the
profits that their estates generated. In the late tenth century, they reorganized their
lands for greater productivity, encouraged their peasants to cultivate new land, and
converted services and dues to money payments. With ready cash, they not only
fostered the development of local markets and yearly fairs, where they could sell their
surpluses and buy luxury goods, but also encouraged traders and craftspeople to
settle down near them.
Some markets formed just outside the walls of older cities; these gradually
merged into new and enlarged urban communities as towns built new walls around
them to protect their inhabitants. Along the Rhine River and in other river valleys,
cities sprang up to service the merchants who traversed the route between Italy and
the north. Many long-distance traders were Italians and Jews. They supplied the fine
wines, spices, and fabrics beloved by lords and ladies, their families, and their vassals.
Italians took up long-distance trade because of Italy’s proximity to Byzantine and
Islamic ports, their opportunities for plunder and trade on the high seas, and their
never entirely extinguished urban traditions.
The Jews of Mediterranean regions — especially Italy and Spain — had been
involved in commerce since Roman times. That trade had centered on the Mediter-
ranean; now it extended to the north as well. For Jews living in the port cities of the
old Roman Empire, little had changed. But for many Jews in northern Europe, the
story was different. They had settled on the land alongside other peasants, and dur-
ing the Carolingian period their properties bordered those of their Christian neigh-
bors. As political power fragmented over the course of the tenth century and the
countryside was reorganized under local lords, many Jews were driven off the land.
They found refuge in the new towns and cities. Some became scholars, doctors, and
judges within their communities; many became small-time pawnbrokers; and still
others became moneylenders and financiers.
Fod
replaced it with a more extensive one in 872. Then,
esta
Cana
in 1169, Piacenzans took down the ninth-century
l
wall and replaced it with one that was still more
expansive.
Before the eleventh century, Europeans had
depended on boats and waterways for bulky long-
distance transport. In the twelfth century, carts could
haul items overland because new roads through the
countryside linked the urban markets and strength- To Genoa
ened governments could protect overland travelers. Textile Late antique
Still, although commercial centers developed through- makers wall
(hypothetical)
Smiths
out western Europe, they grew fastest and most Leather
Wall of 872
densely in regions along key waterways: the Mediter- workers Wall of 1169
Fishermen, Wall of 1265
ranean coasts of Italy, France, and Spain; northern kiln workers,
shipwrights Church
Italy along the Po River; the Rhône-Saône-Meuse and/or
monastery
river system; the Rhineland; the English Channel;
the shores of the Baltic Sea. During the eleventh cen-
The Walls of Piacenza
tury, these waterways became part of a single inter-
dependent economy.
What did townspeople look like? We can get an idea from a twelfth-century
baptismal font cast in Liège (see below). It shows Jesus speaking to the soldiers and
publicans (tax collectors): the soldier is dressed as a medieval knight, while the
publicans wear the caps and clothes of well-to-do city dwellers.
But commerce needed credit as well as coins. In the Middle Ages, as now, entre-
preneurs had to take out loans to finance their projects. Creditors were induced to
give out loans in return for interest. But the church banned usury — lending money
at interest. This led to various ingenious ways to get around the prohibition. For
example, often contracts specified a “penalty for late payment” rather than an interest
charge. The new willingness to finance business enterprises with loans signaled a
more positive attitude toward credit, risk, and profit.
Contracts and partnerships made large-scale productive enterprises possible. In
fact, light industry began in the eleventh century. One of the earliest products to
benefit from new industrial technologies was cloth. Water mills powered machines
such as presses to extract oil from fibers, and flails to clean and thicken cloth.
Machines also exploited raw materials more efficiently: new deep-mining technol-
ogy provided Europeans with hitherto untapped sources of metals. Simultaneously,
forging techniques improved, and for the first time since antiquity, iron was regu-
larly used for agricultural tools and plows. Iron tools — which were more durable
than wood — made farming more productive, which in turn fed the commercial
revolution.
and buy what they lacked. Increases in land under cultivation and the use of iron
tools meant greater productivity. Peasants also gained increased personal freedom
as they shook off direct control by lords. Nevertheless, these advantages were par-
tially canceled out by their cash obligations. Peasants touched by the commercial
revolution ate better than their forebears
had eaten, but they also had to spend more REVIEW QUESTION What new institutions
money. resulted from the commercial revolution?
Church Reform
The commercial revolution affected the church no less than it affected other institu-
tions of the time. Typically, kings or powerful local lords appointed bishops, who
then ruled over the city. This transaction involved gifts: churchmen gave gifts and
money to secular leaders in return for their offices. Soon the same sorts of people
who appreciated the fates of Dives and Lazarus were condemning such transactions.
The impulse to free the church from “the world” — from rulers, wealth, sex, money,
and power — was as old as the origins of monasticism; but, beginning in the tenth
century and increasing to fever pitch in the eleventh, reformers demanded that the
church as a whole remodel itself and become free of secular entanglements.
This freedom was, from the start, as much a matter of power as of religion. Most
people had long believed that their ruler — whether king, duke, count, or castellan —
reigned by the grace of God and had the right to control the churches in his territory.
But by the second half of the eleventh century, more and more people saw a great
deal wrong with secular power over the church. They looked to the papacy to lead
the movement of church reform. The matter came to a head during the so-called
Investiture Conflict, when Pope Gregory VII clashed with Emperor Henry IV (whose
empire embraced both Germany and Italy). The Investiture Conflict ushered in a
major civil war in Germany and a great upheaval in the distribution of power across
western Europe. By the early 1100s, a reformed church — with the pope at its head —
was penetrating into areas of life never before touched by churchmen. Church reform
began as a way to free the church from the world, but in the end the church was
thoroughly involved in the new world it had helped create.
Beginnings of Reform
The project of freeing the church from the world began in the tenth century with
no particular plan and only a vague idea of what it might mean. The Benedictine
monastery of Cluny (today in France) may serve to represent the early phases of the
reform. The duke and duchess of Aquitaine founded Cluny in 910 and endowed it
with property. Then they did something new: instead of retaining control over the
monastery, like most other monastic founders, they gave it and its worldly posses-
sions to Saints Peter and Paul. In this way, they put control of the monastery into
the hands of heaven’s two most powerful saints. They designated the pope, as the
322 Chapter 10 Commercial Quickening and Religious Reform
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successor of St. Peter, to be the monastery’s worldly protector if anyone should bother
or threaten it.
The whole notion of “freedom” at this point was vague. But Cluny’s prestige was
great because of its status as St. Peter’s property and the elaborate round of prayers
that the monks carried out there with scrupulous devotion. The Cluniac monks
fulfilled the role of “those who pray” in a way that dazzled their contemporaries.
Through their prayers, they seemed to guarantee the salvation of all Christians. Rul-
ers, bishops, rich landowners, and even serfs (if they could) donated land to Cluny,
joining their lands to the land of St. Peter and the fate of their souls to Cluny’s
efficacious prayers. Powerful men and women called on the Cluniac monks to reform
other monasteries along the Cluniac model.
The abbots of Cluny came to see themselves as reformers of the world as well.
They advocated clerical celibacy and argued against the prevailing norm, in which
parish priests and even some bishops were married. They thought that the laity (all
Christians who were not part of the clergy) could be reformed and become more
virtuous. In particular, they sought to curb the oppression of the poor by the rich
and powerful. In the eleventh century, the Cluniacs began to link their program of
internal monastic and external worldly reform to the papacy. When bishops and
laypeople encroached on their lands, they appealed to the popes for help. The causes
that the Cluniacs championed were soon taken up by a small group of clerics and
monks in the Empire, the political entity created by the Ottonians. They buttressed
their arguments with new interpretations of canon law — the laws decreed over the
centuries at church councils and by bishops and popes. They concentrated on two
breaches of those laws: clerical marriage and simony (buying church offices).* Later
they added the condemnation of lay investiture — the installation of clerics into their
offices by lay rulers. In the investiture ritual, the emperor or his representative sym-
bolically gave the church and the land that went with it to the priest or bishop or
archbishop chosen for the job.
At first the emperors supported the reformers. Many of the men who promoted
the reform lived in the highly commercialized regions of the empire — Italy and the
regions along the northern half of the Rhine River. Familiar with the impersonal
practices of a profit economy, they regarded the gifts that churchmen usually gave
in return for their offices as no more than crass purchases.
Emperor Henry III (r. 1039–1056) took seriously his position as the anointed of
God. He felt responsible for the well-being of the church in his empire. He denounced
simony and refused to accept money or gifts when he appointed bishops to their
posts. When in 1046 three men, each representing a different faction of the Roman
aristocracy, claimed to be pope, Henry, as ruler of Rome, traveled to Italy to settle
the matter. There Henry presided over the Synod of Sutri (1046), which deposed all
three popes and elected another. In 1049, Henry appointed a bishop from the Rhine-
*The word simony comes from the name Simon Magus, the magician in the New Testament who
wanted to buy the gifts of the Holy Spirit from St. Peter.
[1050–1150
] Church Reform 323
Investiture of a Bishop
This plaque, made of champlevé
enamel around 1180, shows a seated
ruler on the viewer’s right. He holds
an orb of the world in his left hand,
while with his right he gives the monk
on the left a cross-standard. The
inscription at the top says “E-P FIT,”
meaning “He becomes bishop.” What
is depicted here, then, is the investi-
ture of a bishop by a king. In the
eleventh century, this practice came
under heavy criticism by church
reformers. By the time this plaque
was made, the reformers had made
their point. The artist put the focus on
the monk who was about to become
bishop: he wears a halo and looms
in size over the king. In addition, the
inscription makes him — rather than
the king — the subject of the story.
(Museum for the Arts and Industry, Hamburg,
Germany / Interfoto / akg-images.)
land to the papacy as Leo IX (r. 1049–1054). But this appointment did not work out
as Henry had expected.
Leo set out to reform the church under his own, not the emperor’s, control. Under
his rule, the pope’s role expanded. He traveled to France and Germany, holding
councils to condemn bishops guilty of simony. He sponsored the creation of a canon
law textbook — Collection in 74 Titles — that emphasized the pope’s power. He brought
to the papal court the most zealous reformers of his day, including Humbert of Silva
Candida and Hildebrand (later Pope Gregory VII).
In 1054, his last year as pope, Leo sent Humbert to Constantinople on a diplomatic
mission to argue against the patriarch of Constantinople on behalf of the new, lofty
claims of the pope. When the patriarch treated him with contempt, Humbert became
furious and excommunicated him. In retaliation, the patriarch excommunicated Hum-
bert and his party, threatening them with eternal damnation. Clashes between the two
churches had occurred before and had been patched up, but this one, the schism
between the eastern and western churches (1054), proved insurmountable.* Thereafter,
the Roman Catholic and the Greek Orthodox churches were largely separate.
*The mutual excommunications led to a permanent breach between the churches that largely remained
in effect until 1965, when Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I made a joint declaration regret-
ting “the offensive words” and sentences of excommunication the two sides had exchanged more than
nine hundred years before, deploring “the effective rupture of ecclesiastical communion,” and express-
ing the hope that in time the “differences between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox
Church” would be overcome.
324 Chapter 10 Commercial Quickening and Religious Reform
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Leo also confronted a new power to his south. North Sea 0 150 300 miles
Elb
Under Count Roger I (c. 1040–1101), the Nor- e R 0 150 300 kilometers
.
R hi
mans created a county that would eventually POLAND
R .GERMANY
ne
stretch from Capua to Sicily. Leo, threatened by Worms . BOHEMIA
be R
this great power, tried to curtail it: in 1053, he sent D anu
EN
ITALY r ia
NI
NE
ti c
in effect, gave — Apulia, nearby Calabria, and even Se
M
Rome
TS
APULIA a
.
the still-unconquered Sicily to Roger’s brother, Capua
even though none of this was the pope’s to give. The Empire
Under Norman
The papacy was particularly keen to see the Nor- rule Sicily
I deprive King Henry [IV], son of the emperor Henry [III], who has rebelled
against [God’s] Church with unheard-of audacity, of the government over the
whole kingdom of Germany and Italy, and I release all Christian men from
the allegiance which they have sworn or may swear to him, and I forbid
anyone to serve him as king.
It was this last part of the decree that made it politically explosive; it authorized
everyone in Henry’s kingdom to rebel against him. Henry’s enemies, mostly German
princes (as German aristocrats were called), now threatened to elect another king.
They were motivated partly by religious sentiments and partly by political opportun-
ism. Some bishops joined forces with Gregory’s supporters, a great blow to royal
power because Henry desperately needed the troops supplied by his churchmen.
Attacked from all sides, Henry traveled to intercept Gregory, who was journeying
northward to visit the rebellious princes. In early 1077, king and pope met at a castle
belonging to Matilda, countess of Tuscany, at Canossa, high in central Italy’s snowy
Apennine Mountains. Gregory remained inside the fortress there; Henry stood out-
side as a penitent, begging forgiveness. Henry’s move was astute, for no priest could
*This movement is also called the Investiture Controversy, Investiture Contest, or Investiture Struggle.
The epithets all refer to the same thing: the disagreement and eventually war between the pope and
the emperor over the right to invest churchmen in particular and power over the church hierarchy in
general.
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Matilda of Tuscany
How often is a woman the
dominant figure in medieval
art? In this illustration, made
around 1115, Matilda, count-
ess of Tuscany, towers above
the king (Henry IV) and
upstages the abbot of Cluny
(Hugh). Matilda was a key sup-
porter of Pope Gregory VII. It
was at her castle at Canossa
that Henry IV did penance.
The words underneath the
picture emphasize Henry’s
abjection. They read: “The
king begs the abbot and
supplicates Matilda as well.”
(Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana,
The Vatican, Italy / Flammarion /
Bridgeman Images.)
refuse absolution to a penitent; Gregory had to lift the excommunication and receive
Henry back into the church. But, as Henry stood in the snow, Gregory had the
advantage of enjoying the king’s humiliation before the majesty of the pope.
Although Henry was technically back in the church’s fold, nothing of substance
had been resolved. The princes elected an antiking (a king chosen illegally), and
Henry and his supporters elected an antipope. From 1077 until 1122, papal and
imperial armies and supporters waged intermittent war in both Germany and Italy.
The Investiture Conflict was finally resolved long after Henry IV and Greg-
ory VII had died. The Concordat of Worms of 1122 ended the fighting with a com-
promise. Henry V, the heir of Henry IV, gave up the right in the investiture ceremony
to confer the ring and the pastoral staff — symbols of spiritual power. But he retained,
in Germany, the right to be present when bishops were elected. In effect, he would
continue to have influence over those elections. In both Germany and Italy he also
had the right to give the scepter to the churchman in a gesture meant to indicate
the transfer of the temporal, or worldly, powers and possessions of the church (the
lands by which it was supported).
Superficially, nothing much had changed; the Concordat of Worms ensured that
secular rulers would continue to have a part in choosing and investing churchmen.
In fact, however, few people would now claim that a king could act as head of the
[1050–1150
] Church Reform 327
church. Just as the concordat broke the investiture ritual into two parts — one spirit-
ual, with ring and staff, the other secular, with the scepter — so, too, it implied a new
notion of kingship that separated it from priesthood. The Investiture Conflict did not
produce the modern distinction between church and state — that would develop
slowly — but it set the wheels in motion.
The most important changes brought about by the Investiture Conflict, however,
were on the ground: the political landscape in both Italy and Germany was irrevo-
cably transformed. In Germany, the princes consolidated their lands and their posi-
tions at the expense of royal power. In Italy, the emperor lost power to the cities.
The northern and central Italian communes were formed in the crucible of the war
between the pope and the emperor. In fierce communal struggles, city factions, often
created by local grievances but claiming to fight on behalf of the papal or the impe-
rial cause, created their own governing bodies. In the course of the twelfth century,
these Italian cities became accustomed to self-government.
Dalmatic
This vestment, called a dal-
matic, is made of thirteenth-
century textiles and was used
at Roda, in Spain, as a garment
for a cleric. Made of red, white,
and blue silk threads woven with
gold, it was further ornamented
with panels of tapestry. In the
wake of the Gregorian reform,
even members of the lower
clerical orders such as deacons
began to wear splendid vest-
ments. As they put on each
layer of clothing, they said
prayers to remind them that
each piece of clothing signified
a virtue. (Museum of Costume and
Textiles, Barcelona, Spain / Ramon
Manent / The Art Archive at Art
Resource, NY.)
Even while Gratian was writing, the papal curia (government), centered in Rome,
resembled a court of law with its own collection agency. In the course of the eleventh
and twelfth centuries, the papacy developed a bureaucracy to hear cases, such as
disputed elections of bishops. Churchmen went to the papal curia for other purposes
as well: to petition for privileges for their monasteries or to be consecrated by the
pope. All these services were expensive, requiring lawyers, judges, hearing officers,
notaries, and collectors. The lands owned by the papacy were not sufficient to sup-
port the growing cost of its administrative apparatus, so the petitioners and litigants
themselves had to pay. The pope, with his law courts, bureaucracy, and financial
apparatus, had become a monarch.
Pulpit
Choir of the Kitchen
lay brothers Benches (for reading)
Cellar
Latrines for
the lay brothers
Lay brothers’
refectory
Many who were not members of the Cistercian order held similar views of
God; their spirituality signaled wider changes. For example, around 1099, St. Anselm
wrote a theological treatise entitled Why God Became Man, arguing that since man
had sinned, only a sinless man could redeem him. St. Anselm’s work represented a
new theological emphasis on the redemptive power of human charity, including that
of Jesus as a human being. As Anselm was writing, the crusaders were heading for
the very place of Christ’s crucifixion, making his humanity more real and power-
ful to people who walked in the holy “place of God’s humiliation and our redemp-
tion,” as one chronicler put it. Yet this new stress on the loving bonds that tied
Christians together also led to the persecu-
tion of non-Christians, especially Jews and REVIEW QUESTION What were the causes
Muslims. and consequences of the Gregorian reform?
The Crusades
The crusades were the culmination of two separate historical movements: pilgrim-
ages and holy wars. Like pilgrimages to the Holy Land, the place where Jesus had
lived and died, the crusades drew on a long tradition of making pious voyages to
332 Chapter 10 Commercial Quickening and Religious Reform
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]
sacred shrines to petition for help or cure. The relics of Jesus’s crucifixion in Jerusalem,
and even the region around it, attracted pilgrims long before the First Crusade was
called in 1095.
As holy wars blessed by church leaders, the crusades had a prehistory. The Truce
of God, begun in the late tenth century, depended on knights ready to go to battle
to uphold it. The Normans’ war against Sicily had the pope’s approval. Already, as
we have seen, the battle of 1063 in the reconquista of Spain was fought with a papal
indulgence.
European crusaders established states in the Middle East that lasted for two hun-
dred years. A tiny strip of crusader states along the eastern Mediterranean survived —
perilously — until 1291.
ea
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W S ea lti
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.
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Jerusalem
1099
Why did Urban make this call to arms? Certainly he hoped to win Christian
control of the Holy Land. He was also anxious to fulfill the goals of the Truce of God
by turning the crowd at Clermont into a peace militia dedicated to holy purposes.
Finally, Urban’s call placed the papacy in a new position of leadership, one that
complemented in a military arena the position the popes had gained in the church
hierarchy.
Inspired by local preachers, men and women, rich and poor, young and old,
laypeople and clerics heeded Urban’s call to go on the First Crusade (1096–1099).
Between 60,000 and 100,000 people abandoned their homes and braved the rough
journey to Jerusalem. They went to fight for God, to gain land and plunder, or to
follow their lord. Although women were discouraged from going, some crusaders
were accompanied by their wives. Other women went as servants; a few may have
been fighters. Children and old people, not able to fight, made the cords for siege
334 Chapter 10 Commercial Quickening and Religious Reform
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engines — giant machines used to hurl stones at enemy fortifications. As Christians
undertook more crusades during the twelfth century, the transport and supply of
these armies became a lucrative business for the commercial classes of maritime
Italian cities such as Venice, strategically located on the route eastward.
Crusade Warfare
This battle scene, painted on paper (already common in the Islamic world) in the twelfth cen-
tury, depicts an Islamic garrison defending against Western knights. At the center is a Muslim
warrior wearing a large turban. Fully clad in chain mail, he sits atop a horse and wields a sword
and shield. Behind him to the left are archers, also in mail armor and turbans. Above him and
to the right are Muslim foot soldiers protected only by large shields. Their enemy, the knight on
the black horse, has been defeated and is falling to the ground. (Early-12th-century paper fragment,
Cairo, Egypt / British Museum, London, UK / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY.)
early June 1099, a large force of crusaders amassed before the walls of Jerusalem; in
mid-July, they attacked, breaching the walls and entering the city. “Now that our men
had possession of the walls and towers, wonderful sights were to be seen,” wrote
Raymond d’Aguiliers, a priest serving one of the crusade leaders. “Some of our men
(and this was the more merciful) cut off the heads of their enemies; others shot them
with arrows, so that they fell from the towers; others tortured them longer by casting
them into the flames.”
Ti
Edessa
gr
SELJUKS s R.
i
their own vassals. Since most Europeans went Antioch PRINCIPALITY
Cyprus OF ANTIOCH
home after the First Crusade, the rulers who SYRIA
Tripoli
COUNTY OF Eu
remained learned to coexist with the indigenous Mediterranean
TRIPOLI ph
Sea
ra
Damascus
population, which included Muslims, Jews, and KINGDOM OF Jerusalem
tes
R.
JERUSALEM
Greek Orthodox Christians. They encouraged a Dead
Sea ARABIA
lively trade at their ports. FATIMIDS
0 100 200 miles
R.
The main concerns of these rulers were mili-
N i le
0 100 200 kilometers
tary. They set up castles and recruited knights
from Europe. So organized for war was this soci- The Crusader States in 1109
ety that it produced a new and militant kind of
monasticism: the Knights Templar. The Templars vowed themselves to poverty and
chastity. But unlike monks, the Templars, whose name came from their living quar-
ters in the area of the former Jewish Temple at Jerusalem, devoted themselves to
warfare. Their first mission — to protect the pilgrimage routes from Palestine to
Jerusalem — soon diversified. They manned the town garrisons of the crusader
states, and they transported money from Europe to the Holy Land. In this way, the
Order of the Templars became enormously wealthy (even though individual monks
owned nothing), with branch “banks” in major cities across Europe.
The Second Crusade had one decisive outcome: it led Louis VII to divorce his
wife, Eleanor, the heiress of Aquitaine. He was disappointed that she had provided
him with a daughter but no son, and he suspected her of infidelity. After the pope
“dissolved” their marriage — that is, found it to have been uncanonical in the first
place — Eleanor promptly married Henry, count of Anjou and duke of Normandy.
This marriage had far-reaching consequences, as we shall see, when Henry became
King Henry II of England in 1154.
from many parts of France. Just before William’s invasion force landed, Harold
defeated Harald Hardrada at Stamford Bridge, near York, in the north of England.
When he heard of William’s arrival, Harold turned his forces south, marching them
250 miles and picking up new soldiers along the way to meet the Normans.
The two armies clashed at the battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066, in one
of history’s rare decisive battles. Most of Harold’s men were on foot, armed with
battle-axes and stones tied to sticks, which could be thrown with great force. Wil-
liam’s army consisted of perhaps three thousand mounted knights, a thousand
archers, and the rest infantry. At first William’s knights broke rank, frightened by the
deadly battle-axes thrown by the English; but then some of the English also broke
rank as they pursued the knights. Gradually Harold’s troops were worn down, par-
ticularly by William’s archers, whose arrows flew a hundred yards, much farther than
an Englishman could throw his battle-ax. (Some of the archers are depicted on the
lower margin of the Bayeux “Tapestry.”) By dusk, King Harold was dead and his army
defeated.
Some Anglo-Saxons in England supported William. But William — known to
posterity as William the Conqueror — wanted to replace, not assimilate, the Anglo-
Saxons. During William’s reign, families from the European continent almost totally
supplanted the English aristocracy. Although the English peasantry remained — now
with new lords — many of them “perished . . . by famine or the sword,” as William
340 Chapter 10 Commercial Quickening and Religious Reform
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confessed on his deathbed. Modern historians estimate that one out of five people
in England died as a result of the Norman conquest and its immediate aftermath.
Yet, although the Normans destroyed a generation of English men and women,
they preserved and extended many Anglo-Saxon institutions. For example, the new
kings retained the old administrative divisions and legal system of the shires. At the
same time, they drew from continental institutions. They set up a political hierar-
chy, culminating in the king, whose strength was reinforced by his castles. Because
all of England was the king’s by conquest, he could treat it as his booty; William
kept about 20 percent of the land for himself and divided the rest, distributing it
in large but scattered fiefs to a relatively small number of his barons and family
members, lay and ecclesiastical, as well as to some lesser men. In turn, these fief-
holders maintained their own vassals; they owed the king military ser vice — and
the ser vice of a fixed number of their vassals — along with certain dues, such as
reliefs (money paid upon inheriting a fief) and aids (payments made on important
occasions).
In addition to these revenues from the nobles, the king of England made sure
that he would get his share from the peasantry. In 1086, William ordered a survey
and census of England, popularly called Domesday because, like the reckoning
Christians expected at doomsday, it provided facts that could not be appealed. It was
the most extensive inventory of land, livestock, taxes, and population that had ever
been compiled in Europe. The king’s men consulted Anglo-Saxon tax lists and took
testimony from local men. From these inquests, scribes drew up reports, which were
then summarized in Domesday itself.
William was not just the ruler of England; he was also duke of Normandy. The
Norman conquest tied England to the languages, politics, institutions, and culture
of the European continent. English commerce was linked to the wool industry in
Flanders. St. Anselm, the archbishop of Canterbury and author of Why God Became
Man, was born in Italy and served as the abbot of a monastery in Normandy before
crossing the Channel to England. Modern English is an amalgam of Anglo-Saxon
and Norman French.
The barons of England retained their estates in Normandy and elsewhere, and
the kings of England often spent more time on the continent than they did on the
island. When William’s son Henry I (r. 1100–1135) died without male heirs, civil
war soon erupted: the throne of England was fought over by two French counts, one
married to Henry’s daughter, the other to his sister. The story of England after 1066
was, in miniature, the story of Europe.
royal power. We know a good deal about him and his reputation because a contem-
porary and close associate, Suger (1081–1152), abbot of Saint-Denis, wrote Louis’s
biography.
Although a churchman, Suger was a propagandist for his king. When Louis set
about consolidating his rule in the Île-de-France, Suger portrayed him as a righteous
hero. He thought that the king had rights over the French nobles because they were
his vassals. He believed that the king had a religious role as the protector of the church
and the poor. To be sure, the Gregorian reform had made its mark: Suger did not
claim that Louis was the head of the church. But he nevertheless emphasized the
royal dignity and its importance to the papacy. He stressed Louis’s piety and active
defense of the faith.
When Louis VI died in 1137, Suger’s notion of the might and right of the king
of France reflected reality in an extremely small area. Nevertheless, Louis laid the
groundwork for the gradual extension of royal power in France. As the lord of vas-
sals, the king could call on his men to aid him in times of war, though the most
powerful among them sometimes disregarded the summons. As a king and land-
lord, he could obtain many dues and taxes. He drew revenues from Paris, a thriving
city not only of commerce but also of scholarship. Officials called provosts enforced
his royal laws and collected taxes. With money and land, Louis dispensed the favors
and gave the gifts that added to his prestige and his power. Louis VI and Suger
together created the territorial core and royal ideal of the future French monarchy.
Surviving as Emperor
Henry IV lost much of the power over the church and over Italy that his father had
wielded. The Investiture Conflict meant that he could no longer control the church
hierarchy in Germany and northern Italy, nor could he depend on bishops to work
as government officials. The German princes rebelled against him, and the cities of
northern Italy found ways to declare their independence of him.
The Concordat of Worms (1122) conceded considerable power within the church
to the king, but said nothing about the ruler’s relations with the German princes or
the Italian cities. When Henry V (r. 1105–1125) died childless, the position of the
emperor was extremely uncertain.
When a German king died childless, the great bishops and princes would meet
together to elect the next emperor. In 1125, numerous candidates were put forward;
the winner, Lothar III (r. 1125–1137), was chosen largely because he was not the per-
son designated by Henry V. Lothar had little time to reestablish royal control before
he, too, died childless, leaving the princes
to elect Conrad III. It was Conrad’s nephew,
REVIEW QUESTION Which ruler — Alexius
Frederick Barbarossa, who would have a Comnenus, William the Conqueror, or Louis VI —
chance to find new sources of imperial was the strongest, which the feeblest, and why?
power in a post-Gregorian age.
342 Chapter 10 Commercial Quickening and Religious Reform
[ 1050–1150
]
Conclusion
The commercial revolution and the building boom it spurred profoundly changed
Europe. New trade, wealth, and business institutions became common in its thriving
cities. Merchants and artisans became important. Mutual and fraternal organizations
like the guilds and communes expressed and reinforced the solidarity and economic
interests of city dwellers. The countryside became reorganized for the market.
Sensitized by the commercial revolution to the corrupting effects of money and
inspired by the model of Cluny, which seemed to “free the church from the world,”
reformers began to demand a new and purified church. Under Pope Gregory VII,
the reform asserted a new vision of the church with the pope at the top. But many
people — especially rulers — depended on the old system. Henry IV was particularly
affected; for him the Gregorian reform meant war. The Investiture Conflict, though
officially ended by a compromise, in fact greatly enhanced the power of the papacy
and weakened that of the emperor.
The First Crusade was both cause and effect of the pope’s new power. But the
crusades were not just papal projects. They were fueled by enormous popular piety
as well as by the ambitions of European rulers. They resulted in a ribbon of crusader
states along the eastern Mediterranean.
Apart from the emperor, rulers in the period after the Investiture Conflict gained
new prestige and, with the wealth of the commercial revolution, the ability to hire
civil servants and impose their will as never before. The Norman ruler of England
is a good example of the new-style king; William the Conqueror was interested not
only in waging war but also in setting up the most efficient possible taxation system
in times of peace. The successes of these rulers signaled a new era: the flowering of
the Middle Ages.
[ 1050–1150
] Conclusion 343
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ENGLAND POMERANIA
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Normandy Paris
Worms BOHEMIA CUMANS
Orleans FRENCH
ROYAL GERMANY Regensburg ALANS
Loire R. DOMAIN
Pest
Buda
BURGUNDY
Poitiers HUNGARY GE O
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Milan CROATIA
Rhône
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LEÓN Toulouse ITALY BOSNIA R. Bl ack S e a
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Review Questions
1. What new institutions resulted from the commercial revolution?
2. What were the causes and consequences of the Gregorian reform?
3. How and why was the First Crusade a success, and how and why was it a failure?
4. Which ruler — Alexius Comnenus, William the Conqueror, or Louis VI — was the strongest,
which the feeblest, and why?
Making Connections
1. What were the similarities — and what were the differences — between the powers wielded
by the Carolingian kings and those wielded by twelfth-century rulers?
2. In what ways was the movement for church reform a consequence of the commercial
revolution?
3. How may the First Crusade be understood as a consequence of the Gregorian reform?
Suggested References
Lopez was the first to recognize the importance of the commercial revolution, and Little makes
crucial connections between the new commerce and religious reform. Miller’s running narrative
and primary sources provide the best introduction to the Investiture Conflict and its aftermath,
and her book on clerical clothing shows that “fashion” is not a modern invention. Asbridge
offers a vivid account of the crusades, while Nicholson gives a quick overview along with pri-
mary sources. Fuhrmann, Hallam, and Huscroft cover the new western monarchies well, while
Waley takes up the Italian republics.
Asbridge, Thomas. The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land. 2010.
*Bayeux Tapestry: http://www.bayeuxtapestry.org.uk/Index.htm
Clanchy, Michael. From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307. 3rd ed. 2006.
Fuhrmann, Horst. Germany in the High Middle Ages, c. 1050–1200. 2002.
Hallam, Elizabeth M., and Judith Everard. Capetian France, 987–1328. 2nd ed. 2001.
Huscroft, Richard. The Norman Conquest: A New Introduction. 2009.
Little, Lester K. Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe. 1978.
Lopez, Robert S. The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950–1350. 1976.
* ———, and Irving W. Raymond. Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World. 1955.
*Primary source.
344
[1050–1150
] Chapter 10 Review 345
Important Events
Consider three events: Papacy of Gregory VII (1073–1085), Concordat of Worms ends
Investiture Conflict (1122), and Gratian’s Decretum published (c. 1140). How did these
events serve to enhance the power of the papacy? How might the papacy have been
different had any of these events not occurred?
Miller, Maureen C. Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800–1200. 2014.
*———. Power and the Holy in the Age of the Investiture Conflict. 2005.
Moore, Robert I. The First European Revolution, c. 970–1215. 2000.
Morris, Colin. The Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250. 1989.
Nicholson, Helen. The Crusades. 2004.
*Peters, Edward, ed. The First Crusade: The Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres and Other Source
Materials. 1971.
*Suger. The Deeds of Louis the Fat. Trans. Richard C. Cusimano and John Moorhead. 1992.
Tyerman, Christopher. God’s War: A New History of the Crusades. 2006.
Waley, Daniel. The Italian City-Republics. 1969.
11
The Flowering of the Middle Ages
1150–1215
I
n 1194 a raging fire burned most of the town of Chartres, in France, including
its cathedral. Worried citizens feared that their most prized relic, the sacred tunic
worn by the Virgin Mary when Christ was born, had gone up in flames as well.
Had the Virgin abandoned the town? Suddenly the bishop and his clerics emerged
from the cathedral crypt carrying the sacred tunic, which had remained unharmed.
They took it as a sign that the Virgin had not only not abandoned her city but also
wanted a new and more magnificent cathedral to house her relic. The town dedicated
itself to the task; the bishop, his clerics, and the town guilds all gave generously to
pay for stonecutters, carvers, glaziers, countless other workmen, and a master builder.
Donations poured in from the counts, dukes,
and even the king of France. The new cathedral
Chartres Cathedral
Rebuilt after a fire in 1194, the was finished in twenty-six years — a very short
cathedral of Chartres reconciled old time in an age when such churches usually
and new. The three doorways of its took a century or more to build. Its vault soared
west end (shown here) were rem- 116 feet high; its length stretched more than
nants of the former church. But they 100 yards. Its western portals, which had been
were crowned by a rose window, a
form newly in vogue. (Ingram Publish-
spared the flames, retained the sculptural dec-
ing / Newscom.) oration — carved around 1150 — of the old
church: three doorways surrounded and sur-
mounted by figures that demonstrated the close
relationship between the truths of divine wisdom, the French royal house, and the
seven liberal arts — grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astron-
omy. The rest of the church was built in a new style: Gothic.
The rebuilt cathedral at Chartres sums up in stone the key features that charac-
terized the period from 1150 to 1215 and would mark the rest of the Middle Ages.
Its Gothic style — with its high vault, flying buttresses, and enormous stained-glass
windows — became the quintessential style of medieval architecture. The celebration
of the liberal arts on one of its doorways mirrored the new schools that flourished
in the twelfth century and culminated in the universities of the thirteenth. The
twenty-four statues of Old Testament figures flanking its western portals were meant
to prefigure the kings of France; they demonstrate the extraordinary importance of
powerful princes in this period, when monarchies and principalities ceased to be the
347
348 Chapter 11 The Flowering of the Middle Ages
[ 1150–1215
]
personal creation of each ruler and became permanent institutions, with professional
bureaucratic staffs. The outpouring of popular support that culminated in the build-
ing of the cathedral is evidence of a vibrant vernacular (non-Latin-speaking) culture,
which expressed itself not only in stone but in literature as well. Finally, the emphasis
at Chartres on the divine wisdom echoes
the age’s fervor about Christian truths, a
CHAPTER FOCUS What were the cultural and
zeal that led to the creation of new religious
political achievements of the late twelfth cen-
tury, and what downsides did they have? movements even as it stoked the fires of
intolerance.
tion and manipulation of mental constructs, was a transitional subject leading to the
second part of the liberal arts, the quadrivium. This comprised four areas of study
that we might call theoretical math and science: arithmetic, geometry, music (theory),
and astronomy. Of all these arts, logic appealed the most to twelfth-century students.
Medieval students and masters were convinced that logic could order and clarify
every issue, even questions about the nature of God.
After studying the trivium, students went on to schools of medicine, theology,
or law. Paris was renowned for theology, Montpellier for medicine, and Bologna for
law. All of these schools trained men for jobs. The law schools, for example, taught
men who would later serve popes, bishops, kings, princes, and communes. Scholars
interested in the quadrivium tended to pursue those studies outside the normal
school curriculum, and few gained their living through such pursuits. With books
expensive and hard to find, lectures were the chief method of communication. Stu-
dents committed the lectures to memory.
The remarkable renewal of scholarship in the twelfth century had an unexpected
benefit: we know a great deal about the men involved in it — and a few of the women —
because they wrote so much, often about themselves. Three important figures may
serve to typify the scholars of the period: Abelard and Heloise, who were early
examples of the new learning; and Peter the Chanter, the product of a slightly later
period.
Although Peter Abelard (1079–1142) was expected to become a lord and warrior,
he gave up his inheritance to become one of the twelfth century’s greatest thinkers.
In his autobiographical account, The Story of My Misfortunes, Abelard described how
he first studied with one of the best-known teachers of his day in Paris. Soon he
began to lecture and to gather students of his own. Around 1122–1123, he composed
a textbook for his students, Sic et Non (Yes and No). It consisted of opposing positions
on 156 subjects, among them “That God is one and the contrary” and “That all are
permitted to marry and the contrary.” Abelard arrayed passages from the Bible, the
church fathers, and other authorities on both sides of each question. The juxtaposi-
tion of such sources was nothing new; what was new was calling attention to their
contradictions. Abelard’s students loved the challenge: they were eager to find the
origins of the quotes, consider the context of each one carefully, and seek to reconcile
the opposing sides by using the tools of logic.*
Abelard’s fame as a teacher was such that a Parisian cleric named Fulbert gave
Abelard room and board and engaged him as tutor for his niece, Heloise (c. 1100–
c. 1163/1164). Brought up under Fulbert’s guardianship, Heloise had been sent as a
young girl to a convent school, where she received a thorough literary education.
*Abelard’s students did not yet have the sophisticated rules of logic that had been worked out by the
ancient philosopher Aristotle (see page 118). Until the middle of the twelfth century, very little of
Aristotle’s work was available in Europe because it had not been translated from Greek into Latin. By
the end of the century, however, that situation had been rectified by translators who traveled to cities
such as Córdoba in Spain and Syracuse in Sicily, where they found Islamic scholars who had already
translated Aristotle’s Greek into Arabic and could help them translate from Arabic to Latin.
350 Chapter 11 The Flowering of the Middle Ages
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Her uncle hoped to continue her education at home by hiring Abelard. Abelard,
however, became Heloise’s lover as well as her tutor. “Our desires left no stage of
love-making untried,” wrote Abelard in his Misfortunes.
At first their love affair was secret. But Heloise became pregnant, and Abelard
insisted they marry. They did so clandestinely to prevent damaging Abelard’s career,
for the new emphasis on clerical celibacy meant that Abelard’s professional success
and prestige would have been compromised if news of his marriage were made pub-
lic. After they were married, Heloise and Abelard rarely saw one another; Abelard’s
sister took in their child. Fulbert, suspecting that Abelard had abandoned his niece,
plotted a cruel revenge against him: he paid a servant to castrate Abelard. Soon after,
Abelard and Heloise entered separate monasteries.
For Heloise, separation from Abelard was a lasting blow. Although she became
a successful abbess, carefully tending to the physical and spiritual needs of her nuns,
she continued to call on Abelard for “renewal of strength.” In a series of letters
addressed to him, she poured out her feelings as “his handmaid, or rather his daugh-
ter, wife, or rather sister.”
For Abelard, however, the loss of Heloise and even his castration were not the
worst disasters of his life. The heaviest blow came later, and it was directed at his
intellect. He wrote a book that applied “human and logical reasons” (as he put it) to
the Trinity; the book was condemned at the Council of Soissons in 1121, and he was
forced to throw it, page by page, into the flames. Bitterly weeping at the injustice,
Abelard lamented, “This open violence had come upon me only because of the purity
of my intentions and love of our Faith, which had compelled me to write.”
By the second half of the twelfth century, masters like Abelard had become far
more common. Many of them taught in Paris. Peter the Chanter (d. 1197) was one
of the most influential and prolific. He studied at the cathedral school at Reims and
was given the honorary title of chanter of Notre Dame in Paris in 1183. The chant,
as we shall see, consisted of the music and words of the church liturgy. But Peter
had his underlings work with the choir singers; he himself was far more interested
in lecturing, disputing, and preaching.
Peter’s lectures followed the pattern established by other masters. The lecture
began with the recitation of a passage from an important text. The master then explained
the text, giving his comments. He then “disputed” — mentioning other explanations
and refuting them, often drawing on the logic of Aristotle, which by Peter’s time was
fully available. Sometimes masters held public debates on their interpretations.
Peter chose to comment on biblical texts. There were many ways to interpret
the Bible. Some commentators chose to talk about it as an allegory; others preferred
to stress its literal meaning. Peter was interested in the morals it taught. While most
theology masters commented on just the Psalms and the New Testament, Peter
taught all the books of the Bible. He wrote two important treatises and was particu-
larly interested in exploring social issues and the sacrament of penance.
Peter also took the fruits of his classroom experience to the public. His sermons
have not survived, but he inspired a whole group of men to preach in and around
[1150–1215
] New Schools and Churches 351
Paris. One of his protégés, for example, was renowned for turning prostitutes, usu-
rers, and immoral clerics from their sinful ways.
Around 1200, the pope wrote to the masters of theology, church law, and the
liberal arts at Paris. He called them a universitas — the Latin word for a corporation
or guild. The pope was right: universities were guilds. Like guilds, they had appren-
tices (students) and masters (schoolmasters). They issued rules to cover their trade
(the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge). They had provisions for disciplin-
ing, testing, and housing students and regulated the masters in similar detail. For
example, masters at the University of Paris were required to wear long black gowns,
follow a particular order in their lectures, and set the standards by which students
could become masters themselves. The University of Bologna was unique in having
two guilds, one of students and one of masters. At Bologna, the students participated
in the appointment of masters and paid their salaries.
University curricula differed in content and duration. At the University of Paris in
the early thirteenth century, for example, a student had to spend at least six years study-
ing the liberal arts before he could begin to teach. If he wanted to continue his studies
with theology, he had to attend lectures on the subject for at least another five years.
Because masters and students were considered clerics, and clerics were male, it
meant that women could be neither students nor masters. And because clerics were
subject to church courts only, no secular jurisdiction, whether town courts or lords,
could touch those who attended the university. For example, in 1200 the king of
France promised that “neither our provost nor our judges shall lay hands on a stu-
dent [at the University of Paris] for any offense whatever.” The emperor in Germany
declared that in his territories — Germany and northern Italy — “no one shall be so
rash as to venture to inflict any injury on scholars.”
The combination of clerical status and special privileges made universities vir-
tually self-governing corporations within the towns. This sometimes led to friction.
For example, when a student at Oxford was suspected of killing his mistress and
the townspeople tried to punish him, the masters protested by refusing to teach and
leaving town. Incidents such as this explain why historians speak of the hostility
between “town” and “gown.” Yet, as in our own time, university towns depended on
scholars to patronize local restaurants, shops, and hostels. Town and gown normally
learned to negotiate with each other to their mutual advantage.
churches were decorated with brightly colored wall paintings and sculpture. The
various parts of the church — the chapels in the chevet, or apse (the east end), for
example — were handled as discrete units, with the forms of cubes, cones, and cyl-
inders (Figure 11.1). Inventive sculptural reliefs, both inside and outside the church,
enlivened the geometrical forms. Emotional and sometimes frenzied, Romanesque
sculpture depicted themes ranging from the beauty of Eve to the horrors of the Last
Judgment. (See the frieze depicting Dives and Lazarus on page 312 for an example.)
Romanesque churches were above all houses for prayer, which was neither silent
nor private. The musical style for prayer was called plainchant, or Gregorian chant.
Monks sang plainchant melodies in unison and without instrumental accompani-
ment. Rhythmically free and lacking a regular beat, plainchant’s melodies ranged
from extremely simple to highly ornate and embellished. By the twelfth century, a
large repertoire of melodies had grown up, at first composed and transmitted orally
and then, starting in the ninth century, using written notation. Echoing within the
stone walls and the cavernous choirs, plainchant worked well in a Romanesque
church.
Gothic architecture, to the contrary, was a style of the cities, reflecting the self-
confidence and wealth of merchants, guildspeople, bishops, and kings.* Usually a
*Gothic is a modern term, originally meant to denigrate the style’s “barbarity” but now used admiringly.
[1150–1215
] New Schools and Churches 353
Narthex
cathedral — the bishop’s principal church — rather than a monastic church, the Gothic
church was the religious, social, and commercial focal point of a city. The style, popu-
lar from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, was characterized by pointed arches,
ribbed vaults, and stained-glass windows. The arches began as architectural motifs
but were soon adopted in every art form. Flying buttresses permitted much of the
wall to be cut away and the open spaces to be filled with glass. Soaring above the
west, north, south, and often east ends of many Gothic churches is a rose window: a
large round window shaped like a flower. Gothic churches appealed to the senses the
way that Peter the Chanter’s lectures and disputations appealed to human logic and
reason: both were designed to lead people to knowledge that touched the divine. The
atmosphere of a Gothic church was a foretaste of heaven.
The style had its beginnings around 1135, with the project of Abbot Suger, the
close associate of King Louis the Fat of France (see page 341), to remodel portions
of the church of Saint-Denis. Suger’s rebuilding was part of the fruitful melding of
royal and ecclesiastical interests and ideals in the north of France. At the west end
of his church, the place where the faithful entered, Suger decorated the portals with
figures of Old Testament kings, queens, and patriarchs, signaling the links between
the present king and his illustrious predecessors. At the eastern end, behind the altar,
Suger used pointed arches and stained glass to let in light, which Suger believed
354 Chapter 11 The Flowering of the Middle Ages
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would transport the worshipper from the “slime of earth” to the “purity of Heaven.”
Suger said that the father of lights, God himself, “illuminated” the minds of the
beholders through the light that filtered through the stained-glass windows.
By the mid-thirteenth century, Gothic architecture had spread from France to other
European countries. The style varied by region, most dramatically in Italy. At Sant’Andrea
in Vercelli, for example, there are only two
stories, and light filters in from small win-
REVIEW QUESTION What was new about
dows. Yet with its pointed arches and ribbed
education and church architecture in the
twelfth and early thirteenth centuries? vaulting, Sant’Andrea is considered a Gothic
church. At its east end is a rose window.
[1150–1215
] Governments as Institutions 355
Governments as Institutions
Around the same time that architects, workers, patrons, theologians, and city dwellers
were coming together to produce Gothic cathedrals, rulership was becoming insti-
tutionalized. By the end of the twelfth century, western Europeans for the first time
spoke of their rulers not as kings of a people (for example, the king of the Franks)
but as kings of a territory (for example, the king of France). This new designation
reflected an important change in medieval rulership. However strong earlier rulers
had been, their political power had been personal (depending on ties of kinship,
friendship, and vassalage) rather than territorial (touching all who lived within the
borders of their state). Renewed interest in Roman law, a product of the schools,
served as a foundation for strong, centralized rule. Money allowed kings to hire sala-
ried professionals — talented, literate officials, many of whom had been schooled in
the new universities cropping up across Europe — to carry out the will of the ruler.
The process of state building had begun.
In England, the governmental system was institutionalized early, with royal offi-
cials administering both law and revenues. In other regions, such as France and Ger-
many, bureaucratic administration did not develop that far. In eastern Europe, it
hardly existed at all. At Byzantium, the bureaucracy that had long been in place frayed
badly, leaving the state open to conquest by western crusaders.
*Henry’s father, Geoffrey of Anjou, was nicknamed “Plantagenet,” from the genet, a shrub he liked.
Historians sometimes use the name to refer to the entire dynasty, so Henry II was the first Planta-
genet as well as the first Angevin king of England.
356 Chapter 11 The Flowering of the Middle Ages
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0 100 200 miles Ruled by Henry II directly as king
0 100 200 kilometers Held by Henry II as vassal of the king of France
Held by vassals of Henry II
Royal domain of the king of France
N Held by other vassals of the king of France
W
The Empire
E Territories straddling border of the Empire
S Boundary of the Empire, 1152
SCOTLAND
North
a
Sea
Se
Dublin
DENMARK ic
York lt
IRELAND Ba
Newburgh
WALES
PRUSSIANS
ENGLAND Frisia
LübeckPomerania
Bremen
Runnymede London
Saxony
Canterbury
Bruges
POLAND
English Channel Brandenburg
Ghent Cologne
Silesia
Prague Neisse
Normandy
Mainz
el R.
Nantes Anjou
Blois Swabia
Augsburg
Poitou Touraine Bourges Staufen AUSTRIA
ATLANTIC Poitiers Bavaria
OCEAN Aquitaine
Clermont Burgundy HUNGARY
Legnano
Bordeaux Savoy
KINGDOM Milan
VE Da
nub
Gascony OF ARLES LOMBARDY NI e R.
Avignon CE
Navarre Toulouse Canossa Bologna
Arles Provence
Languedoc Marseille Pisa Florence Ad
ria
Castile Aragon tic
Corsica Patrimony of Se
a
Barcelona St. Peter
M e d i t e r r a n e a n Se a Rome KINGDOM OF
SICILY
Sardinia Naples
MAP 11.1 Europe in the Age of Henry II and Frederick Barbarossa, 1150–1190
The second half of the twelfth century was dominated by two men, King Henry II and Emperor
Frederick Barbarossa. Of the two, Frederick seemed to control more land, but this was deceptive.
Although he was emperor, he had great difficulty ruling the territory that was theoretically part
of the Empire. Frederick’s base was in central Germany, and even there he had to contend with
powerful vassals. Henry II’s territory was more compact but also more surely under his control.
the enormous inheritance of the duchy of Aquitaine to the English crown. Although
Henry was technically the vassal of the king of France for his continental lands, he
effectively ruled a territory that stretched from England to southern France (Map 11.1).
Eleanor gave Henry not only an enormous inheritance but also the sons he
needed to maintain his dynasty. He gave her much less. As queen of France, Eleanor
had enjoyed an important position: she disputed with St. Bernard, the Cistercian
[1150–1215
] Governments as Institutions 357
Eleanor and
Henry
Nothing about their
side-by-side tombs
suggests the
stormy relation-
ship of Eleanor of
Aquitaine and King
Henry II of England.
Their effigies,
carved of lime-
stone and walnut,
suggest peace and
piety. How does
Eleanor’s book help
project this image?
What do you sup-
pose she is reading? The placement of the couple’s tombs also attests to their religious fervor:
they were buried in the powerful monastery of Fontevraud, a “double monastery” that housed
(in separate quarters) both monks and nuns. An abbess presided over all. (Hervé Champollion /
© Cephas Picture Library / Alamy.)
abbot who was the most renowned churchman of the day, and when she accompanied
Louis on the Second Crusade, she brought more troops than he did. Of independent
mind, she determined to separate from Louis even before he considered leaving her.
But with Henry, she lost much of her power, for he dominated her just as he came
to dominate his barons. Turning to her offspring in 1173, Eleanor, disguised as a
man, tried to join her eldest son, Henry the Younger, in a plot against his father. But
the rebellion was put down, and she spent most of her years thereafter, until her
husband’s death in 1189, confined under guard at Winchester Castle. (In death, how-
ever, she gained dignity, with her tomb next to Henry’s.)
As soon as Henry II became king of England, he destroyed or confiscated the new
castles and regained crown land. Then he proceeded to extend monarchical power,
above all by imposing royal justice. His judicial reforms built on an already well-
developed legal system. The Anglo-Saxon kings had royal district courts: the king
appointed sheriffs to police the shires, muster military levies, and haul criminals into
court. The Norman kings retained these courts and had the right to summon large
landowners in the shire to attend them. To these established institutions, Henry II
added a system of judicial visitations called eyres (from the Latin iter, “journey”).
Under this system, royal justices made regular trips to every locality in England to
judge those accused of murder, arson, or rape — all defined as crimes against the
“king’s peace.” The justices summoned representatives of the knightly class to meet
and either give the sheriff the names of those suspected of committing crimes in the
vicinity or arrest the suspects themselves and hand them over to the royal justices.
During the eyres, the justices also heard cases between individuals, today called
civil cases. Free men and women (that is, people of the knightly class or above) could
358 Chapter 11 The Flowering of the Middle Ages
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Hanging Thieves
The development of common law in England
meant mobilizing royal agents to bring
charges and arrest people throughout the
land. In 1124, the royal justice Ralph Basset
hanged forty-four thieves. It could not have
been very shocking in that context to see,
in this miniature from around 1130, eight
thieves hanged for breaking into the shrine
of St. Edmund. Under Henry II, all cases of
murder, arson, and rape were considered
crimes against the king himself. The result
was not just the enhancement of the king’s
power but also new definitions of crime,
more thorough policing, and more system-
atic punishments. Even so, hanging was
probably no more frequent than it had been
before. (The Thieves Are Hanged, from The Life, Pas-
sion, and Miracles of St. Edmund, King and Martyr, in
Latin, Bury St. Edmund’s, c. 1130. MS. M.736, f. 19v.
The Pierpont Morgan Library / Art Resource, NY.)
bring their disputes over such matters as inheritance, dowries, and property claims
to the king’s justices. Earlier courts had generally relied on duels between litigants
to determine verdicts. Henry’s new system offered a different option, an inquest under
royal supervision.
The new system of common law — law that applied to all of England — was praised
for its efficiency, speed, and conclusiveness in a twelfth-century legal treatise known
as Glanvill (after its presumed author). Glanvill might have added that the king also
speedily gained a large treasury. The exchequer, as the financial bureau of England
was called, recorded all the fines paid for judgments and the sums collected for writs.
The amounts, entered on parchment sewn together and stored as rolls, became the
Receipt Rolls and Pipe Rolls, the first of many such records of the English monarchy
and an indication that writing had become a mechanism for institutionalizing royal
power in England.
The stiffest opposition to Henry’s extension of the royal courts came from the
church, where a separate system of trial and punishment had long been available to
the clergy and to others who enjoyed church protection. The punishments for crimes
meted out by church courts were generally quite mild. Protective of their special status,
churchmen refused to submit to the jurisdiction of Henry’s courts. Henry insisted, and
the ensuing contest between Henry II and his archbishop, Thomas Becket (1118–
1170), became the greatest battle between the church and the state in the twelfth
century. The conflict simmered for six years, with Becket refusing to allow “crimi-
nous clerics” — clergy suspected of committing a crime — to come before royal courts.
[1150–1215
] Governments as Institutions 359
Then Henry’s henchmen murdered Becket, right in his own cathedral. The desecration
unintentionally turned Becket into a martyr. Henry was forced by a general public
outcry to do penance for the deed. In the end, both church and royal courts expanded
to address the concerns of an increasingly litigious society.
In England, Henry II made the king’s presence felt everywhere through his sys-
tem of traveling royal courts. On the continent, he maintained his position through
a combination of war and negotiation. He bequeathed to his sons Richard I (r. 1189–
1199) and John (r. 1199–1216) an omnipresent and wealthy monarchy. Its omnipres-
ence derived largely from its eyre system of justice and its administrative apparatus.
Its wealth came from court fees, income from numerous royal estates both in England
and on the continent, taxes from cities, and customary feudal dues (reliefs and aids)
collected from barons and knights. Enriched by the commercial economy of the late
twelfth century, the English kings encouraged their knights and barons not to serve
them personally in battle but, in lieu of service, to pay the king a tax called scutage.
The monarchs preferred to hire mercenaries both as troops to fight external enemies
and as police to enforce the king’s will at home.
Richard I, known as the Lion-Hearted, went on the Third Crusade the very year
he was crowned. On his way home, he was captured and held for ransom by political
enemies for a long time; he died soon thereafter while defending his possessions on
the continent. His successor, John, lived longer but gained no admiring epithet. In
fact, he presided over the whittling away of the English empire. In 1204, the king of
France confiscated the northern French territories held by John. Between 1204 and
1214, John did everything he could to add to the crown revenues so that he could pay
for an army to win back the territories. He forced his vassals to pay ever-increasing
scutages, and he extorted money in the form of new feudal dues. He compelled the
widows of his vassals either to marry men of his choosing or to pay him a hefty fee.
Despite John’s heavy investment in the war, his army was defeated in 1214 at the
battle of Bouvines. The defeat caused discontented English barons to rebel openly
against the king. At Runnymede in June 1215, John was forced to agree to the charter
of baronial liberties that has come to be called Magna Carta (“Great Charter”).
The English barons intended Magna Carta to be a conservative document defining
the “customary” obligations and rights of the nobility and forbidding the king to break
from these customs without consulting his barons. It maintained that all free men in
the land had certain rights that the king was obligated to uphold. In this way, Magna
Carta implied that the king was not above the law. In time, as the definition of free
men expanded to include all the king’s subjects, Magna Carta came to be seen as a
guarantee of the rights of Englishmen (and eventually Englishwomen) in general.
*Philip was particularly successful in imposing royal control in Normandy; later French kings gave
most of the other territories conquered by Philip to various members of the royal family.
[1150–1215
] Governments as Institutions 361
and powers. The German kings were in a difficult position: they had to balance the
many conflicting interests of their royal and imperial offices, their families, and the
German princes, and they had to contend with the increasing power of the papacy
and the Italian communes. All this prevented the consolidation of power under a
strong German monarch during the first half of the twelfth century.
During the Investiture Conflict, the two sides (imperial and papal) were repre-
sented by two noble families. Leading the imperial party was the Staufer, or Hohen-
staufen, clan; opposing them were the Welfs. (Two later Italian factions, the Ghibel-
lines and the Guelphs, corresponded, respectively, to the Hohenstaufens and the
Welfs.) The enmity between these families was legendary, and warfare between the
groups raged long after the Concordat of Worms in 1122. Decades of constant battles
exhausted all parties, who began to long for peace. In an act of rare unanimity, they
elected Frederick I (Barbarossa). In Frederick (r. 1152–1190) they seemed to have a
candidate who could end the strife: his mother was a Welf, his father a Staufer. Con-
temporary accounts of the king’s
career represented Frederick in
the image of Christ as the corner-
stone that joined two houses and
reconciled enemies.
Frederick’s very appearance
impressed his contemporaries —
the name Barbarossa referred to
his red-blond hair and beard. But
beyond appearances, Frederick
impressed those around him by
what they called his firmness. He
affirmed royal rights, even when
he handed out duchies and allowed
others to name bishops, because
in return for these political pow-
ers Frederick required the princes
to concede formally and publicly
that they held their rights and
territories from him as their lord.
By making them his vassals,
although with nearly royal rights
Frederick Barbarossa
within their principalities, Freder- In this image of Frederick, made during his lifetime,
ick defined the princes’ subordi- the emperor is dressed as a crusader, and the inscrip-
nate relationship to the German tion tells him to fight the Muslims. The small figure on
king. the right is the abbot of the Monastery of Schäftlarn,
As the king of Germany, who gives Frederick a book that contains an account
of the First Crusade. (By Robert, a monk of Reims, History of
Frederick had the traditional Jerusalem, Fol. 1 / Vatican Apostolic Library, The Vatican, Italy /
right to claim the imperial crown. Photo © Tarker / Bridgeman Images.)
362 Chapter 11 The Flowering of the Middle Ages
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When, in 1155, he marched to Rome to be crowned emperor, the fledgling commune
there protested that it alone had the right to give him the crown. Frederick interrupted
them, asserting that the glory of Rome, together with its crown, came to him by right
of conquest. He was equally insistent with the pope, who wrote to tell him that Rome
belonged to St. Peter. Frederick replied that his imperial title gave him rights over
the city. In part, Frederick was influenced by the revival of Roman law — the laws of
Theodosius and Justinian — that was taking place in the schools of Italy. In part, too,
he was convinced of the sacred — not just secular — origins of the imperial office.
Frederick called his empire sacer (“sacred”), asserting that it was in its own way as
precious, worthwhile, and God-given as the church.
Frederick buttressed this high view of his imperial right with worldly power. He
married Beatrice of Burgundy, whose vast estates in Burgundy and Provence enabled
him to establish a powerful political and territorial base centered in Swabia (today
southwestern Germany). From Swabia, Frederick looked south to Italy, with its
wealthy cities. Swabia and northern Italy together could give Frederick a compact
and centrally located territory.
Nevertheless, Frederick’s ambitions in Italy were problematic. Since the Investi-
ture Conflict, the emperor had ruled Italy in name only. The communes of the north-
ern cities guarded their liberties jealously, while the pope considered Italy his own
sphere of influence. Frederick’s territorial base just north of Italy threatened those
interests (see Map 11.1, page 356).
Despite the opposition of the cities and the pope, Frederick was determined to
conquer northern Italy, which he managed to do by 1158. Adopting an Italian solu-
tion for governing the communes — appointing outsiders as magistrates — Frederick
appointed his own men to these powerful positions. But that was where Frederick
made a mistake. He chose German officials who lacked a sense of Italian communal
traditions. Their heavy hand created enormous resentment. By 1167, most of the
cities of northern Italy had joined with the pope to form the Lombard League against
Frederick. Defeated by the league at the battle of Legnano in 1176, Frederick made
peace and withdrew most of his forces from Italy. The battle marked the triumph of
the cities over the crown in Italy, which would not have a centralized government
until the nineteenth century; its political history would instead be that of its various
regions and their dominant cities.
Frederick was the victim of traditions that were rapidly becoming outmoded.
He based much of his rule in Germany on the bond of lord and vassal at the very
moment when rulers elsewhere were relying less on such personal ties and more on
salaried officials. He lived up to the meaning of emperor, with all its obligations to
rule Rome and northern Italy, when other leaders were consolidating their territorial
rule bit by bit. In addition, as “universal” emperor, he did not recognize the impor-
tance of local pride, language, customs, and traditions; he tried to rule Italian com-
munes with his own men from Germany, and he failed.
Frederick also had problems in Germany, where he had to contend with princes
of near-royal status who acted as independent rulers of their principalities, though
[1150–1215
] Governments as Institutions 363
acknowledging Frederick as their feudal lord. One of the most powerful was Henry
the Lion (c. 1130–1195), who was duke of Saxony and Bavaria, which gave him impor-
tant bases in both the north and the south of Germany. A confident and aggressive
ruler, Henry dominated his territory by investing bishops (usurping the role of the
emperor as outlined in the Concordat of Worms), collecting dues from his estates,
and exercising judicial rights over his territories. Henry also actively extended his
rule, especially in Slavic regions, pushing northeast past the Elbe River to reestablish
dioceses and to build the commercial city of Lübeck (today in northern Germany).
He was lord of many vassals and ministerials (people of unfree status but high pres-
tige). He organized a staff of clerics and ministerials to collect taxes and tolls and to
write up his legal acts.
Yet like kings, princes could fall. Henry’s growing power so threatened other
princes and even Frederick that in 1179 Frederick called Henry to the king’s court
for violating the peace. When Henry chose not to appear, Frederick exercised his
authority as Henry’s lord and charged him with violating his duty as a vassal. Because
Henry refused the summons to court and avoided serving his lord in Italy, Frederick
condemned him, confiscated his holdings, and drove him out of Germany.
However, successfully challenging one recalcitrant prince/vassal meant negotiating
costly deals with the others, since their support was vital. Frederick wanted to retain
Henry’s duchy for himself, as Philip Augustus had managed to do with Normandy. But
Frederick was not powerful enough to do so and was forced to divide and distribute
it to the supporters he had relied on to enforce his decrees against Henry.
Per aquesta fri e tremble, For this one I shiver and tremble,
quar de tan bon’ amor l’am; I love her with such a good love;
qu’anc no cug qu’en nasques I do not think the like of her was
semble ever born
en semblan de gran linh n’Adam. in the long line of Lord Adam.
The rhyme scheme of this poem appears to be simple — tremble goes with semble,
l’am with n’Adam — but the entire poem has five earlier verses, all six lines long and
all containing the -am, -am rhyme in the fourth and sixth lines, while every other
line within each verse rhymes as well.
Troubadours and trobairitz varied their rhymes and meters endlessly to dazzle
their audiences with brilliant originality. Their most common topic, love, echoed the
twelfth-century church’s emphasis on the emotional relationship between God and
humans. But the troubadours concentrated on the various forms of human love and
its joys and sorrows. Thus the trobairitz Contessa de Dia (flourished c. 1160) wrote
about her unrequited love for a man:
The key to these lines, as to troubadour verse in general, is the idea of cortesia. The
word refers to courtesy (the refinement of people living at court) and to the struggle
to achieve an ideal of virtue.
Historians and literary critics used to use the term courtly love to emphasize one
of the themes of this literature: overwhelming love for a beautiful married noblewoman
who is far above the poet in status and utterly unattainable. But this theme was only
one of many aspects of love that the troubadours sang about: some of the songs boasted
of sexual conquests, others played with the notion of equality between lovers, and still
others preached that love was the source of virtue. The real overall theme of this litera-
ture is not courtly love; it is the power of women. And no wonder: there were many
powerful ladies (the female counterparts of lords) in southern France. They owned
property, had vassals, led battles, decided disputes, and entered into and broke political
alliances as their advantage dictated. Both men and women appreciated troubadour
poetry, which recognized and praised women’s power even as it eroticized it.
Troubadour poetry was not read; it was sung, typically by a jongleur, a medieval
musician. Manuscripts from the thirteenth century show troubadour music written
on four- and five-line staves, so scholars can at least determine relative pitches, and
modern musicians can sing some troubadour songs with the hope of sounding rea-
sonably like the original. This popular music is the earliest that can be re-created
authentically (Figure 11.2).
From southern France, the troubadours’ songs spread to Italy, northern France,
England, and Germany. Similar poetry appeared in other vernacular languages: the
minnesingers (“love singers”) sang in German; the trouvères sang in the Old French
366 Chapter 11 The Flowering of the Middle Ages
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Anc no mori per amor ni per al
I Never Died for Love
of northern France. One trouvère was the English king Richard the Lion-Hearted.
Taken prisoner on his return from the Third Crusade, Richard wrote a poem express-
ing his longing not for a lady but for the good companions of war, the knightly
“youths” he had joined in battle:
They know well, the men of Anjou and Touraine,
. . . that I am arrested, far from them, in another’s hands.
There’s no lordly fighting now on the barren plains,
because I am a prisoner.
Clearly some troubadour poetry was about war rather than love.
the same time as love poems. Like the songs of the troubadours, these epic poems
implied a code of behavior for aristocrats, in this case on the battlefield. They served
as heroic models for nobles and knights, whose positions were being threatened by
the newly emerging merchants in the cities on the one hand and newly powerful
kings on the other. The knights’ ascendancy on the battlefield, where they unhorsed
one another with lances and long swords and took prisoners rather than killing their
opponents, was also beginning to wane in the face of mercenary infantrymen who
wielded long hooks and knives that ripped easily through chain mail. A knightly
ethos and sense of group solidarity emerged in the face of these social, political, and
military changes. Even while heroic poems celebrated battles, they explored the moral
issues that made war tragic, if inevitable.
Other long poems, later called romances, explored the relationships between
men and women. Often inspired by the legend of King Arthur, romances reached
their zenith of popularity during the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. In
one romance, for example, the heroic knight Lancelot, who is in love with King
Arthur’s wife, Queen Guinevere, chooses humiliation over honor because of his love
for the queen. When she sees him — the greatest knight in Christendom — fighting
in a tournament, she tests him by asking him to do his “worst.” The poor knight is
obliged to lose all his battles until she changes her mind.
Lancelot was the perfect chivalric knight. The word chivalry derives from the
French word cheval (“horse”); the fact that the knight was a horseman marked him
as a warrior of the most prestigious sort. Perched high on his horse, his heavy lance
couched in his right arm, the knight was both imposing and menacing. Chivalry
made him gentle — except to his enemies on the battlefield. The chivalric hero was
a knight constrained by a code of refine-
ment, fair play, piety, and devotion to an
REVIEW QUESTION What do the works of the
ideal. Historians debate whether real
troubadours and vernacular poets reveal about
knights lived up to the codes implicit in the nature of entertainment — its themes,
epics and romances, but there is no doubt its audience, its performers — in the twelfth
that knights saw themselves mirrored there. century?
They were the poets’ audience.
Beguine Psalter
Although emphasizing labor and caring
for others, most Beguines were also
literate. The Psalter (book of Psalms)
illustrated here was probably made by
Beguines. The painting focuses on Mary:
in the bottom tier is the Annunciation,
when she learns that she will give birth
to the Savior. At the top Mary reigns as
Queen of Heaven, with a crown on her
head and the baby Jesus on her lap.
(© The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.
Liège Psalter, BL Add. Ms. 2114, fol. 8v.)
FINLAND
NORWAY Third Crusade, 1189–1192
N
SWEDEN Fourth Crusade, 1202–1204
W
ESTONIA Christian attacks in Spain, to 1212
E SCOTLAND
LIVONIA Northern Crusades, twelfth century
ea
S
Nor th Albigensian Crusade, to 1215
cS
IRELAND Sea DENMARK LITHUANIA
ti
l Crusader states, c. 1189
Ba
Lübeck Battle
ENGLAND Pomerania PRUSSIA
Bremen
London
Saxony
POLAND RUS
Od
Flanders r R Silesia
AT L ANTIC
e
.
Dni
O CEA N Paris THE e pe r
R.
EMPIRE
HUNGARY
Vézelay Vienna
FRANCE AUSTRIA (route of
Toulouse Frederick
1212 Rhône Venice
Barbarossa)
León R. Genoa
ALBIGENSIANS Zara R.
Marseille 1202 Danube Bl ack S e a
Portugal Ad
Castile Aragon Corsica r ia
tic BULGARIA Constantinople
Languedoc Se 1204
Lisbon Rome a
Valencia
Sardinia
Las Navas BYZANTINE EMPIRE
A
de Tolosa
L
1212 O
M
Edessa
H Sicily
A SYRIA
D Cyprus
D (route of
O Me
M dit Crete Richard I) Damascus
IN err
ane
IO a n S e a (route of Philip II) Acre
N
S Alexandria Jerusalem
Eb
R. EES
Valladolid
Duero R.
PORTUGAL
A T LA N T IC CASTILE
Saragossa ARAGON
Barcelona
OC E A N Tagus
R. Toledo
Lisbon Tarragona
Badajoz
Gu
ad
ia n
aR Valencia
.
Las Navas de Tolosa
uivir R.
alq Córdoba
1212
BALEARIC
ad
AL-ANDALUS
Reconquest, 1150–1212 Cádiz
Med i terran ean S ea
by Castile Gibraltar
by Aragon Tangier Ceuta
by Portugal
Islamic areas
0 100 200 miles
Battle NORTH AFRICA
0 100 200 kilometers
Almourol Castle
In the early twelfth century,
the papacy recognized the
reconquista as equivalent to
a crusade, and the rulers of
Portugal, Castile, and Aragon
persuaded the Templars and
other military orders to help
them hold on to regions that
had formerly been Muslim.
When the Portuguese ruler
conquered the western end
of the Tagus River valley in
the mid-twelfth century, he
entrusted some of the Mus-
lim strongholds there to the
Templars. They rebuilt one
of them as Almourol castle,
using it to defend Portugal’s
new frontier. (Index / Bridgeman
Images.)
beginnings of the Northern Crusades, which continued intermittently until the early
fifteenth century. The first phase was led by the king of Denmark and the Saxon
duke Henry the Lion. Their initial attacks on the Slavs were uncoordinated, but in
the 1160s and 1170s, the two leaders worked together to bring much of the region
west of the Oder River under their control. They took some land outright; even more
frequently, they turned Slavic princes into their vassals. Meanwhile, the Cistercians
arrived even before the first phase of fighting had ended, building monasteries to
the very banks of the Oder River. Soon German traders, craftspeople, and colonists
poured in, populating new towns and cities along the Baltic coast and dominating
the shipping that had once been controlled by non-Christians. The leaders of the
crusades gave these townsmen some political independence but demanded a large
share of the cities’ wealth in return.
Slavic peasants suffered from the conquerors’ fire and pillage, but the Slavic rul-
ing classes ultimately benefited from the Northern Crusades. Once converted to
Christianity, they found it advantageous for both their eternal salvation and their
worldly profit to join new crusades to areas still farther east.
Although less well known than the crusades to the Holy Land, the Northern
Crusades had far more lasting effects: they settled the Baltic region with German-
speaking lords and peasants and forged a permanent relationship between northeast-
ern Europe and its neighbors to the south and west. With the Baltic dotted with
churches and monasteries and its peoples dipped into baptismal waters, the region
374 Chapter 11 The Flowering of the Middle Ages
[ 1150–1215
]
0 150 300 miles gradually adopted the institutions of western medi-
0 150 300 kilometers eval society — cities, guilds, universities, castles, and
Rh
ine
English Channel Douai manors. Only the Lithuanians managed to resist
Liège
R.
western conquest, settlement, and conversion.
Se
ne Trier
i
R. THE Crusades were also launched within Europe
EMPIRE
R. itself. The first of these attacked the Cathars in
Loire
FRANCE southern France. To be sure, the papacy initially
Lyon tried conversion, and the Dominican Order had
Bordeaux
Garonne
Rhône R. its start as preachers to the heretics. Its founder,
R.
Toulouse
Albi Avignon St. Dominic (1170–1221), and his followers rejected
Eb
Montpellier material riches and went about on foot, preaching
ro Narbonne Marseille
R. and begging and trying to bring the Cathars back
into the church. Resembling the Franciscans both
Major concentrations
of heretics organizationally and spiritually, the Dominicans,
Albigensian crusade too, were called friars. But their missions did not
have much success, and in 1208 the pope called
The Albigensian Crusade, upon northern princes to take up the sword, invade
1209–1229 Languedoc, wrest the land from the heretics, and
populate it with orthodox Christians.
The Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) for the first time offered warriors fighting
an enemy within Christian Europe all the spiritual and temporal benefits of a crusade
to the Holy Land. Like all other crusades, the Albigensian Crusade had political as
well as religious dimensions. It pitted southern French princes, who often had hereti-
cal sympathies, against northern leaders eager to demonstrate their piety and win
new possessions. After sixteen years of
warfare, the Capetian kings of France took
REVIEW QUESTION How did the idea of cru-
sade change from the time of the original
over leadership of the crusade. By 1229, all
expedition to the Holy Land? resistance was broken, and Languedoc was
brought under the French crown.
Conclusion
In the second half of the twelfth century, Christian Europe expanded from the Baltic
Sea to the southern Iberian peninsula. European settlements in the Holy Land, by
contrast, were nearly obliterated. When western Europeans sacked Constantinople in
1204, Europe and the Islamic world became the dominant political forces in the West.
Powerful territorial kings and princes established institutions of bureaucratic
authority. They hired staffs to handle their accounts, record acts, collect taxes, issue
writs, and preside over courts. A money economy provided the finances necessary
to support the new bureaucracy. Cathedral schools and universities became its train-
ing ground. A new lay vernacular culture celebrated the achievements and power of
the ruling class, while Gothic architecture reflected above all the pride and power of
the cities.
[1150–1215
] Conclusion 375
a
N Nor th
Se
IRELAND S ea
c
W
ti
l LITHUANIA
E Ba
S Wales
ENGLAND
Oxford London
Saxony RUS
Lewes
Antwerp POLAND
Liège
ATL A NT IC Thuringia
O CEAN Chartres Paris GERMANYBohemia Cracow
Franconia
Anjou Moravia
FRANCE Vienna
Swabia Bavaria
Limoges Burgundy HUNGARY
Carinthia
Aquitaine Lyon Venice
LEÓN Milan
Romagna
León Albi Lombardy (Area claimed
Genoa Bologna
Languedoc Provence by papacy) Bl ack S e a
ITALY Florence
PORTUGAL Tuscany Ad LATIN
CASTILE ARAGON Corsica BULGARIA
r ia SERBIA EMPIRE
tic
Toledo Rome Se
a Constantinople
Sardinia PAPAL Naples
Seville STATES
BYZANTINE EMPIRE
KINGDOM OF
SICILY
Chapter 11 Review
Key Terms and People
Be sure that you can identify the term or person and explain its historical significance.
Romanesque (p. 351) Philip II (Philip Augustus) chansons de geste (p. 366)
Gothic architecture (p. 352) (p. 359) chivalry (p. 367)
Henry II (p. 355) Frederick I (Barbarossa) Franciscans (p. 368)
common law (p. 358) (p. 361) Fourth Crusade (p. 370)
Magna Carta (p. 359) troubadours/trobairitz (p. 364)
Review Questions
1. What was new about education and church architecture in the twelfth and early thirteenth
centuries?
2. What new sources and institutions of power became available to rulers in the second half
of the twelfth century?
3. What do the works of the troubadours and vernacular poets reveal about the nature of
entertainment — its themes, its audience, its performers — in the twelfth century?
4. How did the idea of crusade change from the time of the original expedition to the Holy Land?
Making Connections
1. What were the chief differences that separated the ideals of the religious life in the period
1150–1215 from those of the period 1050–1150?
2. How was the gift economy associated with Romanesque architecture and the money econ-
omy with the Gothic style?
3. How do political developments — the growth of bureaucratic institutions, the development
of strong monarchies, the growth of city governments — help explain the rise and popularity
of vernacular literature and song in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries?
[1150–1215
] Chapter 11 Review 377
Important Events
Consider three events: The Third Crusade (1189–1192), The Fourth Crusade (1202–
1204), and the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229). What were their various causes and
results? How were they differently waged and led?
Suggested References
For the new schools, Abelard is a key primary source, while Clanchy provides perceptive back-
ground. Both Burl and Coldstream discuss cultural and artistic developments. Bartlett and
Bradbury are essential for politics.
*Abelard’s The Story of My Misfortunes: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/abelard-sel.html
Aurell, Martin. The Plantagenet Empire, 1154–1224. Trans. David Crouch. 2007.
Bartlett, Robert. England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075–1225. 2000.
Bouchard, Constance Brittain. “Every Valley Shall Be Exalted”: The Discourse of Opposites in
Twelfth-Century Thought. 2003.
Bradbury, Jim. Philip Augustus: King of France. 1998.
Burl, Aubrey. Courts of Love, Castles of Hate: Troubadours and Trobairitz in Southern France,
1071–1321. 2008.
Cheyette, Fredric L. Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours. 2001.
Christiansen, Eric. The Northern Crusades. 2nd ed. 1998.
Clanchy, Michael. Abelard: A Medieval Life. 1997.
Coldstream, Nicola. Medieval Architecture. 2002.
*Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa: The History of the Expedition of the Emperor Frederick and
Related Texts. Trans. G. A. Loud. 2010.
Hudson, John. The Formation of the English Common Law: Law and Society in England from the
Norman Conquest to Magna Carta. 1996.
Moore, R. I. The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe,
950–1250. 2nd ed. 2007.
Paden, William, and Frances Freeman Paden, eds. and trans. Troubadour Poems from the South
of France. 2007.
Pegg, Mark Gregory. A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom. 2008.
*Primary source.
The Medieval Synthesis —
12
and Its Cracks
1215–1340
T
oward the end of the thirteenth century, a Paris workshop produced an
elegantly illustrated translation of some of Aristotle’s works. On the opening
page of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, in the large O of the first word, omnes (“all”),
an artist depicted Aristotle seated on a bench and pointing to the sky. Although
Aristotle was a Greek who had lived before the time of Christ, the artist showed him
instructing monks while he pointed to a sky
Aristotle Instructs the Monks
dominated by Christ himself. In this way, the
“All men by nature desire to learn” artist subtly but surely incorporated the pagan
says the opening text of this trans- Aristotle into Christian belief and practice.
lation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, and In the period from 1215 to 1340, Europe-
that explains why the artist placed ans at every level, from workshop artisans to
in the initial letter a depiction of
kings and popes, thought that they could har-
Aristotle as a teacher. Notice that
he wears a turban, a tribute to the monize all ideas with Christianity, all aspects
fact that Aristotle’s works were of this world with the next, and all of nature
transmitted to Europe via Arabic with revelation. Sometimes, as in the case of
scholarship. Above the sky to which the illumination made for Aristotle’s treatise,
Aristotle points is Christ himself. In
the synthesis worked. But often it was forced,
this way, the artist revealed his cer-
tainty that the ancient teachings of
fragile, or elusive. Not everyone was willing to
Aristotle and Christian belief worked subordinate his or her beliefs to the tenets of
together. (Opening page of the Metaphys- Christianity; kings and popes argued, without
ics of Artistotle, 13th century / Bibliotheque resolution, about the limits of their power; and
Mazarine, Paris, France / Archives Charmet /
Bridgeman Images.)
theologians fought over the place of reason in
matters of faith. Discord continually threat-
ened expectations of unity and harmony.
Medieval thinkers, writers, musicians, and artists attempted to reconcile faith
and reason and to find the commonalities in the sacred and secular realms. At the
level of philosophy, this quest led to a new method of inquiry and study known as
scholasticism. Yet some scholastic thinkers pointed out cracks and disjunctions in
the syntheses achieved.
379
380 Chapter 12 The Medieval Synthesis — and Its Cracks
[ 1215–1340
]
To impose greater order and unity, kings and other rulers found new ways to
extend their influence over their subjects. They used the tools of taxes, courts, and
even representative institutions to control their realms. Popes issued new laws for
Christians and established courts of inquisition to find and punish heretics (those
who dissented from church teachings). Both secular and religious authorities at times
persecuted Jews and lepers. Yet none of this prevented dissent, and rulers often did
not gain all the power they wanted.
From 1215 to 1340, the Empire weak-
ened, the papacy asserted itself but was
CHAPTER FOCUS In what areas of life did
eventually forced to move out of Rome, and
thirteenth-century Europeans try to find har-
mony and impose order, and how successful
the Mongols challenged Christian rulers.
were these attempts? Soon natural disasters — crop failures and
famine — added to the tension.
For laypeople, perhaps the most important canons (church laws) of the Fourth
Lateran Council concerned the sacraments, the rites the church believed Jesus had
instituted to confer sanctifying grace. For example, Fourth Lateran required Chris-
tians to attend Mass and to confess their sins to a priest at least once a year. It also
precisely defined the sacrament of the Eucharist: “[Christ’s] body and blood are truly
contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine, the bread
and wine having been changed in substance [transubstantiated], by God’s power, into
his body and blood.” The word transubstantiated was meant to explain how the
Eucharist could look like bread and wine even though it had been transformed dur-
ing the Mass into Christ’s body and blood.
Other canons concerned marriage. The church declared that it had the duty to
discover any impediments to a union (such as a close relationship by blood), and it
claimed jurisdiction over marital disputes. It insisted that children conceived within
clandestine or forbidden marriages were illegitimate; they were not to receive inheri-
tances or become priests.
The impact of the council’s provisions was perhaps less dramatic than church
leaders hoped. All church laws took effect only when local political powers enforced
them. Well-to-do London fathers still included their bastard children in their wills.
On English manors, sons conceived out of wedlock regularly took over their parents’
Jewish Couple
In this illustration from a Hebrew
prayer book, a couple sits in a garden
of lilies under a starry sky, illustrating
the Bible’s Song of Solomon 4:8:
“Come with me from Lebanon, my
bride.” Hebrew commentators on this
verse interpreted the bride as stand-
ing for Israel, while the speaker, the
groom, was God. Here the artist has
portrayed the groom wearing a tradi-
tional Jewish hat, while Israel is a
woman with a crown. There is an
irony here: Christians portrayed the
church as a crowned female. How-
ever, in this case the woman wears
a blindfold. This makes her like the
Christian depiction of the allegorical
figure of the Jewish synagogue. In
short, this seemingly innocuous
illustration gives the synagogue
the status and dignity of the church.
(Staats-und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg
Carl von Ossietzky, Cod. Levy 37, fol. 169.)
382 Chapter 12 The Medieval Synthesis — and Its Cracks
[ 1215–1340
]
land. Men and women continued to marry in secret, and even churchmen had to
admit that the consent of both parties made any marriage valid. Nevertheless, many
men and women accepted the obligation to take communion and confess once a year,
and priests proceeded to call out the banns (announcements of marriages) to discover
any impediments to them.
The Fourth Lateran Council wanted to control Jews as well as Christians. It
required all Jews to advertise their religion by some outward sign: “We decree that
[Jews] of either sex in every Christian province at all times shall be distinguished
from other people by the character of their dress in public.” Eventually Jews almost
everywhere had to wear some sign of their second-class status. In southern France
and in a few places in Spain, they wore round badges. In England, Oxford required
a rectangle, while Salisbury demanded that Jews wear special clothing. In Vienna and
Germany, Jews were told to put on pointed hats. (See the illustration on page 381.)
The Fourth Lateran Council’s longest decree blasted heretics: “Those condemned
as heretics shall be handed over to the secular authorities for punishment.” If the
secular authority did not carry out the punishment, the heretic was to be excommu-
nicated. If he or she had vassals, they were to be released from their oaths of fealty
and their lands taken over by orthodox Christians. Church authorities set up a court
of papal inquisitors; this court and its activities, later known as the Inquisition,
became permanent in 1233.
The Inquisition
The word inquisition simply means “investigation”; secular rulers had long used the
method to summon people together, either to discover facts or to uncover and pun-
ish crimes. In its zeal to end heresy, the thirteenth-century church used the Inquisi-
tion to ferret out “heretical depravity.” Calling suspects to testify, inquisitors, aided by
secular authorities, rounded up virtually entire villages, first preaching to the throngs
and then questioning each man and woman who seemed to know something about
heresy: “Have you ever seen any heretics? Have you heard them preach?” Relatively
lenient penalties were given to those who were not aware that they held heretical
beliefs and to heretics who quickly recanted. But unrepentant heretics were punished
severely because the church believed that such people threatened the salvation of all.
Lay Piety
The church’s zeal to reform the laity was matched by the desire of many laypeople
to become more involved in their religion. Men and women flocked to hear the
preaching of friars, who made themselves a permanent feature of the towns. When
Berthold, a Franciscan preacher who traveled the length and breadth of Germany
giving sermons, came to a town, a high tower was set up for him outside the town
walls. A pennant advertised his presence and let people know which way the wind
would blow his voice.
[1215–1340
] The Church’s Mission 383
them. No doubt this inspired a boom in the founding of leper houses, which peaked
between 1175 and 1250.
Before the leper went to such a house, he or she was formally expelled from the
community of Christians via a ceremony of terrible solemnity. In northern France,
for example, the leper had to stand in a cemetery with his or her face veiled. The
priest intoned Mass and threw dirt on the leper as if he or she were being buried.
“Be dead to the world, be reborn in God,” the priest said, continuing, “I forbid you to
ever enter the church or monastery, fair, mill, marketplace, or company of persons. . . .
I forbid you to wash your hands or any thing about you in the stream or in the
fountain.” The prohibition against drink-
ing in the stream or fountain gained more
sinister meaning in 1321, when false REVIEW QUESTION How did people respond
rumors spread that Muslims had recruited to the teachings and laws of the church in the
early thirteenth century?
both Jews and lepers to poison all the wells
of Christendom.
him. In this way, John separated the divine and secular realms, and the medieval
synthesis cracked.
motet (from the French mot, meaning “word”). It typically had two or three melody
lines, or “voices.” The lowest was usually a plainchant melody sung in Latin. The
remaining melodies had different texts, either Latin or French (or one of each), which
were sung simultaneously. Latin texts were usually sacred, whereas French ones were
secular, dealing with themes such as love and springtime. The motet thus wove the
sacred (the chant melody in the lowest voice) and the secular (the French texts in
the upper voices) into a sophisticated tapestry of words and music.
Like the scholastic summae, motets were written by and for a clerical elite. Yet
they incorporated the music of ordinary people, such as the calls of street vendors
and the boisterous songs of students. In turn, they touched the lives of everyone, for
polyphony influenced every form of music, from the Mass to popular songs that
entertained laypeople and churchmen alike.
Complementing the motet’s complexity was the development of a new notation
for rhythm. Music theorists of the thirteenth century developed increasingly precise
methods to indicate rhythm, with each note shape allotted a specific duration. The
music of the thirteenth century reflected both the melding of the secular and the
sacred and the possibilities of greater order and control.
[1215–1340
] Reconciling This World and the Next 389
Gothic Art
Gothic architecture — like philosophy, literature, and music — brought together this
world and the next. By the end of the thirteenth century, the Gothic style had spread
across most of Europe. Some of its elements began to appear as well in other forms
of art, like stained glass. Because pointed arches and flying buttresses allowed the
walls of a Gothic church to be pierced with large windows, stained glass became a
newly important art form. To make this colored glass, workers added chemicals to
sand, heated the mixture until it was liquid, and then blew and flattened it. From
these colored glass sheets, artists cut shapes, holding them in place with lead strips.
The size of the windows allowed the artists to depict complicated themes ranging
from heaven to hell. As the sun shone through the finished windows, they glowed
like jewels.
The exteriors of Gothic cathedrals were decorated with figures sculpted in the
round. The figures evoked motion — turning, moving, and interacting; at times, they
even smiled. Like stained glass, Gothic sculptures evoked complex ideas. For example,
the figures on the south portals of the cathedral at Chartres tell the story of the soul’s
pilgrimage from the suffering of this world to eternal life: on the left doorway are
the martyrs (who died for their beliefs), on the right the confessors (who were tor-
tured), and in the center the Last Judgment (when the good receive eternal life and
the bad eternal damnation).
The allure of Gothic was so great that painters began to use elements of its style.
Manuscript illuminations feature the pointed shapes of Gothic cathedral windows
and vaults as common background themes. (See the illustration on page 394 for one
Last Judgment
Stained glass could illustrate
complex theological truths. In this
thirteenth-century depiction of the
Last Judgment from the cathedral
at Bourges, in France, two colorful
devils force two naked sinners into
the toothy mouth of hell. Licks of red
flame greet them. While the devils
enjoy their task (the green one is
smiling), the sinners grimace and
seem to cry out in pain. (Saint-Etienne
Cathedral, Bourges, France / Bridgeman
Images.)
390 Chapter 12 The Medieval Synthesis — and Its Cracks
[ 1215–1340
]
example.) The colors of Gothic manuscripts echoed the rich hues of stained glass.
Gothic sculpture inspired painters like Giotto (1266–1337), an Italian artist. When
he filled the walls of a private chapel at Padua with paintings depicting scenes of
Christ’s life, Giotto experimented with the
illusion of depth, figures in the round, and
REVIEW QUESTION How did artists, musi-
cians, and scholastics in the thirteenth and
emotional expression. By fusing naturalis-
early fourteenth centuries try to link the physi- tic forms with religious meaning, Giotto
cal world with the divine? found yet another way to fuse the earthly
and divine realms.
The Annunciation
Figures decorating Gothic churches,
such as this one at Reims (in north-
ern France), were carved in the
round. Here the angel Gabriel (on
the left) turns and smiles joyfully
at Mary, who looks down modestly
as he announces that she will give
birth to Jesus. (Scala / Art Resource, NY.)
Danube R.
R.
Drava
(In fact, Germany would not be united as a nation
Milan Verona
until the nineteenth century.) Between 1254 and Lombardy Venice
1273, the princes kept the German throne empty. Ferrara HUNGARY
Claimed
Splintered into factions, they elected two differ- Florence
by papacy
ent foreigners, who spent their time fighting each Fermo
Ad
ria
other. Rome tic
Se
a
In one of history’s great ironies, it was during PAPAL Anagni
STATES Naples
this low point of the German monarchy that the KINGDOM OF NAPLES
Sardinia (Anjou after 1265)
term Holy Roman Empire was coined, emphasiz- (Aragon)
Louis was revered not because he was a military leader but because he was an
administrator, a judge, and a “just father” of his people. On warm summer days, he
would sit under a tree in the woods near his castle at Vincennes, on the outskirts of
Paris, hearing disputes and dispensing justice personally. Through his administra-
tors, he vigorously imposed his laws and justice over much of France. At Paris he
appointed a salaried chief magistrate, who could be supervised and fired if necessary.
During Louis’s reign, the influence of the parlement of Paris (the royal court of
justice) increased significantly. Originally a changeable and movable body, part of
the king’s personal entourage when he dealt with litigation, the parlement was now
permanently housed in Paris and staffed by professional judges who heard cases and
recorded their decisions.
Unlike his grandfather Philip Augustus, Louis did not try to expand his territory.
He inherited a large kingdom that included Poitou and Languedoc (Map 12.1), and
he was content. Although at first Henry III, the king of England, attacked France
continually to try to regain territory lost under Philip Augustus, Louis remained unpro-
voked. Rather than prolong the fighting, he conceded a bit and made peace. At the
[1215–1340
] The Politics of Control 395
Rhi
his contemporaries were weary Vermandois
ne
Picardy
R.
of the idea. Normandy
Paris Champagne
Respectful of the church Brittany Chartres Île-de-France THE
Maine
and the pope, Louis never (Royal Domain)
Blois Orléans EMPIRE
Se
Nantes Anjou
ine
claimed power over spiritual Tours
R.
Touraine Burgundy
matters. Nevertheless, he vigor-
Lo
Poitiers
Bourges
ire
Poitou .
ously maintained the dignity of
R
Bourbonnais Cluny
Bay of
the king and his rights. He Biscay Lyon
Aquitaine
expected royal and ecclesiastical Bordeaux
e R.
power to work in harmony, and
Ga
ro
nn
Rhôn
he refused to let the church dic- Gascony .
eR
Languedoc Avignon
tate how he should use his tem-
Toulouse Montpellier
poral authority. For example, Marseille
*Although parlement and Parliament are similar words, both deriving from the French word parler
(“to speak”), the institutions they named were very different. The parlement of France was a law
court, whereas the English Parliament, although beginning as a court to redress grievances, had by
1327 become above all a representative institution. The major French representative assembly, the
Estates General, first convened at the beginning of the fourteenth century (see page 398).
[
1215–1340
] The Politics of Control 397
trators, and a papal legate. Although not quite “government by Parliament,” this
council set a precedent for baronial participation in government.
A parliament that included commoners came only in the midst of war and as a
result of political weakness. Once in power, Henry III so alienated nobles and com-
moners alike by his wars, debts, choices of advisers, and demands for money that
the barons threatened to rebel. At a meeting at Oxford in 1258, they forced Henry to
dismiss his foreign advisers. Henceforth he was to rule with the advice of a so-called
Council of Fifteen, chosen jointly by the barons and the king. Chief royal officers
were to serve for one year only, after which they were to account for their actions
to the council. However, this new government was itself plagued by strife among the
barons, and civil war erupted in 1264. At the battle of Lewes in the same year, the
leader of the baronial opposition, Simon de Montfort (c. 1208–1265), routed the king’s
forces, captured the king, and became England’s de facto ruler.
Because only a minority of the barons followed him, Simon sought new support
by convening a parliament in 1265, to which he summoned not only the earls, bar-
ons, and churchmen who backed him but also representatives from the towns, the
“commons” — and he appealed for their help. Thus, for the first time, the commons
were given a voice in English government. Even though Simon’s brief rule ended that
very year and Henry’s son Edward I (r. 1272–1307) became a rallying point for royal-
ists, the idea of representative government in England had emerged, born out of the
interplay between royal initiatives and baronial revolts.
his taxes would be considered outlaws — that is, “outside the law.” Clergymen who
were robbed, for example, would have no recourse against their attackers; if accused
of crimes, they would have no defense in court. Relying on a different strategy, Philip
forbade the exportation of precious metals, money, or jewels — effectively sealing the
French borders. Immediately, the English clergy cried out for legal protection, while
the papacy itself cried out for the revenues it had long enjoyed from French pilgrims,
litigants, and travelers. Boniface was forced to back down, conceding in 1297 that
kings had the right to tax their clergy in emergencies.
But this concession did not end the confrontation. In 1301, Philip the Fair tested
his jurisdiction in southern France by arresting Bernard Saisset, the bishop of Pam-
iers, on a charge of treason for slandering the king by comparing him to an owl.
Saisset’s imprisonment violated the principle, maintained both by the pope and by
French law, that a clergyman was not subject to lay justice. Pope Boniface reacted
angrily, and King Philip seized the opportunity to deride and humiliate him, orches-
trating a public relations campaign against Boniface. Philip convened representatives
of the clergy, nobles, and townspeople to explain, justify, and propagandize his posi-
tion. This new assembly, which met in 1302, was the ancestor of the French repre-
sentative institution, the Estates General. The pope’s reply, the bull* Unam Sanctam
*An official papal document is called a bull, from the bulla, or seal, that was used to authenticate it.
[1215–1340
] The Politics of Control 399
(1302), intensified the situation to fever pitch by declaring bluntly that “it is alto-
gether necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman
Pontiff.” At meetings of the king’s inner circle, Philip’s agents declared Boniface a
false pope, accusing him of sexual perversion, various crimes, and heresy.
In 1303, French royal agents, acting on Philip’s orders, invaded Boniface’s palace
at Anagni (southeast of Rome) to capture the pope, bring him to France, and try
him. Fearing for the pope’s life, the people of Anagni joined forces and drove the
French agents out of town. Yet even after such public support for the pope, the king
made his power felt. Boniface died very shortly thereafter, and the next two popes
quickly pardoned Philip and his agents for their actions.
Just as Frederick II’s failure revealed the weakness of the empire, so Boniface’s
humiliation demonstrated the limits of papal control. The two powers that claimed
“universal” authority had very little weight in the face of new, limited, but tightly
controlled national states such as France and England. After 1303, popes continued
to denounce kings and emperors, but their words had less and less impact. Against
newly powerful medieval states — sustained by vast revenues, judicial apparatuses,
representative institutions, and even the loyalty of churchmen — the papacy could
make little headway. The delicate balance between church and state, reflecting a sense
of universal order and harmony and a hallmark of the reign of St. Louis, broke down
at the end of the thirteenth century.
The papacy’s weakness was dramatically demonstrated by its move to Avignon.
In 1309, forced from Rome by civil strife, the papacy settled in this city close to
France. Here it remained until 1378, and thus the period 1309–1378 is called the
Avignon papacy. Europeans ashamed that the pope lived so far from Rome called
it the Babylonian captivity. They were thinking of the Old Testament story of the
Hebrews captured and brought into slavery in ancient Babylon.*
The Avignon popes, many of them French, established a sober and efficient orga-
nization that took in regular revenues and gave the papacy more say than ever before
in the appointment of churchmen. Slowly, they abandoned the idea of leading all of
Christendom, tacitly recognizing the growing power of the secular states to regulate
their internal affairs.
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others expected to make new converts to Christianity, and still others dreamed of
lucrative trade routes.
The most famous of these travelers was Marco Polo (1254–1324), who remained
in China for nearly two years. Others stayed even longer. In fact, evidence suggests
that an entire community of Venetian traders lived in the city of Yangzhou in the
mid-fourteenth century. Such merchants paved the way for missionaries. Friars, who
were preachers to the cities of Europe, became missionaries to new continents as well.
The long-term effect of the Mongols on the West was to open up new land routes
to the East that helped bind together the two halves of the known world. Travel stories
such as Marco Polo’s account of his journeys stimulated others to seek out the fabulous
riches — textiles, ginger, ceramics, copper — of China and other regions of the East. In
a sense, the Mongols initiated the search for exotic goods and missionary opportunities
that culminated in the European “discovery” of a new world, the Americas.
402 Chapter 12 The Medieval Synthesis — and Its Cracks
[ 1215–1340
]
The Great Famine
While the Mongols stimulated the European economy, natural disasters coupled with
human actions brought on a terrible period of famine in northern Europe. The Great
Famine (1315–1322) left many hungry, sick, and weak while it fueled social antago-
nisms. An anonymous chronicler looking back on the events of 1315 wrote:
The floods of rain have rotted almost all the seed, . . . and in many places
the hay lay so long under water that it could neither be mown nor gathered.
Sheep generally died and other animals were killed in a sudden plague. . . .
[In the next year, 1316,] the dearth of grain was much increased. Such a
scarcity has not been seen in our time in England, nor heard of for a hun-
dred years. For the measure of wheat sold in London and the neighboring
places for forty pence [a very high price], and in other less thickly populated
parts of the country thirty pence was a common price.
Thus did the writer chronicle the causes and effects of the famine: uncommonly
heavy rains, which washed up or drowned the crops; a disease that killed farm ani-
mals key to agricultural life not only for their meat and fleeces but also for their
labor; and, finally, the economic effects, as scarcity drove up the prices of ordinary
foods. All of these led to hunger, disease, and death.
Had the rains gone back to normal, Europeans might have recovered. But the
rains continued, and the crops kept failing. In many regions, the crisis lasted for a
full seven years. Hardest hit were the peasants and the poor. In rural areas, wealthy
lords, churches, monasteries, and well-to-do peasants manipulated the market to
profit from the newly high prices they could charge. In the cities, some merchants
and ecclesiastical institutions benefited as well. But on the whole, even the well-to-do
suffered: both rural and urban areas lost fully 5 to 10 percent of their population,
and loss of population meant erosion of manpower and falling productivity.
To cope with and contain these disasters, the clergy offered up prayers and urged
their congregations to do penance. In the countryside, charitable monasteries gave
out food, conscientious kings tried to control high interest rates on loans, and hungry
peasants migrated from west to east — to Poland, for example, where land was more
plentiful. In the cities, where starving refugees from rural areas flocked for food,
wealthy men and women sometimes opened their storehouses or distributed coins.
Other rich townspeople founded hospitals for the poor. Town councils sold munici-
pal bonds at high rates of interest, gaining some temporary solvency. These towns
became the primary charitable institutions of the era, importing grain and selling it
at or slightly below cost.
Contributing to the crop failure was population growth that challenged the pro-
ductive capabilities of the age. The exponential leap in population from the tenth
through most of the thirteenth century slowed to zero around the year 1300, but all
[1215–1340
] The Politics of Control 403
A Famine in Florence
Starvation did not end with
the last year of the Great
Famine. This miniature from
a manuscript detailing grain
prices shows the effects, and
the artist’s interpretation, of
a famine in 1329. The scene
is the Orsanmichele, the
Florentine grain market. The
market was dominated by
an image of the Virgin Mary,
here depicted on the right-
hand side. Extending beyond
the margin on the far left,
a mother with two children
raises her hands and eyes
to heaven in prayer. In the
back, soldiers guard the
market’s entrance. The mar-
ket itself bustles with rich
buyers, who hand over their
money and pack their bags
with grain. Above flies an
angel with broken trumpets,
while a demon takes center
stage and says, among other
things, “I will make you ache
with hunger and high prices.”
(Biblioteca Laurenziana, Florence,
Italy / Scala / Art Resource, NY.)
the land that could be cultivated had been settled by this time. No new technology
had been developed to increase crop yields. The swollen population demanded a lot
from the productive capacities of the land. Just a small shortfall could dislocate the
whole system of distribution.
The policies of rulers added to the problems of too many people and too little
food. Wars between England and Scotland destroyed crops. So did wars between the
kings of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. These wars also diverted manpower and
resources to arms and castles, and they disrupted normal markets and trade routes.
In order to wage wars, rulers imposed heavy taxes and, as the Great Famine became
worse, requisitioned grain to support their troops. The effects of the famine grew
worse, and in many regions people rose up in protest. In England, peasants resisted
tax collectors. In a more violent reaction, poor French shepherds, outcasts, clerics,
and artisans entered Paris to storm the prisons. They then marched southward,
404 Chapter 12 The Medieval Synthesis — and Its Cracks
[ 1215–1340
]
burning royal castles and attacking offi-
REVIEW QUESTION How did the search cials, Jews, and lepers. The king of France
for harmony result in cooperation — and pursued them and succeeded in putting
confrontation — between the secular rulers down the movement. But the limits of the
of the period 1215–1340 and other institu-
politics of control were made clear in this
tions, such as the church and the towns?
confrontation, which exacerbated the mis-
ery of the famine while doing nothing to
contain it.
Conclusion
The thirteenth century sought harmony and synthesis but discovered how elusive
these goals could be. Theoretically, the papacy and empire were supposed to work
together; instead they clashed in bitter warfare, leaving the government of Germany
to the princes and northern Italy to its communes and signori. Theoretically, faith
and reason were supposed to arrive at the same truths. They sometimes did so in
the hands of scholastics, but not always. Theoretically, all Christians practiced the
same rites and followed the teachings of the church. In practice, local enforcement
determined which church laws took effect — and to what extent. Moreover, the
search for order was never able to bring together all the diverse peoples, ideas, and
interests of thirteenth-century society. Heretics and Jews were set apart.
Synthesis was more achievable in the arts. Heaven, earth, and hell were melded
harmoniously together in stained glass and sculpture. Musicians wove disparate
melodic and poetic lines into motets. Writers melded heroic and romantic themes
with theological truths and mystical visions.
Political leaders also aimed at harmony. Via representative institutions, they har-
nessed the various social orders to their quest for greater order and control. They
asserted sovereignty over all the people who lived in their borders, asserting unity
while increasing their revenues, expanding their territories, and enhancing their pres-
tige. The kings of England and France and the governments of northern and central
Italian cities largely succeeded in these goals, while the king of Germany failed mis-
erably. Germany and Italy remained fragmented until the nineteenth century. Ironi-
cally, the Mongols, who began as invaders in the West, helped unify areas that were
far apart by opening trade routes.
Events at the end of the thirteenth century thwarted the search for harmony.
The mutual respect of church and state achieved under St. Louis in France disinte-
grated into irreconcilable claims to power under Pope Boniface VIII and Philip the
Fair. The carefully constructed tapestry of St. Thomas’s summae began to unravel in
the teachings of John Duns Scotus. An economy stretched to the breaking point
resulted in a terrible period of famine. Disorder and anxiety — but also extraordinary
creativity — would mark the next era.
[ 1215–1340
] Conclusion 405
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Review Questions
1. How did people respond to the teachings and laws of the church in the early thirteenth
century?
2. How did artists, musicians, and scholastics in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries
try to link the physical world with the divine?
3. How did the search for harmony result in cooperation — and confrontation — between the
secular rulers of the period 1215–1340 and other institutions, such as the church and
the towns?
Making Connections
1. Why was Innocent III more successful than Boniface VIII in carrying out his objectives?
2. How did the growth of lay piety help bolster the prestige and power of kings like Louis IX?
3. Comparing the goals and methods of Abelard’s scholarship with those of Thomas Aquinas,
explain the continuities and the differences between the twelfth-century schools and the
scholastic movement.
Suggested References
For the church’s mission, see both Bynum and Sayers. The Inquisition and other forms of per-
secution are the subjects of the books by Given, Jordan (on the Jews), and Nirenberg. Abulafia,
Jones, Maddicott, and O’Callaghan each helpfully cover the political developments of the period.
Abulafia, David. Frederick II: A Medieval Emperor. 1988.
Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval
Women. 1987.
*Fourth Lateran Council: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/lat4-select.asp
Gaposchkin, M. Cecilia. The Making of Saint Louis: Kingship, Sanctity, and Crusade in the Later
Middle Ages. 2008.
Given, James Buchanan. Inquisition and Medieval Society. 2001.
Jackson, Peter. The Mongols and the West. 2005.
*Joinville, Jean de, and Geoffroy de Villehardouin. Chronicles of the Crusades. Trans. M. R. B.
Shaw. 1963.
Jones, Philip. The Italian City-State: From Commune to Signoria. 1997.
Jordan, William Chester. The French Monarchy and the Jews: From Philip Augustus to the Last
Capetians. 1989.
*Primary source.
406
[1215–1340
] Chapter 12 Review 407
Important Events
Consider three events: Fourth Lateran Council (1215), Thomas Aquinas publishes the
Summa Theologiae (1273), and Dante writes Divine Comedy (1313–1321). How did the
papacy, scholastic philosophy, and vernacular literature represent different aspects of the
medieval search for order?
I
n 1453, the Ottoman Turks turned their cannons on Constantinople and
blasted the city’s walls. The fall of Constantinople, which spelled the end of the
Byzantine Empire, was an enormous shock to Europeans. Some, like the pope,
called for a crusade against the Ottomans; others, like the writer Lauro Quirini,
sneered, calling the Ottomans “a barbaric, uncultivated race, without established
customs, or laws, [who lived] a careless, vagrant, arbitrary life.”
But the Turks didn’t consider themselves uncultivated or arbitrary. They saw
themselves as the true heirs of the Roman Empire, and they shared many of the values
and tastes of the very Europeans who were so hostile to them. Sultan Mehmed II
employed European architects to construct his
new palace — the Topkapi Saray — in the city
Portrait of Mehmed II
once known as Constantinople and now popu-
The Ottoman ruler Mehmed II saw
himself as a Renaissance patron of larly called Istanbul. He commissioned the
the arts, and he called on the most Venetian artist Gentile Bellini to paint his por-
famous artists and architects of the trait, a genre invented in Burgundy to celebrate
day to work for him. The painter of the status and individuality of important and
this portrait, Gentile Bellini, was wealthy patrons.
from a well-known family of artists
in Venice and served at Mehmed’s
Mehmed’s actions sum up the dual features
court in 1479–1480. The revival of the period of crisis and Renaissance that
of portraiture, so characteristic of took place from the middle of the fourteenth
Renaissance tastes, was as impor- century to the late fifteenth century. What was
tant to the Turkish sultans as to a crisis from one point of view — the fall of the
European rulers. (National Gallery,
London, UK / Bridgeman Images.)
Byzantine Empire — was at the same time stim-
ulus for what historians call the Renaissance.
Both to confront and to mask the crises of the
day, people discovered new value in ancient, classical culture; they created a new
vocabulary drawn from classical literature as well as astonishing new forms of art
and music based on ancient precedents. The classical revival provided the stimulus
for new styles of living, ruling, and thinking.
Along with the fall of the Byzantine Empire, other crises marked the period from
1340 to 1492. These were matched by equally significant gains. The plague, or Black
Death, tore at the fabric of communities and families; but the survivors and their
409
410 Chapter 13 Crisis and Renaissance
[ 1340–1492
]
children reaped the benefits of higher wages and better living standards. The Hundred
Years’ War, fought between France and England, involved many smaller states in its
slaughter and brought untold misery to the French countryside; but it also helped
create the glittering court of Burgundy. By the war’s end, both the French and the
English kings were more powerful than ever. Following their conquest of Constan-
tinople, the Ottoman Turks penetrated far into the Balkans; but this was a calamity
only from the European point of view. Well into the sixteenth century, the Ottomans
were part of the culture that nourished the artistic achievements of the Renaissance.
A crisis in the church overlapped with the crises of disease and war as a schism within
the papacy — pitting pope against pope — divided Europe into separate camps. But
a church council whose members included
Renaissance humanists eventually resolved
CHAPTER FOCUS Who suffered and who
benefited from the events of the period from
the papal schism by reestablishing the old
1340 to 1492? system: a single pope who presided over
the church from Rome.
1347 1350
N
Jan. 1348 1351 and later
June 1348 Few or no E
NORWAY W
plague deaths
1349
S
SWEDEN Novgorod
SCOTLAND
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Nor th
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.
Paris ROMA N
Strasbourg EMPIRE
FRANCE Alsace Zurich Vienna
R
GA
. Florence
CASTILEARAGON Marseille PAPAL
STATES
RTU
Corsica
Barcelona Constantinople
Rome
Thessalonika
PO
Sicily
Cyprus
M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a Crete
0 200 400 miles
*The Russian Orthodox church had always used the term Russia. In the fourteenth century, the
princes who ruled the northern parts, called Muscovy, started to do so as well.
412 Chapter 13 Crisis and Renaissance
[ 1340–1492
]
the north, Milan suffered very little. Conservative estimates put the death toll in Europe
anywhere between 30 and 50 percent of the entire population, but some historians
put the mortality rate as high as 60 percent. Already weakened by the Great Famine
as well as by local food shortages and epidemic diseases like smallpox, Europeans
were devastated by the arrival of Yersinia.
Many localities sought remedies. The government of the Italian city of Pistoia, for
example, set up a quarantine and demanded better sanitation. Elsewhere reactions
were religious. In England, the archbishop of York tried to prevent the plague from
entering his diocese by ordering “devout processions.” Some people took more extreme
measures. Lamenting their sins — which they believed had brought on the plague —
and attempting to placate God, flagellants, men (with women praying), wandered from
city to city whipping themselves. Religious enthusiasm often culminated in violence
Dance of Death
This fresco, painted in 1474 on a wall of a cemetery church in Croatia, depicts figures meant
to represent all the “types” in medieval society. It should be read from right to left. Not pictured
here, but first in line, is the pope, followed by a cardinal and a bishop. The portion shown here
comes next: the king, who holds a scepter; the queen; and a landlord, carrying a small barrel.
At the far left is a child. Even farther to the left (but not shown here) come a beggar, a knight,
and a shopkeeper. All the figures are flanked by gleeful, dancing skeletons. The message is
clear: everyone, even the most exalted, ends up in the grave. (De Agostini Picture Library / Alfredo
Dagli Orti / Bridgeman Images.)
[
1340–1492
] Crisis: Disease, War, and Schism 413
against the Jews, who were blamed for the Black Death. In Germany, thousands of
Jews were slaughtered. Many Jews fled to Poland, where the epidemic affected fewer
people and where the authorities welcomed Jews as productive taxpayers.
Preoccupation with death led to the popularity of a theme called the Dance of
Death as a subject of art, literature, and performance. It featured a procession of
people of every age, sex, and rank making their way to the grave. In works of art,
skeletal figures of Death, whirling about, laughed as they abducted their prey. Preach-
ers, poets, and playwrights relished the theme.
At the same time that it helped inspire this bleak view of the world, the Black
Death brought new opportunities for those who survived its murderous path. With
a smaller population to feed, less land was needed for cultivation. Landlords allowed
marginal land that had been cultivated to return to pasture, meadow, or forest, and
they diversified their products. Wheat had been the favored crop before the plague,
but barley — the key ingredient of beer — turned out to be more profitable afterward.
Animal products continued to fetch a high price, and some landlords switched from
raising crops to raising animals.
These changes in agriculture meant a better standard of living. The peasants and
urban workers who survived the plague were able to negotiate better conditions or
higher wages from their landlords or employers. With more money to spend, people
could afford a better and more varied diet that included beer and meat. Birthrates
jumped as people could afford to marry at younger ages.
The Black Death, which spared neither professors nor students, also affected
patterns of education. The survivors built new local colleges and universities, partly
to train a new generation for the priesthood and partly to satisfy local donors — many
of them princes — who, riding on a sea of wealth left behind by the dead, wanted to
be known as patrons of education. Thus, in 1348, in the midst of the Black Death,
Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV chartered a university at Prague. The king of Poland
founded Cracow University, and a Habsburg duke created a university at Vienna.
Rather than traveling to Paris or Bologna, young men living east of the Rhine River
now tended to study nearer home.
Philip III
King of France (1270–1285)
The war had two major phases. In the first, the English gained ground, and a
new political entity, the duchy of Burgundy, allied itself with England. This phase
culminated in 1415, when the English achieved a great victory at the battle of Agin-
court and took over northern France. In the second phase, however, fortunes reversed
entirely after a sixteen-year-old peasant girl inspired the dauphin (the yet-uncrowned
heir to the throne) and his troops. Prompted by visions in which God told her to
lead the war against the English, and calling herself “the Maid” (a virgin), Joan of
Arc (1412–1431) arrived at court in 1429 wearing armor, riding a horse, and leading
a small army. Full of charisma and confidence at a desperate hour, Joan convinced
the French that she had been sent by God when she fought courageously (and was
wounded) in the successful battle of Orléans. Soon, with Joan at his side, the dauphin
traveled deep into enemy territory to be anointed and crowned as King Charles VII
at the cathedral in Reims, following the tradition of French monarchs. Joan was
captured by the Burgundians, sold to the English, and put to death by her purchasers
(Map 13.2).
As it unfolded, the Hundred Years’ War drew people from much of Europe into
its vortex. Both the English and the French hired mercenaries from Germany, Swit-
zerland, and the Netherlands; the best crossbowmen came from Genoa.
The duchy of Burgundy became involved in the war when the marriage of the
heiress to Flanders and the duke of Burgundy in 1369 created a powerful new state.
[ 1340–1492
] Crisis: Disease, War, and Schism 415
Calculating shrewdly which side — England or France — to support and cannily enter-
ing the fray when it suited them, the dukes of Burgundy created a glittering court,
a center of art and culture. Had Burgundy maintained its alliance with England, the
map of Europe would be entirely different today. But, sensing France’s new strength,
the duke of Burgundy broke off with England in 1435. The duchy continued to pros-
per until its expansionist policies led to the formation of a coalition against it. The
last duke, Charles the Bold, died fighting in 1477. His daughter, his only heir, tried
to save Burgundy by marrying the Holy Roman Emperor, but the move was to little
avail. The duchy broke up, with France absorbing its western bits.
Flanders, too, got drawn into the war. Its cities depended on England for the
raw wool that they turned into cloth. This is why, at the beginning of the war, Flem-
ish townsmen allied with England against their count, who supported the French
king. But discord among the cities and within each town soon ended the rebellion.
Although revolts continued to flare up, the count thereafter allowed a measure of
self-government to the towns, maintained some distance from French influence, and
managed on the whole to keep the peace.
The nature of warfare changed during the Hundred Years’ War. At its start, the
chronicler Jean Froissart (d. c. 1405) considered it a chivalric adventure, expecting it
to display the gallantry and bravery of the medieval nobility. But even Froissart could
not help but notice that most of the men who went to battle were not wealthy nobles
and knights. They were not even ordinary foot soldiers, who previously had made
up a large portion of all medieval armies. The soldiers of the Hundred Years’ War
were primarily mercenaries: men who fought for pay and plunder, heedless of the
416 Chapter 13 Crisis and Renaissance
[ 1340–1492
]
king for whom they were supposed to be fighting. During lulls in the war, these so-
called Free Companies lived off the French countryside, terrorizing the peasants and
exacting “protection” money.
The ideal chivalric knight fought on horseback with other armed horsemen. But
in the Hundred Years’ War, foot soldiers and archers were far more important than
swordsmen. The French tended to use crossbows, whose heavy, deadly arrows were
released by a mechanism that even a townsman could master. The English employed
longbows, which could shoot five arrows for every one launched on the crossbow.
Meanwhile, gunpowder was slowly being introduced and cannons forged. Handguns
were beginning to be used, their effect about equal to that of crossbows.
By the end of the war, chivalry was only a dream — though one that continued
to inspire soldiers even up to the First World War. Heavy artillery and foot soldiers,
tightly massed together in formations of many thousands of men, were the face of
the new military. Moreover, the army was becoming more professional and central-
ized. In the 1440s, the French king created a permanent army of mounted soldiers.
He paid them a wage and subjected them to regular inspection.
In addition to changing the face of warfare, the Hundred Years’ War gave a new
voice — however temporary — to the lower classes in France and England. When the
English captured the French king John at the battle of Poitiers in 1356, Étienne
Marcel, provost of the Paris merchants, and other disillusioned members of the estates
of France (the representatives of the clergy, nobility, and commons) met to discuss
political reform, the incompetence of the French army, and the high taxes they paid
to finance the war. Under Marcel’s leadership, a crowd of Parisians killed some nobles
and for a short while took control of the city. But troops soon blockaded Paris and
cut off its food supply. Later that year, Marcel was assassinated and the Parisian revolt
came to an end.
In the same year, peasants weary of the Free Companies (who were ravaging the
countryside) and disgusted by the military incompetence of the nobility rose up in
protest. The French nobility called the peasant rebellion the Jacquerie, probably
taken from a derisive name for male peasants: Jacques Bonhomme (“Jack Goodfel-
low”). The peasants committed atrocities against local nobles, but the nobles soon
gave as good as they got, putting down the Jacquerie with exceptional brutality.
Similar revolts took place in England. The movement known as Wat Tyler’s
Rebellion started in much of southern and central England when royal agents tried
to collect poll taxes (a tax on each household) to finance the Hundred Years’ War.
Refusing to pay and refusing to be arrested, the commons — peasants and small
householders — rose up in rebellion in 1381. They massed in various groups, vowing
“to slay all lawyers, and all jurors, and all the servants of the King whom they could
find.” Marching to London to see the king, they began to make a more radical demand:
an end to serfdom. Although the rebellion was put down and its leaders executed,
peasants returned home to bargain with their lords for better terms. The death knell
of serfdom in England had been sounded.
[1340–1492
] Crisis: Disease, War, and Schism 417
Constantinople
MAP 13.3 Ottoman Expansion 1453
in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth ANATOLIA
Centuries
The Balkans were the major the-
ater of expansion for the Ottoman Med
iterr
anean Sea N
Empire. The Byzantine Empire was
reduced to the city of Constanti- W E
0 250 500 miles
nople and surrounded by the Otto-
0 250 500 kilometers S
mans before its final fall in 1453.
418 Chapter 13 Crisis and Renaissance
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]
to supervise local administrators throughout formerly Byzantine regions. Building a
system of roads that crisscrossed their empire, the sultans made long-distance trade
easy and profitable.
Once Constantinople was his, Mehmed embarked on an ambitious program of
expansion and conquest. By 1500, the Ottoman Empire was a new and powerful state
bridging Europe and the Middle East.
of the faithful, even against the wishes of an unwilling pope — or popes. They spear-
headed the conciliar movement — a movement to have the cardinals or the emperor
call a council.
In 1408, long after Urban and Clement had passed away and new popes had
followed, the conciliar movement succeeded when cardinals from both sides met and
declared their resolve “to pursue the union of the Church . . . by way of abdication of
both papal contenders.” With support from both England and France, the cardinals
called for a council to be held at Pisa in 1409. Both popes refused to attend, and the
council deposed them, electing a new pope.
But the “deposed” popes refused to budge, even though most of the European
powers abandoned them. There were now three popes. The successor of the newest
one, John XXIII, turned to the emperor to arrange for another council.
The Council of Constance (1414–1418) met to resolve the papal crisis as well as
to institute church reforms. The delegates deposed John XXIII and accepted the
resignation of the pope at Rome. After long negotiations with rulers still supporting
the Avignon pope, all allegiance to him was withdrawn and he was deposed. The
council then elected Martin V, whom every important ruler of Europe recognized
as pope. Finally, the Great Schism had come to an end.
Nevertheless, the schism had worked changes in the religious sensibilities of Euro-
peans. Worried about the salvation of their souls now that the church was fractured
by multiple popes, pious men and women eagerly sought new forms of religious
solace. The church offered the plenary indulgence — full forgiveness of sins, which
had been originally offered to crusaders who died while fighting for the cause —
to those who made a pilgrimage to Rome and other designated holy places during
declared Holy Years. People could wipe away their sins through confession and con-
trition, but they retained some guilt that they could remove only through good deeds
or in purgatory. The idea of purgatory — the place where sins were fully purged —
took precise form at this time, and with it indulgences became popular. These remis-
sions of sin were offered for good works to reduce the time in purgatory.
Both clergy and laity became more interested than ever in the education of young
people as a way to deepen their faith and spiritual life. The Brethren of the Common
Life — laypeople, mainly in the Low Countries (the region comprising today’s Bel-
gium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands), who devoted themselves to pious works —
set up a model school at Deventer. In Italy, humanists (see “Renaissance Humanism,”
page 422) emphasized primary school education. Priests were expected to teach the
faithful the basics of the Christian religion.
Home was equally a place for devotion. Portable images of Mary, the mother of
God, and of the life and passion of Christ proliferated. Ordinary Christians contem-
plated them at convenient moments throughout the day. People purchased or com-
missioned copies of Books of Hours, which contained prayers to be said at the same
hours of the day that monks chanted their liturgy. Books of Hours included calen-
dars, sometimes splendidly illustrated with depictions of the seasons and labors of
the year. Other illustrations reminded their users of the life and suffering of Christ.
420 Chapter 13 Crisis and Renaissance
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]
Book of Hours
This illustration for June in a Book
of Hours made for the duke of
Berry was meant for the contem-
plation of a nobleman. In the back-
ground is a fairy-tale depiction of
the duke’s palace and the tower of
a Gothic church, while in the fore-
ground graceful women rake the
hay and well-muscled men swing
their scythes. (Musée Condé, Chantilly,
France / © RMN-Grand Palais / Art
Resource, NY.)
wanted the privilege of drinking the wine as well and, with it, recognition of their
dignity and worth. Their demand brought together several passionately held desires
and beliefs: it reflected a focus on the redemptive power of Christ’s blood. Further-
more, the call for communion with both bread and wine signified a desire for equal-
ity. Bohemia was an exceptionally divided country, with an urban German-speaking
elite, including merchants, artisans, bishops, and scholars, and a Czech-speaking
nobility and peasantry that was beginning to seek better opportunities. (Hus himself
was a Czech of peasant stock who became a professor at the University of Prague.)
The Bohemian nobility protected Hus after the church condemned him as a
heretic, but the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund lured him to the Council of Con-
stance, promising him safe conduct. Nevertheless, Hus was arrested when he arrived.
When he refused to recant his views, the church leaders burned him at the stake.
Hus’s death caused an uproar, and his movement became a full-scale national
revolt of Czechs against Germans. Sigismund called crusades against the Hussites,
but all of his expeditions were soundly defeated. Radical groups of Hussites orga-
nized several new communities in southern Bohemia, attempting to live according
to the example of the first apostles. They recognized no lord, gave women some
political rights, and created a simple liturgy that was carried out in the Czech lan-
guage. Negotiations with Sigismund and his successor led to the Hussites’ incorpora-
tion into the Bohemian political system by 1450. Though the Hussites were largely
marginalized, they had won the right to
receive communion in “both kinds” (wine REVIEW QUESTION What crises did Europe-
and bread) and they had made Bohemia ans confront in the fourteenth and fifteenth
intensely aware of its Czech, rather than centuries, and how did they handle them?
German, identity.
In Germany there are many monasteries with libraries full of Latin books.
This aroused the hope in me that some of the works of Cicero, Varro, Livy,
and other great men of learning, which seem to have completely vanished,
might come to light, if a careful search were instituted. A few days ago, [we]
went by agreement to the town of St. Gall. As soon as we went into the
library [of the monastery there], we found Jason’s Argonauticon, written by
C. Valerius Flaccus in verse that is both splendid and dignified and not far
removed from poetic majesty. Then we found some discussion in prose of
a number of Cicero’s orations.
Cicero, Varro, Livy, and Valerius Flaccus were pagan Latin writers. Even though
Cincius and his friends were working for Pope John XXIII, they loved the writ-
ings of the ancients, whose Latin was, in their view, “splendid and dignified,” unlike
the Latin used in their own time — the Latin of the scholastics and the university
masters — which they found debased and faulty. They saw themselves as the resuscita-
tors of ancient language, literature, and culture, and they congratulated themselves
on rescuing captive books from the “barbarian” monks of the monastery of St. Gall.
Humanism was a literary and linguistic movement — an attempt to revive clas-
sical Latin (and later Greek) as well as the values and sensibilities that came with the
language. It began among men and women who, like Cincius, lived in the Italian
city-states. The humanists saw parallels between their urban, independent lives and
the experiences of the city-states of the ancient world. Humanism was a way to
confront the crises — and praise the advances — of the fourteenth through sixteenth
centuries. Humanists wrote poetry, history, moral philosophy, and grammar books,
all patterned on classical models, especially the writings of Cicero.
That Cincius was employed by the pope yet considered the monks of St. Gall
barbarians was no oddity. Most humanists combined sincere Christian piety with a
new appreciation of the pagan past. Besides, they needed to work in order to live,
and they took employment where they found it. Some humanists worked for the
church, others were civil servants, and still others were notaries. A few were rich men
who had a taste for literary subjects.
The first humanist, most historians agree, was Francis Petrarch (1304–1374).
He was born in Arezzo, a town about fifty miles southeast of Florence. As a boy, he
moved around a lot (his father was exiled from Florence), ending up in the region of
Avignon, where he received his earliest schooling and fell in love with classical lit-
erature. He became a poet, writing in both Italian and Latin. When writing in Italian,
he drew on the traditions of the troubadours, dedicating poems of longing to an
[1340–1492
] The Renaissance: New Forms of Thought and Expression 423
unattainable and idealized woman named Laura; who she really was, we do not
know. When writing in Latin, Petrarch was much influenced by classical poetry.
On the one hand, a boyhood in Avignon made Petrarch sensitive to the failings
of the church: he was the writer who coined the phrase “Babylonian captivity” to
liken the Avignon papacy to the Bible’s account of the Hebrews’ captivity in Babylo-
nia. On the other hand, he took minor religious orders there, which gave him a
modest living. Struggling between what he considered a life of dissipation (he
fathered two children out of wedlock) and a religious vocation, he resolved the con-
flict at last in his book On the Solitary Life, in which he claimed that the solitude
needed for reading the classics was akin to the solitude practiced by those who
devoted themselves to God. For Petrarch, humanism was a vocation, a calling.
Less famous, but for that reason perhaps more representative of humanists in
general, was Lauro Quirini (1420–1475?), the man who (as we saw at the start of this
chapter) wrote disparagingly about the Turks as barbarians. Educated at the University
of Padua, Quirini eventually got a law degree there. He wrote numerous letters and
essays, and corresponded with other humanists. He spent the last half of his life in
Crete, where he traded various commodities — alum, cloth, wine, and Greek books.
If Quirini represents the ordinary humanist, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
(1463–1494) was perhaps the most flamboyant. Born near Ferrara of a noble family,
Pico received a humanist education at home before going on to Bologna to study
law and to Padua to study philosophy. Soon he was picking up Hebrew, Aramaic,
and Arabic. A convinced eclectic (one who selects the best from various doctrines),
he thought that Jewish mystical writings supported Christian scriptures, and in 1486
he proposed that he publicly defend at Rome nine hundred theses drawn from
diverse sources. The church found some of the theses heretical, however, and banned
the whole affair. But Pico’s Oration on the Dignity of Man, which he intended to
deliver before his defense, summed up the humanist view: the creative individual,
armed only with his (or her) “desires and judgment,” could choose to become a boor
or an angel. Humanity’s potential was unlimited.
Christine de Pisan (c. 1365–c. 1430) exemplifies a humanist who chose to fash-
ion herself into a writer and courtier. Born in Venice and educated in France, Chris-
tine was married and then soon widowed. Forced to support herself, her mother,
and her three young children, she began to write poems inspired by classical models,
depending on patrons to admire her work and pay her to write more. Many members
of the upper nobility supported her, including Duke Philip the Bold of Burgundy,
Queen Isabelle of Bavaria, and the English earl of Salisbury.
The Arts
The lure of the classical past was as strong in the visual arts as in literature — and for
many of the same reasons. Architects and artists admired ancient Athens and Rome,
but they also modified these classical models, melding them with medieval artistic
traditions.
424 Chapter 13 Crisis and Renaissance
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The Florentine architect Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) looked at the unplanned
medieval city with dismay. He proposed that each building in a city be proportioned
to fit harmoniously with all the others and that city spaces allow for all necessary
public activities — there should be market squares, play areas, grounds for military
exercises. In Renaissance cities, the agora and the forum (the open, public spaces of
the classical world) appeared once again, but in a new guise: the piazza — a plaza or
open square. Architects carved out spaces around their new buildings, and they
rimmed them with porticoes — graceful covered walkways of columns and arches.
The Gothic cathedral of the Middle Ages was a cluster of graceful spikes and
soaring arches. While Renaissance architects appreciated its vigor and energy, they
tamed it with regular geometrical forms inspired by classical buildings. Classical
forms were applied to previously built structures as well as new ones. Florence’s Santa
Maria Novella, for example, had been a typical Gothic church when it was first built.
But when Alberti, the man who believed in public spaces and harmonious buildings,
was commissioned to replace its facade, he drew on Roman temple forms.
The classical world inspired artists as well. This explains the style Lorenzo Ghiberti
(1378?–1455) chose when he competed to produce the doors of Florence’s baptistery
[1340–1492
] The Renaissance: New Forms of Thought and Expression 425
Ghiberti, Botticelli, and Leonardo were all Italian artists. While they were creating
their works, a northern Renaissance was taking place as well. At the court of Burgundy
during the Hundred Years’ War, the dukes commissioned portraits of themselves —
sometimes unflattering ones — just as Roman leaders had once commissioned their
own busts. Soon it was the fashion for those who could afford it to have a portrait
made, showing them as naturalistically as possible. Around 1433, the chancellor Nico-
las Rolin, for example, commissioned the Dutch artist Jan van Eyck to paint his
portrait. Though opposite the Virgin and the baby Jesus, Rolin, in a pious pose, is
the key figure in the picture. The grand view of a city behind the figures was meant
to underscore Rolin’s prominence in the community. In fact Rolin was an important
man: he worked for the duke of Burgundy and was also the founder of a hospital at
Beaune and a religious order of nurses to serve it. Van Eyck’s portrait emphasized
not only Rolin’s dignity and status but also his individuality. The artist took pains to
show even the wrinkles of his neck and the furrows on his brow.
In music, Renaissance composers incorporated classical texts and allusions into
songs that were based on the motet and other forms of polyphony. Working for
Consolidating Power
The shape of Europe changed between 1340 and 1492. In eastern Europe, the Otto-
man Empire took the place (though not the role) of Byzantium. The capital of the
Holy Roman Empire moved to Prague, bringing Bohemia to the fore. Meanwhile,
the duke of Lithuania married the queen of Poland, uniting those two states. In
western Europe, a few places organized and maintained themselves as republics; the
[1340–1492
] Consolidating Power 429
Swiss, for example, consolidated their informal alliances in the Swiss Confederation.
Italy, which at the beginning of the period was dotted with numerous small city-
states, was by the end dominated by five major powers: Milan, the papacy, Naples,
and the republics of Venice and Florence. Most western European states — England
and France, for example — became centralized monarchies. The union of Aragon and
Castile via the marriage of their respective rulers created Spain. Whether monarchies,
principalities, or republics, states throughout Europe used their new powers to
finance humanists, artists, and musicians — and to persecute heretics, Muslims, and
Jews with new vigor.
and promote their legitimacy. Their entries into cities and their presence at wed-
dings, births, and funerals became the centerpieces of a “theater state” in which the
dynasty provided the only link among diverse territories. New rituals became pro-
paganda tools. Philip’s revival of chivalry at court transformed the semi-independent
nobility into courtiers closely tied to the prince. But, as mentioned earlier in this
chapter (page 415), when Charles the Bold died in 1477, the duchy was parceled out
to France and the Holy Roman Empire.
It was its quick recovery from the Hundred Years’ War that allowed France to
take a large bite out of Burgundy. Under Louis XI (r. 1461–1483), the French mon-
archy both expanded its territory and consolidated its power. Soon after Burgundy
fell, Louis inherited most of southern France. When he inherited claims to the duchy
of Milan and the kingdom of Naples, he was ready to exploit other opportunities in
Italy. By the end of the century, France had doubled its territory, assuming boundar-
ies close to its modern ones, and was looking to expand even further.
432 Chapter 13 Crisis and Renaissance
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]
To strengthen royal power at home, Louis promoted industry and commerce,
imposed permanent salt and land taxes, maintained western Europe’s first standing
army (created by his predecessor), and dispensed with the meetings of the Estates
General, which included the clergy, the nobility, and representatives from the major
towns of France. The French kings had already increased their power with important
concessions from the papacy. The Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438) asserted the
superiority of a general church council over the pope. Harking back to a long tradi-
tion of the high Middle Ages, the Pragmatic Sanction established what would come
to be known as Gallicanism (after Gaul, the ancient Roman name for France), in
which the French king would effectively control ecclesiastical revenues and the
appointment of French bishops.
England, too, recovered quickly from civil wars — called the Wars of the Roses —
spawned by the stresses of the Hundred Years’ War and concluded with the victory
of Henry Tudor, who took the title of Henry VII (r. 1485–1509). Despite the Wars
of the Roses, which affected mainly the English nobility, the English economy con-
tinued to grow during the fifteenth century. The cloth industry expanded consider-
ably, and the English used much of the raw wool that they had been exporting to the
Low Countries to manufacture goods at home. London merchants, taking a vigorous
role in trade, also assumed greater political prominence, not only in governing Lon-
don but also in serving as bankers to kings and members of Parliament. In the coun-
tryside the landed classes — the nobility, the gentry (the lesser nobility), and the yeo-
manry (free farmers) — benefited from rising farm and land-rent income as the
population increased slowly but steadily. The Tudor monarchs took advantage of the
general prosperity to bolster both their treasury and their power.
its fiercely independent stance against the Holy Roman Empire, it became a symbol
of republican freedom. On the other hand, poor Swiss foot soldiers made their living
by hiring themselves out as mercenaries, fueling the wars of kings in the rest of
Europe.
Far less open to the lower classes, Venice, a city built on a lagoon, ruled an
extensive empire by the fifteenth century. Its merchant ships plied the waters stretch-
ing from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and out to the Atlantic Ocean. Now,
for the first time in its career, it turned to conquer land in northern Italy. In the
early fifteenth century, Venice took over many surrounding cities, eventually coming
up against the equally powerful city-state of Milan
to its west. Between 1450 and 1454, two coalitions, HOLY ROMAN
EMPIRE
0 100 200 miles
one led by Milan, the other by Venice, fought for 0 200 kilometers
V
territorial control of the eastern half of northern MILAN E
N OTTOMAN
I EMPIRE
Italy. Financial exhaustion and fear of an invasion FLORENCE A d C E
r
PAPAL i a t i
by France or the Ottoman Turks led to the Peace STATES cS
ea
of Lodi in 1454. Italy was a collection no longer NAPLES
Conclusion
The years from 1340 to 1492 marked a period of crisis in Europe. The Hundred Years’
War broke out in 1337, and ten years later, in 1347, the Black Death hit, taking a
heavy toll. In 1378, a crisis shook the church when first two and then three popes
claimed universal authority. Revolts and riots plagued the cities and countryside. The
Ottoman Turks took Constantinople in 1453, changing the very shape of Europe and
the Middle East.
The revival of classical literature, art, architecture, and music helped men and
women cope with these crises and gave them new tools for dealing with them. The
Renaissance began mainly in the city-states of Italy, but it spread throughout much of
Europe via the education and training of humanists, artists, sculptors, architects, and
[ 1340–1492
] Conclusion 437
Border of the
Holy Roman Empire
Important Hanseatic towns NORWAY
and trading partners SWEDEN MUSCOVY
Reval
N Novgorod
SCOTLAND
Sea
W Wisby
Nor th Riga Moscow
E IRELAND
tic
S
Sea DENMARK
al
B
Hamburg Lübeck Danzig
ENGLAND Bremen TEUTONIC
Brunswick KNIGHTS
London Magdeburg
POLAND-LITHUANIA
Rhi
Cologne MONGOL
ne
AT L AN TIC Prague Dn
i e pe
KHANATES
R
Frankfurt r R.
.
MILAN
Rhône R
PU
NAVARRE BL WALLACHIA
GENOA IC Black Sea
O
FLORENCE PAPAL F V
.
L
Danube R
STATES Ad EN
GA
ria ICE
RTU
Lisbon Corsica t O
SPAIN ic TT Istanbul
Rome S
PO
e OM
NAPLES a AN
Sardinia EMP
Seville IR E
Cádiz Granada
Sicily
Crete
N O RT H A F RI C A Cyprus
Mediterranean Sea
musicians. At the courts of great kings and dukes — even of the sultan — Renaissance
music, art, and literature served as a way to celebrate the grandeur of rulers who
controlled more of the apparatuses of government (armies, artillery, courts, and taxes)
than ever before.
Consolidation was the principle underlying the new states of the Renaissance.
Venice absorbed nearby northern Italian cities, and the Peace of Lodi confirmed its
new status as a power on land as well as the sea. In eastern Europe, marriage joined
together the states of Lithuania and Poland. A similar union took place in Spain when
Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon married. The Swiss Confederation became
a permanent entity. The king of France came to rule over all of the area that we today
call France. The consolidated modern states of the fifteenth century would soon look
to the Atlantic Ocean and beyond for new lands to explore and conquer.
Chapter 13 Review
Key Terms and People
Be sure that you can identify the term or person and explain its historical significance.
Black Death (p. 410) Mehmed II (p. 417) Francis Petrarch (p. 422)
Hundred Years’ War (p. 413) Great Schism (p. 418) Hanseatic League (p. 429)
Joan of Arc (p. 414) indulgences (p. 419) Medici (p. 434)
Jacquerie (p. 416) humanism (p. 422)
Review Questions
1. What crises did Europeans confront in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and how
did they handle them?
2. How and why did Renaissance humanists, artists, and musicians revive classical
traditions?
3. How did the monarchs and republics of the fifteenth century use (and abuse) their powers?
Making Connections
1. How did the rulers of the fourteenth century make use of the forms and styles of the
Renaissance?
2. On what values did Renaissance humanists and artists agree?
3. What tied the crises of the period (disease, war, schism) to the Renaissance (the flowering
of literature, art, architecture, and music)?
Important Events
Consider two events: Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) and the Black Death in Europe
(1347–1352). How did these events represent both major crises and new opportunities?
How was the Renaissance both a crisis itself and a response to the crises of this period?
438
[1340–1492
] Chapter 13 Review 439
Suggested References
Aberth provides a good overview of the crises. Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Bynum each explore
various aspects of late medieval piety. Nauert treats the many ramifications of Renaissance
humanism, and Hale gives a useful overview of political developments.
Aberth, John. From the Brink of the Apocalypse: Confronting Famine, War, Plague, and Death in
the Later Middle Ages. 2001.
*The Black Death. Ed. and trans. Rosemary Horrox. 1994.
Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate. Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, 1378–1417. 2006.
Bynum, Caroline. Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and
Beyond. 2006.
Cohn, Samuel K., Jr. Lust for Liberty: The Politics of Social Revolt in Medieval Europe, 1200–1425.
2006.
Grendler, Paul F. The Universities of the Italian Renaissance. 2002.
Hale, J. R. Renaissance Europe, 1480–1520. 2nd ed. 2000.
Imber, Colin. The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power. 2002.
*Joan of Arc: La Pucelle. Trans. and ed. Craig Taylor. 2006.
Kent, F. W. Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Art of Magnificence. 2004.
Lambert, Malcolm. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the
Reformation. 3rd ed. 2002.
Nauert, Charles G. Humanism and the Culture of the Renaissance Europe. 2nd ed. 2006.
*The Renaissance in Europe: An Anthology. Eds. Peter Elmer, Nick Webb, and Roberta Wood.
2000.
Rollo-Koster, Joëlle, and Thomas M. Izbicki, eds. A Companion to the Great Western Schism
(1378–1417). 2009.
*Selections from English Wycliffite Writings. Ed. and trans. Anne Hudson. 1978.
*Primary source.
Global Encounters and the
14
Shock of the Reformation
1492–1560
I
n 1539 in Tlaxcala, New Spain (present-day Mexico), Indians newly converted
to Christianity performed a pageant organized by Catholic missionaries. It fea-
tured a combined Spanish and Indian army fighting to protect the pope, defeat
the Muslims, and win control of the holy city of Jerusalem. In the play, after a miracle
saves the Christian soldiers, the Mus-
Cortés lims give up and convert to Christianity.
In this Spanish depiction of the landing Although it is hard to imagine what the
of Hernán Cortés in Mexico in 1519, Indians made of this celebration of places
the ships and arms of the Spanish are a and people far away, the event reveals a
commanding presence, especially in com- great deal about the Europeans: the Cath-
parison to the nakedness of the Indians
and the kneeling stance of their leader.
olic missionaries hoped that their success
A Spanish artist painted this miniature, in converting Indians in the New World
which measures only 6 ⁄8 inches by
1 signaled God’s favor for Catholicism the
4¼ inches. It probably accompanied an world over.
account of the Spanish conquest of Mex- Led first by the Portuguese and then
ico. On the back of the picture is a small
Spanish explorers, Europeans sailed into
map of the west coast of Europe and Africa
and the east coast of Central America. contact with peoples and cultures previ-
Europeans relied on such images, and ously unknown to them. European voy-
especially on maps, to help them make agers subjugated native peoples, declared
sense of all the new information flooding their control over vast new lands, and
into Europe from faraway places. Many established a new system of slavery link-
Spaniards viewed Cortés’s conquests as
a sign of divine favor toward Catholicism
ing Africa and the New World. Millions
in a time of religious division. Some even of Indians died of diseases unknowingly
believed that Cortés was born the same imported by the Europeans. The dis-
day, or at least the same year, as Martin covery of new crops — corn, potatoes,
Luther, the German monk who had initiated tobacco, and cocoa — and of gold and
the Protestant Reformation just two years
silver mines brought new patterns of
before Cortés’s landing (in fact, Luther
was born two years before Cortés). consumption, and new objects of con-
(Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY.) flict, to Europe. Historians now call this
momentous spiral of changes in ecology,
441
442 Chapter 14 Global Encounters and the Shock of the Reformation
[ 1492–1560
]
agriculture, and social patterns the Columbian exchange, after Christopher Colum-
bus, who started the process.
While the Spanish were converting Indians in the New World, a different kind
of challenge confronted the Catholic church in central and western Europe. Religious
reformers attacked the leadership of the pope in Rome and formed competing groups
of Protestants (so-called because they protested against some beliefs of the Catho-
lic church). The movement began when the German Catholic monk Martin Luther
criticized the sale of indulgences in 1517. Other reformers raised their voices, too,
but did not agree with the Lutherans. Before long, religious division engulfed the
German states and reached into Switzerland, France, and England. In response, Cath-
olics undertook their own renewal, which strengthened the Catholic church. Catho-
lic missionaries continued to dominate efforts to convert indigenous peoples for a
century or more.
These two new factors — the develop-
ment of overseas colonies and divisions
CHAPTER FOCUS How did the conquest of between Catholics and Protestants within
the New World and the Protestant Reformation Europe — reshaped the long-standing
transform European governments and societies rivalries between princes and determined
in this era?
the course of European history for several
generations.
Portuguese Explorations
The first phase of European overseas expansion began in 1434 with Portuguese
exploration of the West African coast. The Portuguese hoped to find a sea route to
the spice-producing lands of South and Southeast Asia in order to bypass the Otto-
man Turks, who controlled the traditional land routes between Europe and Asia.
Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal (1394–1460) personally financed many voy-
ages with revenues from a noble crusading order. The first triumphs of the Portu-
guese attracted a host of Christian, Jewish, and even Arab sailors, astronomers, and
cartographers to the service of Prince Henry and King John II (r. 1481–1495). They
compiled better tide calendars and books of sailing directions for pilots that enabled
[ 1492–1560
] The Discovery of New Worlds 443
sailors to venture farther into the oceans and reduced — though did not eliminate —
the dangers of sea travel. Success in the voyages of exploration depended on the devel-
opment in the late 1400s of the caravel, a 65-foot, easily maneuvered three-masted
ship that used triangular lateen sails adapted from the Arabs. (The sails permitted a
ship to tack against headwinds and therefore rely less on currents.)
Searching for gold and then slaves, the Portuguese gradually established forts
down the West African coast. In 1487–1488, they reached the Cape of Good Hope
at the tip of Africa; ten years later, Vasco da Gama led a Portuguese fleet around the
cape and reached as far as Calicut, India, the center of the spice trade. His return
to Lisbon with twelve pieces of Chinese porcelain for the Portuguese king set off
two centuries of porcelain mania. Until the early eighteenth century, only the Chi-
nese knew how to produce porcelain. Over the next two hundred years, Western
merchants would import no fewer than seventy million pieces of porcelain, still
known today as “china.” By 1517, a chain of Portuguese forts dotted the Indian Ocean
(Map 14.1). In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese sailor in Spanish service, led
the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe.
Hudson
Bay ENGLAND N
EUROPE
Genoa
W E
NORTH PORTUGAL SPAIN ASIA
AMERICA Lisbon Seville
Cadiz S
AZORES
Ceuta CHINA
BAHAMAS Madeira Hormuz
CANARY IS.
AUSTRALIA
Cape of
Good Hope
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
Area known to Europeans before 1450 John Cabot, 1497
Cape Horn Portuguese strongholds by c. 1500 Vasco da Gama, 1497–1499
Demarcation line,
Treaty of Tordesillas, 1494 Portuguese expeditions 1430s–1480s Amerigo Vespucci, 1499–1502
0 1,000 2,000 miles
0 1,000 2,000 kilometers Spanish Portuguese Bartholomeu Dias, 1487–1488 Ferdinand Magellan, 1519–1522
Columbus’s first voyage, 1492
Printing Press
This illustration from a French
manuscript of 1537 depicts
typical printing equipment of
the sixteenth century. An arti-
san is using the screw press
to apply the inked type to the
paper. Also shown are the com-
posed type secured in a chase,
the printed sheet (four pages
of text printed on one sheet)
held by the seated proofreader,
and the bound volume. When
two pages of text were printed
on one standard-sized sheet,
the bound book was called a
folio. A bound book with four
pages of text on one sheet
was called a quarto (“in four”),
and a book with eight pages
of text on one sheet was called
an octavo (“in eight”). The
octavo was a pocket-size book,
smaller than today’s paper-
back. (The Granger Collection,
NYC — All rights reserved.)
448 Chapter 14 Global Encounters and the Shock of the Reformation
[ 1492–1560
]
the alphabet, movable type allowed entire manuscripts to be printed more quickly
than ever before. Single letters, made in metal molds, could be emptied out of a
frame and new ones inserted to print each new page.
In 1467, two German printers established the first press in Rome; within five
years, they had produced twelve thousand volumes, a feat that in the past would
have required a thousand scribes working full-time. Printing also depended on the
large-scale production of paper. Papermaking came to Europe from China via Arab
intermediaries. By the fourteenth century, paper mills in Italy were producing paper
that was more fragile but also much cheaper than parchment or vellum, the animal
skins that Europeans had previously used for writing. Early printed books attracted
an elite audience. Their expense made them inaccessible to most literate people, who
comprised a minority of the population in any case. Gutenberg’s famous two-volume
Latin Bible was a luxury item, and only 185 copies were printed. Gutenberg Bibles
remain today a treasure that only the greatest libraries possess.
The invention of mechanical printing dramatically increased the speed at which
people could transmit knowledge, and it freed individuals from having to memorize
everything they learned. Printed books and pamphlets, even one-page flyers, would
create a wide community of scholars no longer dependent on personal patronage or
church sponsorship for texts. Printing thus encouraged the free expression and
exchange of ideas, and its disruptive potential did not go unnoticed by political and
religious authorities. Rulers and bishops in the German states, the birthplace of the
printing industry, moved quickly to issue censorship regulations, but their efforts
could not prevent the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation.
Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before
God with an extremely disturbed conscience. Secretly . . . I was angry with
God. . . . At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed
to the context of the words, namely, “In [the gospel] the righteousness of
God is revealed, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall
live.’ ” There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by
which the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith.
No amount of good works, Luther believed, could produce the faith on which salva-
tion depended.
Just as Luther was working out his own personal search for salvation, a priest
named Johann Tetzel arrived in Wittenberg, where Luther was a university profes-
sor, to sell indulgences. In the sacrament of penance, according to Catholic church
doctrine, the sinner confessed his or her sin to a priest, who offered absolution and
imposed a penance. Penance normally consisted of spiritual duties (prayers, pilgrim-
ages), but the church also sold the monetary substitutions known as indulgences. A
person could even buy indulgences for a deceased relative to reduce that person’s
time in purgatory and release his or her soul for heaven.
In ninety-five theses that he proposed for academic debate in 1517, Luther
denounced the sale of indulgences as a corrupt practice. Printed, the theses became
public and unleashed a torrent of pent-up resentment and frustration among the
[1492–1560
] The Protestant Reformation 451
Calvin made his way to Geneva, the French-speaking Swiss city-state where
he would find his life’s work. Genevans had renounced their allegiance to the Catho-
lic bishop, and local supporters of reform begged Calvin to stay and labor there.
Although it took some time for Calvin to solidify his position in the city, his sup-
porters eventually triumphed and he remained in Geneva until his death in 1564.
Under Calvin’s leadership, Geneva became a Christian republic on the model set
out in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, first published in 1536. No reformer
prior to Calvin had expounded on the doctrines, organization, history, and practices
of Christianity in such a systematic, logical, and coherent manner. Calvin followed
Luther’s doctrine of salvation to its ultimate logical conclusion: if God is almighty
and humans cannot earn their salvation by good works, then no Christian can be
certain of salvation. Developing the doctrine of predestination, Calvin argued that
God had ordained every man, woman, and child to salvation or damnation — even
before the creation of the world. Thus, in Calvin’s theology, God saved only the “elect”
(a small group).
Predestination could terrify, but it could also embolden. For Calvinists, a righ-
teous life might be a sign that a person had been chosen for salvation. Thus, Calvinist
doctrine demanded rigorous discipline. Fusing church and society into what follow-
ers named the Reformed church, Geneva became a theocratic city-state dominated
by Calvin and the elders of the Reformed church. Its people were rigorously moni-
tored; detractors said that they were bullied. From its base in Geneva, the Calvinist
movement spread to France, the Low Countries, England, Scotland, the German
states, Poland, Hungary, and eventually New England.
In Geneva, Calvin tolerated no dissent. While passing through the city in 1553,
the Spanish physician Michael Servetus was arrested because he had published books
attacking Calvin and questioning the doctrine of the Trinity, the belief that there are
three persons in one God — the Father, the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit. Upon
Calvin’s advice, the authorities executed Servetus. Calvin was not alone in perse-
cuting dissenters. Each religious group believed that its doctrine was absolutely true
and grounded in the Bible and that therefore violence in its defense was not only
justified but required. Catholic and Protestant polemicists alike castigated their crit-
ics in the harshest terms, but they often saved their cruelest words for the Jews.
Calvin, for example, called the Jews “profane, unholy, sacrilegious dogs,” but Luther
went even further and advocated burning down their houses and their synagogues.
Religious toleration was still far in the future.
N Nor th Holstein
Sea Pomerania
W
E
S Brandenburg
POLAND
S
ND
Wittenberg
LA
Cologne Allstedt
Saxony
ER
Silesia
Hesse
Rh
H
Thuringia
ET
ine
Frankfurt
N
R
Friedburg
.
Bohemia Prague
Mainz Würzburg
Worms
Luxembourg Württemberg
Weidenburg
Moravia
Palatinate
Da
nub
Memmingen e R.
Lorraine Bavaria
Salzburg
of law courts. The Anabaptist movement drew its leadership primarily from the
artisan class and its members from the middle and lower classes — men and women
attracted by a simple but radical message of peace and salvation.
Zwingli immediately attacked the Anabaptists for their refusal to bear arms and
swear oaths of allegiance, sensing accurately that they were repudiating his theocratic
(church-directed) order. When persuasion failed to convince the Anabaptists, Zwingli
urged Zurich magistrates to impose the death sentence. Thus, the Evangelical reform-
ers themselves created the Reformation’s first martyrs of conscience.
Despite the Holy Roman Emperor’s condemnation of the movement in 1529,
Anabaptism spread rapidly from Zurich to many cities in southern Germany. In
[1492–1560
] Reshaping Society through Religion 457
1534, one Anabaptist group, believing the end of the world was imminent, seized
control of the city of Münster. Proclaiming themselves a community of saints, the
Münster Anabaptists abolished private property in imitation of the early Christians
and dissolved traditional marriages, allowing men, like Old Testament patriarchs, to
have multiple wives, to the consternation of many women. Besieged by a combined
Protestant and Catholic army, the city fell in June 1535. The Anabaptist leaders died
in battle or were executed, their bodies hung in cages affixed to the church tower.
Their punishment was intended as a warning to all who might want to take the Ref-
ormation away from the Protestant authorities and hand it to the people. The Ana-
baptist movement in northwestern Europe nonetheless survived under the determined
pacifist leadership of the Dutch reformer Menno Simons (1469–1561), whose fol-
lowers were eventually named Mennonites.
sermons of their preachers, and in their own reading of the Bible. Some of these
attitudes had medieval roots, yet the Protestant Reformation fostered their spread
and Catholics soon began to embrace them.
Although the Bible had been translated into German before, Luther’s transla-
tions (of the New Testament in 1522 and of the Old Testament in 1534) quickly
became authoritative. A new Bible-centered culture began to take root, as more than
200,000 copies of Luther’s New Testament were printed over twelve years, an immense
number for the time. Peppered with witty phrases and colloquial expressions, Luther’s
Bible not only made the sacred writings more accessible to ordinary people but also
helped standardize the German language. Bible reading became a common pastime
undertaken in solitude or at family and church gatherings. To counter Protestant
success, Catholic German Bibles soon appeared, thus sanctioning Bible reading by
the Catholic laity, a sharp departure from medieval church practice.
The new emphasis on self-discipline led to growing impatience with the poor.
Between 1500 and 1560, rapid economic and population growth created prosperity
[
1492–1560
] Reshaping Society through Religion 459
for some and stress — heightened by increased inflation — for many. Wanderers and
urban beggars were by no means novel, but now moralists, both Catholic and Prot-
estant, denounced vagabonds as lazy and potentially criminal.
The Reformation provided an opportunity to restructure relief for the poor.
Instead of decentralized, private initiatives often overseen by religious orders, Prot-
estant magistrates appointed officials to head urban agencies that would certify the
genuine poor and distribute welfare funds to them. Catholic authorities did the same.
In 1531, Henry VIII asked justices of the peace (unpaid local magistrates) to license
the poor in England and to differentiate between those who could work and those
who could not. In 1540, Charles V imposed a welfare tax in Spain to augment that
country’s inadequate system of private charity.
In their effort to establish order and discipline, Protestant reformers denounced
sexual immorality and glorified the family. The early Protestant reformers like Luther
championed the end of clerical celibacy and embraced marriage. Luther, once a celi-
bate priest himself, married a former nun. Protestant magistrates closed brothels
and established marriage courts to handle disputes over marriage promises, child
support, and divorce (allowed by Protestants in some rare situations). The magis-
trates also levied fines or ordered imprisonment for violent behavior, fornication,
and adultery.
Prior to the Reformation, despite the legislation of church councils, marriages
had largely been private affairs between families; some couples never even registered
with the church. The Catholic church recognized any promise made between two
consenting adults (with the legal age of twelve for females, fourteen for males) in the
presence of two witnesses as a valid marriage. As the Reformation took hold, Prot-
estants asserted government control over marriage, and Catholic governments fol-
lowed suit. A marriage was legitimate only if registered by both a government official
and a member of the clergy.
Catholic Renewal
The Catholic church decided in the 1540s to undertake drastic action to fend off
the Protestant threat. Pope Paul III convened a general council of the church in 1545
at Trent, a town on the border between the Holy Roman Empire and Italy. Meeting
sporadically over eighteen years (1545–1563), the Council of Trent effectively set
the course of Catholicism until the 1960s. Catholic leaders sought renewal of reli-
gious devotion and reform of clerical morality (some priests had had sexual relation-
ships and fathered children) as well as clarification of church doctrine. New religious
orders set out to win converts overseas or to reconvert Catholics who had turned to
Protestantism. At the same time, the church did not hesitate to root out dissent by
giving greater powers to the Inquisition, including the power to censor books. The
papal Index, or list of prohibited books, was established in 1557 and not abolished
until 1966.
460 Chapter 14 Global Encounters and the Shock of the Reformation
[ 1492–1560
]
Italian and Spanish clergy predominated among the 255 bishops, archbishops,
and cardinals attending the Council of Trent, which condemned all the central doc-
trines of Protestantism. According to the council, salvation depended on faith and
good works, not faith alone. On the sacrament of the Eucharist, the council reaf-
firmed that the bread of communion “really, truly” becomes Christ’s body. It reas-
serted the supremacy of clerical authority over the laity; the church’s interpretation
of the Bible could not be challenged, and the Latin Vulgate was the only authoritative
version. The council rejected divorce and reaffirmed the legitimacy of indulgences.
It also called for reform from within, however, insisting that bishops henceforth
reside in their dioceses and decreeing that seminaries for the training of priests be
established in every diocese. Henceforth, the schism between Protestant and Catholic
remained permanent, and all hopes of reconciliation faded.
The renewed energy of Catholicism expressed itself most vigorously in the
founding of new religious orders such as the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, founded by
a Spanish nobleman, Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556). In 1521, while recovering from
an injury suffered as a soldier in the Spanish army, Ignatius read lives (biographies)
of the saints; once he recovered, he abandoned his quest for military glory in favor
of serving the church. In 1540, the pope recognized his small band of followers.
With Ignatius as its first general, the Jesuits became the most vigorous defend-
ers of papal authority. The society quickly expanded; by the time of Ignatius’s death
in 1556, Europe had one thousand Jesuits. They established hundreds of colleges
throughout the Catholic world, educating future generations of Catholic leaders.
Jesuit missionaries played a key role in the Spanish and Portuguese empires and
brought Roman Catholicism to Africans, Asians, and native Americans. They saw
their effort as proof of the truth of Roman Catholicism and the success of their mis-
sions as a sign of divine favor, both particularly important in the face of Protestant
challenge.
Catholic missionary zeal brought conflicting messages to indigenous peoples: for
some, the message of a repressive and coercive alien religion; for others, a sweet sign
of reason and faith. Frustrated in his efforts to convert Brazilian Indians, a Jesuit
missionary wrote to his superior in Rome in 1563, “For this kind of people it is better
to be preaching with the sword and rod of iron.”
Catholic missionaries focused initially on winning over local elites. They learned
the local languages and set up schools for the sons of conquered nobles. After an
initial period of relatively little racial discrimination, the Catholic church in the
Americas and Africa adopted strict rules based on color. For example, the first Mexi-
can Ecclesiastical Provincial Council in 1555 declared that holy orders were not to
be conferred on Indians, mestizos (people of mixed European-Indian parentage), or
mulattoes (people of mixed European-African heritage); along with descendants of
Muslims, Jews, and persons who had been sentenced by the Spanish Inquisition,
these groups were deemed “inherently unworthy of the sacerdotal [priestly] office.”
European missionaries in Asia greatly admired Chinese and Japanese civiliza-
tion, and thus used the sermon rather than the sword to win converts. The Jesuit
[1492–1560
] Striving for Mastery 461
Francis Xavier preached in India and Japan, his work greatly assisted by a network
of Portuguese trading stations. Overall the efforts of the Catholic missionaries
seemed highly successful: vast multitudes of native Americans had become nominal
Christians by the second half of the six-
teenth century, and thirty years after Fran- REVIEW QUESTION How did the forces for
cis Xavier’s 1549 landing in Japan, the Jesu- radical change unleashed by the Protestant
its could claim more than 100,000 Japanese Reformation interact with the urge for social
converts. order and stability?
dogs, and falcons for the royal hunt. Hunting represented a form of mock combat,
essential in the training of a military elite. Francis almost lost his own life when,
storming a house during one mock battle, he was hit on the head by a burning log.
Two Italian writers helped define the new culture of courtesy, or proper court
behavior: Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533), in service at the Este court in Ferrara, and
Baldassare Castiglione (1478–1529), a servant of the duke of Urbino and the pope.
Ariosto composed an epic poem, Orlando Furioso, which represented court culture
as the highest synthesis of Christian and classical values. The poem’s captivating tales
of combat, valor, love, and magic ranged across Europe, Africa, Asia, and even the
moon. In The Courtier, Castiglione’s characters debate the qualities of an ideal court-
ier in a series of eloquent dialogues. The true courtier, Castiglione asserts, is a gentle-
man who carries himself with nobility and dignity in the service of his prince and
his lady.
Courtesy was recommended to courtiers, but not always to princes. The Italian
politician and writer Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) helped found modern politi-
cal science by treating the maintenance of power as an end in itself. In his provoca-
tive essay The Prince, he underlined the need for pragmatic, even cold calculation.
[1492–1560
] Striving for Mastery 463
Was it better, he asked, for a prince to be feared by his people or loved? “It may be
answered that one should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them
in one person, [it] is much safer to be feared than loved.” Machiavelli insisted that
princes could benefit their subjects only by keeping a firm grip on power, if neces-
sary through deceit and manipulation. Machiavellian has remained ever since a term
for using cunning and duplicity to achieve one’s ends.
Dynastic Wars
Even as the Renaissance developed in the princely courts and the Reformation began
in the German states, the Habsburgs (the ruling family in Spain and then the Holy
Roman Empire) and the Valois (the ruling family in France) fought each other for
domination of Europe. French claims provoked the Italian Wars in 1494, which soon
escalated into a general conflict that involved the major Christian monarchs and the
Muslim Ottoman sultan as well. From 1494 to 1559, the Valois and Habsburg dynas-
ties, both Catholic, remained implacable enemies. The fighting raged in Italy and the
Financing War
The sixteenth century marked the beginning of superior Western military technol-
ogy. All armies grew in size and their firepower became ever more deadly, increasing
the cost of war. Heavier artillery pieces meant that the rectangular walls of medieval
cities had to be transformed into fortresses with jutting ramparts and gun emplace-
ments. Royal revenues could not keep up with war expenditures. To pay their bills,
governments routinely devalued their coinage (the sixteenth-century equivalent of
printing more paper money), causing prices to rise rapidly.
Charles V boasted the largest army in Europe, supported by the gold and silver
coming in from the New World. Immediately after conquest, the Spanish looted gold
and silver objects, melted them down, and sent the precious metals to Spain. Mining
began with forced Indian labor in the 1520s, and the amount of silver extracted in
Mexico and sent to Spain increased twentyfold in the 1530s and 1540s. Neverthe-
less, Charles could never make ends meet because of his extravagant war costs: the
debt of 37 million ducats accumulated during his forty years in power exceeded by
2 million ducats all the gold and silver brought from the Americas. His opponents
fared even worse. On his death in 1547, Francis I owed the bankers of Lyon almost
7 million French pounds — approximately the entire royal income for that year. Fore-
most among the financiers of war debts was the Fugger bank, based in the southern
German imperial city of Augsburg. The enterprise began with Jakob Fugger (1459–
1525), who became personal banker to Charles V’s grandfather Maximilian I. By the
466 Chapter 14 Global Encounters and the Shock of the Reformation
[ 1492–1560
]
end of his life, Maximilian was so deeply in debt to Jakob Fugger that he had to
pawn the royal jewels. In 1519, Fugger assembled a consortium of German and Ital-
ian bankers to secure the election of Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor. For the next
three decades, the alliance between Europe’s biggest international bank and its largest
empire remained very close. Charles stayed barely one step ahead of his creditors;
in 1531, for example, he had to grant to the Fuggers eight years of mining rights in
Spanish lands south of Peru (present-day Bolivia and Chile).
Divided Realms
European rulers viewed religious division as a dangerous challenge to the unity and
stability of their rule. Subjects who considered their rulers heretics or blasphemers
could only cause trouble, and religious differences encouraged the formation of com-
peting noble factions, which easily led to violence when weak monarchs or children
ruled.
In France, King Francis I tolerated Protestants until the Affair of the Placards in
1534. Even then, the government could not stop many French noble families —
including some of the most powerful — from converting to Calvinism, especially in
southern and western France. Francis and his successor, Henry II (r. 1547–1559),
succeeded in maintaining a balance of power between Catholics and Calvinists, but
after Henry’s death the weakened monarchy could no longer hold together the fragile
realm. The real drama of the Reformation in France took place after 1560, when the
country plunged into four decades of religious wars, whose savagery was unparal-
leled elsewhere in Europe (see Chapter 15).
In England and Scotland religious divisions at the very top threatened the con-
trol of the rulers. Before his death in 1547, Henry VIII had succeeded in making
himself head of the Church of England, but the nature of that church remained
ambiguous. The advisers of the boy king Edward VI (r. 1547–1553) furthered the
Protestant cause by welcoming prominent religious refugees who had been deeply
influenced by Calvinism and wanted to see England move in that austere direction.
But Edward died at age fifteen, opening the way to his Catholic half sister, Mary
Tudor, who had been restored to the line of succession by an act of Parliament under
Henry VIII in 1544.
When Mary (r. 1553–1558) came to the throne, she restored Catholicism and
persecuted Protestants. Nearly three hundred Protestants perished at the stake, and
more than eight hundred fled to the Protestant German states and Switzerland.
Finally, when Anne Boleyn’s daughter, Elizabeth, succeeded her half sister Mary,
becoming Queen Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603), the English Protestant cause gained
lasting momentum. Under Elizabeth’s leadership, Protestantism came to define the
character of the English nation, though the influence of Calvinism within it was still
a cause for dispute. Catholics were tolerated only if they kept their opinions on
religion and politics to themselves. A tentative but nonetheless real peace returned
to England.
[
1492–1560
] Striving for Mastery 467
Conclusion
Charles V’s decision to divide his empire reflected the tensions pulling Europe in
different directions. Even as Charles’s kingdom of Spain joined Portugal as a global
power with new conquests overseas, Luther, Calvin, and a host of others sought
converts to competing branches of Protestantism within the Holy Roman Empire.
The reformers disagreed on many points of doctrine and church organization, but
they all broke definitively from the Roman Catholic church. The pieces were never
put together again. Portugal and Spain, the leaders in global exploration and con-
quest, remained resolutely Catholic, but as ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, where
the Reformation began, Charles could not stifle the growing religious ferment. In the
decades to come, Protestantism would spread, religious conflict would turn even more
deadly, and emerging Protestant powers would begin to contest the global reach of
Spain and Portugal.
[ 1492–1560
] Conclusion 469
Lutheran
Church of England
Calvinist
NORWAY
Calvinist influenced SWEDEN
Roman Catholic
Mixed Protestant-Catholic
TS
SCOTLAND
IGH
Anabaptist minorities
Nor th
ea
KN
N
Sea
cS
W
IC
ti
IRELAND DENMARK
al
N
E B
O
S
T
ENGLAND U
TE
Mühlberg
London LITHUANIA
Münster
NETHERLANDS POLAND
Antwerp HOLY Wittenberg
Brussels Thuringia
AT L A N T IC Noyon Marburg ROMA N Saxony
OCEAN Paris Worms EMPIRE Bohemia
Orléans Regensburg
Strasbourg Bavaria Da
nub Vienna
e R.
Zurich
FRANCE SWISS AUSTRIA
Geneva CONFED.
Trent HUNGARY
Venice
Approximate
eastern limit
AL
of Western
ITALIAN Christianity
TUG
Rome EMPIRE
Sardinia
Sicily
Mediterranean Sea
0 200 400 miles
0 200 400 kilometers
Review Questions
1. Which European countries led the way in maritime exploration, and what were their motives?
2. How did Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Henry VIII each challenge the Roman Catholic church?
3. How did the forces for radical change unleashed by the Protestant Reformation interact
with the urge for social order and stability?
4. How did religious divisions complicate the efforts of rulers to maintain political stability
and build stronger states?
Making Connections
1. In what ways did the discovery of the Americas affect Europe?
2. Why was Charles V ultimately unable to prevent religious division in his lands?
3. How did the different religious groups respond to the opportunity presented by the printing
press?
4. What motives besides religious differences caused war in this period?
Suggested References
A more global historical perspective is reshaping the study of both the European voyages of
exploration and conquest and the Reformation, especially the Catholic renewal, which included
a global missionary effort.
Christopher Columbus: http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/1492.exhibit/Intro.html
Edwards, Mark U., Jr. Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther. 2004.
Gritsch, Eric W. Thomas Müntzer: A Tragedy of Errors. 2006.
Holder, R. Ward. Crisis and Renewal: The Era of the Reformations. 2009.
Knecht, Robert Jean. The French Renaissance Court, 1483–1589. 2008.
Mann, Charles C. 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. 2013.
Marshall, Peter. Religious Identities in Henry VIII’s England. 2006.
O’Malley, John W. Trent: What Happened at the Council. 2013.
Reston, James. Defenders of the Faith: Charles V, Suleyman the Magnificent, and the Battle for
Europe, 1520–1536. 2009.
*Schwartz, Stuart B. Victors and Vanquished: Spanish and Nahua Views of the Conquest of Mexico.
2000.
Stjerna, Kirsi. Women and the Reformation. 2011.
*Symcox, Geoffrey, and Blair Sullivan. Christopher Columbus and the Enterprise of the Indies:
A Brief History with Documents. 2005.
*Primary source.
470
[
1492–1560
] Chaper 14 Review 471
Important Events
Consider three events: Luther publishes three treatises (1520), German Peasants’ War
(1525), and Catholic Council of Trent condemns Protestant beliefs, confirms Catholic
doctrine (1545–1563). How did Luther’s treatises inspire the uprising of peasants and
urban artisans? How did the changes wrought by the first two events prompt the Council
of Trent, its goals, and its decisions?
Wars of Religion and the
15
Clash of Worldviews
1560–1648
I
n November 1576, Spain’s soldiers sacked Antwerp, Europe’s wealthiest city. In
eleven days of horror known as the Spanish Fury, the troops slaughtered seven to
eight thousand people and burned down a thousand buildings, including the city
hall. The king of Spain had sent an army of ten thousand men in 1566 to occupy his
rebellious northern domains and punish Calvinists, who had smashed stained-glass
windows and statues in Catholic churches. By 1575, however, the king had run out
of funds, and his men rioted after being unpaid for months. The Spanish Fury was far
from an isolated incident in this time of reli-
gious upheaval. It showed, moreover, that vio-
Atrocities in Antwerp lence often exploded from a dangerous mixture
The sixteenth-century Netherlandish
artist Franz Hogenberg produced
of religious, political, and economic motives.
this engraving of the Spanish Fury The first two generations of battles over
in Antwerp not long after the events the Protestant Reformation had ended with
took place. It shows the kinds of the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. That agree-
atrocities — rape, murder, pillage, ment helped maintain a relative calm in the
and burning of houses — that would
lands of the Holy Roman Empire, but in west-
be committed repeatedly on both
sides of the conflict between Catho- ern Europe religious strife multiplied after
lics and Protestants. (akg-images.) 1560 as Calvinists made inroads in France, the
Netherlands, and England. In 1618, fighting
broke out again in the Holy Roman Empire —
and before it ended in 1648, the Thirty Years’ War involved most of the European
powers and desolated lands and peoples across central Europe. All in all, nearly con-
stant warfare marked the century between 1560 and 1648. Like the Spanish Fury, these
struggles began as religious disputes but soon revealed other motives: political ambi-
tions, long-standing rivalries between the leading powers, and greed — all of which
raised the stakes of conflict.
Suffering only increased when a major economic downturn in the early seven-
teenth century led to food shortages, famine, and disease in much of Europe. These
catastrophes hit especially hard in the central European lands devastated by the
fighting of the Thirty Years’ War. In intellectual life a new understanding of the
473
474 Chapter 15 Wars of Religion and the Clash of Worldviews
[ 1560–1648
]
motion of the planets in the heavens and of mechanics on earth developed among
experimenters in “natural philosophy,” that is, what came to be called science. This
scientific revolution ultimately reshaped
Western attitudes in virtually every field
CHAPTER FOCUS What were the long-term
political, economic, and intellectual conse-
of knowledge, but at its beginnings it still
quences of the conflicts over religious belief had to compete with traditional religious
in this era? views and popular beliefs in magic and
witchcraft.
1572, an assassin tried but failed to kill one of the Huguenot leaders. Violence against
Calvinists spiraled out of control. On St. Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, a bloodbath
began, fueled by years of growing animosity between Catholics and Protestants. In
three days, Catholic mobs murdered some two thousand Huguenots in Paris. Three
thousand Huguenots died in the provinces over the next six weeks. The pope joyfully
ordered the church bells rung throughout Catholic Europe.
Huguenot pamphleteers now proclaimed their right to resist a tyrant who wor-
shipped idols (a practice that Calvinists equated with Catholicism). This right of
resistance was linked to a political notion of contract; upholding the true religion
was part of the contract binding the ruler to his subjects. Both the right of resistance
and the idea of a contract fed into the larger doctrine of constitutionalism — that a
government’s legitimacy rested on its upholding a constitution, or contract between
ruler and ruled. The religious division in France grew even more dangerous when
Charles IX died and his brother Henry III (r. 1574–1589) became king. Like his
brothers before him, Henry III failed to produce an heir. Convinced that Henry III
lacked the will to root out Protestantism, the Guises formed the Catholic League,
which requested help from Spanish king Philip II. Henry III responded in 1588 by
having his men kill two Guise leaders. A few months later, a fanatical Catholic monk
stabbed Henry III to death, and Henry of Navarre became Henry IV (r. 1589–1610),
despite Philip II’s military intervention.
With the Catholic League threatening to declare his succession invalid, Henry IV
publicly embraced Catholicism, reputedly explaining, “Paris is worth a Mass.” Within
a few years he defeated the ultra-Catholic opposition and drove out the Spanish. In
1598, he issued the Edict of Nantes, in which he granted the Huguenots a large
measure of religious toleration. The approximately 1.25 million Huguenots became
a legally protected minority within an officially Catholic kingdom of some 20 million
people. Protestants were free to worship in specified towns and were allowed their
own troops, fortresses, and even courts.
Few believed in religious toleration as an ideal, but Henry IV followed the advice
of those moderate Catholics and Calvinists — together called politiques — who urged
him to give priority to the development of a durable state. The politiques believed
that religious disputes could be resolved only in the peace provided by strong gov-
ernment. The French Catholic writer Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) went even
further than this pragmatic position and revived the ancient doctrine of skepticism,
which held that total certainty is never attainable. On the beams of his study he
painted the statement “All that is certain is that nothing is certain.” Like toleration
of religious differences, such skepticism was repugnant to Protestants and Catholics
alike, both of whom were certain that their religion was the right one.
The Edict of Nantes ended the French Wars of Religion, but Henry still needed
to reestablish monarchical authority and hold the fractious nobles in check. He
allowed rich merchants and lawyers to buy offices and, in exchange for an annual
payment, pass their positions on to their heirs or sell them to someone else. This
new social elite was known as the “nobility of the robe” (named after the robes that
476 Chapter 15 Wars of Religion and the Clash of Worldviews
[ 1560–1648
]
magistrates wore, much like the ones judges wear today). Income raised by the
increased sale of offices reduced the state debt and also helped Henry strengthen the
monarchy. His efforts did not, however, prevent his enemies from assassinating him
in 1610 after nineteen unsuccessful attempts.
The Spanish and Portuguese Colonial Empires, c. 1580 Spanish Habsburg possessions under Philip II
Austrian Habsburg possessions
Boundary of the Holy Roman Empire
NORTH ASIA
Battle
AMERICA AZORES
SPAIN
Florida
INDIA Macao PHILIPPINES
WEST INDIES
AFRICA Goa
NEW
CAS
SPAIN BRAZIL
UC
Ceylon
OL
Zanzibar
PE
M
RU
Java
SOUTH
AMERICA Nor th
a
Se
S ea c
Maritime trade routes lti
Ba
POLAND-
Vi LITHUANIA
Amsterdam
London stu
la R .
Rhin
El
Armada
be
1588 Antwerp
H O L Y
R
e R.
Paris
AT L A N T I C R. R O M A N
Loire R . Vienna
OCEAN Dan
ube
F R A NC E E M P I R E
N Venice Dan
ube
R .
W E
PAPAL
br
E STATES
PORTUGAL
oR
Ad OTTOMAN
.
S
(1580) SPAI N r ia
Corsica tic EMPIRE
Tagus Se
Lisbon R. Rome a
Naples
BALEARIC IS. Sardinia
M e d i t e r r
a n e
0 200 400 miles a n Sicily Lepanto
0 200 400 kilometers
S e 1571
NORTH AFRICA a
inherited from his father, Charles V, all the Spanish colonies recently settled in the
New World of the Americas. Gold and silver funneled from the colonies supported
his campaigns against the Ottoman Turks and the French and the English Protes-
tants. But all the money of the New World could not prevent Philip’s eventual defeat
in the Netherlands, where Calvinist rebels established the independent Dutch Repub-
lic, which soon vied with Spain, France, and England for commercial supremacy.
A deeply devout Catholic, Philip II came to the Spanish throne at age twenty-
eight determined to restore Catholic unity in Europe and lead the Christian defense
against the Muslims. His brief marriage to Mary Tudor (Mary I of England) did not
produce an heir, but it and his subsequent marriage to Elisabeth de Valois, the sister
of Charles IX and Henry III of France, gave him reason enough for involvement in
English and French affairs. In 1578, the king of Portugal died fighting Muslims in
Morocco, and two years later Philip took over this neighboring realm with its rich
empire in Africa, India, and the Americas.
Philip insisted on Catholic unity in the lands under his control and worked to
forge an international Catholic alliance against the Ottoman Turks. In 1571, he achieved
the single greatest military victory of his reign when he joined with Venice and the
papacy to defeat the Turks in a great sea battle off the Greek coast at Lepanto. Seventy
General. Although the princes of Orange resembled a ruling family, their powers
paled next to those of local elites, known as regents. One-third of the Dutch popula-
tion remained Catholic, and local authorities allowed them to worship as they chose
in private. The Dutch Republic also had a relatively large Jewish population because
many Jews had settled there after being driven out of Spain and Portugal. From 1597,
Jews could worship openly in their synagogues. This openness to various religions
would help make the Dutch Republic one of Europe’s chief intellectual and scientific
centers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Well situated for maritime commerce, the Dutch Republic developed a thriving
economy based on shipping and shipbuilding. Dutch merchants favored free trade
in Europe because they could compete at an advantage. After the Dutch gained
independence, Amsterdam became the main European money market for two cen-
turies. The Dutch controlled many overseas markets thanks to their preeminence in
seaborne commerce: by 1670, the Dutch commercial fleet was larger than the English,
French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Austrian fleets combined.
rejoiced.
ATLANTIC By the time Philip II died in 1598, the costs of
OCEAN FRANCE
fighting the Ottomans, Dutch, English, and French
had finally bankrupted the treasury. In his novel
Don Quixote (1605), the Spanish writer Miguel de
Portugal
Cervantes captured the disappointment of thwarted
SPAIN
Lisbon Spanish ambitions. Cervantes himself had been
wounded at Lepanto. His novel’s hero, a minor
Mediterranean Sea
nobleman, reads so many romances and books of
chivalry that he loses his sense of proportion and
Retreat of the Spanish Armada, wanders the countryside futilely trying to mimic the
1588 heroic deeds he has come across in his reading.
[1560–1648
] Religious Conflicts Threaten State Power, 1560–1618 481
Elizabeth made the most of her limited means and consolidated England’s posi-
tion as a Protestant power. In her early years, she held out the prospect of marriage to
many political suitors; but in order to maintain her — and England’s — independence,
she never married. Her successor, James I (r. 1603–1625), came to the throne as king
of both Scotland and England. Shakespeare’s tragedies Hamlet (1601), King Lear
(1605), and Macbeth (1606), written around the time of James’s succession, might
all be read as commentaries on the uncertainties faced by Elizabeth and James. But
Elizabeth’s story, unlike Shakespeare’s tragedies, had a happy ending: she left James
secure in a kingdom of growing weight in world politics.
Ba
Russian Orthodox church, which faced no compe- POLAND-
LITHUANIA
tition within Russian lands. Building on the base
Danube R.
laid by his grandfather Ivan III, Tsar Ivan IV Ivan IV’s campaign
(r. 1533–1584) stopped at nothing in his endeavor
to make Muscovy (the grand duchy centered on Russia, Poland-Lithuania, and
Moscow) the heart of a mighty Russian empire. Sweden in the Late 1500s
Given to unpredictable fits of rage, Ivan murdered his own son with an iron rod dur-
ing a quarrel. His epithet “the Terrible” reflects not only the terror he unleashed but
also the awesome impression he evoked. Cunning and cruel, Ivan came to embody
barbarism in the eyes of Westerners.
Ivan initiated Russian expansion eastward into Siberia, but two formidable foes
blocked his plans for expansion westward: Sweden (which then included much of
present-day Finland) and Poland-Lithuania. Poland and the grand duchy of Lithuania
united into a single commonwealth in 1569 and controlled an extensive territory.
After Ivan IV died in 1584, a terrible period of chaos known as the Time of Troubles
ensued, during which the king of Poland-Lithuania tried to put his son on the Russian
throne. In 1613, an army of nobles, towns-
people, and peasants finally expelled the
REVIEW QUESTION How did state power
intruders and put on the throne a noble- depend on religious unity at the end of the six-
man, Michael Romanov (r. 1613–1645), teenth century and start of the seventeenth?
who established an enduring new dynasty.
482 Chapter 15 Wars of Religion and the Clash of Worldviews
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The Thirty Years’ War, 1618–1648
Although the eastern states managed to avoid civil wars over religion in the early
seventeenth century, the rest of Europe was drawn into the final and most deadly of
the wars of religion, the Thirty Years’ War. It began in 1618 with conflicts between
Catholics and Protestants within the Holy Roman Empire and eventually involved
most European states. By its end in 1648, many central European lands lay in ruins
and the balance of power had shifted away from the Habsburg powers — Spain and
Austria — toward France, England, and the Dutch Republic. Prolonged warfare cre-
ated turmoil and suffering, but it also fostered the growth of armies and bureaucra-
cies; out of the carnage would emerge centralized and powerful states that made
increasing demands on ordinary people.
vinism in the empire and reclaimed Catholic church properties confiscated by the
Lutherans.
With Protestant interests in serious jeopardy, Gustavus Adolphus (r. 1611–1632)
of Sweden marched into Germany in 1630 with a highly trained army of 100,000
soldiers. Hoping to block Spanish intervention in the war, the French monarchy’s chief
minister, Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642), offered to subsidize the Lutheran Gusta-
vus. This agreement between the Swedish Lutheran and French Catholic powers to
fight the Catholic Habsburgs showed that state interests could outweigh religious
considerations.
Gustavus defeated the imperial army and occupied the Catholic parts of southern
Germany before he was killed at the battle of Lützen in 1632. Once again the tide
turned, but this time it swept Wallenstein with it. Because Wallenstein was rumored
to be negotiating with Protestant powers, Ferdinand had him assassinated.
France openly joined the fray in 1635 by declaring war on Spain. The two Catho-
lic powers pummeled each other. The French king Louis XIII (r. 1610–1643) hoped
to profit from the troubles of Spain in the Netherlands and from the conflicts between
the Austrian emperor and his Protestant subjects. A series of internal revolts shook
the perennially cash-strapped Spanish crown. In 1640, peasants in the rich north-
eastern province of Catalonia rebelled, overrunning Barcelona and killing the viceroy
of the province. The Portuguese also revolted in 1640 and proclaimed independence
like the Dutch. In 1643, the Spanish suffered their first major defeat at French hands.
Although the Spanish were forced to concede independence to Portugal (annexed to
Spain only since 1580), they eventually suppressed the Catalan revolt.
France, too, faced exhaustion after years of rising taxes and recurrent revolts.
Richelieu died in 1642. Louis XIII followed him a few months later and was suc-
ceeded by his five-year-old son, Louis XIV. With yet another foreign queen mother —
she was the daughter of the Spanish king — serving as regent and an Italian cardinal,
Mazarin, providing advice, French politics once again moved into a period of insta-
bility, rumor, and crisis. All sides were ready for peace.
resulted. Armies attracted all sorts of displaced people desperately in need of pro-
visions. In the last year of the Thirty Years’ War, the Imperial-Bavarian Army had
40,000 men entitled to draw rations — and more than 100,000 wives, prostitutes,
servants, children, and other camp followers forced to scrounge for their own food.
a
Swedish lands Nor th
Se
Boundary of the Sea
ic
Holy Roman Empire DENMARK lt
Ba
0
Battle
163
DUTCH POL AND-LI THUANIA
Danish invasion REPUBLIC
BRANDENBURG-
16
Swedish invasion ENGLAND
25
Amsterdam PRUSSIA
Spanish Habsburg invasion Warsaw
Austrian Habsburg invasion Antwerp Westphalia
Lützen
French invasion SPANISH 64
3
162
(1632)
Wal
Saxony
NETH. 1 1 lenst
ein
White Mountain
(1620)
1625
0 150 300 miles Paris Palatinate Prague
Bohemia
RY
1635
GA
Alsace
0 150 300 kilometers TR MOLDAVIA
Franche- UN AN
AugsburgVienna H
9
Comté 61 SY
AT L A N T I C
1 LVA
1645
1633
AUSTRIA NIA
OCEAN FRANCE
(Spain)
N WALLACHIA Bl ack
MILAN
W SWISS Sea
CONFED. Ad O
E T
PAPAL ri
at T O
S STATES ic M
Catalonia Se A N Constantinople
a E M
PORTUGAL Madrid
Barcelona
Corsica Rome P I R
NAPLES E
Lisbon SPAIN Naples
Sardinia Aegean
Sea
BALEARIC IS. Athens
Mediterranean Sea
Sicily
Crete
MAP 15.2 The Thirty Years’ War and the Peace of Westphalia, 1648
The Thirty Years’ War involved many of the major continental European powers. The arrows
marking invasion routes show that most of the fighting took place in central Europe in the lands
of the Holy Roman Empire. The German states and Bohemia sustained the greatest damage
during the fighting. None of the combatants emerged unscathed because even ultimate winners
such as Sweden and France depleted their resources of men and money.
Habsburgs lost the most. The Spanish Habsburgs recognized Dutch independence
after eighty years of war. Each German prince in the Holy Roman Empire gained the
right to establish Lutheranism, Catholicism, or Calvinism in his state, a right denied
to Calvinist rulers by the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. The independence ceded to
German princes sustained political divisions that prepared the way for the emergence
of a new power, the Hohenzollern Elector of Brandenburg, who increased his ter-
ritories and developed a small but effective standing army. After losing considerable
territory in the west, the Austrian Habsburgs turned eastward to concentrate on
restoring Catholicism to Bohemia and wresting Hungary from the Turks.
The Peace of Westphalia settled the distribution of the main religions in the Holy
Roman Empire: Lutheranism would dominate in the north, Calvinism in the area of
the Rhine River, and Catholicism in the south. Most of the territorial changes in
Europe remained intact until the nineteenth century. In the future, international
warfare would be undertaken for reasons of national security, commercial ambition,
486 Chapter 15 Wars of Religion and the Clash of Worldviews
[ 1560–1648
]
or dynastic pride rather than to enforce religious uniformity. As the politiques of the
late sixteenth century had hoped, state interests now outweighed motivations of faith
in political affairs.
The nearly constant warfare that preceded the peace had one surprising result:
despite the death and destruction, warfare had increased state authority. As armies
grew to bolster the war effort, governments needed more money and more supervi-
sory officials. The rate of land tax paid by French peasants doubled in the eight years
after France joined the war. In addition to raising taxes, governments deliberately
depreciated the value of the currency, which often resulted in soaring prices. When
all else failed, rulers declared bankruptcy. The Spanish government, for example, did
so three times in the first half of the seventeenth century. From Portugal to Muscovy,
ordinary people resisted new taxes by forming makeshift armies and battling royal
forces. With their colorful banners, unlikely leaders, strange names (the Nu-Pieds,
or “Barefooted,” in France, for instance), and crude weapons, the rebels usually
proved no match for state armies, but they did keep troops occupied.
To meet these new demands, monarchs relied on advisers who took on the role
of modern prime ministers. Louis XIII’s chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, pro-
claimed the priority of raison d’état (“reason of state”), that is, the state’s interest
above all else. He silenced Protestants within France because they had become too
independent, and he crushed noble and popular resistance to Louis’s policies. He set
up intendants — delegates from the king’s council dispatched to the provinces — to
oversee police, army, and financial affairs.
To justify the growth of state authority and the expansion of government bureau-
cracies, rulers carefully cultivated their royal images. James I of England argued that
he ruled by divine right and was accountable only to God: “The state of monarchy
is the supremest thing on earth; for kings are not only God’s lieutenant on earth, but
even by God himself they are called gods.” He advised his son to maintain a manly
appearance even as some courtiers complained of his behavior toward certain male
favorites. Appearance counted for so much
that most rulers regulated who could wear
REVIEW QUESTION Why did a war fought over
which kinds of cloth and decoration, reserv-
religious differences result in stronger states?
ing the richest and rarest, such as ermine
and gold, for themselves.
those of the northwest emerged stronger. Competition in the New World reflected
and reinforced this shift as the English, Dutch, and French rushed to establish trading
outposts and permanent settlements to compete with the Spanish and Portuguese.
The new powers of northwestern Europe, with their growing Atlantic trade, grad-
ually displaced the Mediterranean economies, which had dominated European com-
merce since the time of the Greeks and Romans. England and the Dutch Republic
vied with France to become the leading mercantile and slave-trading powers. North-
ern Italian industries were eclipsed; Spanish commerce with the New World dropped.
Even the plague contributed to the new disparity in trading power. Whereas central
Europe and the Mediterranean countries took generations to recover from its rav-
ages, northwestern Europe quickly replaced its lost population, no doubt because
this area’s people had suffered less from the effects of the Thirty Years’ War and from
the malnutrition related to the economic crisis.
All but the remnants of serfdom had disappeared in western Europe, yet in
eastern Europe nobles reinforced their dominance over peasants, and the burden of
serfdom increased. The rise in the cost of grain in the sixteenth century prompted
Polish and eastern German nobles to increase their holdings and step up their pro-
duction of grain for western markets. In the economic downturn of the first half
of the seventeenth century, peasants who were already dependent became serfs —
completely tied to the land. Although enserfment produced short-term profits for
landlords, in the long run it retarded economic development in eastern Europe and
kept most of the population in a stranglehold of illiteracy and hardship.
Economic realignment also took place across the Atlantic Ocean. Because Spain
and Portugal had divided between themselves the rich spoils of South America, other
prospective colonizers had to carve niches in seemingly less hospitable places, espe-
cially North America and the Caribbean (Map 15.3). Eventually, the English, French,
and Dutch would dominate commerce with these colonies. Many European states,
including Sweden and Denmark, chartered private joint-stock companies to enrich
investors by importing fish, furs, tobacco, and precious metals (if they could be
found), and to develop new markets for European products. British, French, Dutch,
and Danish companies also began trading slaves.
In establishing permanent colonies, the Europeans created whole new communi-
ties across the Atlantic. Careful plans could not always surmount the hazards of
transatlantic shipping, however. In 1620 the Mayflower, which had sailed for Virginia
with Pilgrim emigrants, landed off-course far to the north in Massachusetts, where
the settlers founded New Plymouth Colony. By the 1640s, the British North Ameri-
can colonies had more than fifty thousand people, of whom perhaps a thousand were
Africans. The Indians native to the area had been decimated in epidemics and wars.
In contrast, French Canada had only about three thousand European inhabitants
by 1640. Though thin in numbers, the French rapidly moved into the Great Lakes
region. Fur traders sought beaver pelts to make the hats that had taken Paris fashion
by storm. Jesuit missionaries lived with native American groups, learning their lan-
guages and describing their ways of life.
492 Chapter 15 Wars of Religion and the Clash of Worldviews
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MAP 15.3 European Colonization
Trois Tadoussac
Rivières Québec Massachusetts Bay Company of the Americas, c. 1640
Sault Ste. Marie
Montréal Boston Europeans coming to the Americas
New Netherlands New Plymouth Colony established themselves first in
Rhode Island
Santa Fé Connecticut coastal areas. The English, French,
New Sweden
Maryland and Dutch set up most of their colo-
Virginia ATLANTIC nies in the Caribbean and North
Monterrey Gulf of Florida
WE OCEAN
Mexico ST America because the Spanish and
NE INDI
ES N Portuguese had already colonized the
W
SP easily accessible regions in South
AI C ar ibbe an Se a E
N W America. Vast inland areas still
S remained unexplored and uncolo-
nized in 1640.
PACIFIC BR AZIL
PE
OCEAN
U
and natural phenomena. During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,
science, political theory, and even art began to break their long-standing bonds with
religion. Scientists and scholars sought laws in nature to explain politics as well as
movements in the heavens and on earth. The visual arts more frequently depicted
secular subjects. A scientific revolution was in the making. Yet traditional attitudes did
not disappear. Belief in magic and witchcraft pervaded every level of society. People
of all classes believed that the laws of nature reflected a divine plan for the universe.
They accepted supernatural explanations for natural phenomena, a view only gradu-
ally and partially undermined by new ideas.
of hills and valleys like those on earth. Galileo portrayed the earth as a moving part
of a larger system, only one of many planets revolving around the sun, not as the
fixed center of a single, closed universe.
In 1616, the Catholic church forbade Galileo to teach that the earth moves; then,
in 1633, it accused him of not obeying the earlier order. Forced to appear before the
Inquisition, he agreed to publicly recant his assertion about the movement of the
earth to save himself from torture and death. Afterward, Galileo lived under house
arrest and could publish his work only in the Dutch Republic, which had become a
haven for scientists and thinkers who challenged conventional ideas.
In the same year that Copernicus challenged the traditional account in astronomy
(1543), the Flemish scientist Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) did the same for anatomy.
Until then, medical knowledge in Europe was based on the writings of the second-
century Greek physician Galen, Ptolemy’s contemporary. Drawing on public dissec-
tions (which had been condemned by the Catholic church since 1300) he performed
himself, Vesalius refuted Galen’s work in his illustrated anatomical text, On the Con-
struction of the Human Body. The English physician William Harvey (1578–1657) used
dissection to examine the circulation of blood within the body, demonstrating how the
heart worked as a pump. The heart and its valves were “a piece of machinery,” Harvey
insisted, and they obeyed mechanical laws. Nature, he said, could be understood by
experiment and rational deduction, not by following traditional authorities.
In the 1630s, the European intellectual elite began to accept the new scientific
views. Ancient learning, the churches and their theologians, and long-standing pop-
ular beliefs all seemed to be undercut by the scientific method. Two men were chiefly
responsible for spreading the reputation of the scientific method in the first half of
the seventeenth century: the English Protestant politician Sir Francis Bacon (1561–
1626) and the French Catholic mathematician and philosopher René Descartes
(1596–1650). They represented the two essential halves of the scientific method:
inductive reasoning through observation and experimental research, and deductive
reasoning from self-evident principles.
In The Advancement of Learning (1605), Bacon attacked reliance on ancient writ-
ers and optimistically predicted that the scientific method would lead to social prog-
ress. The minds of the medieval scholars, he said, had been “shut up in the cells of
a few authors (chiefly Aristotle, their dictator) as their persons were shut up in the
cells of monasteries and colleges,” and they could therefore produce only “cobwebs
of learning” that were “of no substance or profit.” Knowledge, in Bacon’s view, must
be empirically based (that is, gained by observation and experiment).
Although Descartes agreed with Bacon’s denunciation of traditional learning, he
was concerned that the attack on tradition might only replace the dogmatism of the
churches with the skepticism of Montaigne — that nothing at all was certain. Des-
cartes aimed to establish the new science on more secure philosophical foundations,
those of mathematics and logic. In his Discourse on Method (1637), he argued that
mathematical and mechanical principles provided the key to understanding all of
nature, including the actions of people and states. All prior assumptions must be
496 Chapter 15 Wars of Religion and the Clash of Worldviews
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]
repudiated in favor of one elementary principle: “I think, therefore I am.” Everything
else could — and should — be doubted, but even doubt showed the certain existence
of someone thinking. Descartes insisted that human reason could not only unravel
the secrets of nature but also prove the existence of God. Although he hoped to
secure the authority of both church and state, his reliance on human reason rather
than faith irritated authorities, and his books were banned in many places. He moved
to the Dutch Republic to work in peace. Scientific research, like economic growth,
became centered in the northern, Protestant countries, where it was less constrained
by church control than in the Catholic south.
The power of the new scientific method was dramatically confirmed in the
grand synthesis of the laws of motion developed by the English natural philosopher
Isaac Newton (1642–1727). Born five years after the publication of Descartes’s Dis-
course on Method and educated at Cambridge University, where he later became a
professor, Newton brought his most significant mathematical and mechanical dis-
coveries together in his masterwork, Principia Mathematica (1687). In it, he devel-
oped his law of universal gravitation, which explained both movement on earth and
the motion of the planets. His law held that every body in the universe exerts over
every other body an attractive force directly proportional to the product of their
masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. This
law of universal gravitation explained Kepler’s elliptical planetary orbits just as it
accounted for the way an apple fell to the ground.
Newtonian physics combined mass, inertia, force, velocity, and acceleration — all
key concepts in modern science — and made them quantifiable. Once set in motion,
in Newton’s view, the universe operated like a masterpiece made possible by the
ingenuity of God. Newton saw no conflict between faith and science. He believed
that by demonstrating that the physical universe followed rational principles, natural
philosophers could prove the existence of God and so liberate humans from doubt
and the fear of chaos. Even while laying the foundation for modern physics, optics,
and mechanics, Newton spent long hours trying to calculate the date of the begin-
ning of the world and its end with the second coming of Jesus. Others, less devout
than Newton, envisioned a clockwork universe that had no need for God’s continu-
ing intervention.
dance, and scenery in a grand sensual display, often with themes chosen to please the
ruler and the aristocracy. Composers could base operas on typically baroque sacred
subjects or on traditional stories. Like many playwrights, including Shakespeare,
opera composers often turned to familiar stories their audiences would recognize and
readily follow. One of the most innovative composers of opera was Claudio Monte-
verdi (1567–1643), whose earliest operatic production, Orfeo (1607), was based on
Greek mythology.
the law did not recognize anyone as a witch. In 1693, the jurors who had convicted
twenty people of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts, recanted, claiming: “We justly
fear that we were sadly deluded and mistaken.” The Salem jurors had not stopped
believing in witches; they had simply lost confidence in their ability to identify them.
When physicians and judges had believed in witches and carried out official persecu-
tions, with torture, those accused of witch-
craft had gone to their deaths in record
REVIEW QUESTION How could belief in witch-
numbers. But when the same groups dis-
craft and the rising prestige of the scientific
method coexist? tanced themselves from popular beliefs,
the trials and the executions stopped.
Conclusion
The witchcraft persecutions reflected the traumas of these times of religious war,
economic decline, and crises of political and intellectual authority. Deep differences
over religion came to a head in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), which cut a path
of destruction through central Europe and involved most of the European powers.
[ 1560–1648
] Conclusion 501
a
Nor th
Se
Islamic Sea
ic
Boundary of the DENMARK lt
Holy Roman Empire Ba
Stripes = mixed religions IRELAND DUTCH
REPUBLIC
POLAND-
LITHUANIA
0 150 300 miles
ENGLAND Vis BRANDENBURG-
0 150 300 kilometers El
tul
aR PRUSSIA
be .
R.
N
SPANISH NETH.
W Dn
ieste
r R.
E Bohemia
Moravia RY
S .
GA
R
. U N
Rhine
eR H
Loir
AUSTRIA
AT L A N T I C
SWISS
OCEAN FR ANCE CONFED.
OT Danub
e R.
TO
A MA
Eb PAPAL d r i N E
ro STATES at MPI
R i c
Se RE
.
a
PORTUGAL Tagus
Rome
R.
SPAIN Aegean
Sea
Mediterranean Sea
Repulsed by the effects of religious violence, European rulers agreed to a peace that
effectively removed disputes between Catholics and Protestants from the international
arena. Almost everywhere rulers emerged from these decades of war with expanded
powers that they would seek to extend further in the second half of the seventeenth
century. The constant extension of state power is one of the defining themes of
modern history; religious warfare gave it a jump-start.
For all their strength, however, rulers could not control economic, social, or intel-
lectual trends. The economic downturn of the seventeenth century shifted economic
power from the Mediterranean world to northwestern Europe because England,
502 Chapter 15 Wars of Religion and the Clash of Worldviews
[ 1560–1648
]
France, and the Dutch Republic suffered less from the fighting of the Thirty Years’
War and recovered more quickly from bad times. They would become even more
powerful in the decades to come.
An underlying shift in cultural attitudes and intellectual expectations accompa-
nied these changes. Secularization encompassed the establishment of the scientific
method as the standard of truth, the search for nonreligious foundations of political
authority, and the growing popularity of nonreligious forms of art, such as theater
and opera. Proponents of these changes did not renounce their religious beliefs, and
it would be foolish to claim that everyone’s mental universe changed. The signifi-
cance of secularization would only emerge over the long term.
Chapter 15 Review
Key Terms and People
Be sure that you can identify the term or person and explain its historical significance.
Catherine de Médicis (p. 474) Elizabeth I (p. 479) scientific method (p. 493)
Edict of Nantes (p. 475) Puritans (p. 479) heliocentrism (p. 493)
politiques (p. 475) Peace of Westphalia (p. 484) baroque (p. 498)
Philip II (p. 476) raison d’état (p. 487)
Lepanto (p. 477) secularization (p. 492)
Review Questions
1. How did state power depend on religious unity at the end of the sixteenth century and start
of the seventeenth?
2. Why did a war fought over religious differences result in stronger states?
3. What were the consequences of economic recession in the early 1600s?
4. How could belief in witchcraft and the rising prestige of the scientific method coexist?
Making Connections
1. How did the balance of power shift in Europe between 1560 and 1648? What were the
main reasons for the shift?
2. What were the limits to the growth of secularization?
3. What was the influence of New World colonies on Europe from 1560 to 1648?
4. How did religious conflict mix with political concerns in this period?
Suggested References
Religious conflict, the Thirty Years’ War, science, witchcraft, and the travails of everyday life have
all been the subject of groundbreaking research, yet the personalities of individual rulers still
make for great stories, too.
[1560–1648
] Chapter 15 Review 503
Important Events
Consider two events: Thirty Years’ War begins (1618) and Hugo Grotius publishes The
Laws of War and Peace (1625). How does the latter event represent an effort to grapple
with the climate of religious violence?
Braudel, Fernand. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip the Second.
Trans. Siân Reynolds. 2 vols. 1972, 1973.
*Diefendorf, Barbara B. The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: A Brief History with Documents.
2008.
Galileo Project: http://galileo.rice.edu
Ginzburg, Carlo. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller. 2013.
*Jacob, Margaret. The Scientific Revolution: A Brief History with Documents. 2010.
Konstam, Angus. Lepanto 1571: The Greatest Naval Battle of the Renaissance. 2003.
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. The Atlantic in World History. 2012.
Levack, Brian P. The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe. 2006.
Lynn, John A. Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe. 2008.
Madariaga, Isabel De. Ivan the Terrible. 2006.
*Medick, Hans, and Benjamin Marschke. Experiencing the Thirty Years War: A Brief History with
Documents. 2013.
Patterson, Benton Rain. With the Heart of a King: Elizabeth I of England, Philip II of Spain, and the
Fight for a Nation’s Soul and Crown. 2007.
Pitts, Vincent J. Henri IV of France: His Reign and Age. 2008.
Tracy, James D. The Founding of the Dutch Republic: War, Finance, and Politics in Holland, 1572–
1588. 2008.
Wiesner-Hanks, Merry. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. 2008.
*Primary source.
Absolutism,
16
Constitutionalism,
and the Search for Order
1640–1700
I
n May 1664, King Louis XIV of France organized the first of many spectacular
entertainments for his court at Versailles, where he had recently begun construc-
tion of a magnificent new palace. More than six hundred members of his court
attended the weeklong series of parades, races, ballets, plays, and fireworks. In the
opening parade, Louis was accompanied by an eighteen-foot-high float in the form
of a chariot dedicated to Apollo, Greek god of the sun and Louis’s personally chosen
emblem. The king’s favorite writers and musicians presented works specially pre-
pared for the occasion, and each evening ended with a candlelit banquet served by
masked and costumed servants.
Louis XIV designed his pageants to awe
those most dangerous to him, the leading nobles
Louis XIV and His Bodyguards
One of Louis XIV’s court painters, of his kingdom. To make his authority and
the Flemish artist Adam Frans van glory concrete, the king relentlessly increased
der Meulen, depicted the king arriv- the power of his bureaucracy, expanded his
ing at the palace of Versailles, still army, and insisted on Catholic orthodoxy. This
under construction. The painting model of state building was known as abso-
dates from 1669, when none of the
gardens, pools, or statues had yet
lutism, a system of government in which the
been installed. Louis is the only fig- ruler claims sole and uncontestable power.
ure facing the viewer, and his Other mid-seventeenth-century rulers followed
clothing is much more colorful than Louis XIV’s example or explicitly rejected it,
that of anyone else in the painting. but they could not afford to ignore it.
(Chateau de Versailles et de Trianon, Ver-
sailles, France / © RMN-Grand Palais / Art
Although absolutism exerted great influ-
Resource, NY.) ence beginning in the mid-1600s, it faced com-
petition from constitutionalism, a system in
which the ruler shares power with an assembly
of elected representatives. Constitutionalism provided a strong foundation for state
power in England, the Dutch Republic, and the British North American colonies, while
absolutism dominated in central and eastern Europe. Constitutionalism triumphed
505
506 Chapter 16 Absolutism, Constitutionalism, and the Search for Order
[ 1640–1700
]
in England, however, only after one king had been executed as a traitor and another
had been deposed. The English conflicts over the nature of authority found their
most enduring expression in the writings of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, which
laid the foundations of modern political science.
The search for order took place not only in government and politics but also in
intellectual, cultural, and social life. Artists sought means of glorifying power and
expressing order and symmetry in new ways. As states consolidated their power, elites
endeavored to distinguish themselves more clearly from the lower orders. Officials,
clergy, and laypeople worked to reform the
poor, now seen as a major source of dis-
CHAPTER FOCUS What were the most impor-
tant differences between absolutism and
order. Whether absolutist or constitution-
constitutionalism, and how did each system alist, seventeenth-century states all aimed
establish order? to extend control over their subjects’ lives.
power with the right to approve new taxes. Mazarin responded by arresting the lead-
ers of the parlements. He soon faced a series of revolts.
Fearing for the young king’s safety, his mother took Louis and fled Paris. With
civil war threatening, Mazarin and Anne agreed to compromise with the parlements.
The nobles saw an opportunity to reassert their claims to power against the weakened
monarchy and demanded greater local control. Leading noblewomen often played
key roles in the opposition to Mazarin, carrying messages and forging alliances,
especially when male family members were in prison. While the nobles sought to
regain power and local influence, the middle and lower classes chafed at the repeated
tax increases. Conflicts erupted throughout the kingdom as nobles, parlements, and
city councils all raised their own armies to fight either the crown or one another. The
urban poor, such as those in the southwestern city of Bordeaux, sometimes revolted
as well.
Mazarin and Anne eventually got the upper hand because their opponents failed
to maintain unity in fighting the king’s forces. But Louis XIV never forgot the humili-
ation and uncertainty that marred his childhood. His own policies as ruler would
be designed to prevent the recurrence of any such revolts. Yet, for all his success,
peasants would revolt against the introduction of new taxes on at least five more
occasions in the 1660s and 1670s, requiring tens of thousands of soldiers to reestab-
lish order.
508 Chapter 16 Absolutism, Constitutionalism, and the Search for Order
[ 1640–1700
]
Court Culture as an Element of Absolutism
When Cardinal Mazarin died in 1661, Louis XIV, then twenty-two years old, decided
to rule without a first minister. He described the dangers of his situation in memoirs
he wrote later for his son’s instruction: “Everywhere was disorder. My Court as a
whole was still very far removed from the sentiments in which I trust you will find
it.” Louis listed many other problems in the kingdom, but none occupied him more
than his attempts to control France’s leading nobles, some of whom came from fami-
lies that had opposed him militarily during the Fronde.
The French nobles had long exercised local authority by maintaining their own
fighting forces, meting out justice on their estates, arranging jobs for underlings, and
resolving their own conflicts through dueling. Louis set out to domesticate the war-
rior nobles by replacing violence with court ritual, such as the festivities at Versailles
described at the beginning of this chapter. Using a systematic policy of bestowing
pensions, offices, honors, gifts, and the threat of disfavor or punishment, Louis induced
the nobles to cooperate with him. The aristocracy increasingly vied for his favor and
in the process became his clients, dependent on him for advancement. Great nobles
competed for the honor of holding his shirt when he dressed, foreign ambassadors
squabbled for places near him, and royal mistresses basked in the glow of his per-
sonal favor. Far from the court, however, nobles could still make considerable trouble
for the king, and royal officials learned to compromise with them.
Those who did come to the king’s court were kept on their toes. The preferred
styles of behavior changed without notice, and the tiniest lapse in attention to eti-
quette could lead to ruin. Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, known as Madame
de Lafayette, described the court in her novel The Princess of Clèves (1678): “The
Court gravitated around ambition. . . . Everybody was busily trying to better his or
her position by pleasing, by helping, or by hindering somebody else.”
Louis XIV appreciated the political uses of every form of art. Calling himself the
Sun King, after Apollo, Louis stopped at nothing to burnish this radiant image. He
played Apollo in ballets performed at court; posed for portraits with the emblems
of Apollo (laurel, lyre, and tripod); and adorned his palaces with statues of the god.
He also emulated the style and methods of ancient Roman emperors. At a celebration
for the birth of his first son in 1662, Louis dressed in Roman attire, and many
engravings and paintings showed him as a Roman emperor.
The king gave pensions to artists who worked for him and sometimes protected
writers from clerical critics. The most famous of these writers was the playwright
Molière (the pen name of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 1622–1673), whose comedy Tar-
tuffe (1664) made fun of religious hypocrites and was loudly condemned by church
leaders. Louis forced Molière to delay public performances of the play after its pre-
miere at the festivities of May 1664 but resisted calls for his dismissal. Louis’s min-
isters set up royal academies of dance, painting, architecture, music, and science. The
government regulated the number and locations of theaters and closely censored all
forms of publication.
[1640–1700
] Louis XIV: Absolutism and Its Limits 509
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Acquisitions to 1668 S ea
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Constitutionalism in England
Of the two models of state building — absolutism and constitutionalism — the first
seemed unquestionably more powerful because Louis XIV could raise such large
armies and tax his subjects without much consultation. In the end, however, Louis
could not defeat the coalition led by England’s constitutional monarch. Constitution-
alism had its own distinctive strengths, which came from the ruler sharing power
through a representative assembly such as the English houses of Parliament. But the
English rulers themselves hoped to follow Louis XIV’s lead and install their own
absolutist policies. Two revolutions, in 1642–1660 and 1688–1689, overturned two
kings and confirmed the constitutional powers of an elected parliament, laying the
foundation for the idea that government must guarantee certain rights to the people
under the law.
Religious tensions brought conflicts over the king’s authority to a head. With
Charles’s encouragement, the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud (1573–1645),
imposed increasingly elaborate ceremonies on the Church of England. Angered by
these moves toward “popery,” the Puritans responded with pamphlets and sermons
filled with fiery denunciations. Laud then hauled them before the feared Court of Star
Chamber, which the king personally controlled. The court ordered harsh sentences for
Laud’s Puritan critics; they were whipped, pilloried, branded, and even had their ears
cut off and their noses split. When Laud tried to apply his policies to Scotland, how-
ever, they backfired completely: the stubborn Presbyterian Scots invaded the north
of England in 1640. To raise money to fight the war, Charles called Parliament into
session and unwittingly opened the door to a constitutional and religious crisis.
The Parliament of 1640 did not intend revolution, but reformers in the House
of Commons (the lower house of Parliament) wanted to undo what they saw as
the royal tyranny of the 1630s. Parliament removed Laud from office, ordered the
execution of an unpopular royal commander, abolished the Court of Star Chamber,
repealed recently levied taxes, and provided for a parliamentary assembly at least
once every three years, thus establishing a constitutional check on royal authority.
Moderate reformers expected to stop there and resisted Puritan pressure to abolish
bishops and eliminate the Church of England prayer book. The reformers also faced
a rebellion in Ireland by native Catholics against the English and Scottish settlers
who had taken over their lands. The reformers in Parliament feared that the Irish
Catholics would make common cause with Charles to reestablish Catholicism as the
religion of England and Scotland. Their hand was forced in January 1642, when
Charles and his soldiers invaded Parliament and tried unsuccessfully to arrest those
leaders who had moved to curb his power. Faced with mounting opposition within
London, Charles quickly withdrew from the city and organized an army.
The ensuing civil war between king and Parliament lasted four years (1642–1646)
and divided the country. The king’s army of royalists, known as Cavaliers, enjoyed
the most support in northern and western England. The parliamentary forces, called
Roundheads because they cut their hair short, had their stronghold in the southeast,
including London. Although Puritans dominated on the parliamentary side, they
were divided among themselves about the proper form of church government: the
Presbyterians wanted a Calvinist church with some central authority, whereas the
Independents favored entirely autonomous congregations free from other church
government (hence the term congregationalism, often associated with the Indepen-
dents). The Puritans put aside their differences for the sake of military unity and
united under an obscure member of the House of Commons, the country gentle-
man Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), who sympathized with the Independents. After
Cromwell skillfully reorganized the parliamentary troops, his New Model Army
defeated the Cavaliers at the battle of Naseby in 1645. Charles surrendered in 1646.
Although the civil war between king and Parliament had ended in victory for
Parliament, divisions within the Puritan ranks now came to the fore: the Presbyte-
rians dominated Parliament, but the Independents controlled the army. The disputes
516 Chapter 16 Absolutism, Constitutionalism, and the Search for Order
[ 1640–1700
]
between the leaders drew lower-class groups into the debate. When Parliament tried
to disband the New Model Army in 1647, disgruntled soldiers protested. Called
Levellers because of their insistence on leveling social differences, the soldiers took
on their officers in a series of debates about the nature of political authority. The
Levellers demanded that Parliament meet annually, that members be paid so as to
allow common people to participate, and that all male heads of households be
allowed to vote. Their ideal of political participation excluded servants, the property-
less, and women but offered access to artisans, shopkeepers, and modest farmers.
Cromwell and other army leaders rejected the Levellers’ demands as threatening to
property owners. Speaking to his advisers, Cromwell insisted, “You have no other
way to deal with these men but to break them in pieces.”
While political differences between Presbyterians and Independents helped
spark new political movements, their conflicts over church organization fostered the
emergence of new religious sects that emphasized the “inner light” of individual
religious inspiration and a disdain for hierarchical authority. The Baptists, for
example, insisted on adult baptism because they believed that Christians should
choose their own church and that children should not automatically become mem-
bers of the Church of England. The Religious Society of Friends, who came to be
called Quakers, demonstrated their beliefs in equality and the inner light by refus-
ing to doff their hats to men in authority. Manifesting their religious experience
by trembling, or “quaking,” the Quakers believed that anyone — man or woman —
inspired by a direct experience of God could preach. In keeping with their notions
of equality and individual inspiration, many of the new sects provided opportunities
for women to become preachers and prophets.
Parliamentary leaders feared that the new sects would overturn the whole social
hierarchy. Some sects did advocate sweeping change. The Diggers promoted rural
communism — collective ownership of all property. Seekers and Ranters questioned
just about everything. One notorious Ranter, John Robins, even claimed to be God.
A few men advocated free love. The political elite decided that tolerating the new
sects would lead to skepticism, anarchism, and debauchery, and they therefore took
measures to suppress the most radical ones.
The king tried to negotiate with the Presbyterians in Parliament, but Indepen-
dents in the army purged the Presbyterians from Parliament in late 1648, leaving a
“rump” of about seventy members. This Rump Parliament then created a high court
to try Charles I. The court found him guilty of attempting to establish “an unlim-
ited and tyrannical power” and pronounced a death sentence. On January 30, 1649,
Charles was beheaded before an enormous crowd, which reportedly groaned as one
when the ax fell. Although many had objected to Charles’s autocratic rule, few had
wanted him killed. For royalists, Charles immediately became a martyr, and reports
of miracles, such as the curing of blindness by the touch of a handkerchief soaked
in his blood, soon circulated.
The Rump Parliament abolished the monarchy and the House of Lords (the
upper house of Parliament) and set up a Puritan republic with Oliver Cromwell as
[1640–1700
] Constitutionalism in England 517
chairman of the Council of State. Cromwell did not tolerate dissent from his policies.
When his agents discovered plans for mutiny within the army, they executed the
perpetrators; new decrees silenced the Levellers. Although under Cromwell the vari-
ous Puritan sects could worship rather freely and Jews with needed skills were per-
mitted to return to England for the first time since the thirteenth century, Catholics
could not worship publicly, nor could adherents of the Church of England use the
Book of Common Prayer, thought to be too Catholic. The elites were troubled by
Cromwell’s religious policies but pleased to see some social order reestablished.
The new regime aimed to extend state power just as Charles I had before. Crom-
well laid the foundation for a Great Britain — made up of England, Ireland, and
Scotland — by reconquering Scotland and brutally subduing Ireland. When his posi-
tion was secured in 1649, Cromwell went to Ireland with a large force and easily
defeated the rebels, massacring whole garrisons and their priests. He encouraged
expropriating more lands of the Irish “barbarous wretches,” and Scottish immigrants
resettled the northern county of Ulster. This seventeenth-century English conquest
left a legacy of bitterness that the Irish even today call “the curse of Cromwell.”
In 1651, Parliament turned its attention overseas, putting mercantilist ideas into
practice in the first Navigation Act, which allowed imports only if they were carried
on English ships or came directly from the producers of goods. The Navigation Act
518 Chapter 16 Absolutism, Constitutionalism, and the Search for Order
[ 1640–1700
]
was aimed at the Dutch, who dominated world trade; Cromwell tried to carry the
policy further by waging naval war on the Dutch from 1652 to 1654.
At home, however, Cromwell faced growing resistance. His wars required a bud-
get twice the size of Charles I’s, and his increases in property taxes and customs
duties alienated landowners and merchants. The conflict reached a crisis in 1653: Par-
liament considered disbanding the army, whereupon Cromwell abolished the Rump
Parliament in a military coup and made himself Lord Protector. He now silenced his
critics by banning newspapers and using networks of spies to read mail and keep
tabs on his enemies. Cromwell intended that his son should succeed him, but his
death in 1658 only revived the prospect of civil war and political chaos. In 1660, a
newly elected Parliament invited Charles II, the son of the executed king, to return
from exile.
oughly anti-absolutist. He denied the divine right of kings and ridiculed the common
royalist idea that political power in the state mirrored the father’s authority in the family.
Like Hobbes, he posited a state of nature that applied to all people. Unlike Hobbes,
however, he thought people were reasonable and the state of nature peaceful.
Locke insisted that government’s only purpose was to protect life, liberty, and
property, a notion that linked economic and political freedom. Ultimate authority
rested in the will of a majority of men who owned property, and government should
be limited to its basic purpose of protection. A ruler who failed to uphold his part
of the social contract between the ruler and the populace could be justifiably resisted,
an idea that would become crucial for the leaders of the American Revolution a
century later. For England’s seventeenth-century landowners, however, Locke helped
validate a revolution that consolidated their interests and ensured their privileges in
the social hierarchy.
Locke defended his optimistic view of human nature in the immensely influential
Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). He denied the existence of any innate
ideas and asserted instead that each human is born with a mind that is a tabula rasa
(blank slate). Not surprisingly, Locke devoted considerable energy to rethinking edu-
cational practices; he believed that education shaped the human personality by chan-
neling all sensory experience. Everything humans know, he claimed, comes from
sensory experience, not from anything inherent in human nature. Although Locke
himself owned shares in the Royal African
Company and justified slavery, his writings REVIEW QUESTION What differences over
were later used by abolitionists in their religion and politics caused the conflict
campaign against slavery. between king and Parliament in England?
Outposts of Constitutionalism
When William and Mary came to the throne in England in 1689, the Dutch and the
English put aside the rivalries that had brought them to war against each other in
1652–1654, 1665–1667, and 1672–1674. The English and Dutch had much in com-
mon: oriented toward commerce, especially overseas, they both had developed rep-
resentative forms of government. Also among the few outposts of constitutionalism
in the seventeenth century were the British North American colonies, which devel-
oped representative government while the English were preoccupied with their revo-
lutions at home. Constitutionalism was not the only factor shaping this Atlantic
world; as constitutionalism developed in the colonies, so, too, did the enslavement
of black Africans as a new labor force.
N
North Iron,
Sea Timber, copper,
tar, W E
pitch furs
Herring,
wool Wheat, S
ATLANTIC rye
NORTH OCEAN Danzig
DUTCH Amsterdam ASIA
AMERICA REPUBLIC EUROPE
NEW Wine
NETHERLAND
AZORES Wool CHINA
Tobacco JAPAN
Canton
Chinsura Tea, Nagasaki
silk, Amoy Silk,
Calcutta porcelain luxury goods
WEST INDIES Port
Tobacco Bombay INDIA Macao Zeelandia PACIFIC
Curaçao St. Martin Gorée AFRICA Goa
Madras Cloth Manila OCEAN
CAPE VERDE Negapatam PHILIPPINES
IS. Slaves Accra Cochin Colombo
GUIANA Ceylon Malacca Camphor, pepper,
Stabroek Sugar Borneo sandalwood
(Georgetown) DUTCH Axim Cloves, MOLUCCAS
Mombasa
BRAZIL
cinnamon Pepper Spices New
Zanzibar Sunda Macassar Guinea
Sugar Batavia
SOUTH Mauritsstad Mauritius Strait
Java Timor
AMERICA Mozambique Tea,
teak
Madagascar NEW HOLLAND
Cape Town INDIAN (Unknown except for
Provisioning
West Coast)
Station OCEAN
vided for their collective use and not subject to individual ownership. Europeans’
claims that they owned exclusive land rights consequently resulted in frequent skir-
mishes. In 1675–1676, for instance, three tribes allied under Metacomet (called King
Philip by the English) threatened the sur-
vival of New England settlers, who sav- REVIEW QUESTION Why did constitutionalism
agely repulsed the attacks and sold their thrive in the Dutch Republic and the British
captives as slaves. The benefits of constitu- North American colonies, even as their par-
tionalism were reserved for Europeans. ticipation in the slave trade grew?
Poland-Lithuania Overwhelmed
In the version of constitutionalism adopted in Poland-Lithuania, the great nobles dom-
inated the Sejm (parliament). To maintain an equilibrium among themselves, these
nobles each wielded an absolute veto power. This “free veto” constitutional system
deadlocked parliamentary government. The monarchy lost its room to maneuver and,
with it, much of its remaining power.
Ukrainian Cossack warriors revolted against the king of Poland-Lithuania in
1648, inaugurating two decades of tumult known as the Deluge. Cossack was the name
given to runaway serfs and poor nobles who formed outlaw bands in the no-man’s-
land of southern Russia and Ukraine. In 1654, the
Cossacks offered Ukraine to Russian rule, provok- Territory lost
to Russia, 1667 Volga R .
ing a Russo-Polish war that ended in 1667 when
SWEDEN
the tsar annexed eastern Ukraine and Kiev. RUSSIA
Many towns were destroyed in the fighting,
POLAND-
and as much as a third of the Polish population LITHUANIA Kiev
BRANDENBURG- UKRAINE
perished. The once prosperous Jewish and Protes- PRUSSIA
Se
a
ROMAN
ne R
EMPIRE
.
Bohemia Moravia
N
AUSTRIA
E
Da Vienna W
nub
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S
Styria Buda Pest Transylvania
FRANCE SWISS
Tyrol
Carinthia
CONFEDERATION HUNGARY
Carniola
tia
oa
Karlowitz
Cr
Bl ack S ea
A
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
dr
ia
ti
c
Se
Mediterranean Sea
0 200 400 kilometers
Stenka Razin in
Captivity
After leading a revolt of
thousands of serfs, peas-
ants, and members of
non-Russian tribes of the
middle and lower Volga
region, Stenka Razin
was captured by Russian
forces and led off to Mos-
cow, as shown here,
where he was executed
in 1671. He has been
the subject of songs, leg-
ends, and poems ever
since. (© Imagno / ullstein
bild / The Image Works.)
code to organize Russian society in a strict social hierarchy. The code of 1649 —
which held for nearly two centuries — assigned all subjects to a hereditary class
according to their current occupation or state needs. Slaves and free peasants were
merged into a serf class. As serfs, they could not change occupations or move; they
were tightly tied to the soil and to their noble masters. To prevent tax evasion, the
code also forbade townspeople to move from the community where they resided.
Nobles owed absolute obedience to the tsar and were required to serve in the army,
but in return no other group could own estates worked by serfs. Serfs became the
chattel of their lord, who could sell them like horses or land. Their lives differed
little from those of the slaves on the plantations in the Americas.
Some peasants resisted enserfment. In 1667, Stenka Razin (1630–1671), the
head of a powerful band of pirates and outlaws in southern Russia, led a rebellion
that promised liberation from the great noble landowners. Captured four years later
by the tsar’s army, Razin was taken to Moscow, where he was dismembered in front
of the public and his body thrown to the dogs. Thousands of his followers also suf-
fered grisly deaths, but Razin’s memory lived on in folk songs and legends.
Like his Western rivals, Tsar Alexei wanted a bigger army, exclusive control over
state policy, and a greater say in religious matters. The size of the army increased
dramatically from 35,000 in the 1630s to 220,000 by the end of the century. The
Assembly of the Land, once an important source of consultation for the nobles, never
met again after 1653. Alexei also imposed firm control over the Russian Orthodox
church. The state-dominated church took action against a religious group called the
Old Believers, who rejected church efforts to bring Russian worship in line with
Byzantine tradition. Whole communities of Old Believers starved or burned them-
selves to death rather than submit to the crown.
Nevertheless, modernizing trends prevailed. Tsar Alexei set up the first Western-
style theater in the Kremlin, and his daughter Sophia translated French plays. The
530 Chapter 16 Absolutism, Constitutionalism, and the Search for Order
[ 1640–1700
]
most adventurous nobles began to wear
REVIEW QUESTION Why did absolutism flour- German-style clothing. Some even argued
ish everywhere in eastern Europe except that ser vice, not just birth, should deter-
Poland-Lithuania? mine rank. Russia’s long struggle over West-
ern influences had begun.
tectural masterpiece was the gigantic square facing St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Ber-
nini’s use of freestanding colonnades and a huge open space was meant to impress
the individual observer with the power of the popes and the Catholic religion.
Although France was a Catholic country, French artists, like their patron Louis
XIV, preferred the standards of classicism to those of the baroque. As its name sug-
gests, classicism reflected the ideals of the art of antiquity: geometric shapes, order,
and harmony of lines took precedence over the sensuous, exuberant, and emotional
forms of the baroque. Rather than being overshadowed by the sheer power of emo-
tional display, in classicism the individual could be found at the intersection of con-
verging, symmetrical, straight lines. These influences were apparent in the work of
the leading French painters of the period, Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665) and Claude
Lorrain (1600–1682), both of whom tried to re-create classical Roman values in their
mythological scenes and Roman landscapes.
Art could also serve the interests of science. One of the most skilled illustra-
tors of insects and flowers was Maria Sibylla Merian (1646–1717), a German-born
painter-scholar whose engravings were widely celebrated for their brilliant realism
and microscopic clarity. Merian separated from her husband and accompanied mis-
sionaries to the Dutch colony of Surinam, in South America. She painted watercolors
of the exotic flowers, birds, and insects she found in the jungle around the cocoa
and sugarcane plantations.
Despite the initial religious controversies associated with the scientific revo-
lution, absolutist rulers quickly saw the potential of the new science for enhancing
532 Chapter 16 Absolutism, Constitutionalism, and the Search for Order
[ 1640–1700
]
French Classicism
This painting by Nicolas Poussin, Discovery of Achilles on Skyros (1649–1650), shows the
French interest in classical themes and ideals. In the Greek story, Thetis dresses her son
Achilles as a young woman and hides him on the island of Skyros so he would not have to
fight in the Trojan War. When a chest of treasures is offered to the women, Achilles reveals him-
self (he is the figure on the far right) because he cannot resist the sword. In telling the story,
Poussin emphasizes harmony and almost a sedateness of composition, avoiding the exuber-
ance and emotionalism of the baroque style. (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, USA /
Juliana Cheney Edwards Collection / Bridgeman Images.)
their prestige and glory. Various German princes supported the work of Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), who claimed that he, and not Isaac Newton, had
invented modern calculus. A lawyer, mathematician, and philosopher who wrote
about metaphysics, cosmology, and history, Leibniz also helped establish scientific
societies in the German states. Government involvement in science was greatest in
France. In 1666, Jean-Baptiste Colbert founded the Royal Academy of Sciences,
which supplied fifteen scientists with government stipends. In contrast, the Royal
Society of London grew out of informal meetings of scientists at London and Oxford.
It received a royal charter in 1662 but maintained complete independence.
Because of their exclusion from most universities, women only rarely partici-
pated in the new scientific discoveries. In 1667, nonetheless, the Royal Society of Lon-
don invited the writer Margaret Cavendish to watch the exhibition of experiments.
Labeled “mad” by her critics, she attacked the use of telescopes and microscopes
because she detected in the new experimentalism a mechanistic view of the world
that exalted masculine prowess and challenged the Christian belief in freedom of the
[1640–1700
] The Search for Order in Elite and Popular Culture 533
Conclusion
The search for order took place on various levels, from the reform of the disorderly
poor to the establishment of bureaucratic routines in government. The absolutist
government of Louis XIV served as a model for all those who aimed to increase the
power of the central state. Even Louis’s rivals — such as the Holy Roman Emperor
Leopold I and Frederick William, the Great Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia —
followed his lead in centralizing authority and building up their armies. Whether
absolutist or constitutionalist in form, seventeenth-century states aimed to penetrate
more deeply into the lives of their subjects. They wanted more men for their armed
forces; higher taxes to support their projects; and more control over foreign trade,
religious dissent, and society’s unwanted.
[ 1640–1700
] Conclusion 537
AY
Spanish Habsburg lands
S W E D E N
ORW
Venetian possessions
Ottoman Empire FINLAND
K-N
Boundary of the Holy Roman Empire d
inlan
f of F
Gul
Estonia
MAR
0 200 400 miles
SCOTLAND
0 200 400 kilometers Livonia
DEN
Nor th Moscow
a
Se
S ea c
IRELAND
DUTCH lti
N
Ba POLAND-
ENGLAND REPUBLIC Danzig RUSSIA
W LITHUANIA
E
Minsk
S London Amsterdam Berlin Warsaw
Kiev
SPANISH BRANDENBURG-
English Channel PRUSSIA
El
NETH. Leipzig
Rh
be
R. Dni
R.
ine
AT L A N T I C Prague Vistu
la e pe r
R.
R
Paris
.
OCEAN Nantes e R.
Loir Franche-
Strasbourg
R. Vienna
Comté Alsace Danube Munich
Bay of AUSTRIA Buda Pest
FR ANCE SWITZ.
Biscay HUNGARY
Bordeaux SAVOY Venice
.
Rhône R
Da Belgrade
VE
Genoa nub
NE
Florence SE e R. Bl ack S ea
RB
TI
E
PAPAL IA
AN
BULGARIA
br
RE
Corsica
.
PU
Madrid BL MONTENEGRO
IC
Tagus Barcelona
O
Lisbon R. Rome
NAPLES TT Constantinople
Naples OM
Seville BALEARIC Sardinia AN A NAT O L I A
Granada
ISLANDS EM
M e d i t e PIR
r r
Palermo
IONIAN IS. E
n Sicily
a (Venice)
e
a Rhodes
n
S e a Crete Cyprus
(Venice)
Some tears had begun to appear, however, in the seamless fabric of state power.
The civil war between Charles I and Parliament in England in the 1640s opened the
way to new demands for political participation. When Parliament overthrew James II
in 1688, it also insisted that the new king and queen, William and Mary, agree to
the Bill of Rights. In the eighteenth century, new levels of economic growth and the
appearance of new social groups would exert pressures on the European state system.
The success of seventeenth-century rulers created the political and economic condi-
tions in which their critics would flourish.
Chapter 16 Review
Key Terms and People
Be sure that you can identify the term or person and explain its historical significance.
absolutism (p. 505) mercantilism (p. 511) Frederick William of
constitutionalism (p. 505) Levellers (p. 516) Hohenzollern (p. 526)
Louis XIV (p. 506) William, prince of Orange Stenka Razin (p. 529)
revocation of the Edict of (p. 519) classicism (p. 531)
Nantes (p. 510) Glorious Revolution (p. 519) salon (p. 534)
bureaucracy (p. 510) social contract (p. 520)
Review Questions
1. How “absolute” was the power of Louis XIV?
2. What differences over religion and politics caused the conflict between king and Parliament
in England?
3. Why did constitutionalism thrive in the Dutch Republic and the British North American
colonies, even as their participation in the slave trade grew?
4. Why did absolutism flourish everywhere in eastern Europe except Poland-Lithuania?
5. How did elite and popular culture become more separate in the seventeenth century?
Making Connections
1. What accounts for the success of absolutism in some parts of Europe and its failure in
others?
2. How did religious differences in the late seventeenth century still cause political conflict?
3. What were the chief differences between eastern and western Europe in this period?
4. Why was the search for order a major theme in science, politics, and the arts during this
period?
Suggested References
Recent studies have insisted that absolutism could never be entirely absolute because rulers
depended on collaboration to enforce their policies. Studies of constitutional governments have
emphasized the limitations of freedoms for the lower classes and especially for slaves.
*Beik, William. Louis XIV and Absolutism: A Brief Study with Documents. 2000.
British Civil Wars, Commonwealth and Protectorate 1638–1660: http://bcw-project.org/
Brook, Timothy. Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World. 2008.
Davies, Brian L. Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 1500–1700. 2007.
Davis, Natalie Zemon. Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives. 1995.
France in America (site of the Library of Congress on French colonies in North America):
http://international.loc.gov/intldl/fiahtml/fiatheme.html#track1
Friedrich, Karin. Brandenburg-Prussia, 1466–1806: The Rise of a Composite State. 2012.
Pestana, Carla Gardina. The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 1640–1661. 2007.
*Pincus, Steven C. A. England’s Glorious Revolution, 1688–1689: A Brief History with Documents.
2006.
*Primary source.
538
[1640–1700
] Chapter 16 Review 539
Important Events
Soll, Jacob. The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s Secret State Intelligence System.
2009.
Stoye, John. The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial Between Cross and Crescent. 2006.
Tezcan, Baki. The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early
Modern World. 2012.
Versailles castle: http://en.chateauversailles.fr/homepage
Worden, Blair. The English Civil Wars, 1640–1660. 2009.
The Atlantic System
17
and Its Consequences
1700–1750
I
n 1699, a few coffee plants changed the history of the world. European travel-
ers at the end of the sixteenth century noticed Middle Eastern people drinking a
“black drink” called kavah, but the Arab monopoly on its production kept prices
high. This all changed in 1699, when Dutch traders brought a few coffee plants from
the east coast of India to their colony of Java (now Indonesia), which proved ideal
for growing the beans. Within two decades, the trickle of beans going from Java to
Europe became a flood of 200,000 pounds a year. After a shoot from a Dutch plant
made its way to the Caribbean island of Mar-
tinique in 1721, coffee plants quickly spread
London Coffeehouse
This gouache (a variant on water- throughout the Caribbean, where African
color painting) from about 1725 slaves provided the plantation labor.
depicts a scene from a London cof- European consumption of coffee, tea, sugar,
feehouse located in the courtyard and other novelties increased dramatically as
of the Royal Exchange (merchants’ European nations forged worldwide economic
bank). Middle-class men (wearing
wigs) read newspapers, drink coffee,
links. At the center of this new global economy
smoke pipes, and discuss the news was the Atlantic system, the web of trade routes
of the day. The coffeehouse has that bound together western Europe, Africa,
drawn them out of their homes and the Americas. Europeans bought slaves in
into a new public space. (The British western Africa, transported them to be sold in
Museum, London, UK / Bridgeman Images.)
the colonies in North and South America and
the Caribbean, bought raw commodities such
as coffee and sugar that were produced by the new colonial plantations, and then
sold those commodities in European ports for refining and reshipment. This Atlantic
system, which first took clear shape in the early eighteenth century, became the hub
of European expansion throughout the world.
Coffee drinking is just one example of the many new social and cultural patterns
that took root between 1700 and 1750. Improvements in agricultural production
at home reinforced the effects of trade overseas; Europeans now had more dispos-
able income for extras, and they spent their money not only in the new coffeehouses
and cafés that sprang up all over Europe but also on newspapers, musical concerts,
541
542 Chapter 17 The Atlantic System and Its Consequences
[ 1700–1750
]
paintings, and novels. A new middle-class public began to make its presence felt in
every domain of culture and social life.
Although the rise of the Atlantic system gave Europe new prominence in the
global context, European rulers still focused most of their political, diplomatic, and
military energies on their rivalries within Europe. A coalition of countries had suc-
ceeded in containing French aggression under Louis XIV, and a more balanced
diplomatic system emerged. The more evenly matched competition among the great
powers encouraged the development of diplomatic skills and drew attention to public
health as a way of encouraging population growth.
In the aftermath of Louis XIV’s revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, a
new intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment began to germinate. An
initial impetus came from French Protestant refugees who published works critical
of absolutism in politics and religion. Fed by the popularization of science and the
growing interest in travel literature, the early Enlightenment encouraged greater
skepticism about religious and state authority. Eventually, the movement would ques-
tion almost every aspect of social and political life in Europe. The Enlightenment,
which began in western Europe in those
countries most affected by the new Atlan-
CHAPTER FOCUS What were the most impor-
tant consequences of the growth of the Atlantic
tic system — Britain, France, and the Dutch
system? Republic — can be considered a product of
the age of coffee.
W E
AY
S W
OR
-N
ICELAND
AR K
SWEDEN
DENM
Hudson RUSSIA
Bay
ATLANTIC GREAT
CANADA BRITAIN
OCEAN DUTCH REPUBLIC
NEW EUROPE ASIA
NORTH FRANCE RTH Furs, fish ood
s FRANCE
AMERICA NOCATimber, fish t ure
dg
OTTOMAN
SH RI nu
fac SPAIN EMPIRE CHINA
TI M E
co Ma
Tobac JAPAN
I
PORTUGAL
BR
A
Sl a
NEW SPAIN
ve gar Calcutta
s Su
PACIFIC
r wa in, silk
Gold
ices
(Br.)
(MEXICO) silver
, WEST INDIES INDIA Guangzhou
OCEAN
re, sp
Barbados AFRIC A Bombay (Canton)
la
(Br.)
lac , porce
r Pondicherry
lv
e (Fr.) PHILIPPINES
Si Slav
que
es
Tea
EAST INDIES
Gold,
IND ONESIA
s, calicoes, pearls
Slaves
PERU
on, gems
silve
r
suga
Coffee
SOUTH ANGOLA
r
British
laves
l d,
AMERICA
pe r
, cott
Go
Danish
Pep
e
s
Spice
ice
ffe
y, s
Silk
Co
Sp
on
Dutch
Eb
French Cape of
Good Hope
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish 0 1,500 3,000 miles
Spices Trade goods
0 1,500 3,000 kilometers
Realizing that plantations producing staples for Europeans could bring fabulous
wealth, the European powers grew less interested in the dwindling trade in precious
metals and more eager to colonize. In the 1700s, large-scale planters of sugar, tobacco,
and coffee began displacing small farmers who relied on one or two indentured
servants (men and women who gained passage to the Americas in exchange for
several years of work). Planters and their plantations won out because even cheaper
slave labor allowed them to produce mass quantities of commodities at low prices.
State-chartered private companies from Portugal, France, Britain, the Dutch
Republic, Prussia, and even Denmark exploited the 3,500-mile coastline of West
Africa for slaves. Before 1675, most blacks taken from Africa had been sent to Brazil
or Spanish America on Portuguese or Dutch ships, but by 1725 more than 60 percent
of African slaves landed in the Caribbean (Figure 17.1), and more and more of them
were carried on British or French ships.
After 1700, the plantation economy also began to expand on the North Ameri-
can mainland. The numbers stagger the imagination (Figure 17.2). In all, more than
544 Chapter 17 The Atlantic System and Its Consequences
[ 1700–1750
]
3,219,950
1,718,000
275,000
57,900
British North Spanish America Caribbean Brazil
America and U.S.
ten million Africans, not counting those who were captured but died before or during
the sea voyage, were transported to the Americas before 1850, after which the slave
trade finally began to wind down. Europeans traded textiles, cowries (shells from the
Indian Ocean), and firearms for slaves, altering local African power structures and
creating political instability. Population declined in West Africa, and because two-
thirds of those enslaved were men, husbands were in short supply and men increas-
ingly took two or more wives in a practice known as polygyny.
The enslaved women and men suffered terribly. Most had been sold to European
traders by Africans from the west coast who acquired them through warfare or
kidnapping. The vast majority were between fourteen and thirty-five years old.
Before cramming them onto the ships for the three-month trip, slavers shaved their
heads and stripped them naked; they also branded some with red-hot irons. They
separated men and women, and shackled men with leg irons. Sailors and officers
raped the women at will. In the cramped and appalling conditions of the voyage, as
many as one-fourth of the slaves died.
Those who survived the transit were sold and given new names, often only first
names. Slaves had no social identities of their own; they were expected to learn their
master’s language and to do any job assigned. Slaves worked fifteen- to seventeen-
hour days and were fed only enough to keep them on their feet. The death rate among
slaves was high, especially on the sugar plantations, where slaves had to cut and haul
sugarcane to the grinders and boilers before it spoiled. During the harvest, grinding
[ 1700–1750
] The Atlantic System and the World Economy 545
and boiling went on around the clock. Because so many slaves died in the sugar-
growing regions, more and more slaves, especially strong males, had to be imported.
In North America, in contrast, where sugar was a minor crop, the slave population
increased tenfold by 1863 through natural growth.
Not surprisingly, despite the threat of torture or death on recapture, slaves some-
times ran away. Outright revolt was uncommon, but slaveholders’ fears about con-
spiracy and revolt lurked beneath the surface of every slave-based society. In 1710,
the royal governor of Virginia reminded the colonial legislature of the need for
unceasing vigilance: “We are not to Depend on Either Their Stupidity, or that Babel
of Languages among ’em; freedom Wears a Cap which Can Without a Tongue, Call
Togather all Those who Long to Shake off the fetters of Slavery.” Masters defended
whipping and other forms of physical punishment as essential to maintaining disci-
pline. Laws called for the castration of a slave who struck a white person.
The balance of white and black populations in the New World colonies varied
greatly. Because they did not own plantations, New England merchants and farmers
bought few slaves. Blacks — both slave and free — made up only 3 percent of the
population in eighteenth-century New England, compared with 60 percent in South
Carolina. The imbalance of whites and blacks was even more extreme in the Carib-
bean, where most indigenous people had already died fighting Europeans or the
diseases brought by them. By 1713, the French Caribbean colony of St. Domingue
110,000
100,000
90,000
80,000
Number of slaves
70,000
60,000
50,000
40,000
30,000
20,000
10,000
0
1500 1550 1600 1650 1700 1750 1800 1850
Years
Local economies shaped colonial social relations; men in French trapper com-
munities in Canada, for example, had little in common with the men and women
of the plantation societies in Barbados or Brazil. Racial attitudes also differed from
place to place. Unlike the French and English, the Spanish and Portuguese tolerated
intermarriage with the native populations in both America and Asia. By 1800, mes-
tizos, people born to a Spanish father and an Indian mother, accounted for more
than a quarter of the population in the Spanish colonies. Where intermarriage between
colonizers and natives was common, conversion to Christianity proved most suc-
cessful. However, greater racial diversity seems not to have improved the treatment
of slaves.
In the early years of American colonization, many more men than women emi-
grated from Europe. Although the sex imbalance began to decline at the end of the
seventeenth century, it remained substantial; two and a half times more men than
women were among the immigrants leaving Liverpool, England, between 1697 and
1707, for example. Women who emigrated as indentured servants ran great risks:
many died of disease during the voyage, and at least one in five gave birth to an
illegitimate child.
However, the uncertainties of life in the American colonies provided new oppor-
tunities for European women and men willing to live outside the law. In the 1500s
and 1600s, the English and Dutch governments had routinely authorized pirates to
prey on the ships of their rivals, the Spanish and Portuguese. Then, in the late 1600s,
English, French, and Dutch bands made up of deserters and crews from wrecked
vessels began to form their own associations of pirates, especially in the Caribbean.
Called buccaneers from their custom of curing strips of beef, called boucan by the
native Caribs of the islands, the pirates governed themselves and preyed on every-
one’s shipments without regard to national origin. After 1700, the colonial govern-
ments tried to stamp out piracy.
In comparison to those in the Americas, white settlements in Africa and Asia
remained small. A handful of Portuguese trading posts in Angola and a few Dutch
farms on the Cape of Good Hope provided the only toeholds in Africa for future
expansion. In China, the emperors had welcomed Catholic missionaries at court in
the seventeenth century, but the priests’ credibility diminished as they squabbled
among themselves and associated with European merchants, whom the Chinese con-
sidered pirates. In 1720, only one thousand Europeans resided in Guangzhou (Can-
ton), the sole place where foreigners could legally trade for spices, tea, and silk (see
Map 17.1, page 543).
Europeans exercised more influence in Java (in what was then called the East
Indies) and in India. Many Dutch settled in Java to oversee coffee production and
Asian trade. Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, and Danish companies competed
in India for spices, cotton, and silk; by the 1740s, the English and French had
become the leading rivals in India, just as they were in North America. Both coun-
tries extended their power as India’s Muslim rulers lost control to local Hindu
princes, rebellious Sikhs, invading Persians, and their own provincial governors. A
548 Chapter 17 The Atlantic System and Its Consequences
[ 1700–1750
]
few thousand Europeans lived in India, though many thousand more soldiers were
stationed there to protect them. The staple of trade with India in the early 1700s was
calico — lightweight, brightly colored cotton cloth that caught on as a fashion in
Europe. English and French slave traders sold calico to the Africans in exchange for
slaves.
Although contemporaries could not have realized it then, this was the start of
the modern population explosion. It appears that a decline in the death rate, rather
than a rise in the birthrate, explains the turnaround. Three main factors contributed
to increased longevity: better weather and hence more bountiful harvests, improved
agricultural techniques, and the plague’s disappearance after 1720.
By the early eighteenth century, the effects of economic expansion and popula-
tion growth brought about a consumer revolution. For example, at Nantes, the center
of the French sugar trade, imports quadrupled between 1698 and 1733. Tea, chocolate,
and coffee became virtual necessities. In 1700, England had two thousand coffee-
houses; by 1740, every English country town had at least two. Paris got its first cafés
at the end of the seventeenth century, and Berlin opened its first coffeehouse in 1714.
A new economic dynamic steadily took shape that has influenced all of subse-
quent history. More and more people escaped the confines of a subsistence economy,
in which peasants produced barely enough to support themselves from year to year.
As ordinary people gained more disposable income, demand for nonessential con-
sumer goods rose. These included not only the new colonial products such as coffee
and tea but also tables, chairs, sheets, chamber pots, lamps, and mirrors — and for the
better off still, coffee- and teapots, china, cutlery, chests of drawers, desks, clocks,
and pictures for the walls.
Rising demand created more jobs and more income and yet more purchas-
ing power in a mutually reinforcing cycle. In the English economic literature of the
1690s and early 1700s, writers reacted to these developments by expressing a new
view of humans as consuming
animals with boundless appe-
tites. Change did not occur all
at once, however. The consumer
revolution spread from the cities
Agricultural Revolution
Although Britain, France, and the Dutch Republic shared the enthusiasm for con-
sumer goods, Britain’s domestic market grew most quickly. In Britain, as agricultural
output increased by 43 percent over the course of the 1700s, the population increased
by 70 percent. The British imported grain to feed the growing population, but they
also benefited from the development of techniques that together constituted an
agricultural revolution. It was not new machinery but rather increasingly aggressive
attitudes toward investment and management that propelled this revolution. The
Dutch and the Flemish had pioneered many agricultural management techniques in
the 1600s, but the British took them further.
Four major changes occurred in British agriculture that eventually spread to
other countries. First, farmers increased the amount of land under cultivation by
draining wetlands and by growing crops on previously uncultivated common lands
(acreage maintained by the community for grazing). Second, those farmers who could
afford it consolidated small, scattered plots into larger, more efficient units. Third,
livestock raising became more closely linked to crop growing, and the yields of each
increased. For centuries, most farmers had rotated their fields in and out of produc-
tion to replenish the soil. Now farmers planted carefully chosen fodder crops such
as clover and turnips that added nutrients to the soil, thereby eliminating the need
to leave a field fallow (unplanted) every two or three years. With more fodder avail-
able, farmers could raise more livestock, which in turn produced more manure to
[1700–1750
] New Social and Cultural Patterns 551
fertilize grain fields. Fourth, selective breeding of animals combined with the increase
in fodder to improve the quality and size of herds. By the 1730s and 1740s, agricul-
tural output had increased dramatically, and prices for food had fallen because of
these interconnected innovations.
Changes in agricultural practices did not benefit all landowners equally. The
biggest British landowners consolidated their holdings in the “enclosure movement.”
They put pressure on small farmers and villagers to sell their land or give up their
common lands. The big landlords then fenced off (enclosed) their property. Because
enclosure eliminated community grazing rights, it frequently sparked a struggle
between the big landlords and villagers, and in Britain it normally required an act
of Parliament. Such acts became increasingly common in the second half of the
eighteenth century, and by the century’s end six million acres of common lands had
been enclosed and developed. In this way the English peasantry largely disappeared,
replaced by a more hierarchical society of big landlords, enterprising tenant farmers,
and poor agricultural laborers.
The new agricultural techniques spread slowly from Britain and the Low Coun-
tries (the Dutch Republic and the Austrian Netherlands) to the rest of western
Europe. Outside a few pockets, however, subsistence agriculture (producing just
enough to get by rather than surpluses for the market) continued to dominate farm-
ing in western Europe and Scandinavia. Unlike the populations of the highly urban-
ized Low Countries (where half the people lived in towns and cities), most Europe-
ans, western and eastern, eked out their existence in the countryside and could barely
participate in the new markets for consumer goods.
In eastern Europe, the condition of peasants worsened in the areas where land-
lords tried hardest to improve crop yields. To produce more for the Baltic grain
market, aristocratic landholders in Prussia, Poland, and parts of Russia drained wet-
lands, cultivated moors, and built dikes. They also forced peasants off lands that the
peasants had worked for themselves, and they increased compulsory labor services
(the critical element in serfdom). Some eastern landowners grew fabulously wealthy.
The Potocki family in the Polish Ukraine, for example, owned three million acres of
land and had 130,000 serfs.
survived by intermittent work and charity. Women married to artisans and shopkeep-
ers often kept the accounts, supervised employees, and ran the household as well.
Every middle-class and upper-class family employed servants; artisans and shop-
keepers frequently hired them, too. Women from poorer families usually worked as
domestic servants until they married. Four out of five domestic servants in the city
were female. In large cities such as London, the servant population grew faster than
the population of the city as a whole.
Social status in the cities was readily visible. Wide, spacious streets graced rich
districts; the houses had gardens, and the air was relatively fresh. In poor districts,
the streets were narrow, dirty, dark, humid, and smelly, and the houses were damp
and crowded. The poorest people were homeless, sleeping under bridges or in aban-
doned buildings. A Neapolitan prince described his homeless neighbors as “lying
like filthy animals, with no distinction of age or sex.”
Like shelter, clothing was a reliable social indicator. The poorest workingwomen
in Paris wore woolen skirts and blouses of dark colors over petticoats, a bodice, and
a corset. They also donned caps of various sorts, cotton stockings, and shoes (prob-
ably their only pair). Workingmen dressed even more drably. Many occupations
could be recognized by their dress: no one could confuse lawyers in their dark robes
with masons or butchers in their special aprons, for example. People higher on the
social ladder were more likely to sport a variety of fabrics, colors, and unusual designs
in their clothing and to own many different outfits. Social status was not an abstract
idea; it permeated every detail of daily life.
The ability to read and write also reflected social differences. People in the upper
classes were more literate than those in the lower classes; city people were more liter-
ate than peasants. Protestant countries appear to have been more successful at pro-
moting education and literacy than Catholic countries, perhaps because of the Prot-
estant emphasis on Bible reading. Widespread literacy among the lower classes was
first achieved in the Protestant areas of Switzerland and in Presbyterian Scotland. In
France, literacy doubled in the eighteenth century thanks to the spread of parish
schools, but still only one in two men and one in four women could read and write.
Most peasants remained illiterate. Few schools existed, teachers received low wages,
and no country had yet established a national system of education.
A new literate public nonetheless arose among the middle classes of the cities.
More books and periodicals were published than ever before, another aspect of the
consumer revolution. The trend began in the 1690s in Britain and the Dutch Republic
and gradually accelerated. In 1695, new newspapers and magazines proliferated when
the British government stopped demanding that each publication have a government-
approved license. The first London daily newspaper came out in 1702, and in 1709
Joseph Addison and Richard Steele published the first literary magazine, The Spec-
tator. They devoted their magazine to the cultural improvement of the increasingly
influential middle class. By the 1720s, twenty-four provincial newspapers were pub-
lished in England. In the London coffeehouses, an edition of a single newspaper might
reach ten thousand male readers. Women did their reading at home. Except in the
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Dutch Republic, newspapers on the continent lagged behind and often consisted
mainly of advertising with little critical commentary. France, for example, had no
daily paper until 1777.
Rococo Painting
The rococo emphasis on interiors, on dec-
oration, and on intimacy rather than
monumental grandeur are evident in Fran-
çois Boucher’s painting The Luncheon
(1739). The painting also draws attention
to new consumer items, from the mirror
and the clock to chocolate, children’s
toys, a small Buddha statue, and the intri-
cately designed furniture. (Louvre, Paris,
France / Alfredo Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at Art
Resource, NY.)
[
1700–1750
] New Social and Cultural Patterns 555
opera houses by 1700, and the Covent Garden opera house opened in London in
1732.
The growth of a public that appreciated and supported music had much the
same effect as the extension of the reading public: like authors, composers could now
begin to liberate themselves from court patronage and work for a paying audience.
The composer George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) was among the first to grasp the
new directions in music. A German by birth, Handel wrote operas in Italy and then
moved in 1710 to Britain, where he wrote music for the court and began composing
oratorios. The oratorio, a form Handel introduced in Britain, combined the drama
of opera with the majesty of religious and ceremonial music and featured the chorus
over the soloists. The “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s oratorio Messiah (1741) is
perhaps the single best-known piece of Western classical music. It reflected the com-
poser’s personal, deeply felt piety but also his willingness to combine musical
materials into a dramatic form that captured the enthusiasm of the new public.
Nothing captured the imagination of the new public more than the novel, the liter-
ary genre whose very name underscored the eighteenth-century taste for novelty. More
than three hundred French novels appeared between 1700 and 1730. During this
unprecedented explosion, the novel took on its modern form and became more con-
cerned with individual psychology and social description than with the adventure tales
popular earlier (such as Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote). The novel’s popularity
was closely tied to the expansion of the reading public, and novels were available in
serial form in periodicals or from the many booksellers who served the new market.
Women figured prominently in novels as characters, and women writers
abounded. The English author Eliza Haywood (1693?–1756) earned her living turning
out a stream of novels with titles such as Persecuted Virtue, Constancy Rewarded, and
The History of Betsy Thoughtless — all showing a concern for the proper place of
women as models of virtue in a changing world. Haywood’s male counterpart was
Daniel Defoe (1660–1731), a merchant’s son who had a diverse and colorful career
as a manufacturer, political spy, novelist, and social commentator. Defoe is best known
for his novel Robinson Crusoe (1719). The story of the adventures of a shipwrecked
sailor, Robinson Crusoe portrayed the new values of the time: to survive, Crusoe had
to employ fearless entrepreneurial ingenuity. He had to be ready for the unexpected
and be able to improvise in every situation. He was, in short, the model for the new
man in an expanding economy. Crusoe’s patronizing attitude toward the black man
Friday now draws much critical attention, but his discovery of Friday shows how the
fate of blacks and whites had become intertwined in the new colonial environment.
Religious Revivals
Despite the novel’s growing popularity, religious books and pamphlets still sold in
huge numbers, and most Europeans remained devout, even as their religions were
changing. In this period, a Protestant revivalist movement known as Pietism rocked
the complacency of the established churches in northern Europe. Pietists believed in
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a mystical religion of the heart; they wanted a deeply emotional, even ecstatic reli-
gion. They urged intense Bible study, which in turn promoted popular education
and contributed to the increase in literacy. Many Pietists attended catechism instruc-
tion every day and also went to morning and evening prayer meetings in addition
to regular Sunday services. Although Pietism appealed to both Lutherans and Cal-
vinists, it had the greatest impact in Lutheran Prussia, where it taught the virtues of
hard work, obedience, and devotion to duty.
Catholicism also had its versions of religious revival, especially in France. A French-
woman, Jeanne Marie Guyon (1648–1717), attracted many noblewomen and a few
leading clergymen to her own Catholic brand of Pietism, known as Quietism. Claim-
ing miraculous visions and astounding prophecies, she urged a mystical union with
God through prayer and simple devotion. Despite papal condemnation and intense
controversy within Catholic circles in France, Guyon had followers all over Europe.
Even more influential were the Jansenists, who gained many new adherents to
their austere form of Catholicism despite Louis XIV’s harassment and repeated con-
demnation by the papacy. Under the pressure of religious and political persecution,
Jansenism took a revivalist turn in the 1720s. At the funeral of a Jansenist priest in
Paris in 1727, the crowd who flocked to the grave claimed to witness a series of miracu-
lous healings. Some believers fell into frenzied convulsions, claiming to be inspired by
the Holy Spirit through the intercession of
the dead priest. After midcentury, Jansen-
REVIEW QUESTION How were new social
trends reflected in cultural life in the early ism became even more politically active as
1700s? its adherents joined in opposition to the
crown’s policies on religion.
emerged as the new center in the balance of power. A coalition led by Britain and
joined by most of the European powers had confronted Louis XIV’s French forces
across Europe. The conflict extended to the Caribbean and North and South Amer-
ica as well. The casualties mounted inexorably: in the battle of Blenheim in southern
Germany in 1704, 108,000 soldiers fought and 33,000 were killed or wounded — in
just one day. At Malplaquet, near the northern French border, a great battle in 1709
engaged 166,000 soldiers and cavalrymen, and 36,000 of them were killed or wounded.
Those allied against Louis won at Malplaquet, but they lost twice as many men as the
French did and could not pursue their advantage. Everyone rejoiced when peace came
(Map 17.2).
By the terms of the peace, French king Louis XIV’s grandson was confirmed as
King Philip V of Spain (r. 1700–1746) but only on the condition that he renounce
any claim to the French throne. None of the other powers could countenance a joint
French-Spanish monarchy. Philip opened Spain further to the rest of Europe and sta-
bilized the currency, but he could not revive Spain’s military prestige or commercial
position. Spain consistently imported more from Britain and France than it exported
to them. As a country that had been created by a campaign against Muslims within
its boundaries, Spain remained firmly in the grip of the Catholic clergy, which insisted
on the censorship of dissident or heretical ideas. Although the capital city, Madrid,
had 200,000 inhabitants, laws prohibited people from smoking, reading newspapers,
or talking politics in the cafés and inns of the city — precisely the activities flourish-
ing in England, France, and the Dutch Republic.
When Louis XIV died in 1715, his five-year-old great-grandson succeeded him
as Louis XV (r. 1715–1774), with the duke of Orléans (1674–1723), nephew of the
dead king, serving as regent for the young boy. To raise much-needed funds, in 1719
the regent encouraged the Scottish financier John Law to set up an official trading
company for North America and a state bank that issued paper money and stock
(without which trade depended on the available supply of gold and silver). The bank
was supposed to offer lower interest rates to the state, thus cutting the cost of financ-
ing the government’s debts. The value of the stock rose rapidly in a frenzy of specula-
tion, only to crash a few months later. France finally achieved a measure of financial
stability under the leadership of Cardinal Hercule de Fleury (1653–1743), the most
powerful member of the government after the death of the regent. Colonial trade
boomed. Peace and the acceptance of limits on territorial expansion inaugurated a
century of French prosperity.
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Territories gained after the Peace of Utrecht, 1714
French Bourbon lands To Great Britain
Spanish Bourbon lands To the Austrian Empire
Austrian Habsburg lands The Jacobite rising of 1715 M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a
Prussian lands Main areas of fighting during the
War of the Spanish Succession, 1701–1713
Great Britain
Boundary of the Holy Roman Empire
becoming “Great Britain” in 1707. At the same time, Dutch imperial power declined;
by 1700, the British dominated the seas, and the Dutch, with their small population
of less than two million, came to depend on alliances with bigger powers.
English relations with Scotland and Ireland were complicated by the problem of
succession: William and Mary had no children. To ensure a Protestant succession,
Parliament ruled that Mary’s sister, Anne, would succeed William and Mary and that
the Protestant house of Hanover in Germany would succeed Anne if she had no
surviving heirs. Catholics were excluded. When Queen Anne (r. 1702–1714) died
leaving no children, the elector of Hanover, a Protestant great-grandson of James I,
consequently became King George I (r. 1714–1727). The house of Hanover — renamed
the house of Windsor during World War I — still occupies the British throne today.
Support from the Scots and Irish for this solution did not come easily because
many in Scotland and Ireland supported the claims to the throne of the deposed
Catholic king, James II, and, after his death in 1701, his son James Edward. Out of
fear of this Jacobitism (from the Latin Jacobus, for “James”), Scottish Protestant lead-
ers agreed to the Act of Union of 1707, which abolished the Scottish Parliament and
affirmed the Scots’ recognition of the Protestant Hanoverian succession. The Scots
agreed to obey the Parliament of Great Britain, which would include Scottish mem-
bers in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. A Jacobite rebellion in Scot-
land in 1715, aiming to restore the Stuart line, was suppressed (see Map 17.2, page
558). The threat of Jacobitism nonetheless continued into the 1740s.
The Irish — 90 percent of whom were Catholic — proved even more difficult to
subdue. William III had to take command of the joint English and Dutch forces to
defeat the Irish supporters of James II, and after that defeat Catholics in Ireland faced
yet more confiscation and legal restrictions. By 1700, Irish Catholics, who in 1640
had owned 60 percent of the land in Ireland, owned just 14 percent. The Protestant-
controlled Irish Parliament passed a series of laws limiting the rights of the Catholic
majority: Catholics could not marry Protestants, send children abroad for education,
or establish Catholic schools at home. Moreover, Catholics could not sit in Parlia-
ment, nor could they vote for its members unless they took an oath renouncing
Catholic doctrine. These and a host of other laws reduced Catholic Ireland to the
status of a colony.
In Britain’s constitutional system, the monarch ruled with Parliament. The crown
chose ministers, directed policy, and supervised administration, while Parliament
raised revenue, passed laws, and represented the interests of the people to the crown.
The powers of Parliament were reaffirmed by the Triennial Act in 1694, which pro-
vided that Parliaments meet at least once every three years (this was extended to
seven years in 1716, after the Whigs had established their ascendancy). Only 200,000
propertied men could vote, out of a population of more than 5 million, and a few
hundred families controlled all the important political offices.
George I and George II (r. 1727–1760) relied on one man, Sir Robert Walpole
(1676–1745), to help them manage their relations with Parliament. From his posi-
tion as First Lord of the Treasury, Walpole made himself into the first, or “prime,”
560 Chapter 17 The Atlantic System and Its Consequences
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minister, leading the House of Commons from 1721 to 1742. Although appointed
initially by the king, Walpole established an enduring pattern of parliamentary gov-
ernment in which a prime minister from the leading party guided legislation through
the House of Commons. Walpole also built a vast patronage machine that dispensed
government jobs to win support for the crown’s policies.
The partisan division between the Whigs, who supported the Hanoverian suc-
cession and the rights of dissenting Protestants, and the Tories, who had backed the
Stuart line and the Church of England, did not hamper Great Britain’s pursuit of
economic, military, and colonial power. In this period, Great Britain became a great
power on the world stage by virtue of its navy and its ability to finance major military
involvement in wars. The founding in 1694 of the Bank of England — which, unlike
the French bank, endured — enabled the government to raise money at low interest
for foreign wars. By the 1740s, the government could borrow more than four times
what it could in the 1690s.
When William of Orange (William III of England) died in 1702, he left no heirs,
and for forty-five years the Dutch lived without a stadholder. The merchant ruling
class of some two thousand families dominated the Dutch Republic more than ever,
but they presided over a country that counted for less in international power politics.
The Dutch population was not growing as fast as others, and the Dutch share of the
Baltic trade decreased from 50 percent in 1720 to less than 30 percent by the 1770s.
The output of Leiden textiles dropped to one-third of its 1700 level by 1740. Ship-
building, paper manufacturing, tobacco processing, salt refining, and pottery produc-
tion all dwindled as well. The biggest exception to the downward trend was trade with
the New World, which increased with escalating demands for sugar and tobacco. The
Dutch shifted their interest away from great-power rivalries and toward those areas of
international trade and finance where they could establish an enduring presence.
*Peter introduced the Julian calendar, then still used in Protestant but not Catholic countries. Later in
the eighteenth century, Protestant Europe abandoned the Julian for the Gregorian calendar. Not until
1918 was the Gregorian calendar adopted in Russia, at which point Russia’s calendar had fallen thir-
teen days behind Europe’s.
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which they spoke even at home. Such changes affected only the very top of Russian
society, however; the mass of the population had no contact with the new ideas and
ended up paying for the innovations either in ruinous new taxation or by building
St. Petersburg, a project that cost the lives of thousands of workers. Serfs remained
tied to the land, completely dominated by their noble lords.
Peter also reorganized government and finance on Western models and, like
other absolute rulers, strengthened his army. With ruthless recruiting methods,
which included branding a cross on every recruit’s left hand to prevent desertion, he
forged an army of 200,000 men and equipped it with modern weapons. He not only
built the first navy in Russian history but also created schools for artillery, engineer-
ing, and military medicine. Not surprisingly, taxes tripled.
The tsar allowed nothing to stand in his way. He did not hesitate to use torture,
and he executed thousands. He gave a special guard regiment unprecedented power
to expedite cases against those suspected of rebellion, espionage, pretensions to the
throne, or just “unseemly utterances” against him. Because his only son, Alexei, had
allied himself with Peter’s critics, the tsar threw him into prison, where the young
man mysteriously died.
To control the often restive nobility, Peter insisted that all noblemen engage in
state service. The Table of Ranks (1722) classified them into military, administrative,
and court categories, a codification of social and legal relationships in Russia that
would last for nearly two centuries. Because the nobles lacked a secure independent
status, Peter could command them to a degree that was unimaginable in western
Europe. State service was not only compulsory but also permanent. Moreover, the
male children of those in service had to be registered by the age of ten and begin
serving at fifteen. To increase his authority over the Russian Orthodox church, Peter
allowed the office of patriarch (supreme head) to remain vacant, and in 1721 he
replaced it with the Holy Synod, a bureaucracy of laymen under his supervision.
Peter the Great’s success in building up state authority changed the balance of
power in eastern Europe. First he took on Sweden, which had dominated the Baltic
region since the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). Peter joined an anti-Swedish coali-
tion in 1700 with Denmark, Saxony, and Poland, but the ensuing Great Northern
War (1700–1721) went badly for the allies at first. The Swedes defeated Denmark,
quickly marched into Poland and Saxony, and then invaded Russia. Peter’s rebuilt
army finally defeated the Swedes at the battle of Poltava (1709), taking twenty-three
thousand Swedish soldiers prisoner and marking the end of Swedish imperial ambi-
tions in the Baltic (Map 17.3). Russia could then begin to compete with the great
powers Prussia, Austria, and France.
When the tide turned in the Great Northern War, King Frederick William I of
Prussia (r. 1713–1740) joined the Russian side and gained new territories. Prussia
had to make the most of every military opportunity because it was much smaller in
size and population than the other powers. Frederick William doubled the size of
the Prussian army; though still smaller than those of his rivals, it was the best-trained
and most up-to-date force in Europe. The army so dominated life in Prussia that the
[1700–1750
] Consolidation of the European State System 563
FINLAND
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0 250 500 miles
0 250 500 kilometers
MAP 17.3 Russia and Sweden after the Great Northern War, 1721
After the Great Northern War, Russia supplanted Sweden as the major power in the north.
Although Russia had a much larger population from which to draw its armies, Sweden made
the most of its advantages and gave way only after a great military struggle.
country earned the label “a large army with a small state attached.” One of the first
rulers to wear a military uniform as his everyday dress, Frederick William subordi-
nated the entire domestic administration to the army’s needs. He financed the army’s
growth by subjecting all the provinces to an excise tax on food, drink, and manu-
factured goods and by increasing rents on crown lands.
By 1685, France had embassies in all the important capitals. Nobles of ancient fami-
lies served as ambassadors to Rome, Madrid, Vienna, and London, whereas royal
officials were chosen for Switzerland, the Dutch Republic, and Venice. The ambas-
sador selected and paid for his own staff, which might be as large as eighty people.
The diplomatic system ensured a continuation of the principles of the Peace of West-
phalia (1648); in the midst of every crisis and war, the great powers would convene
and hammer out a written agreement detailing the requirements for peace.
Adroit diplomacy could smooth the road toward peace, but success in war still
depended on sheer numbers — of men and of muskets. Because each state’s strength
depended largely on the size of its army, the growth and health of the population
increasingly entered into government calculations. William Petty’s Political Arithmetick
(1690) offered statistical estimates of human capital — that is, of population and
wages — to determine Britain’s national wealth. Government officials devoted increased
effort to the statistical estimation of total population and rates of births, deaths, and
marriages.
Physicians used the new population statistics to explain the environmental
causes of disease, another new preoccupation in this period. Petty, trained as a physi-
cian himself, devised a quantitative scale that distinguished healthy from unhealthy
places largely on the basis of air quality, an early precursor of modern environmen-
tal studies. Cities were the unhealthiest places because garbage and excrement (ani-
mal and human) accumulated where people lived densely packed together. The Irish
writer Jonathan Swift described what happened in London after a big rainstorm:
“Filths of all hues and colors . . . sweepings from butchers’ stalls, dung, guts and
blood . . . dead cats and turniptops come tumbling down the flood.” Reacting to
newly collected data on climate, disease, and population, local governments under-
took such measures as draining low-lying areas, burying refuse, and cleaning wells.
Not all changes came from direct government intervention. Hospitals, founded
originally as charities concerned foremost with the moral worthiness of the poor,
gradually evolved into medical institutions that defined patients by their diseases.
Physicians began to rely on postmortem dissections in the hospital to gain better
knowledge, a practice most patients’ families resented. Press reports of body snatch-
ing and grave robbing by surgeons and their apprentices outraged the public well
into the 1800s.
Despite the change in hospitals, a medical profession with nationwide organiza-
tions and licensing had not yet emerged, and no clear line separated trained physi-
cians from quacks. Patients in a hospital were as likely to catch a deadly disease as
to be cured there. Antiseptics were virtually unknown. Because doctors believed that
most insanity was caused by disorders in the system of bodily “humors,” their pre-
scribed treatments included blood transfusions; ingestion of bitter substances such
as coffee, quinine, and soap; immersion in water; various forms of exercise; and
burning or cauterizing the body to allow “black vapors” to escape.
Hardly any infectious diseases could be cured, though inoculation against small-
pox spread from the Middle East to Europe in the early eighteenth century, thanks
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largely to the efforts of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762). Wife of the British
ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Montagu witnessed firsthand the Turkish use
of inoculation. When a new smallpox epidemic threatened England in 1721, she
called on her physician to inoculate her daughter. Inoculation against smallpox
spread more widely only after 1796, when the English physician Edward Jenner
developed a serum based on cowpox, a milder disease.
Public bathhouses had disappeared from cities in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries because they seemed to be a source of disorderly behavior and epidemic
illness. In the eighteenth century, even private bathing came into disfavor because
people feared the effects of contact with water. Bathing was hazardous, physicians
insisted, because it opened the body to disease. The upper classes associated clean-
liness not with baths but with frequently
changed linens, powdered hair, and per-
REVIEW QUESTION What events and develop-
ments led to greater stability and more limited
fume, which was thought to strengthen the
warfare within Europe? body and refresh the brain by counteract-
ing corrupt and foul air.
After attacking Louis XIV’s anti-Protestant policies, Bayle took a more general stand
in favor of religious toleration. No state in Europe officially offered complete toler-
ance, though the Dutch Republic came closest with its tacit acceptance of Catholics,
dissident Protestant groups, and open Jewish communities. In 1697, Bayle published
his Historical and Critical Dictionary, which cited all the errors and delusions that
he could find in past and present writers of all religions. Even religion must meet
the test of reasonableness: “Any particular dogma, whatever it may be, whether it is
advanced on the authority of the Scriptures, or whatever else may be its origins, is
to be regarded as false if it clashes with the clear and definite conclusions of the
natural understanding [reason].”
Bayle’s insistence on rational investigation seemed to challenge the authority of
faith. Other scholars challenged the authority of the Bible by subjecting it to histori-
cal criticism. Discoveries in geology in the early eighteenth century showed that
marine fossils dated immensely further back than the biblical flood story suggested.
Investigations of miracles, comets, and oracles — like the growing literature against
belief in witchcraft — urged the use of reason to combat superstition and prejudice.
Defenders of church and state published books warning of the new skepticism’s dan-
gers. The spokesman for Louis XIV’s absolutism, the bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet,
warned that “reason is the guide of their choice, but reason only brings them face
to face with vague conjectures and baffling perplexities.” Human beings, the tradi-
tionalists held, were simply incapable of subjecting everything to reason, especially
in the realm of religion.
State authorities found religious skepticism equally unsettling because it threat-
ened to undermine state power, too. The extensive literature of criticism was not
568 Chapter 17 The Atlantic System and Its Consequences
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]
limited to France, but much of it was published in French, and the French govern-
ment took the lead in suppressing the more outspoken works. Forbidden books were
then often published in the Dutch Republic, Britain, or Switzerland and smuggled
back across the border to a public whose appetite was only whetted by censorship.
The most influential writer of the early Enlightenment was a Frenchman born
into the upper middle class, François-Marie Arouet, known by his pen name, Vol-
taire (1694–1778). Voltaire took inspiration from Bayle, once giving him the follow-
ing tongue-in-cheek description: “He gives facts with such odious fidelity, he exposes
the arguments for and against with such dastardly impartiality, he is so intolerably
intelligible, that he leads people of only ordinary common sense to judge and even
to doubt.” Voltaire’s tangles with church and state began in the early 1730s, when he
published his Letters Concerning the English Nation (the English version appeared in
1733), in which he devoted several chapters to scientist Isaac Newton and philoso-
pher John Locke and used the virtues of the British as a way to attack Catholic
bigotry and government rigidity in France. He spent two years in exile in Britain
when the French state responded to his book with an order for his arrest.
Voltaire also popularized Newton’s scientific discoveries in his Elements of the
Philosophy of Newton (1738). The French state and many European theologians con-
sidered Newtonianism threatening because it glorified the human mind and seemed
to reduce God to an abstract, external, rationalistic force. So sensational was the
success of Voltaire’s book on Newton that a hostile Jesuit reported that “all Paris
resounds with Newton, all Paris stammers Newton, all Paris studies and learns New-
ton.” Before long, Voltaire was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in London and
in Edinburgh as well as being admitted to twenty other scientific academies. Vol-
taire’s fame continued to grow, reaching truly astounding proportions in the 1750s
and 1760s.
Conclusion
Expansion of colonies overseas and economic development at home created greater
wealth, longer life spans, and higher expectations for Europeans in the first half of
the eighteenth century. In these better times for many, a spirit of optimism prevailed.
People could now spend money on newspapers, novels, travel literature, and music
as well as on coffee, tea, and cotton cloth. Not everyone shared equally in the ben-
efits, however: slaves toiled in misery for their masters in the Americas, eastern
European serfs found themselves ever more closely bound to their noble lords, and
rural folk almost everywhere tasted few fruits of consumer society.
Politics changed, too, as experts urged government intervention to improve pub-
lic health, and states found it in their interest to settle many international disputes
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Chapter 17 Review
Key Terms and People
Be sure that you can identify the term or person and explain its historical significance.
Atlantic system (p. 541) agricultural revolution (p. 550) Westernization (p. 560)
plantation (p. 542) rococo (p. 554) War of the Austrian
mestizo (p. 547) Pietism (p. 555) Succession (p. 564)
buccaneers (p. 547) Robert Walpole (p. 559) Enlightenment (p. 566)
consumer revolution (p. 549) Peter the Great (p. 560) Voltaire (p. 568)
Review Questions
1. How was consumerism related to slavery in the early eighteenth century?
2. How were new social trends reflected in cultural life in the early 1700s?
3. What events and developments led to greater stability and more limited warfare within
Europe?
4. What were the major issues in the early decades of the Enlightenment?
Making Connections
1. How did the rise of slavery and the plantation system change European politics and
society?
2. Why was the Enlightenment born just at the moment that the Atlantic system took shape?
3. What were the major differences between the wars of the first half of the eighteenth cen-
tury and those of the seventeenth century? (Refer to Chapters 15 and 16.)
4. During the first half of the eighteenth century, what were the major issues affecting peas-
ants in France and serfs in Poland and Russia?
Suggested References
The slave trade Web site listed here offers the most up-to-date information about the workings
of the Atlantic system, and the Hypercities Web site allows the viewer to trace the growth of cer-
tain cities over time. The definitive study of the early Enlightenment is the book by Hazard, but
many others have contributed biographies of individual figures or studies of women writers.
Black, Jeremy. European Warfare in a Global Context, 1660–1815. 2007.
Blackburn, Robin. The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights. 2013.
Cracraft, James. The Revolution of Peter the Great. 2009.
[1700–1750
] Chapter 17 Review 573
Important Events
*Primary source.
The Promise of
18
Enlightenment
1750–1789
I
n the summer of 1766, Empress Catherine II of Russia (known as Catherine the
Great) wrote to Voltaire, one of the leaders of the Enlightenment, praising him
for entering “into combat against the enemies of mankind” and for fighting super-
stition, fanaticism, ignorance, and “evil judges.” Catherine corresponded regularly
with Voltaire, a writer who, at home in France, found himself in constant conflict
with authorities of church and state. Her admiring letter shows how influential
Enlightenment ideas had become by the middle of the eighteenth century. Even an
absolutist ruler such as Catherine endorsed
Catherine the Great many aspects of the Enlightenment call for
In this portrait (c. 1762) by the reform.
Danish painter Vigilius Eriksen, the Enlightenment writers such as Voltaire
Russian empress Catherine the used every means at their disposal — including
Great is shown on horseback, much personal interaction with rulers — to argue for
like any male ruler of the time. Born
Sophia Augusta Frederika of Anhalt-
reform. Everything had to be examined in the
Zerbst in 1729, Catherine was the cold light of reason, and anything that did not
daughter of a minor German prince. promote the improvement of humanity was to
When she married the future tsar be jettisoned. As a result, Enlightenment writ-
Peter III in 1745, she promptly ers supported religious toleration, attacked the
learned Russian and adopted Rus-
legal use of torture to extract confessions, and
sian Orthodoxy. Peter, physically and
mentally frail, proved no match for criticized censorship by state or church. The
her; in 1762 she staged a coup book trade and new places for urban social-
against him and took his place when izing, such as coffeehouses and learned soci-
he was killed. (Musée des Beaux-Arts, eties, spread these ideas within a new elite of
Chartes, France / Bridgeman Images.)
middle- and upper-class men and women. In
contrast, the lower classes had little contact with
Enlightenment ideas. Their lives were shaped more profoundly by an increasing pop-
ulation, rising food prices, and ongoing wars among the great powers.
Rulers pursued Enlightenment reforms that they believed might enhance state
power, but they feared changes that might unleash popular discontent. All reform-
minded rulers faced potential challenges to their authority. They were right to be
575
576 Chapter 18 The Promise of Enlightenment
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concerned, for Enlightenment ideas paved the way for something much more radi-
cal and unexpected. The American Declaration of Independence in 1776 showed
how Enlightenment ideas could be trans-
CHAPTER FOCUS How did the Enlightenment
lated into democratic political practice.
influence Western politics, culture, and society? After 1789, democracy would come to
Europe as well.
Science in Action
In September 1783, the Montgolfier
brothers demonstrated their newly
invented hot air balloon at Versailles
with the royal family in attendance. The
flight reached an altitude of 1,500 feet,
covered two miles, and lasted eight min-
utes. The passengers — a sheep, a duck,
and a rooster — landed safely. Hydrogen
balloons were developed at the same
time and quickly replaced the hot air ver-
sions because they could fly higher and
longer. Thousands of people flocked to
see the launches. Colored etchings such
as the one shown here helped increase
public interest. (Private Collection / Bridgeman
Images.)
century, the philosophes could discuss ideas they might hesitate to put into print.
Best known was the salon of Madame Marie-Thérèse Geoffrin (1699–1777), a wealthy
middle-class widow. She corresponded extensively with influential people across
Europe, including Catherine the Great. Women’s salons helped galvanize intellec-
tual life and reform movements all over Europe. Wealthy Jewish women created nine
of the fourteen salons in Berlin at the end of the eighteenth century, and Princess
Zofia Czartoryska gathered around her in Warsaw the reform leaders of Poland-
Lithuania.
At the time, most Europeans believed in God. After Newton, however, and despite
Newton’s own deep religiosity, people could conceive of the universe as an eternally
existing, self-perpetuating machine, in which God’s intervention was unnecessary. In
short, such people could become either atheists (people who do not believe in God)
or deists (people who believe in God but give him no active role in earthly affairs).
For the first time, writers claimed the label atheist and disputed the common view
that atheism led inevitably to immorality.
Deists continued to believe in a benevolent, all-knowing God who had designed
the universe and set it in motion. But they usually rejected the idea that God directly
intercedes in the functioning of the universe, and they often criticized the churches
for their dogmatic intolerance of dissenters. Voltaire was a deist, and in his influential
Philosophical Dictionary (1764) he attacked most of the claims of organized Chris-
tianity, both Catholic and Protestant. Christianity, he argued, had been the prime
source of fanaticism and brutality among humans. Throughout his life, Voltaire’s
motto was Écrasez l’infâme — “Crush the infamous thing” (the “thing” being bigotry
and intolerance). French authorities publicly burned his Philosophical Dictionary.
Criticism of religious intolerance involved more than simply attacking the
church. Critics also had to confront the states to which churches were closely tied.
In 1762, a judicial case in Toulouse provoked an outcry throughout France that
Voltaire soon joined. When the son of a local Calvinist was found hanged (he had
probably committed suicide), magistrates accused the father, Jean Calas, of murder-
ing him to prevent his conversion to Catholicism. (Since Louis XIV’s revocation of
the Edict of Nantes in 1685, it had been illegal to practice Calvinism publicly in
France.) The all-Catholic parlement of Toulouse tried to extract the names of accom-
plices through torture — using a rope to pull up Calas’s arm while weighing down
his feet and then pouring water down his throat — but Calas refused to confess. The
torturers then executed him by breaking every bone in his body with an iron rod.
Voltaire launched a successful crusade to rehabilitate Calas’s good name and to
restore the family’s properties, which had been confiscated after his death. Voltaire’s
efforts eventually helped bring about the extension of civil rights to French Protes-
tants and encouraged campaigns to abolish the judicial use of torture.
Critics also assailed state and church support for European colonization and
slavery. One of the most popular books of the time was the Philosophical and Political
History of European Colonies and Commerce in the Two Indies, published in 1770 by
the abbé Guillaume Raynal (1713–1796), a French Catholic clergyman. Raynal and
his collaborators described in excruciating detail the destruction of native popula-
tions by Europeans and denounced the slave trade. Despite the criticism, the slave
trade continued. So did European exploration. British explorer James Cook (1728–
1779) charted the coasts of New Zealand and Australia, discovered New Caledonia,
and visited the ice fields of Antarctica.
The Enlightenment belief in natural rights helped fuel the antislavery movement,
which began to organize political campaigns against slavery in Britain, France, and
the new United States in the 1780s. Advocates of the abolition of slavery encouraged
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]
freed slaves to write the story of their enslavement. One such freed slave, Olaudah
Equiano, wrote of his kidnapping and enslavement in Africa and his long effort to
free himself. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, published in
1788, became an international best seller. Armed with such firsthand accounts of
slavery, abolitionists began to petition their governments for the abolition of the
slave trade and then of slavery itself.
Enlightenment critics of church and state usually advocated reform, not revo-
lution. For example, though he resided near the French-Swiss border in case he had
to flee, Voltaire made a fortune in financial speculations and ended up being cele-
brated in his last years as a national hero even by many former foes. Other philo-
sophes also believed that published criticism, rather than violent action, would bring
about necessary reforms. The philosophes generally regarded the lower classes — “the
people” — as ignorant, violent, and prone to superstition; as a result, they pinned
their hopes on educated elites and enlightened rulers.
tions raised by Smith. Rousseau, by contrast, emphasized the needs of the community
over those of the individual. His work, which led both toward democracy and toward
communism, continues to inspire heated debate in political science and sociology.
Adam Smith (1723–1790) optimistically believed that individual interests natu-
rally harmonized with those of the whole society. To explain how this natural har-
monization worked, he published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations in 1776. In this work, commonly known as The Wealth of Nations,
Smith insisted that individual self-interest, even greed, was quite compatible with
society’s best interest: the laws of supply and demand served as an “invisible hand”
ensuring that individual interests would be synchronized with those of the whole
society. Market forces naturally brought individual and social interests in line.
Smith rejected the prevailing mercantilist views that the general welfare would be
served by accumulating national wealth through agriculture or the hoarding of gold and
silver. Instead, he argued that the division of labor in manufacturing increased produc-
tivity and generated more wealth for society and well-being for the individual. Using
the example of the ordinary pin, Smith showed that when the manufacturing process
was broken down into separate operations — one man to draw out the wire, another to
straighten it, a third to cut it, a fourth to point it, and so on — workers who could make
only one pin a day on their own could make thousands by pooling their labor.
To maximize the effects of market forces and the division of labor, Smith
endorsed a concept called laissez-faire (“to leave alone”), in which the government
neither controls nor intervenes in the economy. He insisted that governments elimi-
nate all restrictions on the sale of land, remove restraints on the grain trade, and
abandon duties on imports. Free international trade, he argued, would stimulate
production everywhere and thus ensure the growth of national wealth. Governments,
he insisted, should restrict themselves to providing “security,” that is, national defense,
internal order, and public works.
Much more pessimistic about the relation between individual self-interest and
the good of society was Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778). In Rousseau’s view,
society itself threatened natural rights or freedoms: “Man is born free, and every-
where he is in chains.” Rousseau first gained fame by writing a prize-winning essay
in 1749 in which he argued that the revival of science and the arts had corrupted
social morals, not improved them. This startling conclusion seemed to oppose some
of the Enlightenment’s most cherished beliefs. Rather than improving society, he
claimed, science and art raised artificial barriers between people and their natural
state. Rousseau’s works extolled the simplicity of rural life over urban society.
Whereas earlier Rousseau had argued that society corrupted the individual by
taking him out of nature, in The Social Contract (1762) he aimed to show that the
right kind of political order could make people truly moral and free. Individual
moral freedom could be achieved only by learning to subject one’s individual inter-
ests to “the general will,” that is, the good of the community. Individuals did this by
entering into a social contract not with their rulers, but with one another. If everyone
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followed the general will, then all would be equally free and equally moral because
they lived under a law to which they had all consented.
Like Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and John Locke (1632–1704) in the seven-
teenth century, Rousseau derived his social contract from human nature, not from
history, tradition, or the Bible. He went much further than Hobbes or Locke, how-
ever, when he implied that people would be most free and moral under a republican
form of government with direct democracy. Neither Hobbes nor Locke favored
republics. Moreover, Rousseau roundly condemned slavery. Authorities in both
Geneva and Paris banned The Social Contract for undermining political authority.
Rousseau’s works would become a kind of political bible for the French revolutionar-
ies of 1789, and his attacks on private property inspired the communists of the
nineteenth century such as Karl Marx. Rousseau’s rather mystical concept of the
general will remains controversial because he insisted that the individual could be
“forced to be free.” Rousseau’s version of democracy did not preserve the individual
freedoms so important to Adam Smith.
ment than most other European countries. Major Works of the Enlightenment
In short, French elites had reason to com-
plain, the means to make their complaints 1751 Beginning of publication of the French
Encyclopedia
known, and a government torn between
1755 David Hume, The Natural History of
the desire to censor dissident ideas and the Religion
desire to appear open to modernity and
1762 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social
progress. Contract
By the 1760s, the French government 1764 Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary
regularly ignored the publication of many 1770 Abbé Guillaume Raynal, Philosophical
works once thought offensive or subver- and Political History of European Colo-
sive. In addition, a growing flood of works nies and Commerce in the Two Indies
printed abroad poured into France and cir- 1776 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature
culated underground. Private companies and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
in Dutch and Swiss cities made fortunes 1781 Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure
Reason
smuggling illegal books into France over
mountain passes and back roads. Foreign
printers provided secret catalogs of their
offerings and sold their products through booksellers who were willing to market
forbidden books for a high price — among them not only philosophical treatises of
the Enlightenment but also pornographic books and pamphlets (some by Diderot)
lampooning the Catholic clergy and leading members of the royal court. In the 1770s
and 1780s, lurid descriptions of sexual promiscuity at the French court helped under-
mine the popularity of the throne.
Whereas the French philosophes often took a violently anticlerical and combat-
ive tone, their German counterparts avoided direct political confrontations with
authorities. Gotthold Lessing (1729–1781) complained in 1769 that Prussia was still
“the most slavish society in Europe” in its lack of freedom to criticize government
policies. Lessing promoted religious toleration for the Jews and spiritual emancipa-
tion of Germans from foreign, especially French, models of culture, which still domi-
nated. Lessing also introduced the German Jewish writer Moses Mendelssohn (1729–
1786) into Berlin salon society. Mendelssohn labored to build bridges between
German and Jewish culture by arguing that Judaism was a rational and undogmatic
religion. He believed that persecution and discrimination against the Jews would end
as reason triumphed.
Reason was also the chief focus of the most influential German thinker of the
Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). A university professor who lectured
on everything from economics to astronomy, Kant wrote one of the most important
works in the history of Western philosophy, The Critique of Pure Reason (1781). Kant
admired Smith and especially Rousseau, whose portrait he displayed proudly in his
study. Kant established the doctrine of idealism, the belief that true understanding
can come only from examining the ways in which ideas are formed in the mind. Ideas
are shaped, Kant argued, not just by sensory information (a position central to empiri-
cism, a philosophy based on John Locke’s writings) but also by the operation on that
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information of mental categories such as space and time. In Kant’s philosophy, these
“categories of understanding” were neither sensory nor supernatural; they were
entirely ideal and abstract and located in the human mind.
George Whitefield
This colored etching depicts one of the most prominent preachers of the Great Awakening, the
English Methodist George Whitefield, preaching in the British North American colonies. White-
field visited the colonies seven times, sometimes for long periods, and drew tens of thousands
of people to his dramatic and emotional open-air sermons, which moved many listeners to
tears of repentance. Whitefield was a celebrity in his time and is considered by many to be the
founder of the Evangelical movement. (The Granger Collection, NYC — All rights reserved.)
and a methodical approach to religious study and observance. In 1738, Wesley began
preaching his new brand of Protestantism, which emphasized an intense personal
experience of salvation and a life of thrift, abstinence, and hard work. Traveling all
over the British Isles, Wesley preached forty thousand sermons in fifty years, an aver-
age of fifteen a week. The Church of England refused to let him preach in the churches.
In response, Wesley began to ordain his own clergy. While considered radical in
religious views, the Methodist leadership
remained politically conservative during
REVIEW QUESTION What were the major dif-
Wesley’s lifetime; Wesley himself wrote
ferences between the Enlightenment in France,
many pamphlets urging order, loyalty, and Great Britain, and the German states?
submission to higher authorities.
court nobility continued to sport swords, plumed hats, makeup, and elaborate wigs,
while middle-class men wore simpler and more somber clothing. Aristocrats had
their own seats in church and their own quarters in the universities. Frederick II of
Prussia (r. 1740–1786), who came to be known as Frederick the Great, made sure
that nobles dominated both the army officer corps and the civil bureaucracy. Russia’s
Catherine the Great (r. 1762–1796) granted the nobility vast tracts of land, the exclu-
sive right to own serfs, and exemption from personal taxes and corporal punishment.
Her Charter of the Nobility of 1785 codified these privileges in exchange for the
nobles’ political subservience to the state. In Austria, Spain, the Italian states, Poland-
Lithuania, and Russia, most nobles consequently cared little about Enlightenment
ideas; they did not read the books of the philosophes and feared reforms that might
challenge their dominance of rural society.
In France, Britain, and the western German states, however, the nobility proved
more open to the new ideas. Half of Rousseau’s correspondents, for example, were
nobles. The nobles of western Europe sometimes married into middle-class families
and formed with them a new mixed elite, united by common interests in reform and
new cultural tastes.
Neoclassical Style
In this Georgian interior of Syon House on the outskirts of London, various neoclassical motifs
are readily apparent: Greek columns, Greek-style statuary on top of the columns, and Roman-
style mosaics in the floor. The Scottish architect Robert Adam created this room for the duke
of Northumberland in the 1760s. Adam had spent four years in Italy and returned in 1758 to
London to decorate homes in the “Adam style,” meaning the neoclassical manner. (Syon House,
Middlesex, UK / Bridgeman Images.)
complete. Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) and his fellow Austrian Wolfgang Ama-
deus Mozart (1756–1791) both wrote for noble patrons, but by the early 1800s their
compositions had been incorporated into the canon of concert classics all over
Europe. Incredibly prolific, both excelled in combining lightness, clarity, and pro-
found emotion. Both also wrote numerous Italian operas, a genre whose popularity
continued to grow: in the 1780s, the Papal States alone boasted forty opera houses.
Haydn spent most of his career working for a Hungarian noble family, the Eszter-
házys. Asked once why he had written no string quintets (at which Mozart excelled),
he responded simply: “No one has ordered any.”
Interest in reading, like attending public concerts, took hold of the middle classes
and fed a frenzied increase in publication. By the end of the eighteenth century, six
times as many books were being published in the German states, for instance, as at
the beginning. Local newspapers, lending libraries, and book clubs multiplied.
Despite the limits of women’s education, women benefited as much as men from the
spread of print. As one Englishman observed, “By far the greatest part of ladies now
590 Chapter 18 The Promise of Enlightenment
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have a taste for books.” Women also wrote them. Catherine Macaulay (1731–1791)
published best-selling histories of Britain, and in France Stéphanie de Genlis (1746–
1830) wrote children’s books — a genre that was growing in importance as middle-class
parents became more interested in education.
break of hostilities. Between 1750 and 1775, the instability of the European balance
of power resulted in a diplomatic reversal of alliances, a major international conflict,
and the partition of Poland-Lithuania among Russia, Austria, and Prussia.
In 1756, a set of events that historians call the Diplomatic Revolution reshaped
relations among the great powers. Prussia and Great Britain signed a defensive alli-
ance, prompting Austria to overlook two centuries of hostility and ally with France.
Russia and Sweden soon joined the Franco-Austrian alliance. When Frederick the
Great invaded Austria’s ally Saxony with his large, well-disciplined army, the long-
simmering hostilities between Great Britain and France over colonial boundaries
flared into a general war that became known as the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763).
Fighting soon raged around the world (Map 18.1). The French and British battled
on land and sea in North America (where the conflict was called the French and
British, 1755
British, 1763 N
W SWEDEN
French, 1763
Spanish, 1763 E
S
0 500 1,000 miles
0 500 1,000 kilometers
CANADA
Quebec
Montreal
ea
North RUSSIA
ic S
Sea Balt Danzig
New York GREAT
BRITAIN PRUSSIA
PRUSSIA
ATLANTIC Berlin POLAND-
OCEAN Saxony LITHUANIA
ATL AN TIC Rossbach Silesia
O C E AN Paris 1757
Prague
WEST
Havana
INDIES
FRANCE AUSTRIA
HUNGARY
Caribbean Sea
Ad Black
r ia Danube R. Sea
PORTUGAL ti c
Se
SPAIN a
R.s
du
In
g
Gan es R.
INDIA Calcutta
Main areas of fighting
Allies: Austria, France, Russia,
Arabian Sweden, Saxony, Spain Mediterranean Sea
Sea Bay of
Madras Bengal Allies: Great Britain,
Prussia, Portugal 0 200 400 miles
0 250 500 miles
Battle
0 250 500 kilometers 0 200 400 kilometers
returned to their estates and served as local offi- 0 200 400 kilometers
To Russia
a
cials. This militarization of Prussian society had a
Se
c
profoundly conservative effect: it kept the peasants lti RUSSIA
Ba
enserfed to their lords and blocked the middle PRUSSIA
POLAND-
classes from access to estates or high government LITHUANIA
To Prussia
positions.
Prussia’s power grew so dramatically that in To Austria
1772 Frederick the Great proposed that large chunks
AUSTRIA
of Poland-Lithuania be divided among Austria, HUNGARY
Prussia, and Russia. Although the Austrian empress
Maria Theresa protested that the partition would The First Partition of Poland,
1772
spread “a stain over my whole reign,” she agreed to
the first partition of Poland, splitting one-third of Poland-Lithuania’s territory and
half of its people among the three powers. Russia took over most of Lithuania, effec-
tively ending the large but weak Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth.
State-Sponsored Reform
In the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War, all the belligerents faced pressing needs for
more money. To make tax increases more palatable to public opinion, rulers appointed
reform-minded ministers and gave them a mandate to modernize government. Such
reforms always threatened the interests of traditional groups, however, and the spread
of Enlightenment ideas aroused sometimes unpredictable desires for more change.
Monarchs dedicated to reform insisted on greater attention to merit, hard work,
and professionalism. In this view, the ruler should be a benevolent, enlightened admin-
istrator who worked for the general well-being of his or her people. Frederick the Great,
who drove himself as hard as he drove his officials, boasted, “I am the first servant of
the state.” A Freemason and supporter of religious toleration, Frederick abolished tor-
ture, reorganized taxation, and hosted leading French philosophes at his court. The
Prussian king also composed more than a hundred original pieces of music.
Legal reform, both of the judicial system and of the often disorganized and
irregular law codes, was central to the work of many reform-minded monarchs. Like
Frederick the Great, Joseph II of Austria (r. 1780–1790) ordered the compilation of
a unified law code, a project that required many years for completion. Catherine the
Great began such an undertaking even more ambitiously. In 1767, she called together
a legislative commission of 564 deputies and asked them to consider a long docu-
ment called the Instruction, which represented her hopes for legal reform based on
the ideas of Montesquieu and the Italian jurist Cesare Beccaria. Montesquieu had
insisted that punishment should fit the crime; he criticized the use of torture and
brutal corporal punishment. In his influential book On Crimes and Punishments
(1764), Beccaria argued that justice should be administered in public, that judicial
torture should be abolished as inhumane, and that the accused should be presumed
596 Chapter 18 The Promise of Enlightenment
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Maria Theresa
Like Catherine the Great, Maria The-
resa had herself painted on horseback
to emphasize her sovereign position,
which the crown over her head makes
apparent. This portrait from 1757 does
not make her seem warlike, however,
as she carries no sword. She had six-
teen children, two of whom became
Holy Roman Emperor (Joseph II and
Leopold II) and two of whom became
queens (Marie-Antoinette of France and
Maria Carolina of Naples). (Musée histo-
rique Lorraine, Nancy, France / Scala / White
Images / Art Resource, NY.)
tians, and Jews. For the first time, these groups were allowed to own property, build
schools, enter the professions, and hold political and military offices. Louis XVI
signed an edict in 1787 restoring French Protestants’ civil rights — but still, Protes-
tants could not hold political office. Great Britain continued to deny Catholics free-
dom of open worship and the right to sit in Parliament. Most European states limited
the rights and opportunities available to Jews. Even in Austria, where Joseph encour-
aged toleration, the laws forced Jews to take German-sounding names. The leading
philosophes in theory opposed persecution of the Jews but often in practice treated
them with undisguised contempt. Diderot’s comment was all too typical: the Jews,
he said, bore “all the defects peculiar to an ignorant and superstitious nation.”
Limits of Reform
When enlightened absolutist leaders introduced reforms, they often ran into resis-
tance from groups threatened by the proposed changes. Joseph II tried to remove
the burdens of serfdom in the Habsburg lands. After 1781, serfs could move freely,
enter trades, or marry without their lords’ permission. Joseph also abolished the tithe
to the church, shifted more of the tax burden to the nobility, and converted peasants’
labor services into cash payments.
The Austrian nobility furiously resisted these far-reaching reforms. When Joseph
died in 1790, his brother Leopold II (r. 1790–1792) had to revoke most reforms to
appease the nobles. Prussia’s Frederick the Great, like Joseph, encouraged such agri-
cultural innovations as planting potatoes and turnips (new crops that could help feed
a growing population), but Prussia’s noble landlords, called Junkers, continued to
expand their estates at the expense of poorer peasants and thwarted Frederick’s
attempts to improve the status of serfs.
In France, a group of economists called the physiocrats urged the government
to deregulate the grain trade and make the tax system more equitable to encourage
agricultural productivity. In the interest of establishing a free market, they also
insisted that urban guilds be abolished because the guilds prevented free entry into
the trades. The French government heeded some of this advice and gave up its sys-
tem of price controls on grain in 1763, but it had to reverse the decision in 1770
when grain shortages caused a famine.
A conflict with the parlements (the thirteen high courts of law) prompted French
king Louis XV (r. 1715–1774) to go even further in 1771. He replaced the parlements
with courts in which the judges no longer owned their offices and thus could not
sell them or pass them on as an inheritance. Justice, he hoped, would then be more
impartial. The displaced judges of the parlements succeeded in arousing widespread
opposition to what they portrayed as tyrannical royal policy. The furor calmed down
only when Louis XV died in 1774 and his successor, Louis XVI (r. 1774–1792),
yielded to aristocratic demands and restored the old parlements.
Louis XVI tried to carry out part of the program suggested by the physiocrats,
and he chose one of their disciples, Jacques Turgot (1727–1781), as his chief minister.
598 Chapter 18 The Promise of Enlightenment
[ 1750–1789
]
A contributor to the Encyclopedia, Turgot pushed through several edicts that again
freed the grain trade, suppressed guilds, converted the peasants’ forced labor on
roads into a money tax payable by all landowners, and reduced court expenses. He
also began making plans to introduce a system of elected local assemblies, which
would have increased representation in the government. Faced with broad-based
resistance led by the parlements and his own courtiers as well as with riots against
rising grain prices, Louis XVI dismissed Turgot, and one of the last possibilities to
overhaul France’s government collapsed.
The failure of reform in France paradoxically reflected the power of Enlighten-
ment thinkers; everyone now endorsed Enlightenment ideas but used them for dif-
ferent ends. The nobles in the parlements blocked the French monarchy’s reform
efforts using the very same Enlightenment language spoken by the crown’s ministers.
Where Frederick the Great, Catherine the Great, and even Joseph II used reform to
bolster the efficiency of absolutist govern-
ment, attempts at change in France back-
REVIEW QUESTION What prompted enlight-
ened absolutists to undertake reforms in the
fired. French kings found that their ambi-
second half of the eighteenth century? tious programs for reform succeeded only
in arousing unrealistic hopes.
Free trade in grain meant selling to the highest bidder, even if that bidder was
a foreign merchant. In the short run, in times of scarcity, big landowners and farmers
could make huge profits by selling grain outside their hometowns. This practice
enraged poor farmers, agricultural workers, and urban wageworkers, who could not
afford the higher prices. Lacking the political means to affect policy, the poor could
enforce their desire for old-fashioned price regulation only by rioting. Most did not
pillage or steal grain but rather forced the sale of grain or flour at a “just” price and
blocked the shipment of grain out of their villages to other markets. Women often
led these “popular price fixings,” as they were called in France, in desperate attempts
to protect the food supply for their children.
Such food riots occurred regularly in Britain and France in the last half of the
eighteenth century. One of the most turbulent was the so-called Flour War in France
in 1775. Turgot’s deregulation of the grain trade in 1774 caused prices to rise in several
provincial cities. Rioting spread from there to the Paris region, where villagers attacked
grain convoys heading to the capital city. Local officials often ordered merchants and
bakers to sell at the price the rioters demanded, only to find themselves arrested by
the central government for overriding free trade. The government brought in troops
to restore order and introduced the death penalty for rioting.
Frustrations with serfdom and hopes for a miraculous transformation provoked the
Pugachev rebellion in Russia beginning in 1773. An army deserter from the southeast
frontier region, Emelian Pugachev (1742–1775) claimed to be Tsar Peter III, the dead
husband of Catherine the Great. Pugachev’s appearance seemed to confirm peasant
hopes for a “redeemer tsar” who would save the
people from oppression. He rallied around him Cos- Area of rebellion
Pugachev’s route
sacks like himself who resented the loss of their old
0 150 300 miles
tribal independence. Nearly three million people
0 150 300 kilometers
eventually participated, making this the largest single
rebellion in the history of tsarist Russia. When Moscow
R.
and brought him in an iron cage to Moscow, where
n
Conclusion
What began as a cosmopolitan movement of a few intellectuals in the first half of
the eighteenth century had reached a relatively wide audience among the educated
elite of men and women by the 1770s and 1780s. The spirit of Enlightenment swept
from the salons, coffeehouses, and Masonic lodges into the halls of government from
Philadelphia to Vienna. Scientific inquiry into the causes of social misery and laws
defending individual rights and freedoms gained adherents even among the rulers
and ministers responsible for censoring Enlightenment works.
For most Europeans, however, the promise of the Enlightenment did not become
a reality. Rulers such as Catherine the Great had every intention of retaining their
full, often unchecked powers even as they corresponded with leading philosophes
and entertained them at their courts. Yet even the failure of reform contributed to
the ferment in Europe after 1770. Peasant rebellions in eastern Europe, the “Wilkes
and Liberty” campaign in Great Britain, the struggle over reform in France, and the
AT SPAIN ITALY TO
MA
ST PORTUGAL
ISIA
N
ED ATLANTIC
EM
PIRE
IT
NA
U N PERSIA
OCEAN
EGYPT
WEST INDIES
EW
N
SP
AI British possessions
N
French possessions
Slave-Trading Areas Spanish possessions
Chapter 18 Review
Key Terms and People
Be sure that you can identify the term or person and explain its historical significance.
philosophes (p. 576) Jean-Jacques Rousseau enlightened despots (p. 592)
deists (p. 579) (p. 581) Seven Years’ War (p. 593)
abolitionists (p. 580) romanticism (p. 584) partition of Poland (p. 594)
laissez-faire (p. 581) Methodism (p. 584) Pugachev rebellion (p. 595)
Freemasons (p. 587)
Review Questions
1. What were the major differences between the Enlightenment in France, Great Britain, and
the German states?
2. What were the major differences in the impact of the Enlightenment on the nobility, the
middle classes, and the lower classes?
3. What prompted enlightened absolutists to undertake reforms in the second half of the
eighteenth century?
4. Why did public opinion become a new factor in politics in the second half of the eighteenth
century?
Making Connections
1. Why might rulers have felt ambivalent about the Enlightenment, supporting reform on the
one hand while clamping down on political dissidents on the other hand?
2. Which major developments in this period ran counter to the influence of the
Enlightenment?
3. In what ways had politics changed, and in what ways did they remain the same during the
Enlightenment?
4. Explain how Catherine the Great of Russia could be taken as a symbol of both the promise
and the limits of the Enlightenment.
[1750–1789
] Chapter 18 Review 605
Important Events
Suggested References
Gay’s interpretive study of the Enlightenment remains useful, but the Kors volumes offer the
most up-to-date views. Readers can find different perspectives in studies of individual rulers,
their routes to power, and their reactions to the Enlightenment.
Beales, Derek. Enlightenment and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Europe. 2005.
Cash, Arthur H. John Wilkes: The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty. 2006.
Catherine the Great: http://russia.nypl.org/home.html
Danley, Mark, and Patrick Speelman, eds. The Seven Years’ War: Global Views. 2012.
Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. 2 vols. 1966, 1969.
*Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von. The Sufferings of Young Werther. Trans. Stanley Corngold. 2012.
Gray, Edward G., and Jane Kamensky, eds. The Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution. 2013.
Hempton, David. Church in the Long Eighteenth Century. 2011.
Kors, Alan Charles, ed. Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment. 4 vols. 2003.
Melton, James Van Horn. The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe. 2001.
Rothschild, Emma. Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet and the Enlightenment. 2001.
*Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men.
Ed. Helena Rosenblatt. 2011.
Venturi, Franco. The End of the Old Regime in Europe, 1768–1776: The First Crisis. Trans. R. Burr
Litchfield. 1989.
*Primary source.
The Cataclysm
19
of Revolution
1789–1799
O
n October 5, 1789, a crowd of several thousand women marched in a
drenching rain from the center of Paris to Versailles, a distance of twelve
miles. They demanded the king’s help in securing more grain for the hungry
and his reassurance that he did not intend to resist the emerging revolutionary move-
ment. Joined the next morning by thousands of men who came from Paris to re-
inforce them, they broke into the royal family’s private apartments, killing two of the
royal bodyguards. To prevent further bloodshed, the king agreed to move his family
and his government to Paris. A dramatic pro-
cession of the royal family guarded by throngs
Women’s March to Versailles
of ordinary men and women made its slow way
Thousands of prints broadcast the
events of the French Revolution to back to the capital. The people’s proud dis-
the public in France and elsewhere. play of cannons and pikes underlined the fun-
This colored engraving shows a damental transformation that was occurring.
crowd of armed women marching Ordinary people had forced the king of France
to Versailles on October 5, 1789, to respond to their grievances. The French
to confront the king. The sight of
armed women frightened many
monarchy was in danger, and if such a pow-
observers and demonstrated that erful and long-lasting institution could come
the Revolution was not only a men’s under fire, then could any monarch of Europe
affair. Note the middle-class woman rest easy?
on the left being forced to join with The French Revolution first grabbed the
the others. (The Granger Collection,
NYC — All rights reserved.)
attention of the entire world because it seemed
to promise human rights and broad-based
political participation. Its most famous slogan
pledged “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” for all. Even as the Revolution promised
democracy, however, it also inaugurated a cycle of violence and intimidation, seen
already in October 1789. When the revolutionaries encountered resistance to their
programs, they tried to compel obedience. Some historians therefore see in the French
Revolution the origins of modern totalitarianism — that is, a government that tries
to control every aspect of life, including daily activities, while limiting all forms of
political dissent. As events unfolded after 1789, the French Revolution became the
607
608 Chapter 19 The Cataclysm of Revolution
[ 1789–1799
]
model of modern revolution. Republicanism, democracy, terrorism, nationalism, and
military dictatorship all took their modern forms during the French Revolution.
The Revolution might have remained a strictly French affair if war had not
involved the rest of Europe. After 1792, huge French republican armies, fueled by
patriotic nationalism, marched across Europe, promising liberation from traditional
monarchies but often delivering old-fashioned conquest and annexation. French vic-
tories spread revolutionary ideas far and
CHAPTER FOCUS What was so revolutionary
wide, from Poland to the colonies in the
about the French Revolution? Caribbean, where the first successful slave
revolt established the republic of Haiti.
trian Netherlands. Those Patriots who remained nursed their grievances until the
French republican armies invaded in 1795.
If Austrian emperor Joseph II had not tried to introduce Enlightenment-inspired
reforms, the Belgians of the ten provinces of the Austrian Netherlands might have
remained tranquil. Just as he had done previously in his own crown lands (see page
597), Joseph abolished torture, decreed toleration for Jews and Protestants (in this
resolutely Catholic area), and suppressed monasteries. His reorganization of the
administrative and judicial systems eliminated many offices that belonged to nobles
and lawyers, sparking resistance among the upper classes in 1788.
Upper-class protesters intended only to defend historic local liberties against an
overbearing government. Nonetheless, their resistance galvanized democrats, who
wanted a more representative government and organized clubs to give voice to their
demands. At the end of 1788, a secret society formed armed companies to prepare
an uprising. By late 1789, each province had separately declared its independence,
and the Austrian administration had collapsed. Delegates from the various provinces
declared themselves the United States of Belgium, a clear reference to the American
precedent.
Once again, however, social divisions doomed the rebels. When the democrats
began to challenge noble authority, aristocratic leaders drew to their side the Catholic
clergy and peasants, who had little sympathy for the democrats of the cities. Every
Sunday in May and June 1790, thousands of peasant men and women, led by their
priests, streamed into Brussels carrying crucifixes, nooses, and pitchforks to intimidate
the democrats and defend the church. Faced with the choice between the Austrian
emperor and “our current tyrants,” the democrats chose to support the return of the
Austrians under Emperor Leopold II (r. 1790–1792), who had succeeded his brother.
A reform party calling itself the Patriots also emerged in Poland, which had been
shocked by the loss of a third of its territory in the first partition of 1772. The Patri-
ots sought to overhaul the weak commonwealth along modern western European
lines and looked to King Stanislaw August Poniatowski (r. 1764–1795) to lead them.
In 1788, the Patriots got their golden chance. Bogged down in war with the Otto-
man Turks, Catherine the Great of Russia could not block the summoning of a reform-
minded parliament, which eventually enacted the constitution of May 3, 1791. It
ended the veto power that each aristocrat had over legislation, granted townspeople
limited political rights, and vaguely promised future Jewish emancipation. Abolishing
serfdom was hardly mentioned. Within a year, however, Catherine had turned her
attention to Poland and engineered the downfall of the Patriots.
popular hatred. The king’s ineffectiveness and the queen’s growing unpopularity
helped undermine the monarchy as an institution.
Faced with a mounting deficit, in 1787 Louis submitted a package of reforms first
to the Assembly of Notables and then to his old rival the parlement of Paris. Both
refused to consider the reforms. Louis finally gave in to demands that he call a meet-
ing of the Estates General, which had last met 175 years before.
The calling of the Estates General electrified public opinion. The Estates General
was a body of deputies from the three estates, or orders, of France. The deputies in
the First Estate represented some 170,000 priests, monks, and nuns of the Catholic
church, which owned about 10 percent of the land in France and collected a 10 per-
cent tax (the tithe) on peasants. The deputies of the Second Estate represented the
nobility, about 140,000 men and women who owned about one-third of the land,
enjoyed many tax exemptions, and collected seigneurial dues and rents from their
peasant tenants. The deputies of the Third Estate represented everyone else, at least
95 percent of the nation. Included in the Third Estate were the vast mass of peasants,
some 75 percent of the population, and the sans-culottes (“without breeches”) and
middle classes of the cities. The sans-culottes were those who worked with their hands
and wore long trousers rather than the knee breeches of the upper classes.
Before the elections to the Estates General in 1789, the king agreed to double
the number of deputies from the Third Estate (making those deputies equal in num-
ber to the other two orders combined), but he refused to mandate voting by indi-
vidual head rather than by order. Voting by order, allowing each order to have one
vote, would conserve the traditional powers of the clergy and nobility; voting by
head, allowing each deputy one vote, would give the Third Estate an advantage since
many clergymen and even some nobles sympathized with the Third Estate.
As the state’s censorship apparatus broke down, pamphleteers by the hundreds
denounced the traditional privileges of the nobility and clergy and called for voting
by head rather than by order. In the most vitriolic of all the pamphlets, What Is the
Third Estate?, the middle-class abbé (“abbot”) Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès charged that
the nobility contributed nothing at all to the nation’s well-being; they were, he said,
“a malignant disease which preys upon and tortures the body of a sick man.” In the
winter and spring of 1789, villagers and townspeople alike held meetings to elect
deputies and write down their grievances. The effect was immediate. Although law-
yers dominated the meetings at the regional level, the humblest peasants voted in
their villages and burst forth with complaints, especially about taxes. One village
meeting summed up the frustration: “misery is so great in the country that we can-
not make enough complaints.” The long series of meetings raised expectations that
the Estates General would help the king solve all the nation’s ills.
These new hopes soared just at the moment France experienced a food shortage,
an increasingly rare but always dangerous situation. Bad weather had damaged the
harvest of 1788, causing bread prices to rise dramatically in many places in the spring
and summer of 1789 and threatening starvation for the poorest people. In addition,
a serious slump in textile production had been causing massive unemployment since
612 Chapter 19 The Cataclysm of Revolution
[ 1789–1799
]
1786. Hundreds of thousands of textile workers were out of work and hungry, adding
another volatile element to an already tense situation.
When some twelve hundred deputies journeyed to the king’s palace of Versailles
for the opening of the Estates General in May 1789, many readers avidly followed
the developments in newspapers that sprouted overnight. Although most nobles
insisted on voting by order, the deputies of the Third Estate refused to proceed on
that basis. After six weeks of stalemate, the deputies of the Third Estate took unilat-
eral action on June 17 and declared themselves and whoever would join them the
National Assembly, in which each deputy would vote as an individual. Two days later,
the clergy voted by a narrow margin to join them. Suddenly denied access to their
meeting hall on June 20, the deputies met on a nearby tennis court and swore an oath
not to disband until they had given France a constitution that reflected their newly
declared authority. This “tennis court oath” expressed the determination of the Third
Estate to carry through a constitutional revolution.
At first, Louis XVI appeared to agree to the new National Assembly, but he
also ordered thousands of soldiers to march to Paris. The deputies who supported
the Assembly feared a plot to arrest them and disperse the Assembly. Their fears
were confirmed when, on July 11, the king fired Jacques Necker, the Swiss Protestant
finance minister and the one high official regarded as sympathetic to the deputies’
cause.
The popular reaction in Paris changed the course of the French Revolution.
When the news spread, the sans-culottes in Paris began to arm themselves and attack
places where either grain or arms were thought to be stored. A deputy in Versailles
reported home: “Today all of the evils overwhelm France, and we are between des-
potism, carnage, and famine.” On July 14, an armed crowd marched on the Bastille,
a huge fortified prison that symbolized royal authority (even though only a few
prisoners were actually incarcerated there). After a chaotic battle in which a hundred
armed citizens died, the prison officials surrendered.
Three weeks later, the deputies drew up the Declaration of the Rights of Man
and Citizen as the preamble to a new constitution. In words reminiscent of the
American Declaration of Independence, whose author, Thomas Jefferson, was in
Paris at the time, it proclaimed, “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.”
The Declaration granted freedom of religion, freedom of the press, equality of taxa-
tion, and equality before the law. It established the principle of national sovereignty:
the king derived his authority henceforth from the nation rather than from tradition
or divine right.
By pronouncing all men free and equal, the Declaration immediately created
new dilemmas. Did women have equal rights with men? What about free blacks in
the colonies? How could slavery be justified if all men were born free? Did religious
toleration of Protestants and Jews include equal political rights? Women never
received the right to vote during the French Revolution, though Protestant and Jew-
ish men did.
Some women did not accept their exclusion. In addition to joining demonstra-
tions, such as the march to Versailles in October 1789 (see chapter opener), women
wrote petitions, published tracts, and organized political clubs to demand more par-
ticipation. In her Declaration of the Rights of Woman of 1791, writer and political
activist Olympe de Gouges (1748–1793) played on the language of the official Dec-
laration to make the point that women should also be included: “Woman is born free
and lives equal to man in her rights.” De Gouges linked her complaints to a program
of social reform in which women would have equal rights to property and public
office and equal responsibilities in taxes and criminal punishment.
Unresponsive to calls for women’s equality, the National Assembly turned to pre-
paring France’s first written constitution. The deputies gave voting rights only to white
men who passed a test of wealth. Despite these limitations, France became a consti-
tutional monarchy in which the king served as the leading state functionary. A one-
house legislature was responsible for making laws. The king could postpone enact-
ment of laws but not veto them. The deputies abolished all the old administrative
divisions of the provinces and replaced them with a national system of eighty-three
departments with identical administrative and legal structures (Map 19.1). All officials
were elected; no offices could be bought or sold. The deputies also abolished the old
taxes and replaced them with new ones that were supposed to be uniformly levied.
The National Assembly had difficulty collecting taxes, however, because many people
had expected a substantial cut in the tax rate. The new administrative system survived
nonetheless, and the departments are still the basic units of the French state today.
When the deputies to the National Assembly turned to reforming the Catholic
church, however, they created enduring conflicts. Convinced that monastic life
encouraged idleness and a decline in the nation’s population, the deputies outlawed
any future monastic vows and encouraged monks and nuns to return to private life
by offering state pensions. Motivated partly by the ongoing financial crisis, the
National Assembly confiscated all the church’s property and promised to pay clerical
salaries in return. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy, passed in July 1790, provided
616 Chapter 19 The Cataclysm of Revolution
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GREAT GREAT
BRITAIN BRITAIN
AUSTRIAN AUSTRIAN
N NETHERLANDS N
NETHERLANDS
W Boulonnais W
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Var
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SPA IN SPAIN
S
0 100 200 miles 0 100 200 miles Golo
Corsica
0 100 200 kilometers 0 100 200 kilometers
Liamone
French Provinces, 1789 French Departments, 1791
that the voters elect their own parish priests and bishops just as they elected other
officials. The impounded property served as a guarantee for the new paper money,
called assignats, issued by the government. The assignats soon became subject to
inflation because the government printed more and more money even as it sold the
church lands to the highest bidders in state auctions.
Faced with resistance to these changes, the National Assembly in November
1790 required all clergy to swear an oath of loyalty to the Civil Constitution of the
Clergy. Pope Pius VI in Rome condemned the constitution, and half of the French
clergy refused to take the oath. The oath of allegiance permanently divided the
Catholic population. The revolutionary government lost many supporters by passing
laws against the clergy who refused the oath and by sending them into exile, deport-
ing them forcibly, or executing them as traitors.
[1789–1799
] From Monarchy to Republic, 1789–1793 617
regularly at the salon of Jeanne Roland, the wife of a minister. They resented the
growing power of Parisian militants and tried to appeal to the departments outside
of Paris. The Mountain (so called because its deputies sat in the highest seats of the
National Convention), in contrast, was closely allied with the Paris militants.
The first showdown between the Girondins and the Mountain was the trial of
the king in December 1792. Although the Girondins agreed that the king was guilty
of treason, many of them argued for clemency, exile, or a popular referendum on his
fate. After a long and difficult debate, the National Convention supported the Moun-
tain and voted by a very narrow majority
to execute the king. Louis XVI went to the REVIEW QUESTION Why did the French Revo-
guillotine on January 21, 1793, sharing the lution turn in an increasingly radical direction
fate of Charles I of England in 1649. after 1789?
The Guillotine
Before 1789, only nobles were decapitated if condemned to death;
commoners were usually hanged. Equalization of the death pen-
alty was first proposed by J. I. Guillotin, a professor of anatomy
and a deputy in the National Assembly. He also suggested that a
mechanical device be constructed for decapitation, leading to the
instrument’s association with his name. The Assembly decreed
decapitation as the death penalty in June 1791 and another physi-
cian, A. Louis, actually invented the guillotine. The executioner
pulled up the blade by a cord and then released it. Use of the
guillotine began in April 1792 and did not end until 1981,
when the French government abolished the death penalty.
The guillotine fascinated as much as it repelled. Repro-
duced in miniature, painted onto snuffboxes and
china, worn as jewelry, and even serving as a toy, the
guillotine became a part of popular culture. How could
the guillotine be simultaneously celebrated as the
people’s avenger by supporters of the Revolution
and vilified as the preeminent symbol of the Terror
by opponents? (Musée de la Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet,
Paris, France / © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY.)
620 Chapter 19 The Cataclysm of Revolution
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beyond these stopgap measures and create a “republic of virtue,” in which the gov-
ernment would teach, or force, citizens to become virtuous republicans through a
massive program of political reeducation. Thus began the Terror, in which the guil-
lotine became the most terrifying instrument of a government that suppressed almost
every form of dissent.
Antoinette of treason and sent her to the guillotine. The Girondin leaders and Jeanne
Roland were also guillotined, as was Olympe de Gouges.
The new republic won its greatest success on the battlefield. As of April 1793,
France faced war with Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, Spain, Sardinia, and the Dutch
Republic — all fearful of the impact of revolutionary ideals on their own populations.
The execution of Louis XVI, in particular, galvanized European governments; accord-
ing to William Pitt, the British prime minister, it was “the foulest and most atrocious
act the world has ever seen.” To face this daunting coalition of forces, the French
republic ordered the first universal draft of men in history. Every unmarried man
and childless widower between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five was declared
eligible for conscription. The government also tapped a new and potent source of
power — nationalist pride.
Forges were set up in the parks and gardens of Paris to produce thousands of
guns, and citizens everywhere helped collect saltpeter to make gunpowder. By the
end of 1793, the French nation in arms had stopped the advance of the allied powers,
and in the summer of 1794 it invaded the Austrian Netherlands and crossed the
Rhine River. The army was ready to carry the gospel of revolution and republicanism
to the rest of Europe.
Representing Liberty
Liberty was represented by a female figure because in French the noun is feminine (la liberté).
This painting from 1793–1794, by Jeanne-Louise Vallain, captures the usual attributes of
Liberty: she is soberly seated, wearing a Roman-style toga and holding a pike with a Roman
liberty cap on top. Her Roman appearance signals that she represents an abstract quality. The
fact that she holds an instrument of battle suggests that women might be active participants.
The Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, given by the French to the United States, is a late-
nineteenth-century version of the same figure, but without any suggestion of battle. (Allegory of
Liberty by Nanine Vallain, 1794 / De Agostini Picture Library / Getty Images.)
Some revolutionaries hoped the festival system would replace the Catholic church
altogether. They initiated a campaign of de-Christianization that included closing
churches (Protestant as well as Catholic), selling many church buildings to the high-
est bidder, and trying to force even those clergy who had taken the oath of loyalty
to abandon their clerical vocations and marry. Great churches became storehouses
for arms or grain, or their stones were sold off to contractors. The medieval statues
of kings on the facade of Notre Dame cathedral were beheaded. Church bells were
dismantled and church treasures melted down for government use.
[
1789–1799
] Terror and Resistance 623
explained its motives: “They [the republicans] have killed our king, chased away our
priests, sold the goods of our church, eaten everything we have and now they want
to take our bodies [in the draft].” The rebels stormed the largest towns in the region.
Both sides committed horrible atrocities. At the small town of Machecoul, for
example, the rebels massacred five hundred republicans, including administrators
and National Guard members; many were tied together, shoved into freshly dug
graves, and shot. By the fall, however, republican soldiers had turned back the rebels.
Military courts ordered thousands executed, and republican soldiers massacred
thousands of others. In one especially gruesome incident, the deputy Jean-Baptiste
Carrier supervised the drowning of some two thousand Vendée rebels, including a
number of priests. Barges loaded with prisoners were floated into the Loire River
near Nantes and then sunk. Controversy still rages about the rebellion’s death toll
because no accurate count could be taken. Estimates of rebel deaths alone range from
about 20,000 to higher than 250,000. Many thousands of republican soldiers and civil-
ians also lost their lives in fighting that continued on and off for years. Even the low
estimates reveal the carnage of this catastrophic confrontation between the republic
and its opponents.
The men who led the July 27 attack on Robespierre did not intend to reverse all
his policies, but that happened nonetheless because of a violent backlash known
as the Thermidorian Reaction. The new government released hundreds of sus-
pects and arranged a temporary truce in the Vendée. It purged Jacobins from local
bodies and replaced them with their opponents. It arrested some of the most notori-
ous “terrorists” in the National Convention, such as Carrier, and put them to death.
628 Chapter 19 The Cataclysm of Revolution
[ 1789–1799
]
Within the year, the new leaders abolished the Revolutionary Tribunal and closed
the Jacobin Club in Paris. Popular demonstrations met severe repression. In south-
eastern France, in particular, the “White Terror” replaced the Jacobins’ “Red Terror.”
Former officials and local Jacobin leaders were harassed, beaten, and often murdered
by paramilitary bands that had tacit support from the new authorities. Those who
remained in the National Convention prepared yet another constitution in 1795,
setting up a two-house legislature and an executive body — the Directory, headed by
five directors.
The Directory regime tenuously held on to power for four years, all the while
trying to fend off challenges from the remaining Jacobins and the resurgent royal-
ists. The puritanical atmosphere of the Terror gave way to the pursuit of pleasure —
low-cut dresses of transparent materials, the reappearance of prostitutes in the streets,
and “victims’ balls” where guests wore red ribbons around their necks as reminders
of the guillotine. Bands of young men dressed in knee breeches and rich fabrics
picked fights with known Jacobins and disrupted theater performances with loud
antirevolutionary songs. All over France, people petitioned to reopen churches closed
during the Terror. If necessary, they broke into a church to hold services with a priest
who had been in hiding or a lay schoolteacher who was willing to say Mass.
Although the Terror had ended, the Revolution had not. Both the most demo-
cratic and the most repressive phases of
the Revolution had ended at once in July
REVIEW QUESTION What factors can explain
the Terror? To what extent was it simply a
1794. Between 1795 and 1799, the republic
response to a national emergency or a reflec- endured in France, but it directed a war
tion of deeper problems within the French effort abroad that would ultimately bring
Revolution? to power the man who would dismantle
the republic itself.
army officers and the problems of integrating new draftees. By the end of 1793, the
French had a huge and powerful fighting force of 700,000 men. But the army still
faced many problems in the field. As many as a third of the recent draftees deserted
before or during battle. Generals might pay with their lives if they lost a key battle
and their loyalty to the Revolution came under suspicion. Although France had built
up a relatively large navy, the dominance of Great Britain on the seas meant that
France had to seek victory on the land.
France nevertheless had one overwhelming advantage: those soldiers who agreed
to serve fought for a revolution that they and their brothers and sisters had helped
make. The republic was their government, and the army was in large measure theirs,
too; many officers had risen through the ranks by skill and talent rather than by
inheriting or purchasing their positions. One young peasant boy wrote to his parents,
“Either you will see me return bathed in glory, or you will have a son who is a worthy
citizen of France who knows how to die for the defense of his country.”
When the French armies invaded the Austrian Netherlands and crossed the
Rhine in the summer of 1794, they proclaimed a war of liberation (Map 19.2). In
the Austrian Netherlands, Mainz, Savoy, and Nice, French officers organized Jacobin
Clubs that attracted locals. The clubs petitioned for annexation to France, and French
legislation was then introduced, including the abolition of seigneurial dues. As the
French annexed more and more territory, however, “liberated” people in many places
began to view them as an army of occupation. Despite resistance, especially in the
Austrian Netherlands, these areas remained part of France until 1815, and the legal
changes were permanent.
The Directory government that came to power in 1795 launched an even more
aggressive policy of creating semi-independent “sister republics” wherever the armies
succeeded. When Prussia declared neutrality in 1795, the French armies swarmed
into the Dutch Republic, abolished the stadholderate, and — with the revolutionary
penchant for renaming — created the new Batavian Republic, a satellite of France.
The brilliant young general Napoleon Bonaparte gained a reputation by defeating
the Austrian armies in northern Italy in 1797 and then created the Cisalpine Repub-
lic. Next he overwhelmed Venice and then handed it over to the Austrians in exchange
for a peace agreement that lasted less than two years. After the French attacked the
Swiss cantons in 1798, they set up the Helvetic Republic and curtailed many of the
Catholic church’s privileges. They conquered the Papal States in 1798 and installed
a Roman Republic, forcing the pope to flee to Siena.
The revolutionary wars had an immediate impact on European life at all levels
of society. Thousands of men died in every country involved, with perhaps as many
as 200,000 casualties in the French armies alone in 1794 and 1795. More soldiers
died in hospitals as a result of their wounds than on the battlefields. Constant warfare
hampered world commerce and especially disrupted French overseas shipping. Times
were now hard almost everywhere, because the dislocations of internal and external
commerce provoked constant shortages.
630 Chapter 19 The Cataclysm of Revolution
[ 1789–1799
]
Nort h
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.
ing Tadeusz Kościuszko (1746–1817), an officer who had been a foreign volunteer
in the War of American Independence and who now escaped to Paris. In the spring
of 1794, Kościuszko returned from France to lead a nationalist revolt.
The uprising failed. Kościuszko won a few victories, but when the Russian empress
Catherine the Great’s forces regrouped, they routed the Poles and Lithuanians.
Kościuszko and other Polish Patriot leaders languished for years in Russian and
Austrian prisons. Taking no further chances, Russia, Prussia, and Austria wiped
Poland completely from the map in the third partition (1795). “The Polish question”
would plague international relations for more than a century as Polish rebels flocked
to any international upheaval that might undo the partitions. Beyond all this maneu-
vering lay the unsolved problem of Polish serfdom, which isolated the nation’s gentry
and townspeople from the rural masses.
Toussaint L’Ouverture
The leader of the St. Domingue
slave uprising appears on horse-
back, in his general’s uniform,
sword in hand. His depiction in
this colored print from the early
nineteenth century makes him
seem much like other military
heroes from the time, including
Napoleon Bonaparte. (Bibliothèque
nationale, Paris, France / Archives
Charmet / Bridgeman Images.)
[1789–1799
] Revolution on the March 633
the slaves in his jurisdiction in August 1793 without permission from the govern-
ment in Paris. In February 1794, the National Convention formally abolished slavery
and granted full rights to all black men in the colonies. These actions had the desired
effect. One of the ablest black generals allied with the Spanish, the ex-slave François
Dominique Toussaint L’Ouverture (1743–1803), changed sides and committed his
troops to the French. Toussaint remained in charge until 1802, when Napoleon sent
French armies to regain control of the island. They arrested Toussaint and transported
him to France, where he died in prison. Toussaint became a hero to abolitionists
everywhere, a potent symbol of black struggles to win freedom. Napoleon attempted
to restore slavery, as he had in the other French Caribbean colonies of Guadeloupe
and Martinique, but the remaining black generals defeated his armies and in 1804
proclaimed the Republic of Haiti.
Conclusion
Growing out of aspirations for freedom that also inspired the Dutch, Belgians, and
Poles, the revolution that shook France permanently altered the political landscape
of the Western world. Between 1789 and 1799, monarchy as a form of government
gave way in France to a republic whose leaders were elected. Aristocracy based on
rank and birth was undermined in favor of civil equality and the promotion of merit.
Thousands of men held elective office for the first time. A revolutionary government
tried to teach new values with a refashioned calendar, state festivals, and a civic
religion. Its example inspired would-be revolutionaries everywhere.
But the French Revolution also had its darker side. The divisions created by the
Revolution within France endured in many cases until after World War II. Even now,
when asked by public-opinion surveys if it was right to execute the king in 1793,
most French respondents say they believe that Louis XVI was guilty of treason but
should not have been executed. The revolutionaries proclaimed human rights and
democratic government as universal goals, but they also explicitly excluded women,
even though they admitted Protestant, Jewish, and eventually black men. They used
the new spirit of national pride to inspire armies and then used those armies to
conquer other peoples. Their ideals of universal education, religious toleration, and
democratic participation could not prevent the institution of new forms of govern-
ment terror to persecute, imprison, and
kill dissidents. These paradoxes created an
REVIEW QUESTION Why did some groups opening for Napoleon Bonaparte, who
outside of France embrace the French Revolu- rushed in with his remarkable military and
tion while others resisted it?
political skills to push France — and with
it all of Europe — in new directions.
[ 1789–1799
] Conclusion 635
AY
States established by revolutionary France
SWEDEN
NORW
Boundary of the Holy Roman Empire
AND
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N orth
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IRELAND GREAT
Se a
B al
BRITAIN Batavian RUSSIA
Republic
ENGLAND
Amsterdam Berlin PRUSSIA
London Warsaw
Utrecht
Brussels
Mainz
HOLY
Paris
ATL A NTI C Versailles
Se R. ROMAN
ine
OCEAN
ne
EMPIRE
Rhi
R.
FRENCH
Helvetic
REPUBLIC Lyon Republic AUSTRIAN EMPIRE
Savoy Venice
Piedmont
Toulouse ParmaCisalpine
Nice Republic Venice R.
D a n u be Black
Siena Ad Sea
Ligurian Tuscany Roman ria
PORTUGAL Republic tic O
Republic
Corsica Se T
a T
SPAI N Neapolitan O Constantinople
Rome
M
Republic AN
Naples EM
Sardinia PIR
E
Mediterranean Sea
Review Questions
1. How did the beginning of the French Revolution resemble the other revolutions of
1787–1789?
2. Why did the French Revolution turn in an increasingly radical direction after 1789?
3. What factors can explain the Terror? To what extent was it simply a response to a national
emergency or a reflection of deeper problems within the French Revolution?
4. Why did some groups outside of France embrace the French Revolution while others
resisted it?
Making Connections
1. Should the French Revolution be viewed as the origin of democracy or the origin of
totalitarianism (a government in which no dissent is allowed)? Explain.
2. Why did other European rulers find the French Revolution so threatening?
3. What made the French revolutionary armies so powerful in this period?
4. How was the French Revolution related to the Enlightenment that preceded it?
Suggested References
The most influential book on the meaning of the French Revolution is still the classic study
by Tocqueville, who insisted that the Revolution continued the process of state centralization
undertaken by the monarchy. The revolutions in the colonies are now the subject of many new
and important studies.
Andress, David, ed. Experiencing the French Revolution. 2013.
Chickering, Roger, and Stig Förster, eds. War in an Age of Revolution, 1775–1815. 2010.
Desan, Suzanne. The Family on Trial in Revolutionary France. 2006.
———, Lynn Hunt, and William Max Nelson, eds. The French Revolution in Global Perspective.
2013.
*Dubois, Laurent, and John D. Garrigus, eds. Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789–1804:
A Brief History with Documents. 2006.
*Hunt, Lynn, ed. The French Revolution and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History. 1996.
*Levy, Darline Gay, Harriet Branson Applewhite, and Mary Durham Johnson, eds. Women in
Revolutionary Paris, 1789–1795. 1979.
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution: http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/
*Primary source.
636
[1789–1799
] Chapter 19 Review 637
Important Events
Consider three events: Dutch patriot revolt is stifled by Prussian invasion (1787),
French Revolution begins (1789), and Beginning of slave revolt in St. Domingue (Haiti)
(1791). How would you explain the relationships among these three uprisings? How were
they similar and different in their inspirations, ideologies, tactics, and results?
I
n her novel Frankenstein (1818), the prototype for modern thrillers, Mary
Shelley tells the story of a Swiss inventor, Dr. Frankenstein, who creates a human-
like monster. The monster terrifies all who encounter him and ends by destroying
Frankenstein’s own loved ones. Despite desperate chases across deserts and frozen
landscapes, Frankenstein never manages to trap the monster, who is last seen hunched
over his creator’s deathbed.
Those who witnessed Napoleon Bona-
Napoleon as Military Hero parte’s stunning rise to European dominance
In this painting from 1800–1801, might have cast him as either Frankenstein or
Napoleon Crossing the Alps at St. Ber- his monster. Like the scientist Frankenstein,
nard, Jacques-Louis David reminds Bonaparte created something dramatically
the French of Napoleon’s heroic mili- new: the French Empire with himself as
tary exploits. Napoleon is a picture of
calm and composure while his horse
emperor. Like the former kings of France, he
shows the fright and energy of the ruled under his first name. This Corsican artil-
moment. David painted this propa- lery officer who spoke French with an Italian
gandistic image shortly after one accent ended the French Revolution even
of his former students went to the while maintaining some of its most impor-
guillotine on a trumped-up charge
tant innovations.
of plotting to assassinate the new
French leader. The former organizer of Bonaparte continued the revolutionary
republican festivals during the Terror policy of conquest and annexation until it
had become a kind of court painter reached grotesque dimensions. His foreign
for the new regime. (Schloss Charlotten- policies made many see him as a monster hun-
burg, Berlin, Germany / Bridgeman Images.)
gry for dominion; he turned the sister repub-
lics of the revolutionary era into kingdoms
personally ruled by his relatives, and he exacted tribute wherever he triumphed.
Eventually, resistance to the French armies and the ever-mounting costs of military
glory toppled Napoleon. The powers allied against him met and agreed to restore the
monarchical governments that had been overthrown by the French, shrink France
back to its prerevolutionary boundaries, and maintain this settlement against future
demands for change.
639
640 Chapter 20 Napoleon and the Revolutionary Legacy
[ 1800–1830
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Although the people of Europe longed for peace and stability in the aftermath
of the Napoleonic whirlwind, they lived in a deeply unsettled world. Profoundly
affected by French military occupation, many groups of people organized to demand
ethnic and cultural autonomy, first from Napoleon and then from the restored gov-
ernments after 1815. In 1830, a new round
of revolutions broke out in France, Bel-
CHAPTER FOCUS How did Napoleon Bona-
parte’s actions force other European rulers to gium, Poland, and some of the Italian
change their policies? states. The revolutionary legacy was far
from exhausted.
Sea to Egypt. The Directory government hoped that French occupation of Egypt
would strike a blow at British trade by cutting the route to India. Although the
French defeated a much larger Egyptian army, the British admiral Lord Horatio
Nelson destroyed the French fleet while it was anchored in Aboukir Bay, cutting the
French off from home. Bonaparte insisted that he aimed to liberate the Egyptians
from the Ottoman Turks, but though he proclaimed his respect for Islam, he also
forced through Enlightenment-inspired legal reforms such as equality before the law
and religious toleration. In the face of determined resistance and an outbreak of the
bubonic plague, the French armies retreated from a further expedition in Syria.
Even the failures of the Egyptian campaign did not dull Bonaparte’s luster.
Bonaparte had taken France’s leading scientists with him on the expedition, and his
soldiers had discovered a slab of black basalt dating from 196 b.c.e. written in both
hieroglyphic and Greek. Called the Rosetta stone after a nearby town, it enabled
scholars to finally decipher the hieroglyphs used by the ancient Egyptians.
With his army pinned down by Nelson’s victory at sea, Bonaparte slipped out of
Egypt and made his way secretly to southern France in October 1799. He arrived
home at just the right moment: the war in Europe was going badly. The territories
of the former Austrian Netherlands had revolted against French conscription laws,
and deserters swelled the ranks of rebels in western France. Disillusioned members
of the government saw in Bonaparte’s return an occasion to overturn the constitution
of 1795. They got their wish on November 9, 1799, when troops guarding the legis-
lature ejected those who opposed Bonaparte and left the remaining ones to vote to
abolish the Directory and establish a new three-man executive called the consulate.
Bonaparte became First Consul, a title revived from the ancient Roman repub-
lic. A new constitution — with no declaration of rights — was submitted to the voters.
Millions abstained from voting, and the government falsified the results to give an
appearance of even greater support to the new regime.
minors, demanding that foremen and shop superintendents represent them. The
limitations on workers’ rights won Napoleon the support of French business.
Germaine de Staël
One of the most fascinating intel-
lectuals of her time, Anne-Louise-
Germaine de Staël seemed to
irritate Napoleon more than any
other person did. Daughter of
Louis XVI’s Swiss Protestant
finance minister, Jacques Necker,
and wife of a Swedish diplomat,
Madame de Staël frequently criti-
cized Napoleon’s policies. She
published best-selling novels and
influential literary criticism, and
whenever allowed to reside in
Paris she encouraged the intellec-
tual and political dissidents from
Napoleon’s regime. In this paint-
ing from 1809, Élisabeth Vigée-
Lebrun depicts her as Corinne,
the heroine of one of her novels.
(Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva,
Switzerland / Bridgeman Images.)
646 Chapter 20 Napoleon and the Revolutionary Legacy
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René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) admired Napoleon as “the strong man who has
saved us from the abyss,” but he preferred a restored Bourbon monarchy. In his view,
Napoleon had not properly understood the need to defend Christian values against
the Enlightenment’s excessive reliance on
reason. Chateaubriand wrote his Genius of
REVIEW QUESTION In what ways did Christianity (1802) to draw attention to
Napoleon continue the French Revolution,
the power and mystery of faith. His book
and in what ways did he break with it?
appeared during a rare lull in wars that
soon engulfed much of Europe.
a
Russia, 1812 1812
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pursuit to break enemy morale altogether. His military command, like his rule within
France, was personal and highly centralized. He essentially served as his own opera-
tions officer. This style worked as long as Napoleon could be on the battlefield, but
he failed to train independent subordinates to take over in his absence. He also faced
constant difficulties in supplying a rapidly moving army, which, because of its size,
could not always live off the land.
648 Chapter 20 Napoleon and the Revolutionary Legacy
[ 1800–1830
]
One of Napoleon’s greatest advantages was the lack of coordination among his
enemies. Britain dominated the seas but did not want to field huge land armies. On
the continent, the French republic had already set up satellites in the Netherlands
and Italy, which served as a buffer against the big powers to the east — Austria, Prus-
sia, and Russia. By maneuvering diplomatically and militarily, Napoleon could usu-
ally take these on one by one. He won striking victories against the Austrians at
Marengo and Hohenlinden in 1800, forcing them to agree to peace terms. Once the
Austrians had withdrawn, Britain agreed to the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, effectively
ending hostilities on the continent. Napoleon considered the peace with Great Brit-
ain merely a truce, however, and it lasted only until 1803.
Napoleon used the breathing space not only to consolidate his position before
taking up arms again but also to send an expeditionary force to the Caribbean colony
of St. Domingue to regain control of the island. Continuing resistance among the
black population and an epidemic of yellow fever forced Napoleon to withdraw his
troops from St. Domingue and abandon his plans to extend his empire to the West-
ern Hemisphere. As part of his retreat, he sold the Louisiana Territory to the United
States in 1803.
When war resumed in Europe, the British navy once more proved its superiority
by blocking an attempted French invasion and by defeating the French and their
Spanish allies in a huge naval battle at Trafalgar in 1805. France lost many ships; the
British lost no vessels, but their renowned admiral Lord Horatio Nelson died in the
battle.
On land, Napoleon remained invincible. In 1805, Austria took up arms again
when Napoleon demanded that it declare neutrality in the conflict with Britain. Napo-
leon promptly captured twenty-five thousand Austrian soldiers at Ulm, in Bavaria,
in 1805. After marching on to Vienna, he again trounced the Austrians, who had
been joined by their new ally, Russia. The battle of Austerlitz, often considered Napo-
leon’s greatest victory, was fought on December 2, 1805, the first anniversary of his
coronation.
After maintaining neutrality for a decade, Prussia now declared war on France.
In 1806, the French routed the Prussian army at Jena and Auerstädt. In 1807, Napo-
leon defeated the Russians at Friedland. Personal negotiations between Napoleon
and the young tsar Alexander I (r. 1801–1825) resulted in a humiliating settlement
imposed on Prussia, which paid the price for temporary reconciliation between
France and Russia; the Treaties of Tilsit turned Prussian lands west of the Elbe River
into the kingdom of Westphalia under Napoleon’s brother Jerome, and Prussia’s Pol-
ish provinces became the duchy of Warsaw.
Napoleon had made a classic military mistake that would be repeated by Adolf
Hitler in World War II: fighting a war on two distant fronts simultaneously. The
Spanish war tied down 250,000 French troops and forced Napoleon to bully Prussia
and Austria into supplying soldiers of dubious loyalty for the Moscow campaign;
those soldiers deserted at the first opportunity. The fighting in Spain and Portugal
also exacerbated the already substantial logistical and communications problems
involved in marching to Moscow.
Napoleon’s humiliation might have been temporary if the British and Russians
had not successfully organized a coalition to complete the job. By the spring of 1813,
Napoleon had replenished his army with another 250,000 men. With British financial
support, Russian, Austrian, Prussian, and Swedish armies met the French outside
Leipzig in October 1813 and defeated Napoleon in the Battle of the Nations. One by
one, Napoleon’s German allies deserted him to join the German nationalist “war of
liberation.” The Confederation of the Rhine dissolved, and the Dutch revolted and
restored the prince of Orange. Joseph Bonaparte fled Spain, and a combined Spanish-
Portuguese army under British command invaded France. In only a few months, the
allied powers crossed the Rhine and marched toward Paris. In March 1814, the French
Senate deposed Napoleon, who abdicated when his remaining generals refused to
fight. Napoleon went into exile on the island of Elba off the Italian coast. His wife,
Marie-Louise, refused to accompany him. The allies restored to the throne Louis XVIII
(r. 1814–1824), the brother of Louis XVI, beheaded during the Revolution. (Louis XVI’s
son was known as Louis XVII even though he died in prison in 1795 without ever
ruling.)
Napoleon had one last chance to regain power. Louis XVIII was caught between
nobles returning from exile, who demanded a complete restoration of their lands
and powers, and the vast majority of ordinary people, who had supported either the
republic or Napoleon during the previous twenty-five years. Sensing an opportunity,
Napoleon escaped from Elba in early 1815 and, landing in southern France, made
swift progress to Paris. Although he had left in ignominy, now crowds cheered him
and former soldiers volunteered to serve him. The period eventually known as the
Hundred Days (the length of time between Napoleon’s escape and his final defeat)
had begun. Louis XVIII fled across the border, waiting for help from the powers
allied against Napoleon.
Napoleon quickly moved his reconstituted army of 74,000 men into present-day
Belgium. At first, it seemed that he might succeed in separately fighting the two
armies arrayed against him — a Prussian army of some 60,000 men and a joint force
of 68,000 Belgian, Dutch, German, and British troops led by British general Sir
Arthur Wellesley (1769–1852), duke of Wellington. The decisive battle of Waterloo
took place on June 18, 1815, less than ten miles from Brussels. Napoleon’s forces
attacked but failed to dislodge their opponents. Late in the afternoon, the Prussians
arrived and completed the rout. Napoleon had no choice but to abdicate again. This
time the victorious allies banished him permanently to the remote island of St. Hel-
ena, far off the coast of West Africa, where he died in 1821 at the age of fifty-two.
654 Chapter 20 Napoleon and the Revolutionary Legacy
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]
The cost of Napoleon’s rule was high: 750,000 French soldiers and 400,000 others
from annexed and satellite states died between 1800 and 1815. Yet his impact on
world history was undeniable. Napoleon’s plans for a united Europe, his insistence on
spreading the legal reforms of the French
Revolution, his social welfare programs,
REVIEW QUESTION Why was Napoleon able
to gain control over so much of Europe’s and even his inadvertent awakening of
territory? national sentiment set the agenda for Euro-
pean history in the modern era.
Congress of Vienna
An unknown French engraver caricatured the efforts of the diplomats at the Congress of Vienna,
complaining that they used the occasion to divide the spoils of European territory. What ele-
ments in this engraving make it a caricature? (Photo: akg-images.)
that France must remain a major player to prevent any one European power from
dominating the others. Castlereagh hoped to make Britain the arbiter of European
affairs, but he knew this could be accomplished only through adroit diplomacy
because the British constitutional monarchy had little in common with most of its
more absolutist continental counterparts.
The task of ensuring France’s status at the Congress of Vienna fell to Prince
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand (1754–1838), an aristocrat and former bishop who had
embraced the French Revolution, served as Napoleon’s foreign minister, and ended
as foreign minister to Louis XVIII after helping arrange the emperor’s overthrow.
When the French army failed to oppose Napoleon’s return to power in the Hundred
Days, the allies took away all territory conquered since 1790, levied an indemnity
against France, and required it to support an army of occupation until it had paid.
The goal of the Congress of Vienna was to achieve postwar stability by establish-
ing secure states with guaranteed borders (Map 20.2). Because the congress aimed
to “restore” as many regimes as possible to their former rulers, this epoch is some-
times labeled the restoration. But simple restoration was not always feasible. The
congress turned the duchy of Warsaw, for example, into a new Polish kingdom but
656 Chapter 20 Napoleon and the Revolutionary Legacy
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Prussia A=Parma FINLAND
Austrian Empire B=Modena SWEDEN AND NORWAY
France C=Lucca St. Petersburg
Piedmont-Sardinia D=Tuscany
Russia E=San Marino
a
German States Moscow
Se
N o rt h
Boundary of S ea i
c
German Confederation DENMARK lt
Ba
GREAT S
N BRITAIN D Hamburg PRUSSIA RUSSIA
N
Amsterdam
LA
W
ER
London Berlin Warsaw
E
TH
KINGDOM OF
S English Channel NE
POLAND
Saxony
ATLANTIC Paris GERMAN
CONFEDERATION
OCEAN
Bavaria Vienna
F R ANC E SWITZ. AU S T R IA N E M P I R E
Savoy
Lombardy etia
Genoa A B en D
Nice
V E al
m Black Sea
C at
D PAPAL ia
PORTUGAL STATES O
T
Madrid
Corsica TO
PIEDMONT- M Constantinople
Lisbon SPA IN
Rome AN
SARDINIA EM
Naples
PI
KINGDOM RE
OF THE
M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a TWO SICILIES
0 200 400 miles
0 200 400 kilometers
made the tsar of Russia its king. (Poland would not regain its independence until
1918.) The former Dutch Republic and the Austrian Netherlands, both annexed to
France, were now united as the new kingdom of the Netherlands under the restored
stadholder. Austria took charge of the German Confederation, which replaced the
defunct Holy Roman Empire and also included Prussia.
The Congress of Vienna also resolved various international trade issues. Great
Britain, which had abolished its slave trade in 1807, urged the congress to condemn
that trade for other nations. The congress agreed in principle; in reality, however,
the slave trade continued in many places until 1850. Nearly three million Africans
[1800–1830
] The “Restoration” of Europe 657
were sold into slavery between 1800 and 1850, and most were transported on either
Portuguese or Brazilian slave ships.
To impart spiritual substance to this very calculated settlement of political
affairs, Tsar Alexander proposed the Holy Alliance, which called on divine assistance
in upholding religion, peace, and justice. Prussia and Austria signed the agreement,
but Great Britain refused to accede to what Castlereagh called “a piece of sublime
mysticism and nonsense.” Despite the reassertion of traditional religious principles,
the congress had in fact given birth to a new diplomatic order: in the future, the
legitimacy of states depended on the treaty system, not on “divine right.”
The religious revival was not limited to Europe. In the United States, the second
Great Awakening began around 1790 with huge camp meetings that brought together
thousands of worshippers and scores of evangelical preachers, many of them Meth-
odist. (The original Great Awakening had taken place in the 1730s and 1740s,
sparked by the preaching of George Whitefield, a young English evangelist and fol-
lower of John Wesley — see the illustration on page 585.) Men and women danced
to exhaustion, fell into trances, and spoke in tongues. During this period, Protestant
sects began systematic missionary activity in other parts of the world. In the British
colony of India, for example, Protestant missionaries pushed the British administra-
tion to abolish the Hindu custom of sati — the burning of widows on the funeral
pyres of their husbands — in 1829. The missionaries hoped such actions would make
Indians more likely to embrace Chris-
tianity. Missionary activity by Protestants
and Catholics would become one of the REVIEW QUESTION To what extent did the
Congress of Vienna restore the old order?
arms of European imperialism and cultural
influence in the nineteenth century.
Romanticism
As an artistic movement, romanticism encompassed poetry, music, painting, history,
and literature. (See page 584 on the origins of romanticism.) It glorified nature, emo-
tion, genius, and imagination as antidotes to the Enlightenment and to classicism in
the arts, challenging the reliance on reason, symmetry, and cool geometric spaces.
Classicism idealized models from Roman history; romanticism turned to folklore
and medieval legends. Classicism celebrated orderly, crisp lines; romantics sought
out all that was wild, fevered, and disorderly. Romantics might take any political
position, but they exerted the most political influence when they expressed national-
ist feelings.
660 Chapter 20 Napoleon and the Revolutionary Legacy
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Romantic poetry celebrated overwhelming emotion and creative imagination.
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824), explained his aims in writing poetry:
For what is Poesy but to create
From overfeeling, Good and Ill, and aim
At an external life beyond our fate,
And be the new Prometheus of new man.
Prometheus was the mythological figure who brought fire from the Greek gods to
human beings. Byron did not seek the new Prometheus among political leaders or
military men; he sought him within his own “overfeeling,” his own intense emotions.
Byron became a romantic hero himself when he rushed off to act on his emotions
by fighting and dying in the Greek war for independence from the Turks.
Romantic poetry elevated the wonders of nature almost to the supernatural. In
a poem that became one of the most beloved exemplars of romanticism, “Tintern
Abbey” (1798), the English poet William Wordsworth (1770–1850) compared him-
self to a deer even while making nature seem filled with human emotions. Words-
worth had greeted the French Revolution with joy but had gradually become disen-
chanted and celebrated British nationalism instead.
Their emphasis on authentic self-expression at times drew romantics to exotic,
mystical, or even reckless experiences. Some romantics depicted the artist as pos-
sessed by demons and obsessed with hallucinations. This more nightmarish side was
captured, and perhaps criticized, by Mary Shelley in Frankenstein. In his old age,
German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) likewise denounced the
extremes of romanticism, calling it “everything that is sick.”
Romanticism in painting similarly idealized nature and the individual of deep
feelings. The German romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) depicted
scenes — often far away in the mountains — that captured the romantic fascination
with the sublime power of nature. His melancholy individual figures looked lost in
the vastness of an overpowering nature. Friedrich hated the modern world. His land-
scapes often had religious meaning as well, as in his controversial painting The Cross
in the Mountains (1808), which showed a Christian cross standing alone in a moun-
tain scene. It symbolized the steadfastness of faith but seemed to separate religion
from the churches and attach it to mystical experience.
The English painter Joseph M. W. Turner (1775–1851) depicted his vision of
nature in mysterious, misty seascapes, anticipating later artists by blurring the out-
lines of objects. The French painter Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) chose contem-
porary as well as medieval scenes of great turbulence to emphasize light and color
and break away from what he saw as “the servile copies repeated ad nauseum in
academies of art.” Critics denounced his techniques as “painting with a drunken
broom.” To broaden his experience of light and color, Delacroix traveled in the 1830s
to North Africa and painted many exotic scenes in Morocco and Algeria.
The towering presence of the German composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–
1827) in early-nineteenth-century music helped establish the direction for musical
[1800–1830
] Challenges to the Conservative Order 661
romanticism. His music, according to one leading German romantic, “sets in motion
the lever of fear, of awe, of horror, of suffering, and awakens just that infinite longing
which is the essence of Romanticism.” Beethoven transformed the symphony into a
connected work with recurring and evolving musical themes. Some of his work was
explicitly political; his Ninth Symphony (1824) employed a chorus to sing the Ger-
man poet Friedrich Schiller’s verses in praise of universal human solidarity. Beethoven
had admired Napoleon and even dedicated his Third Symphony, the Eroica (1804),
to him, but when he learned of Napoleon’s decision to name himself emperor, the
composer tore up the dedication in disgust.
If romantics had any common political thread, it was the support of nationalist
aspirations, especially through the search for the historical origins of national iden-
tity. Romantic poets and writers collected old legends and folktales that expressed a
shared cultural and linguistic heritage stretching back to the Middle Ages. These
collections showed that Germany, for example, had always existed even if it did not
currently take the form of a single unified state. Italian nationalists took The Betrothed
(1825–1827), a novel by Alessandro Manzoni (1785–1873), as a kind of bible. Man-
zoni, the grandson of the Italian Enlightenment hero Cesare Beccaria, set his novel
in the seventeenth century, when Spain controlled Italy’s destiny, but his readers
662 Chapter 20 Napoleon and the Revolutionary Legacy
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]
Eugène Delacroix,
Massacre at Chios (1824)
More than any other painter
associated with romanti-
cism, Delacroix focused on
dramatic events of his time.
Here he shows sick and
dying Greek civilians about
to be massacred by the
Turks. He aims to elicit
sympathy for the Greek cam-
paign for independence, a
cause that had many follow-
ers in France and the rest
of Europe. (Oil on canvas by
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix
[1798–1863] / Louvre, Paris,
France / Giraudon / Bridgeman
Images.)
understood that he intended to attack the Austrians who ruled northern Italy in his
own day.
Manzoni had been inspired to write his novel by the most influential of all his-
torical novelists, Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832). While working as a lawyer and then
judge in Scotland, Scott first collected and published traditional Scottish ballads that
he had heard as a child. After achieving immediate success with his own poetry,
especially The Lady of the Lake (1810), he switched to historical novels. His novels
are almost all renditions of historical events, from Rob Roy (1817), with its account
of Scottish resistance to the English in the early eighteenth century, to Ivanhoe (1819),
with its tales of medieval England. Readers snatched them up the minute they
appeared; the first printing of Rob Roy sold out in two weeks. Very much a man of
his time, Scott also published a successful biography of Napoleon only five years after
the emperor’s death.
Sea
1825 Date of revolution W
E place on the periphery of Europe,
ic
lt in Spain, Italy, Greece, Russia, and
GREAT
North Ba S
broke out in the 1820s in Spain, Italy, Russia, and Greece (Map 20.3), as well as across
the Atlantic in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies of Latin America (see page 665).
When Ferdinand VII regained the Spanish crown in 1814, he ordered foreign
books and newspapers to be confiscated at the frontier and allowed the publication
of only two newspapers. Many army officers who had encountered French ideas
responded by joining secret societies. In 1820, disgruntled soldiers demanded that
Ferdinand proclaim his adherence to the constitution of 1812, which he had abol-
ished in 1814. Ferdinand bided his time, and in 1823 a French army invaded and
restored him to absolute power. The French acted with the consent of the other great
powers. The restored Spanish government tortured and executed hundreds of rebels;
thousands were imprisoned or forced into exile.
Hearing of the Spanish uprising, rebellious soldiers in the kingdom of Naples
joined forces with the carbonari and demanded a constitution. The promise of
reform sparked rebellion in the northern Italian kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia,
where rebels urged Charles Albert, the young heir to the Piedmont throne, to fight
the Austrians for Italian unification. After the rulers of Austria, Prussia, and Russia
met and agreed on intervention in 1821, the Austrians defeated the rebels in Naples
and Piedmont. Although Great Britain condemned the indiscriminate suppression
of revolutionary movements, Metternich convinced the other powers to agree to his
silencing the Italian opposition to Austrian rule.
Metternich acted quickly to suppress any sign of dissent closer to home. Uni-
versity students had formed nationalist student societies called Burschenschaften,
and in 1817 they held a mass rally at which they burned books they did not like,
including Napoleon’s Civil Code. Metternich was convinced — incorrectly — that the
Burschenschaften in the German states and the carbonari in Italy were linked in an
international conspiracy. In 1819, when a student assassinated the playwright August
Kotzebue because he had ridiculed the student movement, Metternich convinced the
664 Chapter 20 Napoleon and the Revolutionary Legacy
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]
leaders of the biggest German states to pass the Carlsbad Decrees, dissolving the
student societies and more strictly censoring the press. Professors who criticized
their rulers were immediately fired.
Aspirations for constitutional government surfaced in Russia when Alexander I
died suddenly in 1825. In December, when the troops assembled in St. Petersburg to
take an oath of loyalty to Alexander’s brother Nicholas as the new tsar, rebel officers
insisted that the crown belonged to another brother, Constantine, whom they hoped
would be more favorable to constitutional reform. Constantine, though next in the
line of succession after Alexander, had refused the crown. Soldiers loyal to Nicholas
easily suppressed the Decembrist Revolt (so called after the month of the uprising).
The subsequent trial, however, made the rebels into legendary heroes. For the next
thirty years, Nicholas I (r. 1825–1855) used a new political police, the Third Section,
to spy on potential opponents and stamp out rebelliousness.
The Ottoman Turks faced growing nationalist challenges in the Balkans. The
Serbs revolted against Turkish rule and won virtual independence by 1817. A Greek
general in the Russian army, Prince Alexander
0 200 400 miles
Ypsilanti, tried to lead a revolt against the Turks in
0 200 400 kilometers
1820 but failed when the tsar, urged on by Met-
ternich, disavowed him. Metternich feared rebel-
AU ST R IAN EMPIR E lion even by Christians against their Turkish rul-
DANUBIAN
BOSNIA PRINCIPALITIES ers. A second revolt, this time by Greek peasants,
SERBIA 1829 . Black
1817 D anu b e
R Sea sparked a wave of atrocities in 1821 and 1822. The
MONTENEGRO
Adrianople
Greeks killed every Turk who did not escape; in
BALKANS
OT Constantinople
retaliation, the Turks hanged the Greek patriarch
TOM of Constantinople and, in the areas they still con-
AN EM
PIRE
trolled, pillaged churches, massacred thousands of
GREECE
1830 men, and sold the women into slavery.
Western opinion turned against the Turks;
Navarino Bay
1827 Greece, after all, was the birthplace of Western civi-
1830 Dates of autonomy
lization. While the great powers negotiated, Greeks
or independence and pro-Greece committees around the world sent
Battle food and military supplies; like the English poet
Byron, a few enthusiastic European and American
Nationalistic Movements in the volunteers joined the Greeks. The Greeks held on
Balkans, 1815–1830
until the great powers were willing to intervene. In
1827, a combined force of British, French, and Russian ships destroyed the Turkish
fleet at Navarino Bay; and in 1828, Russia declared war on Turkey and advanced close
to Constantinople. The Treaty of Adrianople of 1829 gave Russia a protectorate over
the Danubian principalities in the Balkans and provided for a conference among
representatives of Britain, Russia, and France, all of whom had broken with Austria
in support of the Greeks. In 1830, Greece was declared an independent kingdom
under the guarantee of the three powers; in 1833, the second son of King Ludwig of
[1800–1830
] Challenges to the Conservative Order 665
Simón Bolívar
This watercolor by Fernandez Luis Cancino celebrates Bolívar’s promise to abolish slavery in
territories he freed from Spanish rule. Although Bolívar liberated his own slaves in 1820, he
was unable to persuade the legislators of the newly independent countries to act immediately.
They insisted on gradual emancipation. (Watercolor on paper by Luis Fernandez Cancino [19th century],
Casa-Museo 20 de Julio de 1810, Bogotá, Colombia / Giraudon / Bridgeman Images.)
under the banner of the Portuguese king’s own son and therefore maintained a
monarchical form of government along with slavery. In contrast, the new republics
freed those slaves who fought on their side, abolished the slave trade, and gradually
eliminated slavery. The United States and Great Britain recognized the new states,
and in 1823 U.S. president James Monroe announced his Monroe Doctrine, closing
the Americas to European intervention — a prohibition that depended on British
naval power and British willingness to declare neutrality.
enraged liberals when he dissolved the legislature and imposed strict censorship. On
July 26, 1830, spontaneous demonstrations in Paris turned into street battles that,
over three days, left 500 citizens and 150 soldiers dead. A group of moderate liberal
leaders, fearing the reestablishment of a republic, offered the crown to Charles X’s
cousin Louis-Philippe, duke of Orléans, and sent Charles into exile in England.
Though the new king doubled it, the number of men eligible to vote was still
minuscule: 170,000 in a country of 30 million. Revolution had broken the hold of
those who wanted to restore the pre-1789 monarchy and nobility, but it had gone
no further this time than installing a more liberal, constitutional monarchy.
Even so, news of the July revolution in Paris ignited the Belgians, whose country
had been annexed to the kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815. Differences in tradi-
tions, language, and religion separated the largely Catholic Belgians from the Dutch.
An opera about a seventeenth-century insurrection in Naples provided the spark,
and students in Brussels rioted, shouting “Down with the Dutch!”
The riot turned into revolt. King William of the Netherlands appealed to the
great powers to intervene; after all, the Congress of Vienna had established his king-
dom. But Great Britain and France opposed intervention and invited Russia, Austria,
and Prussia to a conference that guaranteed Belgium independence in exchange for
its neutrality in international affairs. Belgian neutrality would remain a cornerstone
of European diplomacy for a century. After much maneuvering, the crown of the
new kingdom of Belgium was offered to a German prince, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg,
in 1831. The choice, like that of Otto I of Greece, ensured the influence of the great
European powers without favoring any one of them in particular. Belgium, like
France and Britain, now had a constitutional monarchy.
The Austrian emperor and the Russian tsar would have supported intervention
in Belgium had they not been preoccupied with their own revolts. While the car-
bonari inspired a revolt in Naples in favor of a constitution and an uprising in
Palermo demanded independence for Sicily (both were part of the Kingdom of the
Two Sicilies), in the north, rebels in Piedmont fought for an Italy independent of
Austria. Metternich sent Austrian armies to quell the unrest.
The Polish revolt was more serious. In 1830, in response to news of revolution
in France, students raised the banner of rebellion. Polish aristocrats formed a pro-
visional government, but it was defeated by the Russian army. In reprisal, Tsar Nicho-
las abolished the Polish constitution that his brother Alexander had granted in 1815
and ordered thousands of Poles executed or banished. The independence movements
in Poland and Italy went underground only to reemerge later.
Reform of Parliament rather than revolution preoccupied the British. In August
1819, sixty thousand people attended an illegal political meeting held in St. Peter’s
Fields in Manchester to demand reform of parliamentary elections, which had long
been controlled by aristocratic landowners. When the local authorities sent the cav-
alry to arrest the speaker, panic resulted; eleven people were killed and many hun-
dreds injured. Punsters called it the battle of Peterloo or the Peterloo massacre. An
668 Chapter 20 Napoleon and the Revolutionary Legacy
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]
alarmed government passed the Six Acts, which forbade large political meetings and
restricted press criticism.
In the 1820s, however, new men came into government. Sir Robert Peel (1788–
1850), the secretary for home affairs, revised the criminal code to reduce the number
of crimes punishable by death and introduced a municipal police force in London,
called the Bobbies after him. In 1824, the laws prohibiting labor unions were repealed,
and though restrictions on strikes remained, workers could now organize themselves
legally to confront their employers collectively. In 1828, the appointment of the duke
of Wellington, the hero of Waterloo, as prime minister kept the Tories in power.
Wellington’s government pushed through a bill in 1829 allowing Catholics to sit in
Parliament and hold most public offices.
When in 1830, and again in 1831, the Whigs in Parliament proposed an exten-
sion of the right to vote, Tory diehards, principally in the House of Lords, dug in
their heels and predicted that even the most modest proposals would doom civiliza-
tion itself. Even though the proposed law would grant only limited, not universal,
male suffrage, mass demonstrations in favor of it took place in many cities. In this
“state of diseased and feverish excitement” (according to its opponents), the Reform
Bill of 1832 passed, after the king threatened to create enough new peers to obtain
its passage in the House of Lords.
Although the Reform Bill altered Britain’s political structure in significant ways,
the gains were not revolutionary. One of the bill’s foremost backers, historian and
member of Parliament Thomas Macaulay, explained, “I am opposed to Universal
Suffrage, because I think that it would produce a destructive revolution. I support
this plan, because I am sure that it is our best security against a revolution.” Although
the number of male voters nearly doubled,
only 8 percent of the population qualified
REVIEW QUESTION Why were independence to vote. Nevertheless, the bill set a prece-
movements thwarted in Italy and Poland in this dent for widening suffrage further. Those
era, but not in Greece, Belgium, and Latin
disappointed with the outcome would
America?
organize with renewed vigor in the 1830s
and 1840s.
Conclusion
The agitations and uprisings of the 1820s and early 1830s showed that the revo-
lutionary legacy still smoldered and might erupt into flames again at any moment.
Napoleon Bonaparte transformed the legacy but also kept it alive. He reshaped
French institutions and left a lasting imprint in many European countries. Moreover,
like Frankenstein’s monster, he bounced back from numerous reversals; between the
French retreat from Moscow in 1812 and his final defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Napo-
leon lost many battles yet managed to raise an army again and again.
[1800–1830
] Conclusion 669
FINLAND
SWEDEN AND NORWAY
Revolt sites St. Petersburg
SCOTLAND
a
Moscow
Nor th
Se
GREAT S ea
IRELAND lti
c
BRITAIN DENMARK
Liverpool Manchester
Ba
N ENGLAND NETH.
Hamburg PRUSSIA RUSSIA
W Amsterdam
Berlin Warsaw
London
E BELGIUM
S 1831 Kingdom of
English Channel Poland
Brussels Saxony
AT L A N T I C Paris GERMAN
CONFEDERATION
OCEAN
Bavaria
Vienna
FR ANCE SWITZ. AU S T R IA N E M P I R E
Lyon HUNGARY Transylvania
Lombardy Venetia
DANUBIAN
PRINCIPALITIES
SERBIA Black Sea
PAPAL 1817
PORTUGAL STATES O
T
Madrid TO
PIEDMONT- Constantinople
Lisbon
SARDINIA M
SPAIN
Rome AN
Naples EM
PI
KINGDOM RE
OF THE
M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a TWO SICILIES GREECE
1830
0 200 400 miles
0 200 400 kilometers
The powers that eventually defeated Napoleon tried to maintain the European
peace by shoring up monarchical governments and damping down aspirations for
constitutional freedoms and national autonomy. Nevertheless, Belgium separated
from the Netherlands, Greece achieved independence from the Turks, Latin Amer-
ican countries shook off the rule of Spain and Portugal, and the French installed
a more liberal monarchy than the one envisioned by the Congress of Vienna.
Metternich’s vision of a conservative Europe still held, but in the next two decades
dramatic social changes would prompt a new and much more deadly round of
revolutions.
Chapter 20 Review
Key Terms and People
Be sure that you can identify the term or person and explain its historical significance.
Napoleon Bonaparte (p. 640) Congress of Vienna (p. 654) Ludwig van Beethoven
First Consul (p. 641) Klemens von Metternich (p. 660)
Civil Code (p. 644) (p. 654) Sir Walter Scott (p. 662)
Continental System (p. 650) restoration (p. 655) Simón Bolívar (p. 665)
battle of Waterloo (p. 653) conservatism (p. 657) Reform Bill of 1832 (p. 668)
Review Questions
1. In what ways did Napoleon continue the French Revolution, and in what ways did he
break with it?
2. Why was Napoleon able to gain control over so much of Europe’s territory?
3. To what extent did the Congress of Vienna restore the old order?
4. Why were independence movements thwarted in Italy and Poland in this era, but not in
Greece, Belgium, and Latin America?
Making Connections
1. What was the long-term significance of Napoleon for Europe?
2. What best explains Napoleon’s fall from power: apathy at home, resistance to his rule,
or military defeat?
3. In what ways did Metternich succeed in holding back the revolutionary legacy? In what
ways did he fail?
4. How did the revolts and rebellions of the 1820s reflect the revolutionary legacy? In what
ways did they move in new directions?
Suggested References
Napoleon and his wars have always been subjects of great interest, but recent scholars have
devoted more attention to the long-term influence of the wars. The years between 1815 and
1830 have not attracted as much scholarship, even though those years are arguably more sig-
nificant than the Napoleonic era for their long-term cultural and political effects.
Bell, David A. The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It. 2007.
Black, Jeremy. The Battle of Waterloo. 2010.
Blanning, Tim. The Romantic Revolution: A History. 2011.
*Blaufarb, Rafe. Napoleon: A Symbol for an Age. A Brief Biography with Documents. 2008.
Cole, Juan. Napoléon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East. 2007.
Englund, Steven. Napoleon: A Political Life. 2004.
Hobsbawm, E. J. The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848. 1996.
Johnson, Paul. The Birth of the Modern: World Society, 1815–1830. 1991.
Napoleon Foundation: http://www.napoleon.org
Sandeman, G. A. C. Metternich. 2006.
Schroeder, Paul W. The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848. 1996.
The Walter Scott Digital Archive: http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/
Zamoyski, Adam. Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna. 2012.
*Primary source.
670
[
1800–1830
] Chapter 20 Review 671
Important Events
I
n 1830, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Line opened to the cheers of
crowds and the congratulations of government officials, including the duke of
Wellington, the hero of Waterloo who had been named British prime minister. In
the excitement, some of the dignitaries gathered on a parallel track. Another engine,
George Stephenson’s Rocket, approached at high speed — the engine could go as fast
as twenty-seven miles per hour. Most of the gentlemen scattered to safety, but former
cabinet minister William Huskisson fell and
was hit. A few hours later he died, the first
Inauguration of the Railway Line
from Naples to Portici, Italy, 1839
official casualty of the newfangled railroad.
People of all classes flocked to the Dramatic and expensive, railroads were
inauguration of new railway lines. the most striking symbol of the new industrial
This lithograph by the Italian artist age. Industrialization and its by-product of
Salvatore Fergola depicts the open- rapid urban growth fundamentally changed
ing of the first railway line in Italy,
political conflicts, social relations, cultural con-
which ran from Naples to Portici, a
town five miles south of Naples. Por- cerns, and even the landscape. So great were
tici housed a royal palace and the changes that they are collectively labeled
offered access to Herculaneum, an the Industrial Revolution. Although this revo-
important classical ruin visited by lution did not take place in a single decade
many foreigners. (By Salvatore Fergola, like the French Revolution, the introduction of
Museum San Martino, Naples, Italy / photo
© Roger Viollet / The Image Works.) steam-driven machinery, large factories, and
a new working class transformed life in the
Western world.
The shock of industrial and urban growth generated an outpouring of com-
mentary on the need for social reforms. Many who wrote on social issues expected
middle-class women to organize their homes as a domestic haven from the heartless
process of upheaval. Yet despite the emphasis on domesticity, middle-class women
participated in public issues, too: they set up reform societies that fought prostitution
and helped poor mothers, they agitated for temperance (abstention from alcohol),
and they joined the campaigns to abolish slavery.
673
674 Chapter 21 Industrialization and Social Ferment
[ 1830–1850
]
Social ferment set the ideological pots to a boil. A word coined during the French
Revolution, ideology refers to a coherent set of beliefs about the way the social and
political order should be organized. The dual impact of the French Revolution and
the Industrial Revolution prompted the development of a whole spectrum of ideolo-
gies to explain the meaning of the changes taking place. Nationalists, liberals, social-
ists, and communists offered competing visions of the social order they desired: they
all agreed that change was necessary, but they disagreed about both the means and
the ends of change. Their contest came to
a head in 1848 when the rapid transforma-
CHAPTER FOCUS How did the Industrial
Revolution create new social and political tion of European society led to a new set
conflicts? of revolutionary outbreaks, more consum-
ing than any since 1789.
Roots of Industrialization
British inventors had been steadily perfecting steam engines for five decades before
George Stephenson built his Rocket. A key breakthrough took place in 1776 when
Scottish engineer James Watt developed an efficient steam engine that could be used
to pump water from coal mines or drive machinery in textile factories. Since coal
fired the steam engines that drove new textile machinery, innovations tended to
reinforce one another. This kind of synergy built on previous changes in the textile
industry. In 1733, the Englishman John Kay had patented the flying shuttle, which
enabled weavers to “throw” yarn across the loom rather than draw it back and forth
by hand. Weavers began producing cloth more quickly than spinners could produce
the thread. The resulting shortage of spun thread propelled the invention of the
spinning jenny, a spinning wheel that enabled one worker to run eight spools at once.
The increased output of yarn then stimulated the mechanization of weaving. Using
the engines produced by James Watt and his partner Matthew Boulton, Edmund
Cartwright designed a mechanized loom in the 1780s that, when perfected, could
[1830–1850
] The Industrial Revolution 675
be run by a small boy and yet yield fifteen times the output of a skilled adult working
a handloom. By the end of the century, manufacturers were assembling new power
machinery in large factories that hired semiskilled men, women, and children to
replace skilled weavers.
Several factors interacted to make England the first site of the Industrial Revo-
lution. England had a good supply of private investment capital from overseas trade
and commercial profits, ready access to raw cotton from the plantations of its Carib-
bean colonies and the southern United States, and the necessary natural resources
at home such as coal and iron. Good opportunities for social mobility provided an
environment that fostered the pragmatism of the English and Scottish inventors
who designed the machinery. The agricultural revolution of the eighteenth century
had enabled England to produce food more efficiently, freeing some agricultural
workers to move to the new sites of manufacturing. Cotton textile production
skyrocketed.
Elsewhere in Europe, textile manufacturing — long a linchpin in the European
economy — expanded even without the introduction of new machines and factories
because of the spread of the “putting-out,” or “domestic,” system. Under the putting-
out system, manufacturers supplied the raw materials, such as woolen or cotton
fibers, to families working at home. The mother and her children washed, carded,
and combed the fibers. Then the mother and oldest daughters spun them into thread.
The father, assisted by the children, wove the cloth. The cloth was then finished
(bleached, dyed, smoothed, and so on) under the supervision of the manufacturer
in a large workshop, located either in town or in the countryside. This system had
existed in the textile industry for hundreds of years, but it grew dramatically in the
eighteenth century, and the manufacture of other products — such as glassware,
baskets, nails, and guns — followed suit. The spread of the putting-out system of
manufacturing is sometimes called proto-industrialization to signify that the process
helped pave the way for the full-scale Industrial Revolution. Because of the increase
in textile production, ordinary people began to wear underclothes and nightclothes,
both rare in the past. White, red, blue, yellow, green, and even pastel shades of cotton
now replaced the black, gray, or brown of traditional wool.
Workers in the textile industry enjoyed few protections against fluctuations in
the market. Hundreds of thousands of families might be reduced to bankruptcy in
periods of overproduction. Handloom weavers sometimes violently resisted the
establishment of the factory power looms that would force them out of work. In
England in 1811 and 1812, for example, bands of handloom weavers wrecked fac-
tory machinery and burned mills in the Midlands, Yorkshire, and Lancashire. To
restore order and protect industry, the government sent in an army of twelve thou-
sand regular soldiers and made machine wrecking punishable by death. The rioters
were called Luddites after the fictitious figure Ned Ludd, whose signature appeared
on their manifestos. (The term is still used to describe those who resist new
technology.)
676 Chapter 21 Industrialization and Social Ferment
[ 1830–1850
]
Engines of Change
Steam-driven engines took on a dramatic new form in the 1820s when the English
engineer George Stephenson perfected an engine to pull wagons along rail tracks.
The idea of a railroad was not new: iron tracks had been used since the seventeenth
century to haul coal from mines in wagons pulled by horses. A railroad system as a
mode of human transport, however, developed only after Stephenson’s invention of
a steam-powered locomotive. Placed on the new tracks, steam-driven carriages could
transport people and goods to the cities and link coal and iron deposits to the new
factories. In the 1840s alone, railroad track mileage more than doubled in Great
Britain, and British investment in railways jumped tenfold. The British also began
to build railroads in India. Private investment that had been going into the building
of thousands of miles of canals now went into railroads. Britain’s success with rail
transportation led other countries to develop their own projects. Railroads grew
spectacularly in the United States in the 1830s and 1840s, reaching 9,000 miles of
track by midcentury. In 1835, Belgium (newly independent in 1830) opened the first
continental European railroad with state bonds backed by British capital. By 1850,
the world had 23,500 miles of track, most of it in western Europe.
Railroad building spurred both industrial development and state power (Map 21.1).
Governments everywhere participated in the construction of railroads, which depended
on both private and state funds to pay for the massive amounts of iron, coal, heavy
machinery, and human labor required to build and run them. Demand for iron prod-
ucts accelerated industrial development. Until the 1840s, cotton had led industrial
production; between 1816 and 1840, cotton output more than quadrupled in Great
Britain. But from 1830 to 1850, Britain’s output of iron and coal doubled. Similarly,
Austrian output of iron doubled between the 1820s and the 1840s. One-third of all
investment in the German states in the 1840s went into railroads.
Steam-powered engines made Britain the world leader in manufacturing. By
midcentury, more than half of Britain’s national income came from manufacturing
and trade. The number of steamboats in Great Britain rose from two in 1812 to six
hundred in 1840. Between 1840 and 1850, steam-engine power doubled in Great Brit-
ain and increased even more rapidly elsewhere in Europe, as those adopting British
inventions strove to catch up. The power applied in German manufacturing, for
example, grew sixfold during the 1840s but still amounted to only a little more than
a quarter of the British figure.
Although Great Britain consciously strove to protect its industrial supremacy,
thousands of British engineers defied laws against the export of machinery or the
emigration of artisans. Only slowly, thanks to the pirating of British methods and to
new technical schools, did most continental countries begin closing the gap. Belgium
became the fastest-growing industrial power on the continent: between 1830 and
1844, the number of steam engines in Belgium quadrupled, and Belgians exported
seven times as many steam engines as they imported.
Industrialization spread slowly east from key areas in Prussia (near Berlin), Sax-
ony, and Bohemia. Cotton production in the Austrian Empire tripled between 1831
[ 1830–1850
] The Industrial Revolution 677
a
Sea
Se
BRITAIN c
Manchester DENMARK lti
Liverpool
Ba
Birmingham
N
PRUSSIA RUSSIA
Amsterdam
W London Berlin Warsaw
E Brussels GERMAN Poland
Breslau
S CONFEDERATION
Rh
BELGIUM Frankfurt Saxony
ine Cracow
R
.
ATLANTIC
OCEAN Bohemia
Vienna
FR A NC E Munich
Buda Pest
Lyon AU S T R IA N E M P I R E
Milan
.
Florence Danube R
Marseille
PORTUGAL OTTOMAN EMPIRE
Madrid
Barcelona
Lisbon SPA I N Rome
Naples
Mediterranean Sea
and 1845, and coal production increased fourfold from 1827 to 1847. Even so, by
1850, continental Europe still lagged almost twenty years behind Great Britain in
industrial development.
The advance of industrialization in eastern Europe was slow, in large part because
serfdom still survived there, hindering labor mobility and tying up investment capi-
tal: as long as peasants were legally tied to the land as serfs, they could not migrate
to the new factory towns and landlords felt little incentive to invest their income in
678 Chapter 21 Industrialization and Social Ferment
[ 1830–1850
]
manufacturing. The problem was worst in Russia, where industrialization would not
take off until the end of the nineteenth century.
Despite the spread of industrialization, factory workers remained a minority
everywhere. In the 1840s, factories in England employed only 5 percent of the work-
ers; in France, 3 percent; in Prussia, 2 percent. The putting-out system remained
strong, employing two-thirds of the manufacturing workers in Prussia and Saxony,
for example, in the 1840s. Many peasants kept their options open by combining fac-
tory work or putting-out work with agricultural labor. From Switzerland to Russia,
people worked in agriculture during the spring and summer and in manufacturing
in the fall and winter.
Even though factories employed only a small percentage of the population, they
attracted much attention. Already by 1830, more than a million people in Britain
depended on the cotton industry for employment, and cotton cloth constituted 50
percent of the country’s exports. Factories sprang up in urban areas, where the grow-
ing population provided a ready source of labor. The rapid expansion of the British
textile industry had a colonial corollary: the destruction of the hand manufacture of
textiles in India. The British put high import duties on Indian cloth entering Britain
and kept such duties very low for British cloth entering India. The effects were cata-
strophic for Indian manufacturing: in 1813, the Indian city of Calcutta exported to
England £2 million worth of cotton cloth; by 1830, Calcutta was importing from
England £2 million worth of the product. When Britain abolished slavery in its Carib-
bean colonies in 1833, British manufacturers began to buy raw cotton in the southern
United States, where slavery still flourished.
Factories drew workers from the urban population surge, which had begun in
the eighteenth century and now accelerated. The number of agricultural laborers
also increased during industrialization in Britain, suggesting that a growing birth-
rate created a larger population and fed workers into the new factory system. Factory
employment resembled labor on family farms or in the putting-out system: entire
families came to toil for a single wage, although family members performed different
tasks. Workdays of twelve to seventeen hours were typical, even for children, and
the work was grueling.
As urban factories grew, their workers gradually came to constitute a new socio-
economic class with a distinctive culture and traditions. The term working class, like
middle class, came into use for the first time in the early nineteenth century. It
referred to the laborers in the new factories. In the past, urban workers had labored
in isolated trades: water and wood carrying, gardening, laundry, and building. In
contrast, factories brought working people together with machines, under close
supervision by their employers. Soon developing a sense of common interests, they
organized societies for mutual help and political reform. From these would come the
first labor unions.
Industry returned unheard-of riches to factory owners and managers even as it
caused pollution and created new forms of poverty for exhausted workers. “From this
foul drain the greatest stream of human industry flows out to fertilize the whole
[1830–1850
] The Industrial Revolution 679
world,” wrote the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville after visiting the new English
industrial city of Manchester in the 1830s. “From this filthy sewer pure gold flows.”
Studies by physicians set the life expectancy of workers in Manchester at just seven-
teen years (partly because of high rates of infant mortality), whereas the average life
expectancy in England was forty years in 1840. In some parts of Europe, city leaders
banned factories, hoping to insulate their towns from the effects of industrial growth.
Investigators detailed the pitiful condition of workers. A physician in the town
of Mulhouse, in eastern France, described the “pale, emaciated women who walk
barefooted through the dirt” to reach the factory. The young children who worked
in the factory appeared “clothed in rags which are greasy with the oil from the looms
and frames.” A report to the city government in Lille, France, in 1832 described the
“dark cellars” where the cotton workers lived: “The air is never renewed, it is infected;
the walls are plastered with garbage.”
Government inquiries often focused on women and children. In Great Britain,
the Factory Act of 1833 outlawed the employment of children under the age of nine
in textile mills (except in the lace and silk industries); it also limited the workdays
for those ages nine to thirteen to nine hours a day, and those ages thirteen to eighteen
poorer sections for only a few hours three days a week. In rapidly growing British
industrial cities such as Manchester, one-third of the houses contained no latrines.
Human waste ended up in the rivers that supplied drinking water. The horses that
provided transportation inside the cities left droppings everywhere, and city dwellers
often kept chickens, ducks, goats, pigs, geese, and even cattle, as well as dogs and cats,
in their houses. The result was a “universal atmosphere of filth and stink,” as one
observer recounted.
Such conditions made cities prime breeding grounds for disease. In 1830 to 1832
and again in 1847 to 1851, devastating outbreaks of cholera swept across Asia and
Europe, touching the United States as well in 1849 to 1850 (Map 21.2). Today we
know that a waterborne bacterium causes cholera, but at the time no one understood
the disease and everyone feared it. The usually fatal illness induced violent vomiting
and diarrhea and left the skin blue, eyes sunken and dull, and hands and feet ice
cold. While cholera particularly ravaged the crowded, filthy neighborhoods of rap-
idly growing cities, it also claimed many rural and some well-to-do victims. In Paris,
18,000 people died in the 1832 epidemic and 20,000 in that of 1849; in London,
7,000 died in each epidemic; and in Russia, the epidemic was catastrophic, claiming
250,000 victims in 1831 to 1832 and 1 million in 1847 to 1851.
Epidemics revealed the social tensions lying just beneath the surface of urban
life. Middle-class reformers often considered the poor to be morally degenerate. In
their view, overcrowding led to sexual promiscuity and illegitimacy. They depicted
the lower classes as dangerously lacking in sexual self-control. Officials collected
statistics on illegitimacy that seemed to bear out these fears: one-quarter to one-half
of the babies born in the big European cities in the 1830s and 1840s were illegiti-
mate, and alarmed medical men wrote about thousands of infanticides. In contrast,
only a tiny fraction of rural births were illegitimate. The rising rate of births outside
of marriage seemed to go hand in hand with drinking and crime. Beer halls and
pubs dotted the urban landscape. By the 1830s, Hungary’s twin cities of Buda and
682 Chapter 21 Industrialization and Social Ferment
[ 1830–1850
]
Pest had eight hundred beer and wine houses for the working classes. Police officials
estimated that London had seventy thousand thieves and eighty thousand prostitutes.
In many cities, nearly half the population lived at the level of bare subsistence, and
increasing numbers depended on public welfare, charity, or criminality to make ends
meet.
Everywhere reformers warned of a widening separation between rich and poor
and a growing sense of hostility between the classes. A Swiss pastor noted: “A new
spirit has arisen among the workers. Their hearts seethe with hatred of the well-to-
do; their eyes lust for a share of the wealth about them; their mouths speak unblush-
ingly of a coming day of retribution.” In 1848, as we will see, it would seem that day
of retribution had arrived.
local officials. Nowhere did the old rural social order seem more impregnable than
in Russia. Most Russian serfs remained tied to the land, and troops easily suppressed
serfs’ uprisings in 1831 and 1842. Yet in the 1850s railroad construction would begin
to transform life in Russia, too, and the railroads would bring with them the same
social problems — urbanization, the beginning of industrialization, and a growing
awareness of social disparities — that threatened the social and political order in west-
ern Europe in the 1830s and 1840s. These
new social problems demanded a response. REVIEW QUESTION What dangers did the
But would that response be reform or Industrial Revolution pose to both urban and
revolution? rural life?
In Rain, Steam, and Speed: The Great Western Railway (1844), the leading English
romantic painter, Joseph M. W. Turner (1775–1851), portrayed the struggle between
the forces of nature and the means of economic growth. Turner was fascinated by
steamboats: in The Fighting “Téméraire” Tugged to Her Last Berth to Be Broken Up
(1838), he featured the victory of steam power over more conventional sailing ships.
Increased literacy, the spread of reading rooms and lending libraries, and seri-
alization in newspapers and journals gave novels a large reading public. Unlike the
fiction of the eighteenth century, which had focused on individual personalities, the
great novels of the 1830s and 1840s specialized in the portrayal of social life in all
its varieties. Manufacturers, financiers, starving students, workers, bureaucrats, pros-
titutes, underworld figures, thieves, and aristocratic men and women filled the pages
of works by popular writers. Hoping to get out of debt, the French writer Honoré
de Balzac (1799–1850) pushed himself to exhaustion and a premature death by
cranking out ninety-five novels and many short stories. He aimed to catalog the
[
1830–1850
] Reforming the Social Order 685
social types that could be found in French society. Many of his characters, like him-
self, were driven by the desire to climb higher in the social order.
The English fiction writer Charles Dickens (1812–1870) worked with a similar
frenetic energy and for much the same reason. When his father was imprisoned for
debt in 1824, the young Dickens took a job in a shoe-polish factory. He eventually
became a journalist and managed to produce a series of novels that attracted thou-
sands of readers. In them, he paid close attention to the distressing effects of indus-
trialization and urbanization. In The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), for example, he
depicts the Black Country, the manufacturing region west and northwest of Birming-
ham, as a “cheerless region,” a “mournful place,” in which tall chimneys “made foul
the melancholy air.”
Novels by women often revealed the bleaker side of women’s situations. Char-
lotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) describes the difficult life of an orphaned girl who
becomes a governess, the only occupation open to most single middle-class women.
The French novelist Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin Dudevant (1804–1876), writ-
ing under the pen name George Sand, took her social criticism a step further. She
announced her independence in the 1830s by dressing like a man and smoking cigars.
Though she published her work under a male pseudonym, as did many other women
writers of the time, she created female characters who prevail in difficult circum-
stances through romantic love and moral idealism. Her notoriety — she became the
George Sand
In this lithograph by Alcide Lorentz
of 1842, George Sand is shown in
one of her notorious male costumes
standing on a cloud created by the
cigar in her left hand. Sand published
numerous works, including novels
(Indiana is shown at the left of the
image), plays, essays, travel writing,
and an autobiography. She advocated
setting up a Chamber of Mothers to
go alongside the Chamber of Depu-
ties (her right arm rests on sheets
with those words on them), and she
actively participated in the revolution
of 1848 in France, writing pamphlets
in support of the new republic. Dis-
illusioned by the rise to power of Louis-
Napoleon Bonaparte, she withdrew to
her country estate and devoted her-
self exclusively to her writing. (Musée
de la Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Paris,
France / Archives Charmet / Bridgeman
Images.)
686 Chapter 21 Industrialization and Social Ferment
[ 1830–1850
]
lover of the Polish pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin, among others, and threw
herself into socialist politics — made the term George-Sandism a common expression
of disdain toward independent women.
As artists became more interested in society and social relations, ordinary citi-
zens crowded cultural events. Museums opened to the public across Europe. Popular
theaters in big cities drew thousands from the lower and middle classes every night;
in London, for example, some twenty-four thousand people attended eighty “penny
theaters” nightly. The audience for print culture also multiplied. In the German
states, for example, the production of new literary works doubled between 1830 and
1843, as did the number of periodicals and newspapers and the number of booksell-
ers. Young children and ragpickers sold cheap prints and books door-to-door or in
taverns.
The advent of photography in 1839 provided an amazing new medium for art-
ists. The daguerreotype, named after its inventor, French painter Jacques Daguerre
(1787–1851), prompted one artist to claim that “from today, painting is dead.”
Although this prediction was highly exaggerated, photography did open up new ways
of portraying reality. It did so only gradually, however, as early photographs required
exposure times of twenty to thirty minutes, making it impossible to capture anything
or anyone in movement.
Culture expanded its reach in part because the ranks of artists and writers swelled.
Estimates suggest that the number of painters and sculptors in France, the undisputed
center of European art at the time, grew sixfold between 1789 and 1838. Not every-
one could succeed in this hothouse atmosphere, in which writers and artists furiously
competed for public attention. Their own troubles made some of them more keenly
aware of the hardships faced by the poor. A satirical article in one of the many bit-
ingly critical journals and booklets published in Berlin proclaimed: “In Ipswich in
continued to dress for decorative effect, now with tightly corseted waists that empha-
sized the differences between female and male bodies. Middle- and upper-class
women favored long hair that required hours of brushing and pinning up, and they
wore long, cumbersome skirts.
Scientists reinforced stereotypes. Once considered sexually insatiable, women
were now described as incapacitated by menstruation and largely uninterested in sex,
an attitude that many equated with moral superiority. Thus was born the “Victorian”
woman (the epoch gets its name from England’s Queen Victoria — see page 703), a
figment of the largely male medical imagination. Physicians and scholars considered
women mentally inferior. In 1839, Auguste Comte, an influential early French sociolo-
gist, wrote, “As for any functions of government, the radical inaptitude of the female
sex is there yet more marked . . . and limited to the guidance of the mere family.”
Some women denounced the ideology of domesticity and separate spheres; the
English writer Ann Lamb, for example, proclaimed that “the duty of a wife means
the obedience of a Turkish slave.” Middle-class women who did not marry, however,
had few options for earning a living; they often worked as governesses or ladies’
companions for the well-to-do. Most lower-class women worked because of financial
necessity; as the wives of peasants, laborers, or shopkeepers, they had to supplement
the family’s meager income by working on the farm, in a factory, or in a shop. Domes-
ticity might have been an ideal for them, but rarely was it a reality.
a
Flemish LATVIAN
Se
North
Danish Turkish-Tataric IRISH S ea i
c
DANISH t LITHUANIAN
Norwegian Turkish
B al
Swedish WHITE
Mixed use RUSSIAN
Slavonic of languages WELSH ENGLISH
Great Russian
Ukrainian CORNISH DUTCH
White Russian GERMAN POLISH
Polish
Serbian UKRAINIAN
BRETON FLEMISH
Croatian CZECH
Slovak ATLANTIC WALLOON SLOVAK
Czech OCEAN
Bulgarian
Macedonian FRENCH SLOVENIAN MAGYAR
Slovenian BASQUE
Celtic ROMANIAN
Irish
Gaelic B l ack Se a
SERBIAN
Welsh CROATIAN BULGARIAN
Breton CATALAN CORSICAN
Cornish SPANISH ITALIAN
ALBANIAN
PORTUGUESE
MACEDONIAN
TURKISH
Mediterranean Sea GREEK
And could the powerful, conservative kingdom of Prussia coexist in a unified Ger-
man state with other, more liberal but smaller states? These questions would vex
German history for decades to come.
Polish nationalism revived after the collapse of the revolt in 1830 against Russian
domination. It found its most ringing voice in the poet Adam Mickiewicz (1798–
1855), whose mystical writings portrayed the Polish exiles as martyrs of a crucified
nation with an international Christian mission. Mickiewicz formed the Polish Legion
to fight for national restoration, but rivalries and divisions prevented united action
until 1846, when Polish exiles in Paris tried to launch a coordinated insurrection for
Polish independence. Plans for an uprising in the Polish province of Galicia in the
Austrian Empire collapsed when peasants instead revolted against their noble Polish
masters.
In Russia, nationalism took the form of opposition to Western ideas. Russian
nationalists, or Slavophiles (lovers of the Slavs), opposed the Westernizers, who wanted
Russia to follow Western models of industrial development and constitutional gov-
ernment. The Slavophiles favored maintaining rural traditions infused by the values
of the Russian Orthodox church. Only a return to Russia’s basic historical principles,
they argued, could protect the country against the corrosion of rationalism and
materialism. The conflict between Slavophiles and Westernizers has continued to
shape Russian cultural and intellectual life to the present day.
The most significant nationalist movement in western Europe could be found
in Ireland. The Irish had struggled for centuries against English occupation, but Irish
nationalists developed strong organizations only in the 1840s. In 1842, a group of
writers founded the Young Ireland movement, which aimed to recover Irish traditions
and preserve the Gaelic language (spoken by at least one-third of the peasantry).
Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847), a Catholic lawyer and landowner who sat in the
British House of Commons, hoped to force the British Parliament to repeal the Act
of Union of 1801, which had made Ireland part of Great Britain. In 1843, London
newspapers reported “monster meetings” that drew crowds of as many as 300,000
people in support of repeal of the union. In response, the British government arrested
O’Connell and convicted him of conspiracy.
proletarian revolution and thus lead inevitably to the abolition of exploitation, pri-
vate property, and class society.
Even when not overtly revolutionary, the upsurge in working-class organizations
frightened the middle classes. A newspaper exclaimed in 1834, “The trade unions
are, we have no doubt, the most dangerous institutions that were ever permitted to
take root.” Many British workers joined in Chartism, which aimed to transform Brit-
ain into a democracy. In 1838, political radicals drew up the People’s Charter, which
demanded universal manhood suffrage, vote by secret ballot, equal electoral districts,
annual elections, and the elimination of property qualifications for and the payment
of stipends to members of Parliament. Women took part by founding female political
unions, setting up Chartist Sunday schools, organizing boycotts of unsympathetic
shopkeepers, and joining Chartist temperance associations. Nevertheless, the People’s
Charter refrained from calling for woman suffrage because the movement’s leaders
feared that doing so would alienate potential supporters.
The Chartists organized a massive campaign during 1838 and 1839, with large
public meetings, fiery speeches, and torchlight parades. Presented with petitions for
the People’s Charter signed by more than a million people, the House of Commons
refused to act. In response to this rebuff from middle-class liberals, the Chartists
allied themselves in the 1840s with working-class strike movements in the manufac-
turing districts and associated with various European revolutionary movements.
Continental European workers were less well organized because trade unions and
strikes were illegal everywhere except Great Britain. Nevertheless, artisans and skilled
workers in France formed mutual aid societies that provided insurance, death bene-
fits, and education. In eastern and central Europe, socialism and labor organization —
like liberalism — had less impact than in western Europe. Cooperative societies and
workers’ newspapers did not appear in the German states until 1848. In general, labor
organization tended to flourish where urbanization and industrialization were most
advanced; even though factory workers rarely organized, skilled artisans did so in
order to resist mechanization and wage
cuts. When revolutions broke out in 1848, REVIEW QUESTION Why did ideologies
artisans and workers played a prominent — have such a powerful appeal in the 1830s
and controversial — role. and 1840s?
with rising radicalism in Paris and other big cities, the voters elected a largely conserv-
ative National Assembly in April 1848; most of the deputies chosen were middle-class
professionals or landowners who favored either a restoration of the monarchy or a
moderate republic. The Assembly immediately appointed a five-man executive com-
mittee to run the government and pointedly excluded known supporters of workers’
rights. Suspicious of all demands for rapid change, the deputies dismissed a petition
to restore divorce and voted down woman suffrage by 899 to 1. When the numbers
enrolled in the national workshops in Paris rocketed from a predicted 10,000 to
110,000, the government ordered the workshops closed to new workers, and on June 21
it directed that those already enrolled move to the provinces or join the army.
The workers exploded in anger. In the June Days, as the following week came
to be called, the government forces crushed the workers: more than 10,000 people,
most of them workers, were killed or injured; 12,000 were arrested; and 4,000 even-
tually were convicted and deported to Algeria.
After the National Assembly adopted a new constitution calling for a presidential
election in which all adult men could vote, the electorate chose Louis-Napoleon
Bonaparte (1808–1873), nephew of the dead emperor. Bonaparte got more than 5.5
million votes out of some 7.4 million cast. His election spelled the end of the Second
Republic, just as his uncle had dismantled the first one established in 1792. In 1852,
on the forty-eighth anniversary of Napoleon I’s coronation as emperor, Louis-Napoleon
declared himself Emperor Napoleon III, thus inaugurating the Second Empire.
(Napoleon I’s son died and never became Napoleon II, but Napoleon III wanted to
create a sense of legitimacy and
so used the Roman numeral
III.) Although the revolution
of 1848 never had a period of
terror like that in 1793–1794,
it nonetheless ended in similar
fashion, with an authoritarian
government that tried to play
monarchists and republicans
off against each other.
V
Piedmont
Italians spoke regional dialects.
As king of the most powerful Italian state, PAPAL
STATES
Charles Albert (r. 1831–1849) inevitably played a Corsica
(Fr.)
central role. After some hesitation caused by fears PIEDMONT-
SARDINIA
Rome
Naples
of French intervention, he led a military campaign
Sardinia
against Austria. Although Austrian troops defeated KINGDOM OF
THE TWO SICILIES
Charles Albert in the north, democratic and nation-
Sicily
alist forces prevailed at first in the south. In the 0 100 200 miles
fall, the Romans drove the pope from the city and 0 100 200 kilometers
The goal of German unification soon took precedence over social reform or
constitutional changes within the separate states. In March and April, most of the
German states agreed to elect delegates to a federal parliament at Frankfurt that
would attempt to unite Germany. Local princes and even the more powerful kings
of Prussia and Bavaria seemed to totter. Yet the revolutionaries’ weaknesses soon
became apparent. The eight hundred delegates to the Frankfurt parliament had little
practical political experience and no access to an army. Unemployed artisans and
workers smashed machines; peasants burned landlords’ records and occasionally
attacked Jewish moneylenders; women set up clubs and newspapers to demand their
emancipation from “perfumed slavery.”
The advantage lay with the princes, who bided their time. While the Frankfurt
parliament laboriously prepared a liberal constitution for a united Germany — one
that denied self-determination to Czechs, Poles, and Danes within its proposed Ger-
man borders — Frederick William recovered his confidence. First, his army crushed
the revolution in Berlin in the fall of 1848. Prussian troops then intervened to help
other local rulers put down the last wave of democratic and nationalist insurrections
in the spring of 1849. When the Frankfurt parliament finally concluded its work,
offering the emperorship of a constitutional, federal Germany to the king of Prussia,
Frederick William contemptuously refused this “crown from the gutter.”
Events followed a similar course in the Austrian Empire. Just as Italians were
driving the Austrians out of their lands in northern Italy and Magyar nationalists
were demanding political autonomy for Hungary, a student-led demonstration for
political reform on March 13, 1848, in Vienna turned into rioting, looting, and machine
breaking. Metternich resigned, escaping to England in disguise. Emperor Ferdinand
promised a constitution, an elected parliament, and the end of censorship. The belea-
guered authorities in Vienna could not refuse Magyar demands for home rule, and
Stephen Széchenyi and Lajos Kossuth (see page 694) both became ministers in the
new Hungarian government. The Magyars were the largest ethnic group in Hungary
but still did not make up 50 percent of the population, which included Croats, Roma-
nians, Slovaks, and Slovenes, all of whom preferred Austrian rule to domination by
local Magyars.
The ethnic divisions in Hungary foreshadowed the many political and social divi-
sions that would doom the revolutionaries. Fears of peasant insurrection prompted the
Magyar nationalists around Kossuth to abolish serfdom, thereby alienating the largest
noble landowners. The new government infuriated the other nationalities when it
imposed the Magyar language on them. In Prague, Czech nationalists convened a Slav
congress as a counter to the Germans’ Frankfurt parliament and called for a reorgani-
zation of the Austrian Empire that would recognize the rights of ethnic minorities.
The Austrian government took advantage of these divisions. To quell peasant
discontent, it abolished all remaining peasant obligations to the nobility in March
1848. Rejoicing country folk soon lost interest in the revolution. Military force finally
broke up the revolutionary movements. The first blow fell in Prague in June 1848;
General Prince Alfred von Windischgrätz, the military governor, bombarded the city
702 Chapter 21 Industrialization and Social Ferment
[ 1830–1850
]
Revolutions of 1848 into submission when a demonstration led
to violence (including the shooting death
1848 of his wife, watching from a window).
January Uprising in Palermo, Sicily After another uprising in Vienna a few
February Revolution in Paris; proclamation months later, Windischgrätz marched sev-
of republic
enty thousand soldiers into the capital and
March Insurrections in Vienna, German set up direct military rule. In December,
cities, Milan, and Venice; autonomy
movement in Hungary; Charles the Austrian monarchy came back to life
Albert of Piedmont-Sardinia when the eighteen-year-old Francis Joseph
declares war on Austrian Empire (r. 1848–1916), unencumbered by prom-
May Frankfurt parliament opens ises extracted by the revolutionaries from
June Austrian army crushes revolutionary his now feeble uncle Ferdinand, assumed
movement in Prague; June Days the imperial crown after intervention by
end in defeat of workers in Paris
leading court officials. In the spring of
July Austrians defeat Charles Albert
and Italian forces
1849, the Austrian army teamed up with
Tsar Nicholas I, who marched into Hun-
November Insurrection in Rome
gary with more than 300,000 Russian
December Francis Joseph becomes Austrian
emperor; Louis-Napoleon is elected troops. Hungary was put under brutal
president in France martial law. Széchenyi went mad, and Kos-
1849 suth found refuge in the United States.
February Rome is declared a republic
April Frederick William of Prussia rejects
crown of united Germany offered
Aftermath to 1848:
by Frankfurt parliament Reimposing Authority
July Roman republic overthrown by Although the revolutionaries of 1848
French intervention
failed to achieve their goals, their efforts
August Russian and Austrian armies com- left a profound mark on the political and
bine to defeat Hungarian forces
social landscape. Between 1848 and 1851,
the French served a kind of republican
apprenticeship that prepared the population for another, more lasting republic after
1870. In Italy, the failure of unification did not stop the spread of nationalist ideas
and the rooting of demands for democratic participation. In the German states, the
revolutionaries of 1848 turned nationalism from an idea devised by professors and
writers into a popular enthusiasm and even a practical reality. The initiation of arti-
sans, workers, and journeymen into democratic clubs increased political awareness
in the lower classes and helped prepare them for broader political participation.
Almost all the German states had a constitution and a parliament after 1850. The
spectacular failures of 1848 thus hid some important underlying successes.
The absence of revolution in 1848 in some regions of the West was just as sig-
nificant as its presence. No revolution occurred in Great Britain, the Netherlands, or
Belgium, the three places where industrialization and urbanization had developed
most rapidly. In Great Britain, the Chartist movement mounted several gigantic
demonstrations to force Parliament into granting all adult males the vote. But even
[1830–1850
] Conclusion 703
Conclusion
In 1851, Europe’s most important female monarch presided over a midcentury cel-
ebration of peace and industrial growth that helped dampen the still-smoldering fires
of revolutionary passion. In the place of revolutionary fervor was a government-
sponsored spectacle of what industry, hard work, and technological imagination
could produce. Queen Victoria (r. 1837–1901), who herself promoted the notion of
domesticity as women’s sphere, opened the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry
of All Nations in London on May 1. A huge iron-and-glass building housed the dis-
play. Soon people referred to it as the Crystal Palace; its nine hundred tons of glass
created an aura of fantasy, and the abundant goods from around the world inspired
satisfaction and pride.
Many of the six million people who visited the Crystal Palace display traveled
on the new railroads, the foremost symbol of the age of industrial transformation.
Along with the railroads, the application of steam engines to textile manufacturing
set in motion a host of economic and social changes: cities burgeoned with rapidly
growing populations; factories concentrated laborers who formed a new working
class; manufacturers now challenged landed elites for political leadership; and social
704 Chapter 21 Industrialization and Social Ferment
[ 1830–1850
]
problems galvanized reform organizations and governments alike. The Crystal Palace
presented the rosy view of modern, industrial, urban life, but the housing shortages,
inadequacy of water supplies, and recurrent epidemic diseases had not disappeared.
The revolutions of 1848 brought to the surface the profound tensions within a
European society in transition toward industrialization and urbanization. After
[ 1830–1850
] Conclusion 705
SCOTLAND
Glasgow
Moscow
Nor th
a
GREAT
Se
Sea c
IRELAND Leeds DENMARK lti
N Ba
Manchester
W BRITAIN Hamburg
E
IA RUSSIA
S London NETH.
Berlin U SS
PR
POLAND
BELGIUM
Ga
Frankfurt Prague Cracow
lic
Paris
ia
ATLAN TI C
OC EAN Munich AU S T R IA N
Vienna EMPIRE
F R A NC E SWITZ. AUSTRIA Pest
Buda
HUNGARY
Milan
Venice
them, the Industrial Revolution continued and workers developed more extensive
organizations. Confronted with the menace of revolution, conservative elites now
sought alternatives that would be less threatening to the established order and still
permit some change. This search for alternatives became immediately evident in the
question of national unification in Germany and Italy. National unification would
hereafter depend not on speeches and parliamentary resolutions, but rather on what
the Prussian leader Otto von Bismarck would call “iron and blood.”
Chapter 21 Review
Key Terms and People
Be sure that you can identify the term or person and explain its historical significance.
ideology (p. 674) Opium War (p. 690) communists (p. 696)
Industrial Revolution (p. 674) nationalism (p. 691) Chartism (p. 697)
urbanization (p. 680) Giuseppe Mazzini (p. 691) Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte
George Sand (p. 685) liberalism (p. 693) (p. 699)
domesticity (p. 688) Corn Laws (p. 694)
imperialism (p. 689) socialism (p. 695)
Review Questions
1. What dangers did the Industrial Revolution pose to both urban and rural life?
2. In which areas did reformers trying to address the social problems created by industriali-
zation and urbanization succeed, and in which did they fail?
3. Why did ideologies have such a powerful appeal in the 1830s and 1840s?
4. Why did the revolutions of 1848 fail?
Making Connections
1. Which of the ideologies of this period had the greatest impact on political events? How can
you explain this?
2. In what ways might industrialization be considered a force for peaceful change rather than
a revolution? (Hint: Think about the situation in Great Britain.)
3. In what ways did the revolutions of 1848 repeat elements of the French revolutions in
1789 and 1830, and in what ways did they break with those precedents?
4. Neither Great Britain nor Russia had a revolution in 1848. How is the absence of revolu-
tion in those two countries related to their history in the preceding decades?
Suggested References
The spread of industrialization has elicited much more historical interest than the process of
urbanization because the analysis of industrialization occupied a central role in Marxism. The
Web site Gallica, produced by the National Library of France, offers a wealth of imagery and
information on French cultural history.
Davidoff, Leonore, and Catherine Hall. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle
Class, 1780–1850. 2002.
Hanes, W. Travis, and Frank Sanello. The Opium Wars: The Addiction of One Empire and the
Corruption of Another. 2004.
Hobsbawm, E. J. The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848. 1996.
Jacob, Margaret C. The First Knowledge Economy: Human Capital and the European Economy,
1750–1850. 2014.
Jones, Peter. The 1848 Revolutions. 2013.
Kinealy, Christine. Repeal and Revolution: 1848 in Ireland. 2009.
*Primary source.
706
[1830–1850
] Chapter 21 Review 707
Important Events
Consider three events: Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop (1841), Revolutions of
1848 throughout Europe (1848), and Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist
Manifesto (1848). How do these events represent different responses to the changes
wrought by the Industrial Revolution?
I
n 1859, the name VERDI suddenly appeared scrawled on walls across the cities
of the Italian peninsula. The graffiti seemed to celebrate the composer Giuseppe
Verdi, whose operas thrilled crowds of Europeans. Among Italians, Verdi was a
particular hero; his stories of downtrodden groups struggling against tyrannical gov-
ernment seemed to refer specifically to them. As his operatic choruses thundered
out calls to rebellion in the name of the nation, Italian audiences were sure that Verdi
was telling them to throw off Austrian and papal rule and unite in a newborn Roman
Empire. VERDI also formed an acronym for
Vittorio Emmanuele Re d’Italia (“Victor
Aïda Poster Emmanuel, King of Italy”), and in 1859 it sum-
Aïda (1871), Giuseppe Verdi’s opera
moned Italians to unite under Victor Emman-
of human passion and state power
among people of different nations, uel II, king of Sardinia and Piedmont — the one
became a staple of Western culture, Italian leader with a nationalist, modernizing
bringing people across Europe into profile. The graffiti was good publicity, for the
a common cultural orbit. Written to very next year Italy united as a result of warfare
celebrate the opening of the Suez and hard bargaining by political realists.
Canal, Aïda also celebrated the
improvement of Europe’s access to
After the failed revolutions of 1848, Euro-
Asian resources provided by the new pean statesmen and the politically aware pub-
waterway. The opera was a prime lic increasingly rejected idealism in favor of
example of the surge of interest Realpolitik — a politics of tough-minded real-
in Egyptian styles and objects that ism aimed at strengthening the state and tight-
followed the opening of the canal.
(© Lordprice Collection / Alamy.)
ening social order. Realpolitikers disliked the
romanticism of the revolutionaries. Instead, they
put their faith in power politics and even the use
of violence to attain their goals. Two particularly skilled practitioners of Realpolitik, the
Italian Camillo di Cavour and the Prussian Otto von Bismarck, succeeded in unifying
Italy and Germany not by romantic slogans but by war and diplomacy. Most leading
figures of the 1850s and 1860s, enmeshed like Verdi’s operatic heroes in power politics,
strengthened their states by harnessing the forces of nationalism and liberalism that
had led to earlier romantic revolts. Their achievements changed the face of Europe.
709
710 Chapter 22 Politics and Culture of the Nation-State
[ 1850–1870
]
Making a modern nation-state was a complicated task. Economic development
was also crucial, as was using government policy and culture to create a sense of
national identity and common purpose. Governments took vigorous steps to improve
rapidly growing cities, promote public health, and boost national loyalty. State institu-
tions such as public schools helped establish a common fund of knowledge and politi-
cal beliefs. Authoritarian leaders like Bismarck and the new French emperor Napo-
leon III believed that a better quality of life would not only make the state more stable
by calming revolutionary impulses of years past but also silence liberal critics.
Culture built a sense of belonging. Reading novels, attending operas and art
exhibitions, and visiting the newly fashionable world’s fairs gave ordinary people a
stronger sense of being French or German or British. Like politicians, artists and
writers also came to reject romanticism, featuring instead harsher, more realistic
aspects of everyday life. Artists painted nudes in shockingly blunt ways, eliminating
romantic hues and dreamy poses. Authors wrote about the bleak life of soldiers in
wartime or about ordinary people suffering poverty or turning to crime. Alongside
the tough-minded nation-building policies there arose tough-minded art, not just
mirroring Realpolitik but encouraging it.
In their quest to build strong nations, Western politicians did not shy away from
using violence or causing harm. They sent armies to distant areas to stamp out
resistance to their continuing global expansion. At home, governments uprooted
neighborhoods to construct public buildings, roads, and parks. The process of nation
building was often brutal, bringing foreign wars, arrests, and even civil war — all
the centerpieces of many Verdi operas. In 1871, an uprising of Parisians challenged
the central government’s intrusion into everyday life and its failure to count the
costs. Thus, for the most part, the powerful
Western nation-state did not arise sponta-
CHAPTER FOCUS How did political, inter-
neously. Instead, its growth and the tighter
national, societal, and cultural developments
in individual countries and across Europe in unification of peoples depended on shrewd
the mid-nineteenth century help create and policy, deliberate warfare, and new inroads
strengthen nation states? into societies around the world — which
together formed the basis of Realpolitik.
AUSTRIAN
via
M 1853–1856
K AN Sinope
B AL 1853 The most destructive war in Europe
MONTENEGRO Constantinople
O
N between the Napoleonic Wars and World
T T Straits of
O M Dardanelles E War I, the Crimean War drew attention
A N E W
M P I R E to the conflicting ambitions around ter-
S
GREECE ritories of the declining Ottoman Empire.
The war fractured the alliance of con-
Russian attack servative forces from the Congress of
Allied attack Vienna, allowing Italy and Germany to
Mediterranean Sea
come into being as unified states.
[
1850–1870
] The End of the Concert of Europe 713
Ottoman port of Sinope on the Black Sea. The Russians justified their actions as a
necessary defense of Christians in the Ottoman Empire. In 1854, France and Great
Britain, though enemies in war for more than a century, allied to declare war on
Russia and defend the Ottoman Empire.
The Crimean War was spectacularly bloody. British and French troops landed in
the Crimea in September 1854 and waged a long siege of the Russian naval base at
Sevastopol, which fell only after a year of savage and costly combat. Generals on both
sides demonstrated their incompetence, and governments failed to provide combat-
ants with even minimal supplies, sanitation, or medical care. Hospitals had no beds,
no dishes, and no water. A million men died, more than two-thirds from disease or
starvation.
In the midst of this unfolding catastrophe, Alexander II (r. 1855–1881) ascended
the Russian throne after the death of Nicholas I, his father. With casualties mounting,
the new tsar asked for peace. As a result of the Peace of Paris, signed in March 1856,
Russia lost the right to base its navy in the Strait of Dardanelles and the Black Sea,
which were declared neutral waters. Moldavia and Wallachia (which soon merged
to form Romania) became autonomous Turkish provinces under the victors’ protec-
tion, drastically reducing Russian influence in that region, too.
The Crimean War was full of consequence. New technologies were introduced
into warfare: the railroad, shell-firing cannons, breech-loading rifles, and steam-
powered ships. The telegraph and increased press coverage brought news from the
Crimean front lines to home audiences more rapidly and in more detail than ever
before. Reports of incompetent leadership, poor sanitation, and the huge death toll
outraged the public, inspiring some civilians, such as the British nurse Florence
Nightingale, to head for the front lines to help. Nightingale seized the moment to
escape the confines of middle-class domesticity by organizing a battlefield nursing
service to care for the British sick and wounded. (See the illustration on page 714.)
Through her tough-minded organization of nursing units, she pioneered nursing as a
profession and made sanitary conditions for soldiers a new and permanent priority.
More immediately, the war accomplished Napoleon III’s goal of severing the
alliance between Austria and Russia, the two conservative powers on which the Con-
gress of Vienna peace settlement had rested since 1815. It thus ended Austria’s and
Russia’s grip on European affairs and undermined their ability to contain the forces
of liberalism and nationalism.
Reform in Russia
Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War also made clear the need for meaningful reform.
Hundreds of peasant insurrections had erupted in the decade before the war. “Our
own and neighboring households were gripped with fear,” one aristocrat reported. The
Russian economy stagnated compared with that of western Europe. Old-fashioned
farming techniques depleted soil and led to food shortages, and the nobility often
ignored the suffering caused by malnutrition and hard labor. When Russia lost the
714 Chapter 22 Politics and Culture of the Nation-State
[ 1850–1870
]
Crimean War, the educated public, including some government officials, found the
poor performance of serf armies a disgrace and the system of serf labor a glaring
weakness.
Confronted with the need for change, Tsar Alexander II acted. Well educated and
more widely traveled than his father, Alexander ushered in what came to be known
as the Great Reforms. These granted Russians new rights from above as a way of
preventing violent action from below. The most dramatic reform was the emancipa-
tion of almost fifty million serfs beginning in 1861. By the terms of emancipation,
communities of newly freed serfs, headed by male village elders, received grants of
land. The community itself, traditionally called a mir, had full power to allocate this
land among individuals and to direct their economic activity. Communal landown-
ing and decision making meant that individual peasants could not simply sell their
parcel of land and leave their rural communities to work in factories, as laborers had
been doing elsewhere in Europe.
[1850–1870
] The End of the Concert of Europe 715
In Russia peasants were not given land along with their personal freedom: they
were forced to “redeem” the land they farmed by paying off long-term loans from
the government, which in turn compensated the original landowners. The best land
remained in the hands of the nobility, and the huge burden of debt and communal
regulations slowed Russian agricultural development for decades. Even so, idealistic
reformers believed that the emancipation of the serfs, once treated by the nobility
virtually as livestock, had produced miraculous results. As one of them put it, “The
people are without any exaggeration transfigured from head to foot. . . . The look,
the walk, the speech, everything is changed.”
The Russian state also reformed local administration, the judiciary, and the
military. The government set up zemstvos — regional councils — through which aris-
tocrats could control local affairs such as education, public health, and welfare.
Zemstvos became a new political force with the potential for challenging the authori-
tarian central government. Some aristocrats took advantage of newly relaxed rules
on travel to see how the rest of Europe was governed. Their vision broadened as they
observed different ways of solving social and economic problems. The principle of
equality of all persons before the law, regardless of social rank, was introduced in Rus-
sia for the first time as judicial reform gave all Russians access to modern civil courts.
Military reform followed in 1874 when the government reduced the twenty-five-year
es
Florence
at
Tuscany A
al St
dr
ia
ti
P ap
c
Se
Corsica a
(Fr.)
PIEDMONT- Rome
SARDINIA
Naples
Tyrrhenian
Sea
KINGDOM
OF THE
TWO SICILIES
Piedmont-Sardinia before 1859
to Piedmont-Sardinia, 1859
N
to Piedmont-Sardinia, 1860
W
to kingdom of Italy, 1866 Sicily E
to kingdom of Italy, 1870 S
Boundary of kingdom of Italy
after unification
Route of Garibaldi’s Thousand, 1860 Mediterranean Sea
Battle
Napoleon III’s plan to keep Italy disunited was soon derailed. Support for Pied-
mont continued to swell among Italians. Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882), a commit-
ted republican and veteran of the revolutions of 1848, set sail from Genoa in May
1860 with a thousand red-shirted volunteers (many of them teenage boys) to liberate
Sicily. In the autumn of that year, King Victor Emmanuel II’s victorious forces
descending from the north and Garibaldi’s moving up from the south met in Naples.
[1850–1870
] War and Nation Building 719
Garibaldi threw his support to the king, and in 1861, the kingdom of Italy was pro-
claimed with Victor Emmanuel as its ruler.
Exhausted by a decade of overwork, Cavour died within months of leading
the unification, leaving lesser men to organize the new Italy. The task ahead was
enormous and complex: there was still no common Italian language; 90 percent of
the peninsula’s inhabitants spoke local dialects. Moreover, consensus among Italy’s
elected political leaders was often difficult to reach after the war, and admirers of
Cavour, such as Verdi (who had been made a senator), quit the quarrelsome political
stage. Politicians from the wealthy commercial north and the impoverished agricul-
tural south disagreed over issues like taxation and development, as they often do
even today. Finally, Italian borders did not yet seem complete because Venetia and
Rome remained outside them, under Austrian and French control, respectively.
Holding the new nation together amid these difficulties was the romanticized retell-
ing of the Italian struggle for freedom from foreign and domestic tyrants under the
daring leadership of Garibaldi and his Red Shirts — a legend that papered over
Cavour’s economic and military Realpolitik.
be settled by speeches and majority decisions — that was the great mistake of 1848
and 1849 — but by iron and blood.”
After his triumph over the parliament, Bismarck led Prussia into a series of wars:
against Denmark in 1864, Austria in 1866, and France in 1870. Using war as a politi-
cal tactic, he kept the disunited German states from choosing Austrian leadership
and instead united them around Prussia. Bismarck drew Austria into the 1864 war
over Denmark’s proposed incorporation of the provinces of Schleswig and Holstein,
with their partially German population. The Prussian-Austrian victory resulted in
an agreement that Prussia would administer Schleswig, and Austria, Holstein. That
arrangement stretched Austria’s geographic interests far from its central European
base: “We were very honorable, but very dumb,” Emperor Francis Joseph later said
of being drawn into the Schleswig-Holstein debacle.
Austria proved weaker than Prussia, because the Austrian empire lagged in eco-
nomic development. Bismarck, however, so encouraged Austria’s pretensions to gran-
deur that it disputed the administration of Schleswig and Holstein and in the summer
[ 1850–1870
] War and Nation Building 721
of 1866 confidently declared war on Prussia itself. Within seven weeks, the modern-
ized Prussian army won a decisive victory that allowed Bismarck to drive Austria
from the German Confederation and create the North German Confederation, led
by Prussia (Map 22.3).
To bring the remaining German states into Prussia’s expanding orbit, Bismarck
next provoked France into war. The atmosphere became charged when Spain pro-
posed a Prussian prince to fill its vacant royal throne. This candidacy at once threat-
ened France with Prussian rulers on two of its borders and inflated Prussian pride
at the possibility of its own princes ruling grand states. To get nationalist sentiments
onto the news pages in both countries, Bismarck edited a diplomatic communication
S
Schleswig Danzig
N or t h
Sea Kiel
Lübeck
Holstein
Hamburg
El Mecklenburg
Bremen be
R.
Oldenburg
Hanover A Warsaw
Berlin I
V is
Amsterdam Hanover
S
tul
NETHERLANDS S
aR
U
.
R U SSI A
P R POLAND
Ruh Ode
rR Leipzig rR
Antwerp . .
Dresden
E
Cologne
BELGIUM Weimar
Silesia
R
KINGDOM OF
Hesse SAXONY
I
Ems P
M
Frankfurt
Prague E
Luxembourg
R.
Prussia in 1862
Rhine
Vienna
ac
Munich
United with Prussia to form
FRANCE
Als
toms barriers. Like Paris, the capital city of Vienna GERMAN RUSSIA
STATES
underwent extensive rebuilding, and industrializa-
AUSTRIA
tion progressed, if unevenly.
Vienna
In the fast-moving nineteenth century, the Buda
Pest
HUNGARY
absolutist Austrian emperor Francis Joseph could
not match Bismarck in nation building. Too much ITALY
R.
D a n u be
of the old regime remained as a roadblock: the 0 100 200 miles
OTTOMAN
Catholic church controlled education and civil insti- 0 100 200 kilometers EMPIRE
tutions such as marriage, prosperous liberals lacked
The Austro-Hungarian
representation in such important policy matters as Monarchy, 1867
taxation and finance, and police informers swarmed
around them. Wanting truly representative government and free speech, the liberals
prevented measures — such as providing funds for modernizing the military — that
would have strengthened the reactionary government in Austria. Unlike Bismarck
in Prussia, there was no one to override the liberals to bring about change.
After Prussia’s 1866 victory over Austria, the vast, wealthy kingdom of Hungary
became the key to the Habsburg Empire’s existence. The leaders of the Hungarian
agrarian elites forced the Austrian emperor to accept a dual monarchy — that is, one
in which the Magyars had home rule over the Hungarian kingdom within the
Habsburg lands. This agreement restored the Hungarian parliament and gave it con-
trol of internal policy (including the right to decide how to treat Hungary’s ethnic
minorities). Although the Habsburg emperor Francis Joseph was king of Hungary
and Austro-Hungarian foreign policy was coordinated from Vienna, the Hungarians
mostly ruled themselves after 1867, weakening the process of nation building in the
empire.
Although designed specifically to address the Hungarian demands, the dual mon-
archy led to claims by Czechs, Slovaks, and other national groups in the Habsburg
Empire for a similar kind of self-rule. Czechs who had helped the empire advance
industrially, for example, wanted Hungarian-style liberties. Other leaders of dissat-
isfied ethnic groups turned to Pan-Slavism — that is, the loyalty of all ethnic Slavs
across national boundaries. Instead of looking toward Vienna, they turned to the
largest Slavic country — Russia — as key to achieving the unity of all Slavs. With so
many competing ethnicities, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy remained a dynastic
state in which people could show loyalty to the Habsburg dynasty but had difficulty
relating to one another as members of a single nation.
N
C A N A D A
E
W
WASHINGTON Maine
TERRITORY M S
i
sso
Vt.
ur
iR
N.H. Mass.
.
Oregon Minn. N.Y.
NEBRASKA Wis.
TERRITORY Mich. R.I.
Pa. Conn.
Iowa N.J.
Ohio Md.
Illinois Ind. Del.
UTAH W.
.
TERRITORY
oR
Va. Va.
ad
r KANSAS TERRITORY
lo Missouri Ky.
Co
California N.C.
i R.
Tenn.
sipp
NEW MEXICO Oklahoma Ark. S.C.
ssis
TERRITORY
Mi
Ala. Ga. ATLANTIC
Miss.
OCEAN
PACIFIC La.
Texas
OCEAN Florida
included eighty-five miles of new streets, many lined with showy dwellings for the
wealthy. In London, the many new banks and insurance companies, one architect
believed, “help[ed] the impression of stability.” There was an expectation that the civic
pride resulting from urban rebuilding would replace rebelliousness and disunity.
Amid redevelopment, serious problems menaced the urban population. Repeated
epidemics of diseases such as cholera killed alarming numbers of city dwellers and
gave the strong impression of social decay, not national power. Poor sanitation
allowed typhoid bacteria to spread through sewage and into water supplies, infecting
rich and poor alike. In 1861, Britain’s Prince Albert — the beloved husband of Queen
Victoria — reputedly died of typhoid fever, commonly known as a “filth disease.”
Heaps of animal excrement in chicken coops, pigsties, and stables; unregulated urban
slaughterhouses; and piles of human waste were breeding grounds for disease, mak-
ing sanitation a top priority.
Scientific research, increasingly undertaken in publicly financed laboratories and
hospitals, provided the means to promote public health and control disease. France’s
Louis Pasteur, three of whose young daughters had also died of typhoid, advanced
the germ theory of disease. He suggested that bacteria and parasites might be respon-
sible for human and animal diseases. Pasteur demonstrated that heating foods such
as wine and milk to a certain temperature, a process that soon became known as
pasteurization, killed these organisms and made food safe. English surgeon Joseph
Lister applied Pasteur’s germ theory of disease to infection and developed antiseptics
for treating wounds and preventing puerperal fever, a condition caused by the dirty
hands of physicians and midwives that killed innumerable women after childbirth.
Governments undertook projects to modernize sewer and other sanitary systems
and to straighten rivers. Citizens often prized such improvements as signs of national
superiority. In Paris, sewage flowed into newly built, watertight underground collec-
tors. In addition, Haussmann piped in water from uncontaminated sources in the
countryside to provide each household with a secure supply. To prevent devastating
floods and to eliminate disease-ridden marshlands, governments rerouted and
straightened rivers such as the Rhine and built canals. Improved sanitation testified
to the activist state’s ability to bring about progress.
Citizens responded positively to improvements in everyday life. When sanitary
public toilets for men became a feature of modern cities, women petitioned govern-
ments for similar facilities. More aware of dirt, disease, and smells, the middle classes
bathed more regularly, sometimes even once a week. People’s concerns for refine-
ment and health mirrored governments’ pursuit of order.
but sanitation and public health programs led to a rise in population that strained
resources. Furthermore, landowners and French imperialists siphoned off most of
the profits from economic improvement. The French also undertook a cultural mis-
sion to transform cities like Saigon by adding tree-lined boulevards similar to those
of Paris. French literature, theater, and art were popular with both colonial officials
and upper-class local people.
In this age of Realpolitik, the Crimean War had shown the great powers the
importance of the Mediterranean basin. Napoleon III, remembering his uncle’s cam-
paign in Egypt, took an interest in building the Suez Canal, which would connect
the Mediterranean with the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean and thus dramatically
shorten the route from Europe to Asia. Following the canal’s completion in 1869,
“canal fever” spread: Verdi composed the opera Aïda (set in ancient Egypt), and
people across the West applied Egyptian designs to textiles, furniture, art, and even
public monuments in cities. The French army had occupied all of Algeria by 1870,
when the number of European immigrants to the region reached one-quarter mil-
lion. French rule in Algeria, as elsewhere, was aided by local people’s attraction to
European goods and technology and by the opportunity to make money.
Its vastness allowed China to escape complete takeover, but traders and Chris-
tian missionaries from Europe made inroads for the Western powers. Defeat in the
Opium War caused an economic slump and helped generate the mass movement
known as the Taiping (“Heavenly Kingdom”). Headed by a leader who claimed to
be the brother of Jesus, the Taiping’s millions of adherents wanted an end to the
ruling Qing dynasty, the expulsion of foreigners, more equal treatment of women,
and land reform. By the mid-1850s, the Taiping controlled half of China. The threat-
ened Qing regime promised the British and French greater influence in exchange for
aid in defeating the Taiping. More than 20 million Chinese died in the resulting civil
war. When peace finally came in 1864, Western governments controlled much of the
Chinese customs service and had virtually unlimited access to the country.
Japan alone in East Asia was able to escape Western domination, because it was
keenly aware of the innovations taking place in the West. In 1854, the Japanese agreed
to open the country to foreign trade in part to gain Western goods, including the West’s
superior weaponry. Japanese reformers in 1867 overthrew a government that resisted
such change and in 1868 enacted the Meiji Restoration. The word Meiji pointed to the
“enlightened rule” of the new emperor, whose power reformers had restored. The goal
was to combine “Western science and Eastern values” as a way of “making new” —
hence, a combination of restoration and innovation. The new regime pushed Japan to
become a modern, technologically powerful state free from Western control.
his predictions were coming true. As the Prussians laid siege to Paris in the winter
of 1870–1871, causing many deaths from starvation and bitter cold, Parisians rose up
and demanded new republican liberties, new systems of work, and a more balanced
distribution of power between the central government and localities. On March 28,
1871, to counter what they saw as the despotism of the centralized government, they
declared themselves a self-governing commune. One issue behind the unrest was the
nation-state’s destruction of city life through urban renovation.
In the Paris Commune’s two months of existence, and while trying to maintain
“communal” instead of “national” values, Parisians quickly developed a wide array
of political clubs, local ceremonies, and self-managed workshops. Women workers,
for example, banded together to make National Guard uniforms on a cooperative
rather than a for-profit basis. The Commune proposed to liberate the worker and
ensure “the absolute equality of women laborers.” Thus, a commune — in contrast to
a republic — was meant to bring about social revolution. Communards, however,
often disagreed on how to change society. Anticlericalism, feminism, socialism, and
anarchism were but a few of the proposed routes to social justice.
In the meantime, the provisional government that succeeded the defeated Napo-
leon III stamped out similar uprisings in other French cities. In late May, the well-
supplied national army crushed the Commune and shot tens of thousands of citizens
on the streets. Parisian rebels, one citizen commented, “deserved no better judge
than a soldier’s bullet.” The Communards had promoted a kind of antistate in an age
of rising state power. Others saw the Commune as the work of the pétroleuse (“woman
incendiary”) — a case of frenzied women running amok through the streets. While
revolutionary men became heroes in the history books, writers were soon blaming
the burning of Paris on women — “shameless slatterns, half-naked women, who
kindled courage and breathed life into arson.”
Defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, the rise of the Paris Commune, and the civil
war were all horrendous blows to the French
state. Yet in the struggle against the Com-
mune, the nation-state once again showed REVIEW QUESTION How did Europe’s expand-
ing nation-states attempt to impose social
its strengthening muscle. Executions and
order within and beyond Europe, and what
deportations by the thousands followed, resistance did they face?
and fear of workers spread across Europe.
battle for survival and through the sexual selection of mates — a process he called
natural selection. For Darwin the Bible gave a “manifestly false history of the world.”
Darwin’s theories also undermined Enlightenment principles that glorified nature as
tranquil and noble, and human beings as essentially rational. The theory of natural
selection, in which the fittest survive, suggested a different kind of human society,
one composed of warlike individuals and groups constantly fighting one another to
triumph over hostile surroundings.
Other innovative biological research placed religious views of reproduction under
attack. Working with pea plants in his monastery garden in the 1860s, the Austrian
monk Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) discovered the principles of heredity, from which
the science of genetics later developed. Investigation into the female reproductive
cycle led German scientists to discover the principle of spontaneous ovulation — the
automatic release of the egg by the ovary independent of sexual intercourse. Theo-
rists concluded that men had strong sexual drives because reproduction depended
on their sexual arousal. In contrast, the automatic release of the egg each month
indicated to them that women were passive and lacked sexual feeling.
[1850–1870
] The Culture of Social Order 739
Many other ideas disturbed the status quo. Even before Darwin, the writer Her-
bert Spencer (1820–1903) had written that the “unfit” should be allowed to perish
in the name of progress. On these grounds Spencer opposed public education and
any other attempt to soften the struggle for existence. Darwin continued this line of
argument when he claimed that white European men in the nineteenth century were
wealthier and better because they were more highly evolved than white women or
people of color. A school of thought known as Social Darwinism grew out of Dar-
win’s and Spencer’s ideas; it promoted racist, sexist, and other discriminatory policies
as a way of strengthening the nation-state.
a
Nor th Riga
DENMARK
Se
GREAT S ea Copenhagen c
IRELAND
BRITAIN lti
NETHERLANDS Ba
RUSSIA
ENGLAND Elb
eR Voronezh
.
London Warsaw
Berlin
Od
er
BELGIUM GERMANY R.
POLAND
Rhi
Dresden
Brussels Kiev
ne R
Prague
.
Paris LUXEMBOURG
ATLANTIC AUSTRIA
OCEAN Munich AU S T R IA-
F R A NC E Zurich
Vienna H U NG A RY Odessa
SWITZERLAND Budapest
Bordeaux CROATIA- CRIMEA
HUNGARY
A
SLOVENIA
NI
Genoa Venice MA
Lourdes
BOSNIA RO R.
SERBIA Danube Black Sea
Marseille HERZEGOVINA
PORTUGAL ITALY Sinope
BULGARIA
Madrid Corsica
Lisbon MONTENEGRO
Constantinople
SPAIN Rome
MACE
DONIA
ALBANIA
Sardinia Naples
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
GREECE
Tangier
Tunis Sicily Athens
Algiers
Crete
Cyprus SYRIA
MOROCCO
TUNISIA M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a
ALGERIA
(Fr.)
TRIPOLI EGYPT
Review Questions
1. What were the main results of the Crimean War?
2. What role did warfare play in the various nineteenth-century nation-building efforts?
3. How did Europe’s expanding nation-states attempt to impose social order within and
beyond Europe, and what resistance did they face?
4. How did cultural expression and scientific and social thought help produce the hardheaded
and realistic values of the mid-nineteenth century?
Making Connections
1. What were the main methods of nation building in the mid-nineteenth century, and how did
they differ from those of state building in the early modern period?
2. How did realism in social thought break with Enlightenment values?
3. In what ways did religion emerge as an issue (both within and outside Europe) during the
course of nation building?
4. How was the Paris Commune related to earlier revolutions in France? How did it differ from
them? How was it related to nation building?
Suggested References
Nation building took many forms in the nineteenth century, including wars, urban improvement,
myth making, and the development of scientific and realistic attitudes — all of these themes are
found in the following books.
Barnes, David S. The Great Stink of Paris and the Nineteenth-Century Struggle against Filth and
Germs. 2006.
Berra, Tim M. Charles Darwin: The Concise Story of an Extraordinary Man. 2009.
Blackbourn, David. The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany.
2006.
Brower, Benjamin. A Desert Named Peace: The Violence of French Empire in the Algerian Sahara,
1844–1902. 2009.
Gross, Michael B. The War against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in
Nineteenth-Century Germany. 2005.
Heretz, Leonid. Russia on the Eve of Modernity: Popular Religion and Traditional Culture under the
Last Tsars. 2008.
Kaufman, Suzanne. Consuming Visions: Mass Culture and the Lourdes Shrine. 2005.
Merriman, John M. Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune of 1871. 2014.
Parker, Kate, and Julia Shone, eds. The Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, 1867–1918. 2008.
742
[1850–1870
] Chapter 22 Review 743
Important Events
*Primary source.
Empire, Industry,
23
and Everyday Life
1870–1890
I
n the mid-1880s, Frieda von Bülow, a young German woman of aristocratic birth,
joined several activist groups interested in promoting German colonial expansion
in Africa. Like other women in these pro-imperial organizations, von Bülow was
eager to help German settlers — and even some Africans — in East Africa, which
Germany was in the process of colonizing. She also met adventurous men such as
Carl Peters, a fanatical nationalist and leading figure in imperialist circles. As Euro-
peans competed to take over the African continent, von Bülow and Peters headed
for Zanzibar and other distant cities not only to conquer them but also to carry
on a passionate romance. Once in Africa, von
European Immigrants Arriving Bülow basked in the freedom from her soci-
in New York ety’s restrictions on women and in German
This calm image of an immigrant ship superiority over local African peoples. For his
arriving in New York harbor hardly part, Peters followed his usual pattern of
captures the emotions the immi-
grants had (as we know from their
tricking Africans into giving up their lands
letters and diaries) on leaving their and using guns, rape, and other violence to get
communities and facing an unknown his way. Peters seduced one African woman
life in the United States or other and then had her executed because of her rela-
parts of the Western Hemisphere. tionship with another man. Though Peters’s
Many came from agricultural regions
womanizing caused von Bülow to break up
and would soon be the labor behind
the advance of industry; others would with him, she maintained both her racism and
become settlers, driving out native her German nationalism, learning to shoot a
Americans and thus becoming agents gun on behalf of colonial conquest, writing
of empire. (The Granger Collection, NYC — popular novels about empire and white supe-
All rights reserved.)
riority, and setting up a plantation in South-
east Africa.
Von Bülow and Peters were just two of the tens of thousands of Europeans pur-
suing imperial adventure as the search for lands to colonize reached a feverish pitch
after the 1870s. Those involved in imperialism had a variety of motives and, like
Peters, were often swaggering and violent. The rapid expansion of Western takeovers
745
746 Chapter 23 Empire, Industry, and Everyday Life
[ 1870–1890
]
was called the “new imperialism” because the race for empire now aimed at political
rather than mere economic power.
Europeans had been acquiring global territory since the late fifteenth century;
the new imperialism intensified this process. In their rush for empire, Europeans
like Frieda von Bülow and Carl Peters worked to control whole societies instead of
dominating coastal trade until, by the beginning of the twentieth century, Western
nations claimed jurisdiction over vast stretches of the world’s surface. Beyond political
control, Europeans tried to stamp other continents with European-style place names,
architecture, clothing, languages, and domestic customs. They used culture to secure
their empires just as they used it to forge the nation-state.
Millions of people traveled vast distances in the nineteenth century — a time of
greatly increased mobility and migration, much of which was made possible by an
expansion of industry and colonization. Some migrated temporarily to serve in colo-
nial governments or to find business opportunities. Others relocated permanently
within Europe or outside it. Such migration uprooted tens of millions of people,
disrupted social and family networks, and often inflicted terrible violence on native
peoples dislocated by European migrants’ greed, ambition, or desperation.
The decades from 1870 to 1890 were also an era of expanding industry in the
West. Empire and industry fed on each other as raw materials from conquered areas
supplied Western factories and as innovations in weaponry, transportation, medicine,
and communication allowed imperialism to thrive. Industrialization spread from
Britain to central and eastern Europe and brought a continuous new supply of prod-
ucts to the market. A growing appetite for these products, many of them for house-
hold consumption, changed the fabric of everyday life and built pride in a nation’s
conquests. Urban workers began demanding greater participation in the political
process. Proud Europeans brimmed with
confidence and hope, while the grimmer
CHAPTER FOCUS How did imperial conquest
aspects of empire and industrialization
and industrial advances affect Western society,
culture, and politics in the late nineteenth played themselves out in distant colonies,
century? urban slums, and declining rural areas of
Europe.
of the West increased the subjugation of those peoples, inflicted violence on them,
and radically altered their lives.
S
TUNISIA
MADEIRA IS. (Port.)
ALGERIA Mediterranean Sea
Suez
MOROCCO Canal
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ORO
S A H A R A EGYPT ARABIA
TIB
Red
ES T
I
Sea
SENEGAL
TUKULOR
Ni
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STATE
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SOKOTO
Nil
den
SULTANATE Gulf of A
eR
DAHOMEY RABIH BR.
hit
.
SAMORI’S SOMALIA
GUINEA EMPIRE
W
ETHIOPIA
ASANTE YORUBA
3
SIERRA
LEONE Ubangi R.
LIBERIA
TOGO CAMEROON EQUATORIA
GOLD
o R.
COAST Cong
São Tomé BUGANDA
(Port.)
GABON CONGO L. Victoria
FREE INDIAN
STATE TIPPU OCEAN
TIB’S
ATLANTIC CABINDA
DOMAIN SULTANATE OF
L.Tanganyika ZANZIBAR
OCEAN
CHOKWE
ANGOLA DOMAIN MSIRI’S
KINGDOM L. Nyasa
Z am
be
British Routes of Colonial Expansion zi R
.
PORTUGUESE
French 1 Route of Rhodes’s British
S. African Company, 1890
GERMAN
EAST AFRICA Madagascar
SOUTH-WEST
German
AFRICA 1 (MOZAMBIQUE)
Italian 2 French expansion into
SOUTH
MERINA (HOVA)
West Africa, 1883-1896 WALVIS BAY AFRICAN KINGDOM
Portuguese British expansion into KALAHARI REPUBLIC
Spanish
3 Nigeria, 1880-1902 DESERT (TRANSVAAL)
R.
BRIT.
m popo
4 British invasion and BECHUANALAND L
Ottoman i
occupation of Egypt, 1882 ORANGE
Nominally Ottoman; Orange R. FREE ZULULAND
British controlled STATE
The scramble for Africa escalated tensions in Europe and prompted Bismarck
to call a conference at Berlin. The European nations represented at the conference,
held in a series of meetings in 1884 and 1885, decided that control of settlements
along the African coast guaranteed rights to interior territory. This agreement led to
the strictly linear dissection of the continent — a dissection that cut across boundar-
ies of African culture and ethnic life. The Berlin conference also banned the sale of
alcohol and controlled the flow of arms to African peoples. In theory, the meeting
was supposed to reduce bloodshed and ambitions for territory in Africa. In reality,
the agreement accelerated conquest of the continent and left everyone on edge over
the threat of more violence. Newspaper accounts whetted the popular appetite for
more takeovers. Music hall audiences rose to their feet and cheered at the sound of
popular songs about imperial heroes of the day.
The lust for conquest had perhaps its greatest effect in southern Africa. The
Dutch had moved into the area in the seventeenth century, but by 1815 the British
had gained control. Thereafter, descendants of the Dutch, called Boers (Dutch for
“farmers”), and British immigrants joined together in their fight to wrest farmland
and mineral resources from the Xhosa, Zulu, and other African peoples. British
businessman and politician Cecil Rhodes, sent to South Africa for his health just as
diamonds were being discovered in 1870, cornered the diamond market and claimed
The Violence of
Colonization
King Leopold II, ruler of the
Belgian Congo, was so greedy
and ruthless that his agents
squeezed the last drop of
rubber and other resources
from local peoples. Mission-
aries reported and photo-
graphed atrocities such as
the killing of workers whose
quotas were even slightly
short or the amputation of
hands for the same offense.
Belgian agents collected
amputated hands and sent
them to government officials
to show Leopold that they
were enforcing his kind of dis-
cipline. (Universal History Archive /
UIG / Bridgeman Images.)
750 Chapter 23 Empire, Industry, and Everyday Life
[ 1870–1890
]
a huge amount of African territory hundreds of miles into the interior. His ambition
for Britain and for himself was boundless: “I contend that we are the finest race in
the world,” he explained, “and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is.”
Although notions of European racial superiority had been advanced before, Social
Darwinism strengthened racism to justify the conquest of African lands.
Wherever necessary to ensure domination, Europeans either destroyed African
economic and political systems or transformed them into instruments of their rule.
A British governor of the West African region known as the Gold Coast put the mat-
ter succinctly in 1886: the British would “rule the country as if there were no inhabit-
ants.” Indeed, most Europeans considered Africans barely civilized, despite the wealth
local rulers and merchants accumulated in their international trade and despite indi-
vidual Africans’ accomplishments in everything from fabric dyeing to road building
and architecture. They felt this justified the confiscation of land from Africans, who
were then forced to work for them to pay European-imposed taxes. Agriculture to
support families, often performed by women and slaves, declined in favor of mining
and farming cash crops. Men were made to leave their homes to work in mines or
to build railroads. Family and community networks, though upset by the new arrange-
ments, helped support Africans during this upheaval in everyday life.
CHINA
piece, was integrated into Western empires. At the
RB
Rangoon
ko
on the region’s tin, oil, rice, teak, and rubber as Annexed by British, 1826–52
well as on its access to the numerous interior trade Annexed by British, 1885–86
routes of China. British troops guaranteed the Annexed by British, 1890
N
Russian expansion 1856–1876
W
NORWAY AND ARCTIC OCEAN Russian expansion 1877–1900
SWEDEN
E
S
Vassal khanates
a
B a lt i c S e Railroads (only main lines
Y
shown)
AN
GERM
St. Petersburg
Warsaw Moscow
Kiev
Siberia
Odessa
ga
R . RUSSIA
Bl Vol
a TRA
NS-SIBERIA
N RA ILROAD
ck
Sea
Caspian Sea
Vladivostok
OTTOMAN
EMPIRE
Turkestan
Port Arthur
(leased from China, 1898)
CHINA
PERSIA 0 500 1,000 miles
AFGHANISTAN
INDIA 0 500 1,000 kilometers
The British added to their holdings in Asia partly to counter Russian and French
annexations. For years, Russia had been absorbing the small Muslim states of cen-
tral Asia, including provinces of Afghanistan (Map 23.2). Besides extending into the
Ottoman Empire, Russian tentacles reached Persia, India, and China, often encoun-
tering British competition. By the thousands land-hungry Russian peasants moved
to these regions, with the Trans-Siberian Railroad (1891–1916) later feeding hun-
dreds of thousands more to Siberia. France meanwhile used the threat of military
action to negotiate favorable treaties with Indochinese rulers, creating the Union
of Indochina from the ancient states of Cambodia, Tonkin, Annam, and Cochin
China in 1887 (the last three now constitute Vietnam). Laos was added to Indochina
in 1893.
David Livingstone
David Livingstone was a Scottish missionary and explorer who arrived in southern Africa in
1841 and spent the next thirty-two years of his life investigating rivers and lakes. This image
depicts his expedition to locate Lake Ngami. A later quest took him to Victoria Falls. In both
instances, he was most likely the first European to view them. Livingstone advocated that trade
along waterways could replace slavery on the continent, a development that would also benefit
the English sponsors of his expeditions. Livingstone traveled with a relatively small retinue,
though one can catch glimpses of the rest of his supply train in the distance. Hundreds of
porters, guards, cooks, and guides were some of those necessary to an expedition’s success,
while leaders such as Livingstone were mythologized as solitary and heroic figures braving
all obstacles alone. (chromolithograph from The Life and Explorations of David Livingstone [London, © 1878] /
Universal History Archive / UIG / Bridgeman Images.)
754 Chapter 23 Empire, Industry, and Everyday Life
[ 1870–1890
]
Advocates of imperialism pointed out that whites had a “civilizing mission.” The
French thus taught some of their colonial subjects French language, literature, and
history. In Germany’s African colonies, an exam for students in a school run by
missionaries asked them to write on “Germany’s most important mountains” and
“the reign of William I and the wars he waged.” The deeds of Africa’s great rulers
and the accomplishments of its kingdoms disappeared from the curriculum. While
Europeans believed in instructing colonial subjects, they did not believe that Africans
and Asians were as capable as Europeans of great achievements.
Imperialism’s goal of “civilizing” was further conflicted. French advocates argued
that their nation “must keep its role as the soldier of civilization.” But it was unclear
whether imperialism should emphasize soldiering (that is, the conquest and murder
of local peoples) or civilizing (the education of local peoples in the European tradi-
tion). Western scholars and travelers had long studied Asian and African languages,
art, and literature, and had gathered and used botanical and other scientific knowl-
edge. Yet appreciation of foreign cultures was tinged with bias and error. European
scholars of Islam characterized Muhammad as an inferior imitation of Jesus, for
example, and many Europeans stereotyped Asians and Africans as lying, lazy, self-
indulgent, or irrational. One English official pontificated that “accuracy is abhorrent
to the Oriental mind.” Such beliefs offered still another justification for conquest:
that inferior colonized peoples would ultimately be grateful for what Europe had
brought them.
European missionaries ventured to newly secured areas of Africa and Asia with
attitudes similarly full of contradictions. A woman missionary reflected a common
view when she remarked that the Tibetans with whom she worked were “going down,
down into hell, and there is no one but me . . . to witness for Jesus amongst them.”
Many people under colonial rule did accept Christianity, often blending their local
religious practices with Christian ones. Christianizing entire populations proved
impossible, especially when some imperial adventurers and soldiers became addicted,
went mad, or were wantonly murdered. When native people resisted, missionaries
often supported brutal military measures against them in the name of upholding
Christian values and Western order.
The paradoxes of imperialism are clear in hindsight, but at the time European
self-confidence hid many of them. There was the belief that through imperialist
ventures “a country exhibits before the world its strength or weakness as a nation,”
as one French politician announced. Some in government, however, worried that
imperialism — because of its expense and the constant possibility of war — might
weaken rather than strengthen the nation-state. The most glaring paradox of all was
that Western peoples who believed in
nation building and national indepen-
REVIEW QUESTION What were the goals of
the new imperialism, and how did Europeans dence invaded the territory of others thou-
accomplish those goals? sands of miles away and refused them the
right to rule themselves.
[1870–1890
] The Industry of Empire 755
Industrial Innovation
An abundance of industrial, technological, and commercial innovation backed the
ambitions of the nation-state and the drive for empire. The last third of the nineteenth
century saw new products ranging from the bicycle to the typewriter to the telephone.
In 1885, sophisticated German engineer Karl Benz devised a workable gasoline
engine; six years later, France’s Armand Peugeot constructed a functioning automo-
bile. Electricity became more widely used after 1880, providing power to light every-
thing from private drawing rooms to government office buildings. The Eiffel Tower,
constructed in Paris for the Universal Exposition of 1889, stood as a monument to
the age’s engineering wizardry. Visitors rode to the Eiffel Tower’s summit in electric
elevators, while to fuel the West’s explosive industrial growth, the leading industrial
nations mined and produced massive quantities of coal, iron, and steel in the 1870s
and 1880s. Manufacturers used the metal to build the more than 100,000 locomotives
that pulled trains — trains that transported two billion people a year.
The factory system spread across Europe and around the world, while agricul-
ture continued to be modernized. Historians used to contrast a “second” Industrial
Revolution of the late nineteenth century, in which manufacturers concentrated on
heavy industrial products like iron and steel, to the “first” one of the eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries, in which innovations in the manufacture of textiles and
the use of steam energy predominated. Many historians now believe this distinction
mainly applies to Britain, where industrialization did rise in two stages. In countries
where industrialization came later, the two developments occurred simultaneously.
Numerous and increasingly advanced textile mills were installed on the European
continent later than in Britain, for instance, at the same time that blast furnaces were
being constructed. Although industrialization led to the decline of traditional crafts
like weaving, home industry — or outwork, the process of having some aspects of
industrial work done outside factories in individual homes (similar to the putting-
out system described on page 675) — persisted in garment making, metalwork, and
756 Chapter 23 Empire, Industry, and Everyday Life
[ 1870–1890
]
porcelain painting. Industrial production occurring simultaneously in homes, small
workshops, and factories has continued to the present day.
Industrial innovations also changed agriculture. Chemical fertilizers boosted
crop yields, and reapers and threshers mechanized harvesting. In the 1870s, Sweden
produced a cream separator, a first step toward mechanizing dairy farming, while
wire fencing and barbed wire replaced wooden fencing and stone walls. Refrigera-
tion, developed during this period, allowed fruits, vegetables, and meat to be trans-
ported without spoiling, thus diversifying and increasing the urban food supply. Tin
from colonies facilitated large-scale commercial canning, which made many foods
available year-round to people in the cities and thus improved their health.
Imperial expansion accelerated because new, more powerful guns, railroads,
steamships, and medicines allowed Western penetration of Asia and Africa. Improve-
ments in steamboat technology helped in the conquest of the African interior, but
the scientific development of quinine was also crucial. Before the development of
medicinal quinine in the 1840s and 1850s, the deadly tropical disease malaria deci-
mated many a European party embarking on exploration or military conquest, giving
Africa the nickname “White Man’s Grave.” The processing of quinine from Andean
cinchona bark, long known by local people as preventing or relieving malaria, radi-
cally cut deaths from the disease among soldiers, missionaries, adventurers, traders,
and bureaucrats.
As Europeans profited from these advances, drought and famine plagued large
stretches of both Africa and Asia in these decades, thus weakening local peoples’ abil-
ity to fight off European attacks. Under those circumstances European weapons did
the work of conquest despite stout resistance. Improvements to the breech-loading
rifle and the development of the machine gun, or “repeater,” between 1862 and the
1880s dramatically increased firepower. Europeans sold outmoded guns to peoples
needing protection both from their internal enemies and from the Europeans them-
selves. In contrast, Europeans crushed African resistance with rapid, accurate, and
blazing gunfire: “The whites did not seize their enemy as we do by the body, but
thundered from afar,” claimed one local African resister. “Death raged everywhere —
like the death vomited forth from the tempest.”
Despite global expansion, Britain’s rate of industrial growth slowed as its entre-
preneurs remained wedded to older technologies. Neglecting innovation, Great Brit-
ain profited from its investments worldwide and consolidated its global power in the
latter nineteenth century. Meanwhile, Germany and the United States began surpass-
ing Britain in research, technical education, and innovation — and ultimately in over-
all rates of economic growth.
Following the Franco-Prussian War, Germany annexed Alsace and Lorraine, ter-
ritories with both textile industries and rich iron deposits. Investing heavily in
research, German businesses devised new industrial processes and began to mass-
produce goods. Germany also spent as much money on education as on its military
in the 1870s and 1880s, sending German industrial productivity soaring. The United
States began intensive exploitation of its vast natural resources, including coal, metal
[1870–1890
] The Industry of Empire 757
ores, gold, and oil. Whereas German productivity rested more on state promotion
of industrial efforts, U.S. growth often involved innovative entrepreneurs, such as
Andrew Carnegie in iron and steel and John D. Rockefeller in oil. Most other coun-
tries trailed the three leaders in economic development.
French industry grew steadily, but French businesses remained smaller than
those in Germany and the United States. In Spain, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, indus-
trial development was primarily a local phenomenon. Austria-Hungary, for example,
had densely industrialized areas around Vienna and in Styria and Bohemia, but the
rest of the country remained tied to traditional, nonmechanized agriculture. The
Italian government spent more on building Rome into a grand capital than it invested
in economic growth. A mere 1.4 percent of Italy’s 1872 budget went to education
and science, compared with 10.8 percent in Germany. Scandinavian countries even-
tually made commercial use of electricity to industrialize in the last third of the
nineteenth century and became leaders in the use of hydroelectric power.
which led to the growth of stock markets. These stock markets raised money from a
larger pool of private capital than before and gave businesses the funds to innovate.
Businesses also met the crisis that began in 1873 by banding together in cartels
and trusts. Cartels were combinations of industries formed to control prices and com-
petition. A single German coal cartel, founded in the 1880s, eventually dominated
more than 95 percent of coal production in Germany and could therefore restrict
output and set prices. Trusts — similar to cartels in their power to control prices but
different in structure — appeared first in the United States in 1882, when John D.
Rockefeller created the Standard Oil Trust by acquiring stock from many different
oil companies and placing it under the direction of trustees. The trustees then con-
trolled so much of the companies’ stock that they could set prices for the entire
industry and even dictate to the railroads the rates for transporting the oil. While
expressing their belief in free trade, those who set up cartels and trusts actually
restricted the free market to produce soaring profits for themselves.
Much of Europe had adopted free trade after midcentury, but during the down-
turn of the 1870s and 1880s the resulting huge trade deficits — caused when imports
exceeded exports — soured many Europeans on the concept. Countries with trade
deficits had less capital available to invest internally, slowing job growth. Farmers in
many European countries suffered when improvements in transportation brought in
cheap grain from the United States and Ukraine. With broad popular support, gov-
ernments approved tariffs to make foreign goods, including grain, more expensive.
Consumerism was shaped by empire. Travelers like Frieda von Bülow and Carl
Peters journeyed on speedier ocean liners, carrying quinine, antiseptics, and other
medicines as well as cameras, revolvers, and the latest in rubber goods and apparel.
Colonial products such as coffee, tea, sugar, tobacco, and cocoa became more wide-
spread for the stimulation they offered hardworking Westerners. Tons of palm oil
from Africa were turned into both margarine and soap, allowing even ordinary
people in the West to see themselves as cleaner and more civilized than those in
other parts of the world, including areas
from which those raw materials came.
REVIEW QUESTION What were the major
Empire and industry jointly shaped every-
changes in Western industry and business
day life by exciting the desire for things — by the end of the nineteenth century?
whether industrial goods or products from
the colonies.
country. Millions of rural Jews from eastern Europe also fled vicious anti-Semitism.
Russian mobs brutally attacked Jewish communities, destroying homes and busi-
nesses and even murdering some Jews. These ritualized attacks, called pogroms, were
scenes of horror. “People who saw such things never smiled anymore, no matter how
long they lived,” recalled one Russian Jewish woman who migrated to the United
States in the early 1890s.
Commercial and imperial development determined destinations for interna-
tional migration. Most migrants who left Europe went to North and South America,
Australia, and New Zealand as news of opportunity reached Europe. The railroad
and steamship made journeys across and out of Europe faster, though most workers
traveled in steerage with few comforts. Once established elsewhere, migrants fre-
quently sent money back home; European farm families often received a good deal
of their income from husbands or grown sons and daughters who had left. Cash-
starved peasants in eastern and central Europe welcomed the arrival of “magic dol-
lars” from their kin. Even though they formed the cheapest pool of labor, often in
factories or sweatshops, migrants themselves appreciated the chance to begin anew.
One settler in the United States was relieved to escape the meager peasant fare of rye
bread and herring: “God save us from . . . all that is Swedish,” he wrote home sourly.
More common than international migration was internal migration from rural
areas to European cities, accelerating the urbanization of Europe. The most urban-
ized countries were Great Britain and Belgium, followed by Germany, France, and
the Netherlands; established port cities like Riga, Marseille, and Hamburg offered
opportunities for work in global trade. Many who moved to the cities were seasonal
migrants who worked as masons, cabdrivers, or factory hands to supplement declin-
ing income from agriculture. When they returned to the countryside, they provided
hands for the harvest. In villages across Europe, independent artisans such as hand-
loom weavers often supported their unprofitable livelihoods by sending their wives
and daughters to work in industrial cities.
Changes in technology and management practices often made factory work
more stressful. Workers complained that new machinery sped up the pace of work
to an unrealistic level. For example, employers at a foundry in suburban Paris
required workers using new furnaces to turn out 50 percent more metal per day than
they had produced using the old furnaces. Despite more physical exertion, workers
received no additional pay for their extra efforts. Workers also grumbled about the
increased number of managers; many believed that foremen, engineers, and other
supervisors interfered with their work. Some women kept their jobs only in return
for granting sexual favors to the male manager.
Many in the urban and rural labor force continued to do outwork at home. In
Russia, workers made bricks, sieves, shawls, lace, and locks during the slow winter
season. Every branch of industry, from metallurgy to toy manufacturing to food pro-
cessing, also employed urban women at home — and their work was essential to the
family economy. Women painted tin soldiers, wrapped chocolate, made cheese boxes,
764 Chapter 23 Empire, Industry, and Everyday Life
[ 1870–1890
]
and polished metal. Factory owners liked the system because low piece rates made
outworkers willing to work extremely long days. A German seamstress at her new
sewing machine reported that she “pedaled at a stretch from six o’clock in the morning
until midnight. . . . At four o’clock I got up and did the housework and prepared meals.”
Owners could lay off women at home during slack times and rehire them whenever
needed with little fear of organized protest, as the threat of joblessness meant destitu-
tion. By and large, however, urban workers were better informed and more connected
to the progress of industry and empire than their rural counterparts were.
lilies and even his re-creation of a Japanese garden at his home in France as the
subject for artistic study. Similarly, the American expatriate Mary Cassatt used the
two-dimensionality of Japanese art in The Letter (1890–1891) and other paintings.
Van Gogh sometimes filled the background of portraits with copies of intensely
colored Japanese prints, and in some paintings he imitated classic Japanese wood-
cuts. The graphic arts advanced the West’s
ongoing borrowing from around the globe REVIEW QUESTION How did empire and
while responding to the changes brought industry influence art and everyday life?
about by industry.
cal revolution. Despite government force, unions did not back down or lose their
commitment to solidarity. Craft-based unions of skilled artisans, such as carpenters
and printers, were the most active and cohesive, but from the mid-1880s on, a move-
ment known as new unionism attracted transport workers, miners, matchgirls, and
dockworkers. These new unions were nationwide groups with salaried managers who
could plan a widespread general strike across the trades, focusing on such common
goals as achieving the eight-hour workday but also paralyzing an entire nation
through work stoppages. Large unions had the potential for challenging large indus-
tries, cartels, and trusts.
Working-class political parties developed from unions. Workingmen helped cre-
ate the Labour Party in England, the Socialist Party in France, and the Social Demo-
cratic Parties of Sweden, Hungary, Austria, and Germany — most of them inspired
by Marxist theories. Germany was home to the largest socialist party in Europe after
1890. Socialist parties held out hope that newly enfranchised male working-class
voters could become a collective force in national elections, even triumphing over
the power of the upper class.
Those who accepted Marx’s assertion that “workingmen have no country” also
founded an international movement to address workers’ common interests across
national boundaries. In 1889, some four hundred socialists from across Europe met
770 Chapter 23 Empire, Industry, and Everyday Life
[ 1870–1890
]
to form the Second International, a federation of working-class organizations and
political parties that replaced the First International, founded by Marx before the Paris
Commune. The Second International adopted a Marxist revolutionary program, but
it also advocated suffrage (in countries where it still did not exist) and better working
conditions.
Members of the Second International determined to rid the organization of
anarchists, who flourished in the less industrial parts of Europe — Russia, Italy, and
Spain — where Marxist theories of worker-controlled factories had less appeal. In
an age of tough international competition in agriculture, many rural workers sought
a life free from governments that backed the landowners’ interests. Thus, many
advocated extreme tactics, including physical violence. “We want to overthrow the
government . . . with violence since it is by the use of violence that they force us to
obey,” wrote one Italian anarchist. In the 1880s, anarchists bombed stock exchanges,
parliaments, and businesses. Members of the Second International felt that such
random violence was counterproductive.
Workingwomen joined unions and workers’ political parties, but in much smaller
numbers than men. Unable to vote in national elections and usually responsible for
housework in addition to their paying jobs, women had little time for party meetings.
In addition, their lower wages hardly allowed them to survive, much less pay party
or union dues. Many workingmen also opposed women’s presence in unions. Con-
tact with women would mean “suffocation,” one Russian workingman believed, and
end male union members’ sense of being “comrades in the revolutionary cause.”
Unions glorified the heroic struggles of a male proletariat against capitalism. Marxist
leaders maintained that capitalism alone caused injustice to women and thus that
the creation of a socialist society would automatically end gender inequality. As a
result, although the new political organizations wanted women’s support, they dis-
missed women’s concerns about lower wages and sexual harassment.
Popular community activities further strengthened worker solidarity. The gym-
nastics and musical societies that had once united Europeans in nationalistic fervor
now served working-class goals. Socialist gymnastics, bicycling, and marching soci-
eties promoted physical fitness because it could help workers in the “struggle for
existence” — a reflection of the spread of Darwinian thinking to all levels of society.
Workers also held festivals and cheerful parades, most notably on May 1 — a centuries-
old holiday that the Second International now claimed as a labor holiday. Like reli-
gious processions of an earlier time, parades fostered unity. As a result, governments
frequently banned such public gatherings, calling them a public danger.
in part to the rise of mass journalism — itself the product of imperial and industrial
development. The invention of automatic typesetting and the production of news-
print from wood pulp lowered the costs of printing, and the telephone allowed
reporters to communicate news to their papers almost instantly. Once literary in
content, many daily newspapers now emphasized sensational news, using banner
headlines, dramatic pictures, and gruesome or lurid details — particularly about mur-
ders and sexual scandals — to sell papers. In the hustle and bustle of industrial soci-
ety, one editor wrote that “you must strike your reader right between the eyes.”
Stories of imperial adventurers and exaggerated accounts of exploited women work-
ers, some in the white slave trade, drew ordinary people to the mass press.
Journalism created a national community of up-to-date citizens, whether or not
they could vote. Unlike the book, the newspaper was meant not for quiet reflection
at home or in the upper-class club but for quick reading of attention-grabbing stories
on mass transportation and on the streets. Elites complained that the sensationalist
press was a sign of social decay, but in western Europe increasing political literacy
opened the political process to wider participation.
A change in political campaigning was one example of this widening participa-
tion. In the fall of 1879, William Gladstone (1809–1898), leader of the British Liber-
als, whose party was then out of power, took a train trip across Britain to campaign
for a seat in the House of Commons. During his campaign, Gladstone addressed
thousands of workers, arguing for the people of India and Africa to have more rights
and summoning his audiences to “honest, manful, humble effort” in the middle-class
tradition of “hard work.” Newspapers around the country reported on his trip, and
these accounts, along with mass meetings, fueled public interest in politics. Gladstone’s
campaign was successful, and he took the post of prime minister for the second of
the four nonconsecutive terms he served between 1868 and 1894.
Other changes fostered the growth of political participation in Britain. The Bal-
lot Act of 1872 made voting secret, a reform that reduced the ability of landlords
and employers to control how their workers voted. The Reform Act of 1884 doubled
the electorate to around 4.5 million men, enfranchising many urban workers and
artisans and thus further diminishing traditional aristocratic influence in the coun-
tryside. To win the votes of the newly enfranchised, Liberal and Conservative parties
alike established national political clubs that competed with small cliques of parlia-
mentary elites for control of party politics. Broadly based interest groups such as
unions and national political clubs opened up politics by appealing to many more
voters.
British political reforms immediately affected Irish politics by arming poor ten-
ant farmers with the secret ballot. The political climate in Ireland was explosive
mainly because of the repressive tactics of absentee landlords, many of them English
and Protestant, who drove Irish tenants from their land in order to charge higher
rents to newcomers. In 1879, opponents of these landlords formed the Irish National
Land League and launched fiery protests. Irish tenants elected a solid bloc of nation-
alist representatives to the British Parliament, who, voting as a group, had sufficient
772 Chapter 23 Empire, Industry, and Everyday Life
[ 1870–1890
]
strength to defeat either the Conservatives or the Liberals. Irish leader Charles
Stewart Parnell (1846–1891) demanded British support for home rule — a system
giving Ireland its own parliament — in return for Irish votes. Conservatives called
home rule “a conspiracy against the honor of Britain,” and when they were in power
(1885–1886 and 1886–1892), they cracked down on Irish activism. Scandals reported
in the press, some of them totally invented, weakened Parnell’s influence. In 1890, the
news broke of his affair with a married woman, and he died in disgrace soon after,
as the media shaped politics. Still, Irish home rule remained a heated political issue,
as did the determination to end Ireland’s colonial status.
France’s Third Republic replaced the Second Empire. The republic was shaky
at the start because the monarchist political factions — Bonapartist, Orléanist, and
Bourbon — all struggled to destroy it. Their failure to do so led in 1875 to the adoption
of a new constitution, which created a ceremonial presidency and a premier (prime
minister) dependent on support from the elected Chamber of Deputies. An alliance
of businessmen, shopkeepers, professionals, and rural property owners hoped the
new system would prevent the kind of strongman politics that had seen previous
republics give way to the rule of emperors and the return of monarchs.
Fragile at birth, the Third Republic would remain so until World War II. Eco-
nomic downturns, widespread corruption, and growing anti-Semitism fueled by a
highly partisan and monarchist press kept the Third Republic on shaky ground.
Newspaper stories about members of the Chamber of Deputies selling their votes to
business interests and about the alleged trickery of Jewish businessmen manipulating
the economy added to the instability. As a result, the public also blamed Jews for
problems in the republican government and the economy.
In 1889, those disgusted by the messiness of parliamentary politics backed
Georges Boulanger, a dashing and highly popular general, in his attempt to take over
the government. Boulanger soon lost his nerve, however, thereby saving the French
from rule by another strongman. Still, Boulanger’s popularity showed that in hard
economic times, liberal values based on constitutions, elections, and the rights of citi-
zens could be called into question by someone promising easy solutions.
Republican leaders attempted to strengthen citizen loyalty by instituting com-
pulsory and free public education in the 1880s. In public schools, secular teachers
who supported republicanism replaced the Catholic clergy, who usually favored a
return to monarchy. A common curriculum — identical in every schoolhouse in the
country — featured patriotic reading books and courses in French geography, litera-
ture, and history. The government established secular public high schools for young
women, seen as the educators of future citizens, while mandatory military service
for men inculcated pride in the republic rather than in the monarchy or the church.
Although many western European leaders believed in economic liberalism, con-
stitutions, and efficient government, these ideals did not always translate into univer-
sal male suffrage and citizens’ rights in the less powerful western European countries.
Spain and Belgium abruptly awarded suffrage to all men in 1890 and 1893, respec-
tively, while remaining monarchies. An alliance of conservative landowners and the
[1870–1890
] The Birth of Mass Politics 773
Catholic church dominated Spain, although there was increasingly lively urban activ-
ism in the industrial centers of Barcelona and Bilbao. Reform in the Netherlands
increased male suffrage to only 14 percent by the mid-1890s, and an 1887 law in Italy
gave the vote to all men who had a primary school education, also 14 percent of the
male population. Without receiving the benefits of nation building — education,
urban improvements, industrial progress, and the vote — the average Italian in the
south felt less loyalty to the new nation than fear of the devastating effects of national
taxes and the draft on the family economy.
their own restless Slavs. British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli moved warships into
position against Russia to halt the advance of Russian influence in the eastern Mediter-
ranean, so close to Britain’s routes through the Suez Canal. The public was drawn into
foreign policy: the music halls and newspapers of England echoed a new jingoism, or
political sloganeering, that throbbed with militarism: “We don’t want to fight, but by
jingo if we do, / We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too!”
The other great powers, however, did not want a Europe-wide war, and in 1878
they attempted to revive the concert of Europe by meeting at Berlin under the aus-
pices of Bismarck — now a calming presence on the diplomatic scene. The Congress
of Berlin rolled back the Russian victory by partitioning the large Bulgarian state
carved out of Ottoman territory and denying any part of Bulgaria full independence
from the Ottomans (Map 23.4). Austria occupied (but did not annex) Bosnia and
Herzegovina as a way of gaining clout in the Balkans; Serbia and Montenegro became
fully independent. The Balkans remained a site of ambition for independence and
great-power rivalries.
Following the Congress of Berlin, the European powers attempted to guarantee
stability through a complex series of alliances and treaties. Anxious about the Bal-
kans, Austria-Hungary forged a defensive alliance with Germany in 1879. The Dual
Alliance, as it was called, offered protection against Russia and its potential for
inciting Slav rebellions. In 1882, Italy joined this partnership (henceforth called the
Triple Alliance), largely because of Italy’s imperial rivalries with France. Bismarck
negotiated the Reinsurance Treaty (1887) with Russia guaranteeing neutrality in case
of war unless the Habsburgs attacked Russia or Germany attacked France. The inten-
tion was to keep the Habsburgs from recklessly starting a war over Pan-Slavism.
Russia itself was beset by domestic problems in the 1870s and 1880s. Young
Russians were turning to revolution for solutions to political and social problems.
One such group, the Populists, wanted to rouse debt-ridden peasants to revolt. Other
people formed terrorist bands to assassinate public officials. The secret police
rounded up hundreds of members of one of the largest groups, Land and Liberty,
and subjected them to brutal torture and show trials. When in 1877 a young radical,
Vera Zasulich, tried unsuccessfully to assassinate the chief of the St. Petersburg
police, the people of the capital city applauded her act and acquittal, so great was
their outrage at government treatment of young radicals from respectable families.
Writers debated Russia’s future, mobilizing public opinion over these issues. Nov-
elists Leo Tolstoy, author of the epic War and Peace (1869), and Fyodor Dostoevsky,
a former radical, believed that Russia above all required spiritual regeneration — not
revolution. Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina (1877) tells the story of an impassioned
love affair, but it also weaves in the spiritual quest of Levin, a former “progressive”
landowner who, like Tolstoy, idealizes the peasantry’s stoic endurance. Dostoevsky
satirized Russia’s radicals in The Possessed (1871), a novel in which a group of revo-
lutionaries murders one of its own members. In Dostoevsky’s view, the radicals were
simply destructive, offering no solutions whatsoever to Russia’s ills.
776 Chapter 23 Empire, Industry, and Everyday Life
[ 1870–1890
]
N 0 200 400 miles
0 200 400 kilometers
E
W
S
RUSSIA
AU S T R IA- H U N G A RY
Belgrade ROMANIA
BOSNIA- Bucharest
HERZEGOVINA SERBIA Black Sea
Danube R.
Sarajevo
BULGARIA
Sofia
Ad East Rumelia
ria
tic MONTENEGRO Adrianople
Se
a O Constantinople
T
Macedonia T O San Stefano
ITALY Salonika
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Aegean E M
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Sea E
GREECE Athens
Torah Scrolls
After the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, the government unleashed pogroms against
the Jews of the Russian Empire. The pogroms involved violent acts such as murder, beatings,
and the destruction of property on a grand scale. In this image, Jewish men survey the damage
done to the sacred texts of their religion during one such vicious attack. (© From the Jewish Chron-
icle Archive / Heritage Images / The Image Works.)
name for the restricted territory in which they were permitted to live), endured
pogroms. Their distinctive language, dress, and isolation in ghettos made them easy
targets. Government administrators encouraged these pogroms, blaming Jews for
rising living costs that were actually caused by the high taxes levied on peasants to
pay for industrialization.
As the tsar inflicted even greater repression across Russia, Bismarck’s delicate
system of alliances of the three conservative powers was coming apart. A brash but
deeply insecure young kaiser, William II (r. 1888–1918), came to the German throne
in 1888. William resented Bismarck’s power, and his advisers flattered the young man
into thinking that his own talent made Bismarck an unnecessary rival. William dis-
missed Bismarck in 1890 and let the Rein-
surance Treaty with Russia lapse in favor of
REVIEW QUESTION What were the major
a pro-German relationship with Austria-
changes in political life from the 1870s to the
Hungary. He thus destabilized the diplo- 1890s, and which areas of Europe did they
matic scene just as imperial rivalries were most affect?
intensifying among the European powers.
778 Chapter 23 Empire, Industry, and Everyday Life
[ 1870–1890
]
Conclusion
The period from the 1870s to the 1890s has been called the age of empire and industry
because Western society pursued both these ends in a way that rapidly transformed
Europe and the world. Much of Europe thrived due to industrial innovation, becoming
more populous and more urbanized. Using the innovative weapons streaming from
Europe’s factories, the great powers undertook a new imperialism that established
political rule over foreign peoples. As they tightened connections with the rest of the
globe, Europeans proudly spread their supposedly superior culture throughout the
world and, like Frieda von Bülow and Carl Peters, sought out more power and wealth.
Imperial expansion and industrial change affected all social classes. The upper
class attempted to maintain its position of social and political dominance, while an
expanding middle class was gaining influence. Working-class people often suffered
from the effects of rapid industrial change when their labor was replaced by machin-
ery. Millions relocated to escape poor conditions in the countryside and to find new
opportunities. Political reform, especially the expansion of suffrage, gave working-
class men a political voice. Workers formed unions and political parties to protect
their interests, but governments often responded to workers’ activism with
repression.
As workers struck for improved wages and conditions and the impoverished
migrated to find a better life, the advance of empire and industry was bringing
unprecedented tensions to national politics, the international scene, and everyday
life. By the 1890s, racism and anti-Semitism were spreading, and many were question-
ing the costs of empire both to their own nation and to conquered peoples. Politics
in the authoritarian countries of central and eastern Europe was taking a more con-
servative turn, resisting participation and reform. The rising tensions of modern life
would soon have grave consequences for the West as a whole.
[ 1870–1890
] Conclusion 779
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Colonial Empires c. 1890 BRAZIL SOUTH-WEST
BOLIVIA
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BAY MADAGASCAR Fiji
British United States OCEAN New (Br.)
PORTUGUESE
AUSTRALIA Caledonia
(Fr.)
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TINA
(MOZAMBIQUE)
CHILE
COLONY
Portuguese Personal ATLANTIC ORANGE SOUTH
G EN
NEW
possession FREE AFRICAN ZEALAND
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Italian of Leopold II
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FALKLAND IS.
Spanish Ottoman (Br.)
Review Questions
1. What were the goals of the new imperialism, and how did Europeans accomplish those
goals?
2. What were the major changes in Western industry and business by the end of the nine-
teenth century?
3. How did empire and industry influence art and everyday life?
4. What were the major changes in political life from the 1870s to the 1890s, and which
areas of Europe did they most affect?
Making Connections
1. How did the new imperialism differ from European expansion of two centuries earlier?
Of four centuries earlier?
2. Describe the effects of imperialism on European politics and society as a whole from 1870
to 1890.
3. Compare the political and social goals of the newly enfranchised male electorate with
those of people from the “best circles.”
Suggested References
The literature on imperialism is becoming increasingly exciting, especially as authors such as
Burbank and Cooper show imperialism’s relationship with the nation-state. Others show its con-
fusions and chaotic nature.
Burbank, Jane, and Frederick Cooper. Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference.
2010.
Cain, P. J., and A. G. Hopkins. British Imperialism, 1688–2000. 2002.
Davis, Mike. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World. 2001.
Eley, Geoff. Forging Democracy: A History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000. 2002.
Fisher, Michael. Migration: A World History. 2014.
Headrick, Daniel R. Power over Peoples: Technology, Environments, and Western Imperialism 1400 to
the Present. 2010.
Koven, Seth. The Match Girl and the Heiress. 2014.
Lorcin, Patricia M. E., ed. Algeria and France 1800–2000: Identity, Memory, Nostalgia. 2006.
Maynes, Mary Jo, et al. Secret Gardens, Satanic Mills: Placing Girls in European History, 1750–
1960. 2005.
780
[1870–1890
] Chapter 23 Review 781
Important Events
Price, Richard. Making Empire: Colonial Encounters and the Creation of Imperial Rule in Nineteenth-
Century Africa. 2008
Rappaport, Erika. Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London’s West End. 2000.
Reeder, Linda. Widows in White: Migration and the Transformation of Rural Italian Women, Sicily,
1880–1920. 2003.
Schwarz, Bill. The White Man’s World. 2011.
Smith, Michael S. The Emergence of Modern Business Enterprise in France, 1800–1930. 2005.
Weaver, Stewart, and Maurice Isserman. Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from
the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes. 2008.
Wildenthal, Lora. German Women for Empire, 1884–1945. 2001.
Modernity and the
24
Road to War
1890–1914
I
n the first decade of the twentieth century, a wealthy young Russian man trav-
eled from one country to another to find relief from a common malady of the
time called neurasthenia. Its symptoms included fatigue, lack of interest in life,
depression, and sometimes physical illness. In 1910, the young man consulted Sig-
mund Freud, a Viennese physician whose unconventional treatment — eventually
called psychoanalysis — took the form of a conversation about the patient’s dreams,
sexual experiences, and everyday life. Over the course of four years, Freud uncovered
his patient’s deeply hidden fear of castration,
Edvard Munch, The Scream (1893)
which was disguised as a fear of wolves — thus
In some of his paintings, Norwegian the name Wolf-Man, by which he is known
artist Edvard Munch captured a cer- to us. Freud worked his cure, as the Wolf-
tain spirit of the turn of the century, Man himself put it, “by bringing repressed
depicting in soft pastel colors the ideas into consciousness” through extensive
newly leisured life of people strolling
talking.
in the countryside. Yet modern life
also had a tortured side, which Munch In many ways, the Wolf-Man could be
was equally capable of portraying. The said to represent his time. Born into a family
Scream is taken as emblematic of the that owned vast estates, he reflected Europe’s
torments of modernity as the individ- growing prosperity, though on a grander
ual turns inward, beset by neuroses, scale than most. Countless individuals were
self-destructive impulses, and even
madness. It can also be suggested
troubled, even mentally disturbed like the
that the screamer, like Europe, travels Wolf-Man, and suicides were not uncom-
the road to World War I. (The Scream, mon. The Wolf-Man’s own sister and father
1893 [oil, tempera & pastel on cardboard], died from intentional drug overdoses. As the
Munch, Edvard [1863–1944] / Nasjonalgalleriet,
Oslo, Norway / Bridgeman Images.)
twentieth century opened, Europeans raised
questions about family, gender relationships,
empire, religion, and the consequences of
technology. Every sign of imperial wealth brought on an apparently irrational sense
of Europe’s decline. British writer H. G. Wells saw in this prosperous era “the sunset
of mankind.” Gloom filled the pages of many a book and upset the lives of individu-
als like the Wolf-Man.
783
784 Chapter 24 Modernity and the Road to War
[ 1890–1914
]
Conflict rattled the world as a growing number of powers, including Japan and
the United States, fought their way into even more territories. The nations of Europe
had lurched from one diplomatic crisis to another over access to global resources
and control of territory — both within Europe and outside it. Competition for empire
fueled an arms race that threatened to turn Europe — the most civilized region of
the world, according to its leaders — into a savage battleground. In domestic politics,
militant nationalism stirred ethnic hatreds and furthered anti-Semitic violence.
Women suffragists along with other politically disadvantaged groups such as the
Slavs and Irish demanded full citizenship, even as political assassinations and public
brutality swept away the liberal values of tolerance and human rights.
These were just some of the conflicts associated with the term modernity, often
used to describe the rise of mass politics, the spread of technology, and the faster
pace of life — all of which were visible in the West from the late nineteenth century
on. The word modern was also applied to art, music, science, and philosophy of this
period. Although many people today admire the brilliant, innovative qualities of
modern art, music, and dance, people of the time were offended, even outraged, by
the new styles and sounds. Freud’s theory that sexual drives exist in even the young-
est children shocked people. Every advance in science and the arts simultaneously
undermined middle-class faith in the stability of Western civilization.
That faith was further tested when the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne was
assassinated in June 1914. Few gave much thought to the global significance of the
event, least of all the Wolf-Man, whose treatment with Freud was just ending. He
viewed the fateful day of June 28 simply as the day he “could now leave Vienna a
healthy man.” Yet the assassination put the
spark to the powder keg of international
CHAPTER FOCUS How did developments in
social life, art, intellectual life, and politics
discord that had been building for several
at the turn of the twentieth century produce decades. The resulting disastrous war,
instability and set the backdrop for war? World War I, like the insights of Freud,
would transform life in the West.
Population Pressure
From the 1890s on, European politicians and the public hotly discussed urgent con-
cerns over trends in population, marriage, and sexuality. The European population
continued to grow as the twentieth century opened. Germany’s population increased
from 41 million in 1871 to 64 million in 1910, and tiny Denmark’s grew from 1.7 mil-
lion in 1870 to 2.7 million in 1911. Contributing to the increase were improvements
in sanitation and public health, which reduced infant mortality and extended the
average human life span. Following the earlier examples of Vienna and Paris, planners
tore apart and rebuilt Budapest, Moscow, and Berlin (whose population grew to over
4 million). Less-powerful states also rebuilt cities to absorb population growth: the
Balkan capitals of Sofia, Belgrade, and Bucharest gained tree-lined boulevards and
improved sanitation facilities.
While the absolute size of the population was rising in the West, the birthrate
(measured in births per thousand people) was falling. The birthrate had been decreas-
ing in France since the eighteenth century; other European countries began experi-
encing the decline late in the nineteenth century. The Swedish birthrate dropped
from thirty-five births per thousand people in 1859 to twenty-four per thousand in
1911; Germany went from forty births per thousand in 1875 to twenty-seven per
thousand in 1913.
Industrialization and urbanization helped bring about this change. Farm families
needed fewer hands because new agricultural machinery was taking the place of
human laborers. In cities, individual couples were free to make their own decisions
about limiting family size, learning from neighbors or, for those with enough money
and education, from pamphlets and advice books about birth-control practices,
including coitus interruptus (the withdrawal method of preventing pregnancy). Indus-
trial technology played a further role in curtailing reproduction: condoms, improved
after the vulcanization of rubber in the 1840s, proved fairly reliable in preventing
conception, as did the diaphragm. Abortions were also common.
The wider use of birth control roused critics who accused middle-class women
of holding a “birth strike.” Bishops in the Church of England condemned family
limitation as “demoralizing to character and hostile to national welfare.” Politicians
786 Chapter 24 Modernity and the Road to War
[ 1890–1914
]
worried that the drop in the birthrate was due to a crisis in masculinity, which would
put military strength at risk. The “quality” of those being born troubled activists: If
the “best” classes had fewer children, politicians asked, what would society look like
if only the “worst” classes grew in number? The decline in fertility, one German
nationalist warned, would fill the country with “alien peoples, above all Slavs and
probably East European Jews as well.” Nationalist groups inflamed the political climate
with such racial hatreds. Instead of building consensus to create an inclusive political
community, politicians won votes by demonizing ethnic minorities, the poor, and
women who limited family size.
Reforming Marriage
Reformers thought that improving conditions within marriage would raise both
the quality and quantity of children born. Many educated Europeans believed in
eugenics — a set of ideas about producing “superior” people through selective breed-
ing. A famed Italian criminologist declared that “lower” types of people were not
humans but “orangutans.” Eugenicists wanted increased childbearing for “the fittest”
and decreased childbearing — even sterilization — for “degenerates,” that is, those
deemed inferior. Women of the “better” classes, reformers also believed, would have
[
1890–1914
] Public Debate over Private Life 787
more children if marriage were made more equal. One step would be to allow married
women to keep their wages and to own property, both of which in most legal systems
belonged to their husbands. Another step would be to allow women guardianship of
their own children.
Reformers worked to improve marriage laws to boost the birthrate, while femi-
nists sought to better the lot of mothers and their children. Sweden made men’s and
women’s control over property equal in marriage and allowed married women to work
without their husband’s permission. Other countries, among them France (1884), legal-
ized divorce and made it less complicated to obtain. Reformers reasoned that divorce
would allow unhappy couples to separate and undertake more loving and thus more
fertile marriages. By the early twentieth century, several countries had passed legis-
lation that provided government subsidies for medical care and child support as
concerns about population partially laid the foundations for the welfare state — that
is, a nation-state whose policies addressed not just military defense, foreign policy,
and political processes but also the social and economic well-being of its people.
The conditions of women’s lives varied across Europe. For example, a greater
number of legal reforms occurred in western versus eastern Europe, but women could
get university degrees in Austria-Hungary long before they could at Oxford or Cam-
bridge in England. However, in much of rural eastern Europe, the father’s power over
the extended family remained almost dictatorial. According to a survey of family
life in eastern Europe in the early 1900s, fathers married off their children so young
that 25 percent of women in their early forties had been pregnant more than ten
times. Yet reform of everyday customs did occur: for instance, among the middle
and upper classes of Europe, many grown children were coming to believe that they
had a right to select a marriage partner instead of accepting the spouse their parents
chose for them.
Oscar Wilde
The Irish-born writer Oscar Wilde sym-
bolized the persecution experienced by
homosexuals in the late nineteenth cen-
tury. Convicted of indecency for having
sexual relations with another man, Wilde
served time in prison — a humiliation for
the husband, father, acclaimed author,
witty playwright, and human being. (©ILN /
Mary Evans Picture Library / The Image Works.)
as neurotic and unconscious came into widespread use. Freud attributed girls’ com-
plaints about sexual harassment or abuse to fantasy caused by “penis envy,” an idea
that led members of the new profession of social work to believe that most instances
of such abuse had not actually occurred.
Like Darwin, Freud rejected optimistic
REVIEW QUESTION How did ideas about the views of the world, believing instead that
self and about personal life change at the
humans individually and collectively were
beginning of the twentieth century?
motivated by irrational drives toward death
and destruction.
new truths in physics. Artists and musicians produced shocking works but, like
Freud, they were influenced by advances in science and the progress of empire. Their
blending of the scientific and the irrational, and of Western and non-Western styles,
helped launch the revolution in ideas and creative expression called modernism.
Modern Art
Conflicts between traditional values and new ideas also raged in the arts as artists
distanced themselves further from classical Western styles. French painter Paul
Cézanne initiated one of the most powerful trends in modern art by using rectan-
gular daubs of paint to portray his geometric vision of dishes, fruit, drapery, and
the human body. Cézanne’s art accentuated structure — the lines and planes found
in nature — instead of presenting nature as it appeared in everyday life. Following in
Cézanne’s footsteps, Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) developed a style
[1890–1914
] Modernity and the Revolt in Ideas 793
called cubism. Its radical emphasis on planes and surfaces converted his models into
bizarre, almost unrecognizable forms. Picasso’s painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon
(1907), for example, depicted the bodies of the demoiselles (“young ladies” or in this
case “prostitutes”) as fragmented and angular, with their heads modeled on African
masks. Picasso’s work showed the profound influences of African, Asian, and South
American arts, but his use of these features was less decorative and more brutal than
that of many other modern artists. Like imperialists who recounted their brutal
exploits in speeches and memoirs, Picasso brought knowledge of the empire home
in a disturbing style that captured the jarring uncertainties of society and politics in
these decades.
Across Europe, artists made stylistic changes in their work that incorporated
political criticism and even outrage. “Show the people how hideous is their actual
life,” anarchists challenged. Picasso, who had spent his youth in working-class Bar-
celona, a hotbed of anarchist thought, aimed to present the plain truth about indus-
trial society in his art. In 1912, Picasso and French painter Georges Braque devised
a new kind of collage that incorporated bits of newspaper stories, string, and various
useless objects. The effect was a work of art that appeared to be made of trash. The
newspaper clippings Picasso included described battles and murders, suggesting that
Western civilization was not as refined as it claimed to be. In eastern and central
Europe, artists criticized the boastful nationalism that determined royal purchases
of sculpture and painting: “The whole empire is littered with monuments to soldiers
and monuments to Kaiser William,” one German artist complained.
Scandinavian and eastern European artists produced works expressing the tor-
ment many felt at the time. Like the ideas of Freud, their style of portraying inner
feelings — called expressionism — broke with middle-class optimism. Norwegian
painter Edvard Munch aimed “to make the emotional mood ring out again as happens
on a gramophone.” His painting The Scream (1893), shown in the chapter-opening
illustration, used twisting lines and a tortured skeletal human form to convey the
horror of modern life that many artists perceived. The Blue Rider group of artists,
led by German painter Gabriele Münter and Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, used
geometric forms and striking colors to express an inner, spiritual truth. Kandinsky
is often credited with producing the first fully abstract paintings around 1909; shapes
in these paintings no longer bear any resemblance whatsoever to physical objects or
reality but are meant to express deep feelings. The work of expressionists and cubists
before World War I was a commercial failure in a marketplace run not only by
museum curators but by professional dealers — “experts” — like the professionals in
medicine and law.
Only one style of this period, art nouveau (“new art”), was an immediate, com-
mercial success. Designers manufactured everything from dishes, calendars, and
advertising posters to streetlamps and even entire buildings in this new style. As one
French official said about the first art nouveau coins issued in 1895, “Soon even the
most humble among us will be able to have a masterpiece in his pocket.” Adapting
794 Chapter 24 Modernity and the Road to War
[ 1890–1914
]
elements from Asian design, art nouveau replaced the impersonality of machines
with vines and flowers and the softly curving bodies of female nudes intended to
soothe the individual viewer. This idea directly contrasted with Picasso’s artistic
vision. Art nouveau was the notable exception to public rage at innovations in the
visual arts.
fund of political knowledge that made mass politics possible. On the other hand,
many political activists were no longer satisfied with the liberal rights such as the
vote sought by earlier reformers. Some militant nationalists, anti-Semites, socialists,
suffragists, and others demanded changes that challenged liberal values and individual
rights. Traditional elites, resentful of the rising middle classes and urban peoples,
aimed to overturn constitutional processes and crush city life. Politics soon threat-
ened national unity.
Woman Suffrage
in Finland
In 1906, Finnish
women became the
first in Europe to
receive the vote in
national elections
when the socialist
party there — usually
opposed to feminism
as a middle-class rather
than a working-class
project — supported
woman suffrage. The
Finnish vote encour-
aged activists in the
West, now linked
together by many inter-
national organizations
and ties, because it
showed that more than
a century of lobbying
for reform could lead to
gains. (© ILN / Mary Evans
Picture Library / The Image
Works.)
workers of Manchester, England, for example, put together a vigorous movement for
the vote, seeing it as essential to improved working conditions. Many of these women,
however, distrusted the middle class and believed suffrage to be less crucial than
women’s pressing economic concerns.
In 1906 in Finland, suffragists achieved their first major victory when the Finn-
ish parliament granted women the vote. The failure of parliaments elsewhere in
Europe to enact similar legislation provoked British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst
(1858–1928) and her daughters to found the Women’s Social and Political Union
(WSPU) in 1903. Starting in 1907, members of the WSPU held parades in English
cities, and in 1909 they began a campaign of violence, blowing up railroad stations,
slashing works of art, and chaining themselves to the gates of Parliament. Disguising
themselves as ordinary shoppers, they carried little hammers to smash the plate-
glass windows of department stores and shops. Parades and demonstrations made
suffrage a public spectacle; some outraged men responded by attacking the march-
ers. Arrested for disturbing the peace, the marchers went on hunger strikes in
prison. Like striking workers, these women were willing to use confrontational tac-
tics to obtain rights.
798 Chapter 24 Modernity and the Road to War
[ 1890–1914
]
Liberalism Tested
Governments in western Europe, where liberal institutions were seemingly well
entrenched, sought to control turn-of-the-century conflicts with pragmatic policies
that often struck at liberalism’s very foundations. Political parties in Britain discov-
ered that the recently enfranchised voter wanted solid benefits in exchange for his
support. In 1905, the British Liberal Party won a majority in the House of Commons
and pushed for social legislation aimed at the working class. “We are keenly in sym-
pathy with the representatives of Labour,” one Liberal politician announced. “We have
too few of them in the House of Commons.” The National Insurance Act of 1911
instituted a program of unemployment assistance funded by new taxes on the wealthy.
The Irish question, however, tested Britain’s commitment to such liberal values
as autonomy, opportunity, and individual rights. In the 1890s, new groups formed
to foster Irish culture as a way of heightening the political challenge to what they
saw as Britain’s continuing colonization of the country. In 1901, the circle around
poet William Butler Yeats and actress Maud Gonne founded the Irish National The-
ater to present Irish rather than English plays. Gonne took Irish politics into every-
day life by opposing British efforts to gain the loyalty of the young. Every time an
English monarch visited Ireland, he or she held special receptions for children.
Gonne and other Irish volunteers sponsored competing events, handing out candies
and other treats for patriotic youngsters. One home rule supporter marveled at “the
procession . . . of thirty thousand school children who refused to be bribed into
parading before the Queen of England.” Promoters of an “Irish way of life” encour-
aged speaking Irish Gaelic instead of English and supporting Catholicism instead
of the Church of England. This cultural agenda gained political force with the found-
ing in 1905 of Sinn Féin (“We Ourselves”), a group that strove for complete Irish
independence.
Once committed to economic growth and the rule of law, Italian leaders, now
saddled with debt from unification, began to drift away from these liberal values.
Instead, corruption plagued Italy’s constitutional monarchy, which had not yet devel-
oped either the secure parliamentary system of England or the authoritarian mon-
archy of Germany to guide its growth. To forge national unity in the 1890s, prime
ministers used patriotic rhetoric and imperial adventure, notably a second unsuc-
cessful attempt to conquer Ethiopia in 1896. Giovanni Giolitti, who served as prime
minister for three terms between 1903 and 1914, adopted a policy known as trasform-
ismo (from the word for “transform”), using bribes and public works programs to
gain support from deputies in parliament. Political opponents called Giolitti the
“Minister of the Underworld” and accused him of preferring to buy the votes of local
bosses rather than spending money to develop the Italian economy. In a wave of
protest, urban workers in the industrial cities of Turin and Milan and rural laborers
in the depressed agrarian south demanded change. Giolitti appeased the protesters
by instituting social welfare programs and, in 1912, virtually complete manhood
suffrage.
[1890–1914
] Growing Tensions in Mass Politics 799
public school system that honored toleration and the rule of law. Still, the Dreyfus
Affair made anti-Semitism and official lies standard tools of politics by showing their
effectiveness with the public.
The ruling elites in Germany also used anti-Semitism to win support from those
who feared the consequences of Germany’s sudden and overwhelming industrializa-
tion. The agrarian elites, who still controlled the highest reaches of government, lost
ground to industry as agriculture (from which they drew their fortunes) declined as
a force in Germany’s economy. As industrialists grew wealthier and new opportu-
nities drew rural workers to the cities, the agrarian elites came to loathe industry for
challenging their traditional authority. A Berlin newspaper noted, “The agrarians’
hate for cities . . . blinds them to the simplest needs and the most natural demands
of the urban population.” To woo the masses, conservatives and a growing radical
right claimed that Jews, who made up less than 1 percent of the German population,
were responsible for destroying traditional society. They hurled diatribes against
Jews, new women, and Social Democrats, whom they branded as internationalist and
unpatriotic. This new right invented a modern politics that rejected the liberal value
of parliamentary consensus, relying instead on inventing enemies and thus dividing
what was supposed to be a unified nation-state.
[
1890–1914
] Growing Tensions in Mass Politics 801
S ea
E BRITAIN Sea Riga Moscow
S
t ic
DENMARK
al
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Danzig Vilna 1881
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OCEAN
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erica GREECE
CYPRUS
(Br.)
MOROCCO To
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(Fr.) TUNISIA Medite r ranean S ea l es
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singled out for persecution, legally disadvantaged, and forced to live in ghettos. Jews
from these countries might seek refuge in the nearby cities of central and eastern
Europe where they could eke out a living as day laborers or artisans. Jewish migra-
tion to the United States and other countries also swelled (Map 24.1). By 1900, some
Jews such as Freud were prominent in cultural and economic affairs in cities across
the European continent even as far more were discriminated against and victimized
elsewhere.
Amid vast migration and continued persecution, a spirit of Jewish nationalism
arose. “Why should we be any less worthy than any other . . . people?” one Jewish
[1890–1914
] European Imperialism Challenged 803
leader asked. “What about our nation, our language, our land?” In the 1880s, the
Ukrainian physician Leon Pinsker, seeing the Jews’ lack of national territory as fun-
damental to their persecution, advocated the migration of Jews to found a homeland.
In 1896, Theodor Herzl, strongly influenced by Pinsker, called not simply for migra-
tion but for the creation of a Jewish nation-state, the goal of a movement known as
Zionism. A Hungarian-born Jew, Herzl experienced anti-Semitism firsthand as a
Viennese journalist and a writer in Paris during the Dreyfus Affair. Backed by east-
ern European Jews, he organized the first
International Zionist Congress (1897). By REVIEW QUESTION What were the points
1914, some eighty-five thousand Jews had of tension in European political life at the
moved into Palestine — the region finally beginning of the twentieth century?
chosen for the Jewish nation.
empire, and Britain in its pursuit of the South Afri- 0 250 500 kilometers
ea
Blue
1896
.
SPANISH E
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MOROCCO
TUNISIA S
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Suez Canal
IFNI LIBYA
ALGERIA (TRIPOLI)
RIO DE EGYPT
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ger FRENCH
Ni
WEST AFRICA ANGLO-EGYPTIAN ERITREA FRENCH
SENEGAL SUDAN
GAMBIA 1906, insurrection SOMALILAND
in Sokoto
RICA
PORTUGUESE
GUINEA BRITISH
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COAST
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suppress insurrection
1900, uprising; British SOMALILAND
go R.
UA
EAST AFRICA
SPANISH GUINEA CH
(RIO MUNI) EN
FRFrench
(KENYA) 1899–1900, Mohammed
BELGIAN ben Abdullah
clashes with British,
Congo CONGO GERMAN Italians, Ethiopians
EAST AFRICA
AT LANT IC
1905, uprising ZANZIBAR
1905, insurrection
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1907, uprising (inspired by Herero uprising NORTHERN
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Portuguese SOUTH AFRICA
1899–1902, South African War
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Belgian 1914, Boer uprising 0 250 500 miles
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NORTH
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STATES SARAWAK
Territories held by: Singapore
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enue and keep peace. We shall not assist them in fighting beyond the frontiers or
outside India with Indian blood and money.” Tilak asserted the distinctiveness of
Hindu values from British ways and urged outright rebellion against the British. This
brand of nationalism contrasted with that based on assimilating to British culture
and promoting gradual change. Trying to stop Tilak, the British sponsored a rival
nationalist group, the Muslim League, in a blatant attempt to divide Muslims from
Hindus in the Congress. Faced with political activism, Britain conceded to Indians’
representation in ruling councils and their right to vote based on property owner-
ship. But discontent also mounted, sometimes silently, as did worries among the
most clear-sighted imperialists about the future.
Revolutionary nationalism was simultaneously weakening the Ottoman Empire,
which for centuries had controlled much of the Mediterranean. Rebellions plagued
Ottoman rule, and this resistance allowed European influence to grow even as Otto-
man reformers aimed to strengthen the government. Sultan Abdul Hamid II (r. 1876–
1909) tried to revitalize the multiethnic empire by using Islam to counteract the rising
nationalism of the Serbs, Bulgarians, and Macedonians. Instead, he unintentionally
810 Chapter 24 Modernity and the Road to War
[ 1890–1914
]
provoked Turkish nationalism, which built on the uniqueness of the Turks' culture,
history, and language, as many European ethnic groups were also doing. The Japa-
nese defeat of Russia in 1904–1905 electrified these nationalists with the vision of a
modern Turkey becoming “the Japan of the Middle East,” as they called it. In 1908,
a group of nationalists called the Young Turks took control of the government in
Constantinople. The Young Turks’ triumph motivated other ethnic groups in the
Middle East and the Balkans to demand an end to Ottoman domination in their
regions. Strong contingents of feminist-nationalists mobilized women to work for
independence. However, the Young Turks, often aided by European powers with
financial interests in the region, brutally repressed nationalist uprisings in Egypt,
Syria, and the Balkans that their own success had encouraged.
The rebellions were part of the turmoil in global relations during the years just
before World War I, as empires became the scene of growing opposition in the wake
of Japanese, Russian, and Turkish events. In German East Africa, colonial forces
responded to native resistance in 1905 with a scorched-earth policy, eventually kill-
ing more than 100,000 Africans there. To maintain their grip on Indochina, the
French closed the University of Hanoi, executed Indochinese intellectuals, and
deported thousands of suspected nationalists. A French general stationed there
summed up the fears of many colonial rulers: “The gravest fact of our actual politi-
cal situation in Indochina is not the recent
trouble in Tonkin [or] the plots under-
REVIEW QUESTION How and why did events
in overseas empires from the 1890s on chal- taken against us but in the muted but
lenge Western faith in imperialism? growing hatred that our subjects show
toward us.”
Roads to War
Internationally, competition intensified among the great powers and drove Western
nationalists to become more aggressive. In the spring of 1914, U.S. president Woodrow
Wilson (1856–1924) sent his trusted adviser Colonel Edward House to Europe to
observe the rising tensions there. “It is militarism run stark mad,” House reported,
adding that he foresaw an “awful cataclysm” ahead. Government spending on what
people called the arms race had promoted economic growth while it menaced the
future. As early as the mid-1890s, one socialist had called the situation a “cold war”
because the hostile atmosphere made war seem a certainty. By 1914, the air was even
more charged, with militant nationalism in the Balkan states and politics — both at
home and worldwide — propelling Europeans toward mass destruction.
France and Russia, created in the 1890s. The wild card in the diplomatic scenario
was Great Britain, traditional enemy of France, especially in the contest for global
power. Britain and France — constant rivals in Africa — edged to the brink of war in
1898 over competing claims to Fashoda, a town in the Sudan. The threat of conflict
led France to withdraw, showing both nations as embracing a truce out of mutual
self-interest. To prevent another Fashoda, they entered into secret agreements, the
first of which (1904) recognized British claims in Egypt and French claims in
Morocco. This agreement marked the beginning of the British-French alliance called
the Entente Cordiale. Still, French statesmen feared that, should war break out, their
ally might decide to remain neutral.
Kaiser William II inflamed the diplomatic atmosphere just as France and Britain
were developing the Entente Cordiale. After victory in the Franco-Prussian War,
Bismarck had proclaimed Germany a “satisfied” nation and worked to avoid further
wars. William II, in contrast, was emboldened by Germany’s growing industrial might
and announced in 1901 that Germany needed greater global power to be achieved by
“friendly conquests.” His actions, however, were far from friendly, and he used the
opportunity presented by the defeat of France’s ally Russia in 1904–1905 to contest
French advances in Morocco. A boastful, blustery man who was easily prodded to
rash actions by his advisers, William landed in Morocco in 1905 to block the French.
To resolve what became known as the First Moroccan Crisis, an international confer-
ence met in Spain in 1906. There the powers upheld French claims in North Africa.
France and Britain, encountering German interference in Morocco, drew closer
together.
When the French took over Morocco completely in 1911, Germany triggered
the Second Moroccan Crisis by sending a gunboat to the port of Agadir and again
demanding concessions from the French. This time no power — not even Austria-
Hungary — backed Germany. The British and French now strengthened the Entente
Cordiale, and Germany, smarting from its setbacks on the world stage, refocused on
its own alliances.
Germany’s bold territorial claims unsettled the rest of Europe, particularly the
Balkans. German statesmen began envisioning their creation of a Mitteleuropa — a
term that literally meant “central Europe” but in their minds also included the Bal-
kans and Asia Minor. The Habsburgs, firmly backed by Germany, judged that their
own expansion into the Balkans and the resulting addition of even more ethnic
groups would weaken the claims of any single ethnic minority in the Dual Monarchy.
Russia, however, saw itself as the protector of Slavs in the region and wanted to replace
the Ottomans as the dominant Balkan power, especially since Japan had crushed Rus-
sian hopes for expansion to the east. Austria’s swift annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina
during the Young Turks’ revolt in 1908 enraged not only the Russians but the Serbs
as well, who wanted Bosnia as part of an enlarged Serbia (Map 24.4).
Even without the many greedy eyes cast on the Balkans, the situation would have
been extremely volatile. The nineteenth century had seen the rise of nationalism and
812 Chapter 24 Modernity and the Road to War
[ 1890–1914
]
0 200 400 miles N
0 200 400 kilometers
E
W
Vienna
RUSSIA S
AU S T R IA- H U N G A RY
D anu
be R
. ROMANIA
BOSNIA-
HERZEGOVINA Bla c k
Sarajevo
Sea
SERBIA
Annexed by Ceded to Romania
from Bulgaria, 1913
Austria-Hungary, 1908 BULGARIA
Ad
ria
tic
Se
a OTTOMAN Constantinople
MONTENEGRO EMPIRE
ALBANIA ia
ITALY on
c ed
Ma To Greece, 1913
Aegean
OTTOMAN
Sea EMPIRE
GREECE
To Italy, 1912
ethnicity as the basis for the unity of the nation-state, and by late in the century,
ethnic loyalty challenged the dynastic rule of the Habsburgs and Ottomans in the
region. Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Montenegro emerged as autonomous
states. All of them sought more Ottoman and Habsburg territory to cement a com-
mon ethnicity — an impossible desire given the dense intermingling of ethnicities
throughout the region. Nonetheless, war for territory was on these nationalists’ agenda.
[
1890–1914
] Roads to War 813
In the First Balkan War, in 1912, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Montenegro
joined forces to gain Macedonia and Albania from the Ottomans. The victors divided
up their booty, with Bulgaria gaining the most territory, but in the Second Balkan
War, in 1913 Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro contested Bulgarian gains. The quick
victory of these allies increased Austria’s concern at Serbia’s rising power. The region
had become perilous: both Austria-Hungary (as ruler of many Slavs) and Russia (as
their would-be protector) stationed increasing numbers of troops along the borders.
The situation led strategists to think hopefully that a quick war there — something
like Bismarck’s brief wars — could resolve tension and uncertainty.
they planned to impose martial law the minute war began, using it as an excuse for
arresting the leadership of the German Social Democratic Party, which threatened
their rule.
The European press caught the war fever of nationalist and pro-war organiza-
tions, and military leaders, especially in Germany and Austria-Hungary, promoted
mobilization rather than diplomacy in the last days of July. The Austrians declared
war and then ordered mobilization on July 31 in full confidence of German military
aid, because as early as 1909 Germany had promised to defend Austria-Hungary,
even if that country took the offensive. Nicholas II ordered the mobilization in
defense of the Serbs — Russia’s Slavic allies. Encouraging the Austrians to attack Ser-
bia, the German general staff mobilized on August 1. France declared war by vir-
tue of its agreement to aid its ally Russia,
and when Germany violated Belgian neu-
REVIEW QUESTION What were the major
trality on its way to invade France, Britain factors leading to the outbreak of World
entered the war on the side of France and War I?
Russia.
816 Chapter 24 Modernity and the Road to War
[ 1890–1914
]
Conclusion
Rulers soon forgot their last-minute hesitations when in some capitals celebration
erupted with the declaration of war. “A mighty wonder has taken place,” wrote a Vien-
nese actor after watching the troops march off amid public enthusiasm. “We have
become young.” Both sides exulted, as militant nationalism led many Europeans to
favor war over peace. There were advantages to war: disturbances in private life and
challenges to established truths would disappear, it was believed, in the crucible of
war. A short conflict, people maintained, would resolve tensions ranging from the
rise of the working class to political problems caused by global imperial competition.
German military men saw war as an opportune moment to round up social demo-
crats and reestablish the traditional power of an agrarian aristocracy. Liberal govern-
ment based on rights and constitutions, some believed, had simply gone too far in
allowing new groups full citizenship and political influence.
Modernity helped blaze the path to war. New technology, mass armies, and new
techniques of persuasion supported the military buildup. With continuing violence
in politics, chaos in the arts, and problems in the industrial order, there was a belief
that war would save nations from the modern perils they faced and replace nervous
pessimism with patriotism. “Like men longing for a thunderstorm to relieve them
of the summer’s sultriness,” wrote an Austrian official, “so the generation of 1914
believed in the relief that war might bring.” Tragically, any hope of relief soon faded.
Instead of bringing the refreshment of summer rain, war opened an era of political
turmoil, widespread suffering, massive human slaughter, and even greater doses of
modernity.
[ 1890–1914
] Conclusion 817
N SCOTLAND SWEDEN
W
E
North Sea Moscow
IRELAND Se
a
S GREAT DENMARK
lti c
BRITAIN Ba
NETHERLANDS
ENGLAND
Berlin
R U S S IA
London
Amsterdam
Brussels GERMANY POLAND
BELGIUM
ATLANTIC Paris Prague
OCEAN
Vienna
FRANCE Bern
Budapest
SWITZERLAND AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
MONTE-
NEGRO Belgrade
ROMANIA
Bucharest
Sarajevo
Black Sea
dr SERBIA
AL
ITALY Sofia
UG
Lisbon
Madrid Corsica BULGARIA
Constantinople
RT
SPAIN Rome
ALBANIA
PO
Sardinia
BALEARIC IS. Aegean OTTOMAN
GREECE Sea EMPIRE
Athens
Sicily
Crete
MOROCCO
(Fr.) TUNISIA M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a
ALGERIA (Fr.)
(Fr.)
LIBYA
(It.)
MAPPING THE WEST Europe at the Outbreak of World War I, August 1914
All the powers expected a great, swift victory when war broke out. Many saw war as a chance
to increase their territories; as rivals for trade and empire, almost all believed that war would
bring them many advantages. However well prepared and invincible European nations appeared
at the start of the war, relatively few would survive the conflict intact.
Chapter 24 Review
Key Terms and People
Be sure you can identify the term or person and explain its historical significance.
new woman (p. 787) art nouveau (p. 793) Duma (p. 807)
Sigmund Freud (p. 789) Emmeline Pankhurst (p. 797) Entente Cordiale (p. 811)
modernism (p. 791) Nicholas II (p. 799) Mitteleuropa (p. 811)
Friedrich Nietzsche (p. 791) Zionism (p. 803)
Albert Einstein (p. 792) South African War (p. 803)
Review Questions
1. How did ideas about the self and about personal life change at the beginning of the twenti-
eth century?
2. How did modernism transform the arts and the world of ideas?
3. What were the points of tension in European political life at the beginning of the twentieth
century?
4. How and why did events in overseas empires from the 1890s on challenge Western faith
in imperialism?
5. What were the major factors leading to the outbreak of World War I?
Making Connections
1. How did changes in society at the turn of the twentieth century affect the development of
mass politics?
2. How was culture connected to the world of politics in the years 1890–1914?
3. How had nationalism changed since the French Revolution?
4. In what ways were imperial wars from the 1890s to 1914 relevant to the outbreak of World
War I?
Suggested References
The cultural ferment, social turmoil, and actual violence of the pre–World War I years come alive
in the works listed here.
Forth, Christopher E. The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis of French Manhood. 2005.
Gingeras, Ryan. Sorrowful Shores: Violence, Ethnicity, and the End of the Ottoman Empire 1912–
1923. 2011.
Hull, Isabel. Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany.
2005.
Hunt, Nancy Rose. A Nervous State: Violence, Sterility, and Healing Movements in Colonial Congo.
2015.
Kaplan, Morris B. Sodom on the Thames: Sex, Love, and Scandal in Wilde Times. 2005.
Marchand, Suzanne, and David Lindenfeld, eds. Germany at the Fin-de-Siècle. 2004.
Meir, Natan M. Kiev, Jewish Metropolis: A History, 1859–1914. 2010.
Nolan, Michael E. The Inverted Mirror: Mythologizing the Enemy in France and Germany, 1898–
1914. 2005.
Reagin, Nancy R. Sweeping the German Nation: Domesticity and National Identity in Germany
1870–1945. 2006.
818
[1890–1914
] Chapter 24 Review 819
Important Events
Consider three events: Sigmund Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams (1900),
Emmeline Pankhurst founds Women’s Social and Political Union (1903), and Pablo
Picasso launches cubist painting with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907). How did
these events help to bring about modernity?
Rieber, Alfred J. The Struggle for the Eurasian Borderlands: From the Rise of Early Modern Empires
to the End of the First World War. 2014.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu
Stanislawski, Michael. Zionism and the Fin-de-Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau
to Jabotinsky. 2001.
Thompson, J. Lee. Theodore Roosevelt Abroad: Nature, Empire and the Journey of an American
President. 2010.
Willmott, H. P. The Last Century of Sea Power: From Port Arthur to Chanak, 1894–1922. 2009.
Witkovsky, Matthew S., ed. Avant-garde Art in Everyday Life: Early Twentieth-Century European
Modernism. 2011.
World War I and
25
Its Aftermath
1914 –1929
J
ules Amar, a French expert on improving the efficiency of industrial work,
changed his career as a result of war. After 1914, as hundreds of thousands of
soldiers returned from the battlefront missing body parts, plastic surgery and
the construction of masks and other devices to hide deformities developed rap-
idly. Amar devised artificial limbs that would allow the wounded soldier to return
to normal life by “making up for a function lost, or greatly reduced.” The artificial
arms featured hooks, magnets, and other mechanisms with which veterans could hold
a cigarette, play a violin, and, most important,
work with tools such as typewriters. Those who
Grieving Parents
had been mangled by the weapons of modern
Before World War I, the German art-
ist Käthe Kollwitz gained her artistic technological warfare would be made whole, it
reputation with woodcuts of hand- was thought, by technology such as Amar’s.
loom weavers whose livelihoods Jules Amar did his part to confront the
were threatened by industrialization. tragedy of the Great War, so named by contem-
From 1914 on, she depicted the suf- poraries because of its staggering human toll —
fering and death that swirled around
her — and never with more sober
forty million wounded or killed in battle. The
force than in these two monuments Great War did not settle problems or restore
to her son Peter, who died on the social order as the European powers hoped it
western front in the first months of would. Instead, the war produced political
battle. Today one can still travel to chaos, overturning the Russian, German, Otto-
Peter’s burial place in Vladslo, Bel-
man, and Austro-Hungarian Empires. The bur-
gium, to see this father and mother
mourning their loss, like millions den of war crushed the European powers and
across Europe in those heartbreak- accelerated the rise of the United States, while
ing days. (Kathe Kollwitz / photo © Paul colonized peoples who served in the war inten-
Maeyaert / Bridgeman Images / © 2015 sified their demands for independence. In fact,
Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York /
VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.)
the armistice in 1918 did not truly end con-
flict: many soldiers remained actively fighting
long into what was supposed to be peacetime,
and others had been so militarized that they longed for a life that was more like
wartime.
821
822 Chapter 25 World War I and Its Aftermath
[ 1914–1929
]
World War I transformed society, too. A prewar feeling of doom and decline
gave way to postwar cynicism. Many Westerners turned their backs on politics and
in the Roaring Twenties embraced life with wild gaiety, shopping for new consumer
goods, enjoying once forbidden personal freedoms, and taking pleasure in the enter-
tainment provided by films and radio. Others found reason for hope in the new
political systems the war made possible: Soviet communism and Italian fascism.
Modern communication technologies such as radio gave politicians the means to
promote a utopian mass politics that, ironically, was antidemocratic, militaristic, and
violent — like the war itself. A war that was
welcomed in some quarters as a remedy
CHAPTER FOCUS What political, social, and
for modernity destabilized Europe far into
economic impact did World War I have during
the conflict, immediately after it, and through the following decades leaving Europeans,
the 1920s? including Jules Amar and those he helped,
to deal with its violent aftermath.
N l FINLAND
h nava
W Britis
e
NORWAY
o c ka d
bl
E SWEDEN Petrograd
(St. Petersburg)
S
SCOTLAND Vo
lga R.
Sea
Jutland
1916
Dv Moscow
tic
GREAT l ina R.
IRELAND North Sea DENMARK Ba Tannenberg Treaty of Brest-Litovsk,
BRITAIN Masurian Lakes 1914 Vilnius
March 1918
NETHERLANDS 1914
ENGLAND Elb East Grodno
eR Prussia R U S S I A
.Berlin
Lusitania London Warsaw Brest-
sunk Eastern front, Litovsk Armistice line,
1915
Rhin
rR
Cracow
.
in HIA Dnie gR
eR st
. Alsace- Vienna
NS
.
er
ATLANTIC Marne R. Lorraine
R.
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
OCEAN FRANCE SWITZERLAND
Caporetto
1917 MONTE-
NEGRO ROMANIA
Italian front, Dan Bucharest
March 1918 ube R. Black Sea
SERBIA
ITALY Sofia
SPAIN BULGARIA
Constantinople
ALBANIA
Gallipoli OTTOMAN EMPIRE
GREECE 1915–16
Balkan front,
1917–18
groups within its borders. Among the Allies, Russia wished to reassert its status as
a great power and as the protector of the Slavs by adding a reunified Poland to the
Russian Empire and by taking formal leadership of other Slavic peoples. The French,
too, craved territory, especially the return of Alsace and Lorraine, ceded to Germany
after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. The British wanted to cement their hold
on Egypt and the Suez Canal and keep the rest of their world empire secure. By the
824 Chapter 25 World War I and Its Aftermath
[ 1914–1929
]
Treaty of London (1915), France and Britain promised Italy territory in Africa, Asia
Minor, the Balkans, and elsewhere in return for joining the Allies.
The colonies participated in the war too, providing massive assistance and serv-
ing as battlegrounds. Some one million Africans, one million Indians, and more than
a million men from the British commonwealth countries fought on the battlefronts.
The imperial powers also conscripted uncounted numbers of colonists as forced
laborers: a million Kenyans and Tanzanians alone are estimated to have been con-
scripted for menial labor in the battle for East Africa. Using Arab, African, and Indian
troops, the British waged successful war in the Ottoman lands of the Middle East. In
sub-Saharan Africa, the vicious campaign for East Africa cost many lives, including
many civilians whose resources were confiscated and whose villages were burned.
Unprecedented use of new machinery determined the course of war. In August
1914, machine guns, fast breech-loading rifles, and military vehicles such as airplanes,
battleships, submarines, and motorized transport (cars and trains) were all at the
armies’ disposal. New technologies such as chlorine gas, tanks, and bombs were devel-
oped between 1914 and 1918. The war itself became a lethal testing ground, as both
new and old weapons were used, often ineffectively. Many officers on both sides
believed in a cult of the offensive, which called for spirited attacks against the enemy
and high troop morale. Despite the
availability of powerful war tech-
nology, an old-fashioned, heroic
vision of war made many officers
unwilling to abandon the more
familiar sabers, lances, and bayo-
nets. In the face of massive fire-
power, the cult of the offensive
would cost millions of lives.
The Battlefronts
The first months of the war crushed any hope of a quick victory. The Germans were
guided by the Schlieffen Plan, named after a former chief of the general staff. The
plan outlined a way to combat enemies on two fronts by concentrating on one foe at
a time. It called for a concentrated blow to the west against France, which would lead
to that nation’s defeat in six weeks, accompanied by a light holding action against
Russia to the east. The attack on France was to proceed without resistance through
neutral Belgium. Once France had fallen, Germany’s western armies would move
against Russia, which, it was believed, would mobilize far more slowly. None of the
great powers expected that war would turn into the prolonged massacre of their
nations’ youth.
When German troops reached Belgium and Luxembourg at the beginning of
August 1914, the Belgians surprisingly mounted a vigorous defense, which slowed the
German advance. In September, the British and French armies engaged the Germans
along the Marne River in France. Neither side could defeat the other, and in the first
three months of war, more than 1.5 million men fell on the western front alone. Guns
like the 75-millimeter howitzer, accurate at long range, turned what was supposed to
be an offensive war of movement into a stationary standoff along a line that stretched
from the North Sea through Belgium and northern France to Switzerland.
On the eastern front, the Russians drove far more quickly than expected into East
Prussia in mid-August. The Russians believed that no army could stand up to the
massive number of their soldiers, regardless of how badly equipped and poorly trained
those soldiers were. Their success was short-lived. The Germans overwhelmed the
tsar’s army in East Prussia. Victory made heroes of the German military leaders Paul
von Hindenburg (1847–1934) and Erich Ludendorff (1865–1937), who demanded
more troops for the eastern front, undermining the Schlieffen Plan by removing
forces from the west before the western front had been won.
War at sea proved equally indecisive. The Allies blockaded ports to prevent sup-
plies from reaching Germany and Austria-Hungary. Kaiser William and his advisers
planned a massive U-boat (Unterseeboot, “underwater boat,” or submarine) campaign
against Allied and neutral shipping. In May 1915, U-boats sank the British passenger
ship Lusitania and killed 1,198 people, including 124 Americans. Despite U.S. out-
rage, President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) maintained a policy of neutrality; Ger-
many, unwilling to provoke Wilson further, called off unrestricted submarine war-
fare. In May 1916, the navies of Germany and Britain finally clashed in the North Sea
at Jutland. This inconclusive battle demonstrated that the German fleet could not
master British seapower.
Ideas of a negotiated peace were discarded: “No peace before England is defeated
and destroyed,” William II stormed against his cousin King George V. French leaders
called for a “war to the death.” General staffs on both sides continued to prepare
fierce attacks several times a year. Campaigns opened with heavy artillery pound-
ing enemy trenches and gun emplacements. Troops then responded to the order to
go “over the top” by scrambling out of their trenches and into battle, usually to be
826 Chapter 25 World War I and Its Aftermath
[ 1914–1929
]
War in the Trenches
Men at the front developed close
friendships while they lived with daily
discomfort, death, and the horrors of
modern technological warfare. Some
of the complexities of trench warfare
appear in this image showing soldiers
rescuing their fallen comrades after
fighting at Bagatelle in northern
France. (Private Collection / Stapleton Col-
lection / Bridgeman Images.)
“don’t want to fight any more than we do, so there’s a kind of understanding between
us. Don’t fire at us and we’ll not fire at you.” Many ordinary soldiers came to feel
more warmly toward enemies who shared the trench experience than toward civil-
ians back home. This camaraderie relieved some of the misery of trench life and
aided survival. In some cases, upper-class officers and working-class recruits became
friends in that “wholly masculine way of life uncomplicated by women,” as another
soldier put it. Soldiers tended one another’s blistered feet and came to love one
another, sometimes even passionately. This sense of frontline community survived
the war and influenced postwar politics.
Troops of colonized soldiers from Asia and Africa often were put in the very
front ranks, where the risks were greatest. Yet, like class divisions, racial barriers
sometimes fell: a European might give extra blankets and clothing to soldiers from
warmer regions. These troops saw their “masters” completely undone and “uncivi-
lized,” for when fighting did break out, trenches became a veritable hell of shelling
and sniping, flying body parts, blinding gas, and rotting cadavers. Some soldiers
became hysterical or shell-shocked through the stress and violence of battle. Those
who had gone to war to escape ordinary life in industrial society learned, as one Ger-
man put it, “that in the modern war . . . the triumph of the machine over the indi-
vidual is carried to its most extreme form.”
their pay on ribbons and jewelry. The heated prewar debates over the “new woman”
and gender roles returned.
Although soldiers from different backgrounds often felt bonds of solidarity in
the trenches, difficult wartime conditions increasingly pitted civilians against one
another on the home front. Workers toiled long hours with less to eat, while many
in the upper classes bought fancy food and fashionable clothing on the black market
(outside the official system of rationing). The cost of living surged and thus contrib-
uted to social tensions as shortages of staples like bread, sugar, and meat occurred
across Europe and people went hungry. Reviving prewar anti-Semitism, some blamed
Jews for the shortages. Colonial populations suffered oppressive conditions as well.
The French forcibly transported some 100,000 Vietnamese to work in France for the
war effort. Africans also faced grueling forced labor along with skyrocketing taxes
and prices. Civilian suffering during the
war, whether in the colonies or in Europe, REVIEW QUESTION In what ways was World
laid the groundwork for ordinary people War I a total war?
to take political action.
830 Chapter 25 World War I and Its Aftermath
[ 1914–1929
]
Protest, Revolution, and War’s End, 1917–1918
By 1917, the situation was becoming desperate for everyone — politicians, the mili-
tary, and civilians. Discontent on the home front started shaping the course of the
war. Neither patriotic slogans before the war nor propaganda during it had prepared
people for wartime devastation. Civilians rebelled in cities across Europe. While sol-
diers in some armies mutinied, nationalist struggles continued to plague Britain and
Austria-Hungary. Soon full-fledged revolution was sweeping Europe, toppling the
Russian dynasty, and threatening not just war but civil war as well.
War Protest
On February 1, 1917, the German government, hard-pressed by the public clamor
over mounting casualties and by the military’s growing control, resumed full-scale
submarine warfare. The British responded by mining their harbors and the sur-
rounding seas and by developing the convoy system of shipping to drive off German
submarines. The Germans’ submarine gamble not only failed to defeat the British
but also brought the United States into the war in April 1917, after German U-boats
sank several American ships.
Political opposition increased in Europe. Irish republicans attacked government
buildings in Dublin on Easter Monday 1916 in an effort to gain Ireland’s indepen-
dence from Britain during the crisis. The ill-prepared rebels were easily defeated,
and many of them were executed. In the cities of Italy, Russia, Germany, and Austria,
women rioted to get food for their families, and factory hands and white-collar work-
ers alike walked off the job. Amid these protests, Austria-Hungary secretly asked the
Allies for a negotiated peace; the German Reichstag also made overtures for a “peace
of understanding and permanent reconciliation of peoples.” In January 1918, Presi-
dent Woodrow Wilson issued his Fourteen Points, a blueprint for a nonvindictive
peace settlement held out to the war-weary citizens of the Central Powers.
Revolution in Russia
Of all the warring nations, Russia sustained the greatest number of casualties — 7.5
million by 1917. In March,1 crowds of workingwomen swarmed the streets of Petro-
grad demanding relief from the harsh conditions. They soon fell in with other pro-
testers commemorating International Women’s Day and were then joined by factory
workers and other civilians. Instead of remaining loyal to the tsar, many soldiers were
embittered by the massive casualties and their leaders’ foolhardy tactics. The govern-
1
Until February 1918, Russia observed the Julian calendar, which was thirteen days behind the Grego-
rian calendar used by the rest of Europe. Hence, the first phase of the revolution occurred in March
according to the Gregorian calendar (but February in the Julian calendar), the later phase in Novem-
ber on the Gregorian calendar (October according to the Julian). All dates used in this book follow
the Gregorian calendar.
[1914–1929
] Protest, Revolution, and War’s End, 1917–1918 831
ment’s incompetence and Nicholas II’s stubborn resistance to change had made the
war even worse in Russia than elsewhere. When the riots erupted in March 1917,
Nicholas finally realized the situation was hopeless. He abdicated, bringing the three-
hundred-year-old Romanov dynasty to a sudden end.
Aristocratic and middle-class politicians from the old Duma formed a new
administration called the Provisional Government. At first, hopes were high that
under the Provisional Government, as one revolutionary poet put it, “our false, filthy,
boring, hideous life should become a just, pure, merry, and beautiful life.” To survive,
the Provisional Government had to pursue the war successfully, manage internal affairs
better, and set the government on a firm constitutional footing, but other political
forces had also strengthened during the revolution. Among them, the soviets —
councils elected from workers and soldiers — competed with the government for
political support. Born during the Revolution of 1905, the soviets in 1917 campaigned
to end the deference usually given to the wealthy and to military officers, urged
respect for workers and the poor, and temporarily gave an air of celebration and
carnival to the political upheaval. The peasants, also competing for power, began to
confiscate landed estates and withhold produce from the market, threatening the
Provisional Government.
In hopes of adding to the turmoil in Russia, the Germans in April 1917 provided
safe rail transportation for V. I. Lenin (1870–1924) and other prominent Bolsheviks
to return to Russia through German territory. Lenin had devoted his entire existence
to bringing about socialism through the force of his small band of Bolsheviks. Upon
his return to Petrograd, he issued the April Theses, a radical document that called
for Russia to withdraw from the war, for the soviets to seize power on behalf of
workers and poor peasants, and for all private land to be nationalized. As the Bol-
sheviks aimed to supplant the Provisional Government, they employed such slogans
as “All power to the soviets” and “Peace, land, and bread.”
New prime minister Aleksandr Kerensky used his commanding oratory to arouse
patriotism, but he lacked the political skills needed to create an effective wartime
government. The Bolshevik leadership, urged on by Lenin, overthrew the weakened
Provisional Government in November 1917, an event called the Bolshevik Revolution.
In January 1918, elections for a constituent assembly failed to give the Bolsheviks a
plurality, so the party used troops to take over the new government completely. The
Bolsheviks, observing Marxist doctrine, abolished private property and nationalized
factories to stimulate production. The Provisional Government had allowed both men
and women to vote in 1917, making Russia the first great power to legalize universal
suffrage. This soon became a hollow privilege once the Bolsheviks limited the can-
didates to chosen members of the Communist Party.
The Bolsheviks asked Germany for peace and agreed to the Treaty of Brest-
Litovsk (March 1918), which placed vast regions of the old Russian Empire under
German occupation. Because the loss of millions of square miles to the Germans put
Petrograd at risk, the Bolsheviks relocated the capital to Moscow and formally adopted
the name Communists (taken from Karl Marx’s writings) to distinguish themselves
832 Chapter 25 World War I and Its Aftermath
[ 1914–1929
]
from the socialists/social democrats who had voted for the disastrous war in the first
place. Lenin called the catastrophic terms of the treaty “obscene.” However, he
accepted them — not only because he had promised to bring peace to Russia but also
because he believed that the rest of Europe would soon rebel against the war and
overthrow the capitalist order.
A full-blown civil war now broke out in Russia, with the pro-Bolsheviks (or
“Reds”) pitted against an array of forces (the “Whites”) who wanted to turn back the
revolution (Map 25.2). Among the Whites were three distinct groups: the tsarist mili-
tary leadership, composed mainly of landlords and supporters of aristocratic rule;
the liberal educated class, including businessmen whose property had been national-
ized; and non-Russian nationalities who saw their chance for independence. In addi-
tion, before World War I ended, Russia’s former allies — notably the United States,
Britain, France, and Japan — landed troops in the country to fight the Bolsheviks.
The counterrevolutionary groups lacked a strong leader and unified goals, however.
Pro-tsarist forces, for example, alienated groups seeking independent nation-state
status, such as the Ukrainians, Estonians, and Lithuanians, by stressing the goal of
restoring the Russian Empire. Even with the presence of Allied troops, the opponents
of revolution could not defeat the Bolsheviks without a common purpose.
[1914–1929
] Protest, Revolution, and War’s End, 1917–1918 833
Attacks by non-Russian
anti-Bolshevik forces
NO
Helsinki
Petrograd
SWEDEN BOLSHEVIK RUSSIA OAD
ILR
RA
ESTONIA R IAN
E
IB
Riga S-S
Moscow AN
ea
R
LATVIA T
cS
Samara
i N
alt LITHUANIA
R.
B E
lga
Minsk Orel
Vo
W
S
Warsaw
GERMANY Tsaritsyn
POLAND (Stalingrad)
Kiev Kharkov
C ZEC Ukraine
HOSLOV Rostov Astrakhan
AK IA
Odessa Ca
s
HUNGARY Crimea
pi
ROMANIA CA
an
Sevastopol UC Tbilisi Baku
MONTE- ASU
Sea
.
YU
BULGARIA
SLA
Constantinople
ITALY ALBANIA
VIA
The civil war shaped Russian communism. Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), Bolshevik
commissar of war, built the highly disciplined army by ending democratic procedures,
such as the election of officers, that had originally attracted soldiers to Bolshevism.
Lenin and Trotsky introduced the policy of war communism — seizing grain from
the peasantry to feed the civil war army and workforce. The Cheka (secret police)
imprisoned political opponents and black marketers and often shot them without
trial. The result was a more authoritarian government — a development that broke
Marx’s promise that revolution would bring a “withering away” of the state.
As the Bolsheviks clamped down on their opponents during the bloody civil
war, they organized their supporters to foster revolutionary Marxism across Europe.
In March 1919, they founded the Third International, also known as the Communist
834 Chapter 25 World War I and Its Aftermath
[ 1914–1929
]
International (Comintern), to replace the Second International with a centralized
organization dedicated to preaching communism. By mid-1921, the Red Army had
defeated the Whites in the Crimea, the Caucasus, and the Muslim borderlands in
central Asia. After ousting the Japanese from Siberia in 1922, the Bolsheviks gov-
erned a state as multinational as the old Russian Empire had been, and one at odds
with socialist promises for a humane and flourishing society.
Europe in Turmoil
Urban citizens and returning soldiers ignited the protests that swept Europe in 1918
and 1919. In January 1919, the red flag of socialist revolution flew from the city hall
in Glasgow, Scotland, while in cities of the collapsing Austro-Hungarian monarchy,
workers set up councils to take over factory production and direct politics. Many
soldiers did not disband at the armistice but formed volunteer armies, preventing
the return to peacetime politics. Germany was especially unstable, partly because of
the shock of defeat; German workers and veterans filled the streets, demanding food
and back pay. Whereas in 1848, revolutionaries had marched to city hall or the king’s
residence, the protesters in 1919 took over newspapers and telegraph offices to con-
trol the flow of information. One of the most radical socialist factions was the Sparta-
cists, led by cofounders Karl Liebknecht (1871–1919) and Rosa Luxemburg (1870–
1919). Unlike Lenin, the two leading Spartacists wanted workers to gain political
experience from any uprisings instead of simply following an all-knowing party lead-
ership on a set course.
German conservatives had believed that the war would put an end to Social
Democratic influence; instead, it brought German socialists to power. Social Demo-
cratic leader Friedrich Ebert, who headed the new German government, rejected
revolution and supported the creation of a parliamentary republic to replace the
monarchy. He called on the German army and the Freikorps — a roving paramilitary
band of students, demobilized soldiers, and others — to suppress the workers’ coun-
cils and demonstrators. “The enthusiasm is marvelous,” wrote one young soldier. “No
mercy’s shown. We shoot even the wounded.” Members of the Freikorps hunted
down Luxemburg and Liebknecht, among others, and murdered them.
Violence continued in Europe even as an assembly meeting in the city of Weimar
in February 1919 approved a constitution and founded a parliamentary republic
called the Weimar Republic. This time the right rebelled, for the military leadership
dreamed of a restored monarchy: “As I love Germany, so I hate the Republic,” wrote
one officer. To defeat a military coup by Freikorps officers, Ebert called for a general
strike. This action showed the lack of popular support for a military regime. Late in
836 Chapter 25 World War I and Its Aftermath
[ 1914–1929
]
the winter of 1919, leftists proclaimed “soviet republics” — governments led by work-
ers’ councils — in Bavaria and Hungary. Volunteer armies and troops soon put the
soviets down. The Bolsheviks tried to establish a Marxist regime in Poland, but the
Poles resisted and drove the Red Army back in 1920, while the Allied powers rushed
supplies and advisers to Warsaw. Though they failed, the various revolts provided
further proof that total war had let loose the forces of political chaos. War, it seemed,
continued.
N Ceded by Germany
W
FINLAND Ceded by Austria-Hungary
NORWAY
E Ceded by Bulgaria
Oslo Helsinki
S SWEDEN Ceded by Russia
Petrograd
Stockholm (St. Petersburg) British mandates
ESTONIA
French mandates
ea
North
cS
Alsace
ara
Geneva S.
HUNGARY ROMANIA s
Locarno Tyrol
pi
.
Rhône R
P o R.
an
Genoa Venice Bucharest
CROATIA Belgrade
Sea
.
Rapallo eR Black Sea
D a n ub
YUGOSLAVIA
ITALY SERBIA BULGARIA
SPAIN
Sofia
Constantinople
Rome
ALBANIA
TURKEY
PERSIA
GREECE
Athens
SYRIA
IRAQ
Beirut Damascus Baghdad
TUNISIA Mediterranean Sea
(Fr.) PALESTINE
Jerusalem
TRANS-
JORDAN KUWAIT
ALGERIA Cairo (Gr. Br.)
(Fr.)
LIBYA
0 200 400 miles (It.) EGYPT SAUDI ARABIA
(independent 1922)
0 200 400 kilometers N O R T H A F R I C A
MAP 25.3 Europe and the Middle East after the Peace Settlements of 1919–1920
The political landscape of central, east, and east-central Europe changed dramatically as a
result of the Russian Revolution and the Peace of Paris. The Ottoman, German, Russian, and
Austro-Hungarian Empires were either broken up into multiple small states or territorially reduced.
The settlement left resentments among Germans and Hungarians and created a group of weak,
struggling nations in the heartland of Europe. The victorious powers took over much of the oil-
rich Middle East. Why is it significant that the postwar geopolitical changes were so concen-
trated in one section of Europe?
838 Chapter 25 World War I and Its Aftermath
[ 1914–1929
]
set in 1921 at the crushing sum of 132 billion gold marks. Germany also had to reduce
its army, almost eliminate its navy, stop manufacturing offensive weapons, and
deliver a large amount of free coal each year to Belgium and France. Furthermore,
it was forbidden to have an air force and had to give up its colonies. Article 231 of
the treaty described Germany’s “responsibility” for damage caused “by the aggression
of Germany and her allies.” Outraged Germans interpreted this as a war guilt clause,
which blamed Germany for the war and allowed the victors to collect reparations
from their economically developed country rather than from ruined Austria. War
guilt made Germans feel like outcasts in the community of nations.
Besides redrawing the map of Europe, the Peace of Paris set up an organization
called the League of Nations, whose members had a joint responsibility for main-
taining peace — a principle called collective security. It was supposed to replace the
divisive secrecy of prewar power politics and arbitrate its members’ disputes. The
U.S. Senate failed to ratify the peace settlement and refused to join the league. More-
over, Germany and Russia initially were excluded from the league and were thus
blocked from working cooperatively with it. The absence of these three important
powers weakened the league as a global peacekeeper.
The League of Nations also organized the administration of the former colonies
and territories of Germany and the Ottoman Empire — such as Togo, Cameroon,
Syria, and Palestine — through systems of political control called mandates. While
the victorious powers exercised their mandates, local leaders retained limited author-
ity. The league justified the mandate system as providing governance by “advanced
nations” over territories “not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous
conditions of the modern world.” The mandate system not only kept imperialism
alive at a time when the powers were bankrupt and weak but also, like the Peace of
Paris, aroused anger and resistance.
eral support to rebuild war-torn regions and to force Germany to pay for the recon-
struction. Hoping to stimulate population growth after the devastating loss of life,
the French parliament made distributing birth-control information illegal and abor-
tion a severely punished crime.
Britain encountered postwar boom-and-bust cycles and continuing conflict in
Ireland. Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937), elected the first Labour prime minister in
1924, represented the political strength of workers. He had to face the unpleasant
truth that although Britain had the largest world empire, many of its industries were
obsolete or in poor condition. A showdown came in the ailing coal industry. On
May 3, 1926, workers launched a nine-day general strike against wage cuts and dan-
gerous conditions in the mines. The strike provoked unprecedented middle-class
resistance. University students, homemakers, and businessmen shut down the strike
by driving trains, working on docks, and replacing workers in other jobs. Seeing
strikers as those who were once again attacking the nation, citizens from many walks
of life began working through their wartime traumas with words and deeds, inflict-
ing their violence on conquered lands near and far.
In January 1919, Ireland’s republican leaders 0 50 100 miles
0 50 100 kilometers
declared their nation’s independence and created a SCOTLAND
separate parliament. The British government Ulster
(Northern Ireland)
refused to recognize the parliament and sent in the
Black and Tans, a volunteer army of demobilized
soldiers named for the color of their uniforms. Ter-
Dublin GREAT
ror reigned in Ireland, and by 1921, public outrage
IRISH BRITAIN
had forced the British to negotiate a treaty, one FREE STATE
that reversed the Irish declaration of independence ENGLAND
The managerial sector in industry had expanded during the war and continued
to do so thereafter. Workers’ knowledge became devalued, with managers alone seen
as creative and innovative. Managers reorganized work procedures and classified
workers’ skills. They categorized jobs held by women as requiring less skill — whether
they did or not — and therefore deserving of lower wages. With male workers’ jobs
increasingly threatened by labor-saving machinery, unions usually agreed that women
should receive lower wages to keep them from competing with men for scarce high-
paying jobs. Like the managerial sector, a complex union bureaucracy had ballooned
during World War I to help monitor labor’s part in the war. Unions could mobilize
masses of people, as evidenced by their actions against coups in Weimar Germany
and by the general strike in Great Britain in 1926.
Restoring Society
Civilians met the returning millions of brutalized, incapacitated, and shell-shocked
veterans with combined joy and apprehension — and that apprehension was often
valid. Tens of thousands of German, central European, and Italian soldiers refused to
disband; some British veterans vandalized university classrooms and assaulted women
streetcar conductors and factory workers. Many veterans were angry that civilians
had protested wartime conditions instead of enduring them. Patriotic when the war
erupted, civilians, especially women, sometimes felt estranged from the returning
warriors who had inflicted so much death and who had lived daily with filth, rats,
and decaying human flesh. While women who had served on the front had seen the
soldiers’ suffering firsthand and could sympathize with them, many British suffrag-
ists, for instance, who had fought for equality in men’s and women’s lives before the
war, now embraced separate spheres for men and women, so fearful were they of
returning veterans.
For their part, veterans returned to a world that differed from the home they
had left. They found that the war had blurred class distinctions, giving rise to expec-
tations that life would be fairer afterward. Despite their expectations, veterans often
had few or no jobs open to them, and some found that their wives and sweethearts
had abandoned them. Many found, too, that women’s roles had gone through other
changes: middle-class women did their own housework because former servants
could earn more money in factories, and greater numbers of women worked outside
the home. Women of all classes cut their hair short, wore sleeker clothes, smoked,
and had money of their own because of war work.
Focusing on veterans’ needs, governments tried to make civilian life as comfort-
able as possible to reintegrate men into society and reduce the appeal of communism.
Politicians believed in the calming power of family life and supported social pro-
grams such as veterans’ pensions and housing and benefits for out-of-work men. The
new housing — “homes for heroes,” as politicians called the program in Vienna,
Frankfurt, Berlin, and Stockholm — provided common laundries, day-care centers,
and rooms for socializing. Gardens, terraces, and balconies provided a soothing
846 Chapter 25 World War I and Its Aftermath
[ 1914–1929
]
country ambience that offset the hectic nature of industrial life. Inside, they boasted
modern kitchens and bathrooms, central heating, and electricity.
Despite government efforts to restore traditional family life, freer relationships
and more open discussions of sex characterized the 1920s. Middle-class youths of
both sexes visited jazz clubs and attended movies together. Revealing bathing suits,
short skirts, and body-hugging clothing emphasized women’s sexuality, seeming to
invite men and women to join together and replenish the postwar population. Brit-
ish scientist Marie Stopes published the best seller Married Love in 1918, and Dutch
author Theodor van de Velde produced the wildly successful Ideal Marriage: Its
Physiology and Technique in 1927. Both authors described sex in glowing terms and
offered precise information about birth control and sexual physiology. One Viennese
reformer promoted working-class marriage as “an erotic-comradely relationship of
equals” rather than the economic partnership of past centuries. Meanwhile, such
writers as the Briton D. H. Lawrence and the American Ernest Hemingway glorified
men’s sexual vigor in, respectively, Women in Love (1920) and The Sun Also Rises
(1926). Mass culture’s focus on heterosexuality encouraged the return to normality
after the gender disorder that had troubled the prewar and war years.
[1914–1929
] Mass Culture and the Rise of Modern Dictators 847
As images of men and women changed, people paid more attention to bodily
improvement. The increasing use of toothbrushes and toothpaste, safety and electric
razors, and deodorants reflected new standards for personal hygiene and grooming.
A multibillion-dollar cosmetics industry sprang up almost overnight. Women went
to beauty parlors regularly to have their short hair cut, dyed, straightened, or curled.
They also tweezed their eyebrows, applied makeup, and even submitted to cosmetic
surgery. Ordinary women “painted” their faces (something only prostitutes had done
formerly) and competed in beauty contests. Instead of wanting to look plump and
pale, people aimed to become thin and tan, often through exercise and playing
sports. Consumers’ new focus on personal health coincided with industry’s need for
a physically fit workforce.
As prosperity returned in the mid-1920s, people could afford to buy more con-
sumer goods. Middle- and upper-class families snapped up sleek modern furniture,
washing machines, and vacuum cleaners. Other modern conveniences such as elec-
tric irons and gas stoves appeared in better-off working-class households. Installment
buying, popularized from the 1920s on, helped people finance these purchases.
Family intimacy increasingly depended on
machines of mass communication like
REVIEW QUESTION What were the major
radios, phonographs, and even automo- political, social, and economic problems facing
biles, which not only transformed private postwar Europe, and how did governments
life but also brought changes to the public attempt to address them?
world of mass culture and mass politics.
The Flapper
This modern workingwoman smoking her cigarette stood for all that had changed — or was
said to have changed — in the postwar world. Women worked and had money of their own, they
were out in public and could vote in many countries, and they were liberated from old constraints
on their sexual and other behavior. (General Photographic Agency / Getty Images.)
Guglielmo Marconi, the radio quickly became an affordable consumer item, allowing
the public concert or lecture to penetrate the individual’s private living space. Special-
ized programming for men (such as sports reporting) and for women (such as advice
on home management) attracted listeners. Through radio, disabled veterans found
ways to participate in public events and keep up-to-date. By the 1930s, radio helped
politicians to reach the masses wherever they might be — even alone at home.
designed functional furniture and utensils, many of them inspired by forms from
“untainted” East Asia and Africa. Russian artists, temporarily caught up in the com-
munist experiment, optimistically wrote novels about cement factories and created
ballets about steel.
Artists fascinated by technology and machinery were drawn to the most modern
of all countries — the United States. Hollywood films, glossy advertisements, and the
bustling metropolis of New York tempted careworn Europeans. They loved films
about the Wild West or the supposedly carefree “modern girl.” They were especially
attracted to jazz, the improvisational music developed by African Americans. Per-
formers like Josephine Baker (1906–1975) and Louis Armstrong (1901–1971) became
international sensations when they toured Europe’s capital cities. Like jazz, the New
York skyscraper pointed to the future, not to the grim wartime past.
Like the Bolsheviks, Mussolini promised an efficient military utopia and the
restoration of men’s warrior status. The Black Shirts attracted many young men who
felt cheated of wartime glory and many veterans who missed the vigor of military
life. The fasces, an ancient Roman symbol depicting a bundle of sticks wrapped
around an ax with the blade exposed (representing both unity and force), served as
the movement’s emblem and provided its name: fascism. Unlike Marxism, fascism
scoffed at coherent ideology: “Fascism is not a church,” Mussolini announced. “It is
more like a training ground.” The Fascist Party was defined by deeds — specifically
its promotion of male violence and its attacks on parliamentary rule.
Mussolini criminalized any criticism of the state and used violence against oppo-
nents in parliament. Bands of men from the Fascist Party attacked striking workers,
using their favorite tactic of forcing castor oil (which caused diarrhea) down the
throats of socialists, and even murdering rivals. Yet the sight of the Black Shirts
marching through the streets like disciplined soldiers signaled to many Italians that
their country was orderly and modern. Large landowners and businessmen approved
the Fascists’ attacks on strikers and therefore financed the movement. Their generous
funding allowed Mussolini to build a large staff by hiring the unemployed, creating
the illusion that the Fascists could rescue the economy when no one else could.
854 Chapter 25 World War I and Its Aftermath
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Like a wartime leader, Mussolini used mass propaganda to build support for a
kind of military campaign to remake Italy. Peasant men huddled around radios to
hear him call for a “battle of wheat” to enhance farm productivity. Peasant women
adored him for appearing to value motherhood. In the cities the government launched
avant-garde architectural projects and used public relations promoters to advertise
its achievements. The modern city became a stage set for Fascist spectacles captured
by newsreel cameras and broadcast by radio. Mussolini claimed that he made the
trains run on time, and this triumph of modern technology fanned people’s hopes
that he could restore order, albeit violently.
Mussolini added traditional values and prejudices to his modern order. An athe-
ist himself, he recognized the importance of Catholicism in Italian life. In 1929, the
Lateran Agreement between the Italian government and the church made the Vatican
an independent state under papal sovereignty. The government recognized the
church’s right to determine marriage and family policy; in return, the church ended
its criticism of Fascist tactics. Mussolini also outlawed labor unions, replacing them
with organized groups of employers, workers, and professionals to settle grievances
and determine conditions of work. Mussolini drew praise from business leaders and
professionals when he announced cuts in women’s wages and a ban on women in
the professions. Mussolini aimed to confine women to low-paying jobs as part of his
scheme for reinvigorating men.
Mussolini’s numerous admirers across the West included Adolf Hitler, who
throughout the 1920s had been building a paramilitary group of storm troopers
alongside a political organization called the National Socialist German Workers’
Party (the Nazi Party). During his brief stint in jail for the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch,
Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle); in the book, he expressed both his vicious
anti-Semitism and his recipe for manipulating the masses. Hitler was fascinated by
Mussolini’s legal accession to power and his triumph over all opposition. Late in the
1920s, however, the conditions that had
allowed Mussolini to rise to power in 1922
REVIEW QUESTION How did the postwar
no longer existed in Germany. Although the
atmosphere influence cultural life and encour-
age the trend toward dictatorship?
Nazi Party was becoming a strong political
instrument, Weimar democracy was func-
tioning better as the decade wore on.
Conclusion
The year 1929 was to prove just as fateful as 1914 had been. In 1914, World War I
began an orgy of death, causing tens of millions of casualties and the destruction of
major dynasties. For four years, the war promoted military technology, fierce nation-
alism, and the control of everyday life by bureaucracy. As dynasties fell, the Peace
of Paris treaties of 1919–1920 left Germans bitterly resentful. In eastern and central
Europe the creation of new states by the treaties failed to guarantee a peaceful future.
Massive migrations produced additional chaos, as refugees fled political upheaval
such as that in Russia and as some new nations expelled minority groups.
[ 1914–1929
] Conclusion 855
War furthered the development of mass society. It leveled social classes on the
battlefield and in the graveyard, standardized political thinking through wartime
propaganda, and extended many political rights to women. Production techniques,
improved during wartime, were used in peacetime for manufacturing consumer
goods. Technological innovations — from the prostheses built by Jules Amar to air
transport, cinema, and radio transmission — became available. Modernity in the arts
intensified, probing the nightmarish war that continued to haunt the population.
By the end of the 1920s, the war had so militarized the population that strongmen
had come to power in several countries, including the Soviet Union and Italy, with
Adolf Hitler waiting in the wings in Germany. These strongmen and their followers
kept alive the wartime commitment to violence. Many Westerners were impressed
by the tough, modern efficiency of Fascists and Communists who made parliaments
and citizen rule seem out of date, even effeminate. When the U.S. stock market
crashed in 1929 and economic disaster circled the globe, authoritarian solutions and
militarism continued to look appealing. What followed was a series of catastrophes
even more devastating than those of World War I.
FINLAND
GREENLAND SWEDEN 1920
NORWAY
ICELAND NETH. 4
UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS N
GREAT DEN. 5
CANADA BRITAIN
8 POL. 6
BELG. 2 CZECH. 7 W E
FRANCE ROM. MONGOLIA
SWITZ. YUGO. 3
PORTUGAL SPAIN ITALY S
UNITED STATES GR. TURKEY KOREA JAPAN
TUNISIA 1 SYR. CHINA
MOROCCO (Fr.) PALESTINE IRAQ IRAN AFG. TIBET
(Fr.) TRANS-
ALGERIA LIBYA
CUBA
HAITI (Fr.) (It.) EGYPT JORDAN PACIFIC OCEAN
DOM. REP. SAUDI INDIA
MEXICO 1924
FRENCH ARABIA OMAN
BR. SUDAN SIAM
HONDURAS WEST AFRICA CAMEROON
GUATEMALA NICARAGUA ATLANTIC FR.
EL SALVADOR 1924 NIGERIA INDOCHINA PACIFIC IS.
OCEAN FR. ABYSSINIA
COSTA RICA 1920–1925 VENEZUELA CAMEROON
PANAMA COLOMBIA LIBERIA
FR.
ECUADOR TOGO BISMARCK ARCH.
BR. TOGO RUANDA-
URUNDI TANGANYIKA DUTCH EAST INDIES
BRAZIL INDIAN
1920–1926 ANGOLA OCEAN
PACIFIC PERU SAMOA
OCEAN BOLIVIA
MADAGASCAR
PARAGUAY S.W.
AFRICA
AUSTRALIA
SOUTH
CHILE URUGUAY AFRICA
ARGENTINA
League of Nations 1 Albania, 1920 NEW
ZEALAND
Original members 2 Austria, 1920
Subsequent members, 3 Bulgaria, 1920
with date of membership 4 Estonia, 1921
Possessions of member states 5 Latvia, 1920
Non-member states 6 Lithuania, 1921
Mandated territories 7 Hungary, 1922–1937
0 1,000 2,000 miles
8 Germany, 1926–1933
0 1,000 2,000 kilometers
Review Questions
1. In what ways was World War I a total war?
2. Why did people rebel during World War I, and what turned rebellion into outright revolution
in Russia?
3. What were the major outcomes of the postwar peacemaking process?
4. What were the major political, social, and economic problems facing postwar Europe, and
how did governments attempt to address them?
5. How did the postwar atmosphere influence cultural expression and encourage the trend
toward dictatorship?
Making Connections
1. How did the experience of war shape postwar mass politics?
2. What social changes from World War I carried over into the postwar years, and why?
3. How did postwar artistic and cultural innovations build on the modern movements that
developed between 1890 and 1914?
4. What changes did the war bring to relationships between European countries and their
colonies?
Suggested References
Readers of history and scholars continue to explore the gripping and tragic events of World
War I. Hanna’s work captures the often heartrending relationship between the battlefront and
home front, while Matera’s study provides an example of the tragic aftermath in the colonies.
Arthurs, Joshua. Excavating Modernity: The Roman Past in Fascist Italy. 2012.
Hanna, Martha. Your Death Would Be Mine: Paul and Marie Pireaud in the Great War. 2006.
Healy, Maureen. Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World
War I. 2004.
Horne, John, ed. State, Society, and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War. 2002.
Jensen, Eric N. Body by Weimar: Athletes, Gender and German Modernity. 2010.
Kent, Susan Kingsley. Aftershocks: The Politics of Trauma in Britain, 1918–1931. 2009.
Marks, Sally. The Illusion of Peace: International Relations in Europe, 1918–1933. 2003.
Matera, Marc, et al. The Women’s War of 1929: Gender and Violence in Colonial Nigeria. 2012.
McMeekin, Sean. The Russian Origins of the First World War. 2011.
Northrup, Douglas. Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia. 2004.
Panchasi, Roxanne. Future Tense: The Culture of Anticipation in France between the Wars. 2009.
Robb, George. British Culture and the First World War. 2002.
856
[1914–1929
] Chapter 25 Review 857
Important Events
Consider three events: Joyce, Ulysses (1922), Fascists march on Rome (1922), and
Period of general economic prosperity and stability (1924–1929). How do these events
illustrate the complexities of postwar life?
Roshwald, Aviel. Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, Russia and the Middle
East, 1914–1923. 2001.
Satia, Priya. Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain’s Covert Empire
in the Middle East. 2008.
Scales, Rebecca. Radio Nation: The Politics of Auditory Culture in Interwar France. 2015.
Stovall, Tyler. Paris and the Spirit of 1919: Consumer Struggles, Transnationalism, and Revolution.
2012.
Weitz, Eric D. Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy. 2009.
*World War I Document Archive: http://www.lib.byu.edu/%7Erdh/wwi
*Primary source.
The Great Depression
26
and World War II
1929–1945
W
hen Etty Hillesum moved to Amsterdam from the Dutch provinces
in 1932 to attend law school, an economic depression gripped the world.
A resourceful young woman, Hillesum pieced together a living as a
housekeeper and part-time language teacher so that she could continue her studies.
Absorbed in her everyday life, she took little note of Adolf Hitler’s spectacular rise
to power in Germany, even when he demonized her fellow Jews as responsible for
the economic slump and for virtually every other problem Germany faced. In 1939,
the outbreak of World War II awakened her to
the reality of what was happening. The German
Nazis on Parade conquest of the Netherlands in 1940 led to the
By the time Hitler came to power in
1933, Germany was mired in the
persecution of Dutch Jews, bringing Hillesum
Great Depression. Hated by Com- to note in her diary: “What they are after is
munists, Nazis, and conservatives our total destruction.” The Nazis started relo-
alike, the Weimar Republic had few cating Jews to camps in Germany and Poland.
supporters. Hitler took his cue from Hillesum went to work for Amsterdam’s Jewish
Mussolini by promising an end to
Council, which was forced to organize the
democracy and tolerance and by
using the visual power of Nazi sol- transport of Jews to these death camps. Chang-
diers marching through the streets ing from self-absorbed student to heroine, she
during the depression to win support did what she could to help other Jews and
for overthrowing the government. began carefully recording the deportations.
(Hugo Jaeger / Time & Life Pictures / Getty
Images.)
When she and her family were captured and
deported in turn, she smuggled out letters from
the transit camps along the route to Poland,
describing the inhumane conditions and brutal treatment of the Jews. “I wish I could
live for a long time so that one day I may know how to explain it,” she wrote. Etty
Hillesum never got her wish: she died at Auschwitz in November 1943.
The economic recovery of the late 1920s came to a halt with the U.S. stock market
crash in 1929, which launched a worldwide economic depression. Economic distress
attracted many people to military-style strongmen for solutions to their problems.
Among these dictators was Adolf Hitler, who called on the German masses to restore
859
860 Chapter 26 The Great Depression and World War II
[ 1929–1945
]
the national glory that had been damaged by defeat in 1918. He urged Germans to
scorn democratic rights and root out those he considered to be inferior people: Jews,
Slavs, and Sinti and Roma (often called Gypsies), among others. Militaristic and fas-
cist regimes spread to Spain, Poland, Hungary, Japan, and countries of Latin Amer-
ica, crushing representative institutions. In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin justified
the killing of millions of citizens as necessary for the USSR’s industrialization and
the survival of communism. For millions of hard-pressed people in the 1930s, dic-
tatorship had great appeal.
Elected leaders in the democracies reacted cautiously to both economic depres-
sion and the dictators’ aggression. In an age of mass media, leaders following dem-
ocratic principles appeared timid, while dictators dressed in uniforms looked bold
and decisive. Only the German invasion of Poland in 1939 pushed the democracies
to strong action, as World War II erupted in Europe. By 1941, the war had spread
across the globe with the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and many
other nations united in combat against Germany, Italy, Japan, and their allies. Tens
of millions would perish in this war
because both technology and ideology had
CHAPTER FOCUS What were the main eco-
become more deadly than they had been
nomic, social, and political challenges of the
years 1929–1945, and how did governments just two decades earlier. More than half
and individuals respond to them? the dead were civilians, among them Etty
Hillesum, killed for being Jewish.
for copper, tin, and other raw materials and for the finished products made in urban
factories worldwide. Rising agricultural productivity drove down the price of food-
stuffs like rice and coffee, a disaster for colonial peoples who had been forced to grow
a single cash crop. Just as in Europe, however, the economic picture in the colonies
was uneven. For instance, established Indian industries such as the textile business
gained strength, with India no longer needing British cloth.
Economic distress led to anticolonial action. Colonial farmers withheld produce
like cocoa from imperial trade, and colonial workers went on strike to protest the wage
cuts imposed by imperial landlords. In India, millions of working people, including
hundreds of thousands of veterans, joined with the upper-class Indians, who had orga-
nized to gain rights from Britain in the late nineteenth century. Mohandas K. Gandhi
(1869–1948), called Mahatma (“great-souled”), emerged as the charismatic leader for
Indian independence. Trained in England as a Western-style lawyer, Gandhi preached
Hindu self-denial and rejected British love of material wealth. He wore simple clothing
made of thread he had spun himself and advocated civil disobedience — deliberately
but peacefully breaking the law — a tactic he claimed to have taken from the British
suffragists and from the teachings of spiritual leaders like Jesus and Buddha. Gandhi
aimed to end Indian deference to the British, who jailed him repeatedly and tried to
864 Chapter 26 The Great Depression and World War II
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]
split the Indian independence movement by promoting Hindu-Muslim antagonism.
Instead, commitment to independence in India grew.
The end of the Ottoman Empire following World War I led to efforts to build
modern, independent nations in the Middle East. Mustafa Kemal (1881–1938), who
later took the name Atatürk (“first among Turks”), led the Turks to found an inde-
pendent republic in 1923 and to craft a capitalist economy. In an effort to Westernize
Turkish culture and promote the new Turkish state, Kemal moved the capital from
Constantinople to Ankara in 1923, officially changed the name Constantinople to
the Turkish name Istanbul in 1930, mandated Western dress for men and women,
introduced the Latin alphabet, and abolished polygamy. In 1936, Turkish women
received the vote and were made eligible to serve in the parliament. Persia, which
changed its name to Iran in 1935, similarly loosened the European grip on its econ-
omy by updating its government and by forcing the renegotiation of oil contracts to
keep Western countries from taking the oil for virtually nothing.
Anticolonial activism thrived in French colonies, too, but the government made
few concessions. Like all other imperial countries during the depression, France
depended increasingly on the profits it could take from its empire; therefore, its trade
with its colonies increased as trade with Europe lagged. France also depended on
the growing colonial population for sheer numbers. One official estimated what
colonial numbers meant for national security: “One hundred and ten million strong,
France can stand up to Germany.” Ho Chi Minh, founder of the Indochinese Com-
munist Party, rallied his people to protest French imperialism, but in 1930 the French
government brutally crushed the peasant uprising he led. Needing their empires,
Britain and France increased the number
REVIEW QUESTION How did the Great
of their troops stationed around the world.
Depression affect society and politics? As a result, fascism spread largely unchecked
in Europe during the 1930s.
Totalitarian Triumph
Representative government collapsed in many countries under the sheer weight of
social and economic crisis. After 1929, Mussolini in Italy, Stalin in the USSR, and
Hitler in Germany were able to mobilize vast support for their regimes. Desperate
for economic relief, many citizens supported political violence as key to restoring
well-being. Scholars have classified the fascist, Nazi, and communist regimes of the
1930s as totalitarian. The term totalitarianism refers to highly centralized systems of
government that attempt to control society and ensure obedience through a single
party and police terror. Born during World War I and gaining support in its after-
math, totalitarian governments broke with liberal principles of freedom and natu-
ral rights and came to wage war on their own citizens. Still, important differences
existed among totalitarian states, especially between fascist and communist states.
Whereas communism denounced private ownership of property and economic
inequality, fascism supported them as crucial to national might.
[
1929–1945
] Totalitarian Triumph 865
Although some writers and artists went underground, others found ways to adjust
their talents to the state’s demands. The composer Sergei Prokofiev, for example,
composed scores both for the delightful Peter and the Wolf and for Sergei Eisenstein’s
1938 film Alexander Nevsky, a work that flatteringly compared Stalin to the medieval
rulers of the Russian people. Aided by adaptable artists, workers, and bureaucrats,
Stalin stood triumphant as the 1930s drew to a close. He was, as two different work-
ers put it, “our beloved Leader” and “a god on earth.”
The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small.
In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a
very few points and must harp on those in slogans until the last member of
the public understands what you want him to understand.
Hermann Goering, had vast powers to arrest people and either execute them or
imprison them in concentration camps, the first of which opened at Dachau, near
Munich, in March 1933. The Nazis filled it and later camps with political enemies
like socialists, and then with Jews, homosexuals, and others said to be enemies of
the Volksgemeinschaft.
Hitler deliberately blurred authority in the government and his political party
to encourage confusion and competition. He then settled disputes, often with vio-
lence. When Ernst Roehm, leader of the SA and Hitler’s longtime collaborator, called
for a “second revolution” to end the business and military elites’ continuing influence
on top Nazis, Hitler ordered Roehm’s assassination. The bloody Night of the Long
Knives (June 30, 1934), during which hundreds of SA leaders and innocent civilians
were killed, strengthened the support of the conservative upper classes for the Nazi
regime. They saw that Hitler would deal ruthlessly with those favoring a leveling-out
of social privilege. Nazism’s terrorist politics served as the foundation of Hitler’s
Third Reich — a German empire grandly advertised as the successor to the First
Reich of Charlemagne and the Second Reich of Bismarck and William II.
New economic programs, especially those putting people back to work, were
crucial to the survival of Nazism. The Nazi government pursued pump priming —
that is, stimulating the economy through government spending on tanks and airplanes
and on public works programs such as building the Autobahn, or highway system.
Unemployment declined from a peak of almost 6 million in 1932 to 1.6 million by
1936. The Nazi Party closed down labor unions, and government managers deter-
mined work procedures and set pay levels, rating women’s jobs lower than men’s
regardless of the level of expertise required. Nazi programs produced large budget
deficits, but Hitler was already planning to conquer and loot neighboring countries
to cover the costs.
Nazi officials devised policies to control everyday life, including gender roles. In
June 1933, a bill took effect that encouraged Aryans (those people defined as racially
German) to marry and have children. The bill provided for loans to Aryan newly-
weds, but only if the wife left the workforce. The loans were forgiven on the birth
of the pair’s fourth child. The ideal woman gave up her job, gave birth to many
children, and completely surrendered her will to that of her husband, allowing him
to feel powerful despite military defeat and economic depression. A good wife “joy-
fully sacrifices and fulfills her fate,” as one Nazi leader explained.
The government also controlled culture, destroying the rich creativity of the
Weimar years. Although 70 percent of households had radios by 1938, programs
were severely censored. Books like Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western
Front were banned, and in May 1933 a huge book-burning ceremony rid libraries of
works by Jews, socialists, homosexuals, and modernist writers. In the Hitler Youth,
which boys and girls over age ten were required to join, children learned to report
those adults they suspected of disloyalty to the Third Reich, even their own parents.
People boasted that they could leave their bicycles out at night without fear of rob-
bery, but their world was filled with informers — some 100,000 of them on the Nazi
870 Chapter 26 The Great Depression and World War II
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]
payroll. In general, the improved economy led many to see Hitler working an eco-
nomic miracle while restoring pride in Germany and strengthening the Aryan com-
munity. For hundreds of thousands if not millions of Germans, however, Nazi rule
in the 1930s brought anything but harmony and community.
Nazi Racism
The Nazis defined Jews as an inferior “race” dangerous to the superior Aryan “race”
and responsible for most of Germany’s problems, including defeat in World War I and
the economic depression. The reasons for targeting Jews, Hitler declared in a 1938
speech, were “based on the greatest of scientific knowledge.” Hitler attacked many
ethnic and social groups, but he took anti-Semitism to new and frightening heights.
In the rhetoric of Nazism, Jews were “vermin,” “abscesses,” and “Bolsheviks.” They
were enemies, biologically weakening the race and plotting Germany’s destruction —
all of which, given scientific knowledge then and now, was of course utterly false.
Thus Hitler’s concept of building community also included making some members
of the community enemies within. By branding Jews both as evil businessmen and as
working-class Bolsheviks, Nazis fashioned an enemy for the population to hate.
Nazis insisted that terms such as Aryan and Jewish (a religious category) were
scientific racial classifications that could be determined by physical characteristics
such as the shape of the nose. In 1935, the government enacted the Nuremberg
Laws, legislation that deprived Jews of citizenship and prohibited marriage between
Jews and other Germans. Abortions and birth-control information were readily
available to enemy outcast groups, including Jews, Slavs, Sinti and Roma, and men-
tally or physically disabled people, but were forbidden to women classified as Aryan.
In the name of improving the Aryan race, doctors helped organize the T4 project,
which used carbon monoxide poisoning and other means to kill large numbers of
people — 200,000 handicapped and elderly — late in the 1930s. The murder of the
disabled aimed to eliminate those whose “racial inferiority” endangered the Aryans.
These murders prepared the way for even larger mass exterminations in the future.
Jews were forced into slave labor, evicted from their apartments, and prevented
from buying most clothing and food. In 1938, a Jewish teenager, reacting to the
harassment inflicted on his parents, killed a German official. In retaliation, Nazis and
other Germans attacked some two hundred synagogues, smashed windows of Jewish-
owned stores, ransacked apartments of known or suspected Jews, and threw more
than twenty thousand Jews into prisons and camps. The night of November 9–10
became known as Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass. Faced with such relent-
less persecution, more than half of Germany’s 500,000 Jews had emigrated by the out-
break of World War II in 1939. Their enormous emigration fees helped finance Ger-
many’s economic recovery, while neighbors
REVIEW QUESTION What role did violence
and individual Nazis used anti-Semitism to
play in the Soviet and Nazi regimes? justify stealing Jewish property and taking
the jobs Jews were forced to leave.
[
1929–1945
] Democracies on the Defensive 871
ister Ramsay MacDonald, though leader of the Labour Party, reduced payments to
the unemployed, and Parliament denied unemployment insurance to women even
though they had contributed to the unemployment fund. To protect jobs, the govern-
ment imposed huge tariffs on imported goods, but these only discouraged a revival
of international trade and did not relieve British misery. Finally, in 1933, with the
economy continuing to worsen, the government began to take effective steps with
massive programs of slum clearance, new housing construction, and health insurance
for the needy. British leaders rejected pump-priming methods of stimulating the
economy as foolish and thus resorted to them only when all else had failed.
Depression struck later in France, but the country endured a decade of public
strife in the 1930s. Deputies with opposing solutions to the economic crisis fre-
quently came to blows in the Chamber of Deputies, Parisians took to the streets to
protest the government’s budget cuts, and Nazi-style paramilitary groups flourished,
attracting the unemployed, students, and veterans to the cause of ending representa-
tive government. In February 1934, the paramilitary groups joined Communists and
other outraged citizens in riots around the parliament building. “Let’s string up the
deputies,” chanted the crowd. “Let’s beat in their faces, let’s reduce them to a pulp.”
The right-wing enemies of democratic government, however, lacked both substantial
support and a charismatic leader like Hitler or Mussolini.
Shocked into action by fascist violence, French liberals, socialists, and Commu-
nists established an antifascist coalition known as the Popular Front. Until that time,
such a merging of groups had been impossible because Stalin had directed Commu-
nists across Europe not to cooperate with other political parties. As fascism attracted
followers around the world, however, Stalin allowed Communists to join efforts to
protect democracy. For just over a year in 1936–1937 and again briefly in 1938, the
French Popular Front led the government, with the socialist leader Léon Blum as
premier. Like the American New Dealers and the Swedish reformers, the Popular
Front instituted social-welfare programs, including family subsidies. Blum appointed
women to his government (though women in France were still not allowed to vote).
In June 1936, the French government guaranteed workers two-week paid vacations,
a forty-hour workweek, and the right to bargain collectively. Working people would
long remember Blum as the man who improved their living standards and provided
them with the right to vacations.
During its brief life, the Popular Front offered citizens a youthful but democratic
political culture. “In 1936 everyone was twenty years old,” one man recalled, evoking
the atmosphere of idealism. To express their opposition to fascism, the French cel-
ebrated democratic holidays like Bastille Day with new enthusiasm. Not everyone
liked the Popular Front, however. Bankers and industrialists sent their money out of
the country in protest, leaving France financially strapped. “Better Hitler than Blum”
was the slogan of the upper classes. Blum’s government lost crucial liberal support
for refusing to aid the fight against fascism in Spain because of antiwar sentiment.
The collapse of the antifascist Popular Front showed the difficulties that democratic
societies had facing the revival of militarism during hard economic times.
874 Chapter 26 The Great Depression and World War II
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Fledgling democracies in central Europe, hit hard by the depression, also
struggled for economic survival and representative government, but with little suc-
cess. In 1932, Engelbert Dollfuss came to power in Austria, dismissing the parliament
and ruling briefly as a dictator. Despite his authoritarian stance, Dollfuss would not
submit to the Nazis, who stormed his office and assassinated him in 1934 in an unsuc-
cessful coup attempt. In Hungary, where outrage over the Peace of Paris remained
intense, a crippled economy allowed right-wing general Gyula Gömbös to take over
in 1932. Gömbös reoriented his country’s foreign policy toward Mussolini and Hitler.
He stirred up anti-Semitism and ethnic hatreds and left considerable pro-Nazi feeling
after his death in 1936. In democratic Czechoslovakia, the Slovaks, who were poorer
than the urbanized Czechs, built a strong Slovak Fascist Party as the appeal of fas-
cism grew during the Great Depression.
Madrid Barcelona
tance to the rebels, notably airplanes
SPAIN
PO
held Madrid, Barcelona, and other commercial and industrial areas. The right-wing
rebels took the agricultural west and south (Map 26.1).
Spain became a training ground for World War II. Hitler and Mussolini sent
military personnel in support of Franco, gaining the opportunity to practice the ter-
ror bombing of civilians. In 1937, German planes attacked the town of Guernica,
mowing down civilians in the streets. This useless slaughter inspired Pablo Picasso’s
memorial mural to the dead, Guernica (1937), in which the intense suffering is
starkly displayed. The Spanish republic appealed everywhere for assistance, but only
the Soviet Union answered. Britain and France refused to provide aid despite the
outpouring of popular support for the cause of democracy. Instead, a few thousand
volunteers from a variety of countries — including many students, journalists, and
artists — fought for the republic. “Spain was the place to stop fascism,” these volun-
teers believed. The aid Franco received helped his professional armies defeat the
republicans in 1939, strengthening the cause of military authoritarianism in Europe.
Tens of thousands fled Franco’s brutal revenge; remaining critics found themselves
jailed or worse.
peoples into one nation. The Nazi seizure of Austria’s gold marked an important step
in financing German expansion, as Austria was declared a German province. Nazi
thugs ruled once-cosmopolitan Vienna; an observer later commented on the scene:
“University professors were obliged to scrub the streets with their naked hands, pious
white-bearded Jews were dragged into the synagogue by hooting youths and forced
to do knee-exercises and to shout ‘Heil Hitler’ in chorus.” Nazis gained additional
support in Austria by attacking the stubborn problem of unemployment — especially
among the young and out-of-work rural migrants to the cities. Factories sprang up
overnight, and German policies eliminated some of the pain Austrians had suffered
when their empire had been reduced to a small country after World War I.
With Austria firmly in his grasp, Hitler turned next to Czechoslovakia and its
rich resources. Conquering this democracy looked more difficult, however, because
Czechoslovakia had a large army, strong border defenses, and efficient armament
factories. The Nazi propaganda machine swung into action, accusing Czechoslova-
kia of persecuting its German minority. By October 1, 1938, Hitler warned, Czecho-
slovakia would have to grant autonomy (amounting to Nazi rule) to the German-
populated border region, the Sudetenland, or face German invasion.
Hitler gambled correctly that the other Western powers would choose appease-
ment, the prevention of conflict by making concessions for grievances (in this case,
880 Chapter 26 The Great Depression and World War II
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]
Germany in 1933 Annexed, September 1939
Plebiscite joins Germany in 1935 Occupied by Germany, September 1939
Remilitarized in 1936 Annexed by Soviet Union, September 1939 ESTONIA
Annexed, 1938–1939 Annexed by Hungary, March 1939
Satellite states, March 1939 International boundaries, 1936
U SS R
a
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Riga
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SWEDEN
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lt
North DENMARK Memel
a
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Vilnius
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Danzig East Minsk
S NETHERLANDS Prussia
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stu Warsaw Pinsk
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0 100 200 kilometers a
Pact bought Hitler time to build his army and gave him the green light for further
aggression or whether it wisely provided France and Britain precious time to beef
up their own armies is heatedly debated even today.
Stalin, excluded from the Munich deliberations, saw that the democracies were
not going to fight to protect eastern Europe. He took action. To the astonishment
of people in the West, on August 23, 1939, Germany and the USSR signed a non-
aggression agreement. The Nazi-Soviet Pact provided that if one country became
embroiled in war, the other country would remain neutral. Moreover, the two dicta-
tors secretly agreed to divide Poland and the Baltic states — Latvia, Estonia, and
Lithuania — at some future date. The Nazi-Soviet Pact ensured that, should war
come, the democracies would be fighting a Germany that feared no attack on its
eastern borders. The pact also allowed Sta-
lin extra time to reconstitute his officer
corps, which had been wiped out by the REVIEW QUESTION How did the aggression
of Japan, Germany, and Italy create the condi-
purges. In the belief that Great Britain and
tions for global war?
perhaps even France would continue not
to resist, the Nazis now targeted Poland.
R hi
BELGIUM
0 100 200 kilometers government sat, the aged World War I hero Henri
ne
R.
Sei
ne
R.
Paris
LUX. Philippe Pétain was allowed to govern because of
Lorraine
Loire
R . his and his administration’s pro-Nazi values. Stalin
ce
sa
Al
Rhône R.
ne FRANCE
ro
R.
Marseille
campaigner for resistance to Hitler. As Hitler
SPAIN
ordered the bombardment of Britain in the sum-
German-occupied territory
mer of 1940, Churchill rallied the nation by radio
Annexed by Germany, 1940
Italian invasion, 1940
to protect the ideals of liberty with “blood, toil,
tears, and sweat.” In the battle of Britain — or Blitz,
as the British called it — the German Luftwaffe
The Division of France, 1940
(“air force”) bombed monuments, public buildings,
weapons depots, and industry. In response, Britain poured resources into its highly
successful code-breaking group called Ultra, further development of radar, and air
weaponry, outproducing the Germans by 50 percent.
By the fall of 1940, German air losses compelled Hitler to abandon his plan for
a naval invasion of Britain. Forcing Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria to join the Axis
powers, Germany gained access to more food, oil, and other resources. He then made
his fatal decision to break the Nazi-Soviet Pact and attack the Soviet Union — the
“center of judeobolshevism,” he called it. In June 1941, three million German and
other troops penetrated Soviet lines along a two-thousand-mile front; by July, they had
rolled to within two hundred miles of Moscow. Using a strategy of rapid encirclement,
German troops killed, captured, or wounded more than half the 4.5 million Soviet
soldiers.
Amid success, Hitler blundered. Considering himself a military genius and the
Slavic people inferior, he proposed attacking Leningrad, the Baltic states, and Ukraine
simultaneously, even though his generals wanted to concentrate on Moscow. Driven
by Stalin and local party members, the Soviet people fought back. The onset of
winter turned Nazi soldiers into frostbitten wretches because Hitler had feared that
equipping his army for Russian conditions would suggest to civilians that a long
campaign lay ahead. Convinced of a quick victory in the USSR, he switched German
production from making tanks and artillery to making battleships and airplanes for
war beyond the Soviet Union. Consequently, Germany’s poorly supplied armies fell
victim not only to the weather but also to a shortage of equipment. As the war
became worldwide, Germany still had an inflated view of its own power.
[1929–1945
] World War II, 1939–1945 883
SWITZ. AUSTRIA
Budapest camps in Europe, but the entire
HUNGARY
continent was dotted with thou-
ROMANIA
sands of lesser camps to which
ITALY
the victims of Nazism were trans-
YUGOSLAVIA
Under Axis control,
ported. Some of these lesser
1 Auschwitz-Birkenau 11 Mittelbau
1942 2 Belzec 12 Natzweiler camps were merely way stations on
Axis allies 3 Bergen-Belsen 13 Neuengamme the path to ultimate extermination.
4 Buchenwald 14 Ravensbrück
Neutral 5 Chelmno 15 Sachsenhausen In focusing on the major camps,
Mass murder site 6 Dachau 16 Sobibor historians often lose sight of the
7 Flossenbürg 17 Stutthof
Principal German 8 Gross Rosen 18 Theresienstadt ways in which evidence of deporta-
concentration and 9 Majdanek 19 Treblinka
extermination camp 10 Mauthausen tion and extermination blanketed
Europe.
[1929–1945
] World War II, 1939–1945 885
niques developed in the T4 project, which killed disabled and elderly people, the
camp at Chelmno initially gassed Christian Poles and Soviet prisoners of war. Spe-
cially designed crematoria for the mass burning of corpses started functioning in
1943. By then, Auschwitz had the capacity to burn 1.7 million bodies per year. About
60 percent of new arrivals — particularly children, women, and old people — were
selected for immediate murder in the gas chambers; the other 40 percent labored
until, utterly used up, they too were gassed.
Victims from all over Europe were sent to extermination camps. In the ghettos
of European cities, councils of Jewish leaders, such as the one in Amsterdam where
Etty Hillesum worked, often chose those to be sent for “resettlement in the east” — a
phrase used to mask the Nazis’ true plans. For weakened, poorly armed ghetto inhab-
itants, open resistance meant certain death. When Jews bravely rose up against their
Nazi captors in Warsaw in 1943, they were mercilessly butchered. The Nazis also
took pains to cloak the purpose of the extermination camps. Bands played to greet
886 Chapter 26 The Great Depression and World War II
[ 1929–1945
]
incoming trainloads of victims, and survivors later noted that the purpose of the
camps was so unthinkable that potential victims could not begin to imagine their
fate. Those not chosen for immediate murder had their heads shaved and were dis-
infected. So began life in “a living hell,” as one survivor wrote.
The camps were scenes of struggle for life in the face of torture and death.
Overworked inmates usually received less than five hundred calories per day, far
below the minimum needed to keep an adult in good health. As diseases swept
through the camps, doctors performed unbelievably cruel medical experiments with
no anesthesia on pregnant women, twins, and other innocent people in the name of
advancing “racial science.” Despite the harsh conditions, however, some people main-
tained their spirit: prisoners forged new friendships, and women in particular
observed religious holidays and celebrated birthdays. Thanks to those sharing a
bread ration, wrote the Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi, “I managed not to forget that
I myself was a man.” In the end, six million Jews, the vast majority from eastern
Europe — along with an estimated five to six million Slavs, Sinti and Roma (often
called Gypsies), homosexuals, and countless others — were deliberately murdered in
the Nazi genocidal fury. This vast crime perpetrated by apparently civilized people
still shocks and outrages the world.
Societies at War
Even more than World War I, World War II depended on industrial productivity.
The Axis countries remained at a disadvantage throughout the war despite their
initial conquests, for the Allies consistently outproduced them. For example, in 1942,
Great Britain and Russia produced collectively nearly 50,000 aircraft while Germany
produced around 15,000. Even as Germany occupied the Soviet industrial heartland
and besieged many of its cities, the USSR increased its production of weapons. Both
Japan and Germany made the most of their lower output, especially in the use of
Blitzkrieg. The use of vast quantities of stolen resources and of millions of slave
laborers also helped, but both Japan’s and Germany’s belief in their racial superiority
prevented them from accurately assessing the capabilities of an enemy they held in
contempt.
Allied governments were overwhelmingly successful in mobilizing civilians,
especially women. In Germany and Italy, where government policy particularly
exalted motherhood and kept women from good jobs, officials began to realize that
women were desperately needed in the workforce. Nazis changed their propaganda
to emphasize the need for everyone to take a job, but their messages were not effec-
tive enough to convince women to take the low-paid work offered them. In contrast,
Soviet women constituted more than half their nation’s workforce by war’s end, and
800,000 volunteered for the military, even serving as pilots. As the Germans invaded,
Soviet citizens moved entire factories eastward. In a dramatic about-face, the govern-
ment encouraged devotion to the Russian Orthodox church as a way of boosting
patriotism.
[
1929–1945
] World War II, 1939–1945 887
Even more than in World War I, civilians faced propaganda, censorship, and
government regulation. People were glued to their radios for war news, but much
of it was tightly controlled. The totalitarian powers often withheld news of military
defeats and large casualty numbers in order to keep civilian support. Wartime films
focused on aviation heroes and infantrymen as well as on the self-sacrificing work-
ingwomen and wives on the home front. In most countries, it was simply taken for
granted that civilians would not receive what they needed to survive in good health.
Soviet children and old people were at the greatest risk, a high proportion of them
among the one million residents who starved to death during the siege of Leningrad.
Government specialists regulated the production and distribution of food, clothing,
and household products, all of which were rationed and generally of lower quality
than before the war. With governments standardizing such items as food, clothing,
and entertainment, World War II furthered the development of mass society.
On both sides, propaganda and government policies promoted racial thinking.
Since the early 1930s, the German government had published ugly caricatures of
Jews and Slavs. Similarly, Allied propaganda during the war depicted Germans as
perverts and the “Japs” as insectlike fanatics. The U.S. government forced citizens of
Japanese origin into internment camps, while Muslims and minority ethnic groups
in the Soviet Union were uprooted and relocated away from the front lines as poten-
tial Nazi collaborators. As in World War I, both sides drew colonized peoples into
the war through forced labor and conscription into the armies. Some two million
Indian men served the Allied cause, as did several hundred thousand Africans. As
the Japanese swept through the Pacific and parts of East Asia, they, too, conscripted
local men into their army.
April
V ol
Major battle
ea
g a R.
cS
1940
N. LATVIA 4
North 94 Moscow
lti
IRELAND t. 1
Se p
Ba
GREAT Sea DENMARK LITHUANIA
Germans repulsed
Dec. 1941
IRELAND
BRITAIN Danzig
East 41
Surrendered 19
Battle of Britain, May 8, 1945 Prussia ne
1940
NETH. Elb Ju 43 Besieged
0 eR . 19 Aug. 21, 1942–Jan. 31, 1943
94 . Berlin
July 1944 Aug
y 1 Potsdam
Normandy invasion, Do
Kursk n R.
London Ma Warsaw
D-Day June 6, 1944 Stalingrad
POLAND
Od
4 5 er July 1943
Dunkirk BELG. il 19 R
June 1941
Rh
Slovakia
.
ATLANTIC Ukraine
Liberated BukovinaBessarabia
OCEAN 44
Ca
Aug. 25, 1944
FRANCE HUNGARY
944
19
SWITZ.
sp
D
Aug.
ia
ec
g. 1
Ap
nS
0 .
VICHY 94 Yalta
ril
e1
Au
ROMANIA
ea
19
FRANCE un
19
e R.
44
J
nub
4
Black Sea
1
Da
Ad
YUGOSLAVIA
AL
ria
ITALY
BULGARIA
UG
tic
April 1941
Corsica Se
SPAIN Rome a
RT
ALBANIA Teheran
PO
Monte (It.)
Sardinia Cassino Salerno TURKEY Meeting of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin,
Nov.–Dec. 1943
May 1944 Sept. 1943
No Liberated GREECE
v. 1
942 June 4, 1944 IRAN
M
Tunis
Rhodes
1
Cyprus (Fr.)
94
July 1943 1
Crete (It.) (Br.) IRAQ
Kasserine Pass (Gr.) LEBANON
MOROCCO Feb. 1943
(Fr.) TUNISIA Mediterranean Sea
(Fr.) PALESTINE
(Br.) TRANS-
ALGERIA El Alamein
Alexandria
JORDAN
(Fr.) Oct.–Nov. 1942
Nov. 1942 (Br.)
FRENCH NORTH AFRICA SAUDI
Under Vichy government 1940–42
Joined Allies Nov. 1942 LIBYA EGYPT ARABIA
(It.) (Br.)
1945. British, Canadian, U.S., and other Allied forces simultaneously fought their
way eastward to join the Soviets in squeezing the Third Reich to its final defeat.
As the Allies advanced, Hitler decided that Germans deserved to perish. He thus
refused all negotiations that might have spared them further death and destruction.
As the Soviet army took Berlin, Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, committed suicide.
Although many soldiers remained loyal to the Third Reich, Germany finally sur-
rendered on May 8, 1945.
The Allies had followed a “Europe first” strategy in conducting the war. In 1940
and 1941, Japan had ousted the Europeans from many colonial holdings in Asia, but
the Allies turned the tide in 1942 by destroying some of Japan’s formidable navy in
battles at Midway Island and Guadalcanal (Map 26.5). Allied forces stormed one
890 Chapter 26 The Great Depression and World War II
[ 1929–1945
]
Alaska
(U.S.)
Beri ng S ea
U S S R
Kamchatka
.)
Kiska I. U .S
IS. (
Attu I. ALEUTIAN
Sakhalin I.
3
May 194
45
19
IS
.
L
M ONGOL I A MANCHURIA RI N
Au
g (MANCHUKUO) KU
W
.1
E
45
94
19
5
S
Hiroshima JAPAN
KOREA Aug. 6, 1945
Tokyo
PACIFIC OCEAN
C H I N A
Nanjing
Nagasaki 194
TIBET Aug. 9, 1945 Okinawa
5
Midway I.
Apr. 1–
194
4 GILBERT IS.
Su
Celebes
ra
Rabaul
NE T HE R L ANDS EAST INDIES New SOLOMON IS.
Lae ELLICE IS.
Java Guinea (Br.)
(Fr.-Br.)
Au
g.
19
New Caledonia 42
A U S T R A L I A (Fr.)
Pacific island after another, gaining bases from which to cut off the importation of
supplies and to launch bombers toward Japan itself. Short of men and weapons, the
Japanese military resorted to kamikaze tactics, in which pilots deliberately crashed
their planes into Allied ships, killing themselves in the process. In response, the
Allies stepped up their bombing of major cities, killing more than 100,000 civilians
in their spring 1945 firebombing of Tokyo. The Japanese leadership still ruled out
surrender.
Meanwhile a U.S.-based international team of more than 100,000 workers,
including scientists and technicians, had been working on the Manhattan Project,
the code name for a secret project to develop an atomic bomb. The Japanese practice
Hiroshima, 1945
This photo captures what little remained of the city of Hiroshima after the United States dropped
an atomic bomb on August 6, 1945. Without the bomb, the U.S. military foresaw a long and
costly struggle to defeat Japan, given that country’s overall strategy of fighting to the last per-
son and in the process inflicting the maximum number of enemy casualties. Some claim that
the United States dropped the bomb to menace the Soviet Union, its opponent in the cold war
that was just beginning. Others point to the fact that no such bomb was ever dropped on a
Caucasian population. (The Everett Collection, Inc.)
892 Chapter 26 The Great Depression and World War II
[ 1929–1945
]
of dying almost to the man rather than surrendering caused Allied military leaders
to calculate that defeating Japan might cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of
Allied soldiers (and even more Japanese). On August 6 and 9, 1945, the U.S. govern-
ment therefore unleashed the new atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
killing 140,000 people instantly; tens of thousands later died from burns, wounds,
and other afflictions. Hardliners in the Japanese military wanted to continue the war,
but on August 14, 1945, Japan surrendered.
it and slaughtering its civilians. Hungry, careworn people walking in ragged cloth-
ing along grimy streets characterized both wartime London and Orwell’s fictional
state of Oceania. Millions cheered the demise of Nazi evil in 1945, but for Orwell,
bureaucratic domination depended on
continuing conflict. Indeed, as Allied pow- REVIEW QUESTION How and where was
ers competed for territory at the war’s end, World War II fought, and what were its major
a new struggle called the cold war was consequences?
beginning.
Conclusion
The Great Depression, which brought fear, hunger, and joblessness to millions, cre-
ated a setting in which dictators thrived because they promised to restore economic
prosperity by destroying democracy and representative government. Desperate
people believed the promises of these dynamic new leaders — Mussolini, Stalin, and
Hitler — and often embraced the brutality of their regimes. In the USSR, Stalin’s
program of rapid industrialization cost the lives of millions as he inspired Commu-
nist believers to purge enemies — real and imagined. With the democracies preoc-
cupied with economic recovery while preserving the rule of law and still haunted by
memories of World War I, Hitler, Mussolini, and their millions of supporters went
on to menace Europe unchallenged. At the same time, Japan embarked on a program
of conquest aimed at ending Western domination in Asia and taking more of Asia
894 Chapter 26 The Great Depression and World War II
[ 1929–1945
]
for itself. The coalition of Allies that finally formed to stop the Axis powers of Ger-
many, Italy, and Japan was an uneasy alliance among Britain, Free France, the Soviet
Union, and the United States. World War II ended European dominance. Europe’s
economies were shattered, its colonies were on the verge of independence, and its
peoples were starving and homeless.
The costs of a bloody war — one waged against civilians as much as armies —
taught the victorious powers different lessons. The United States, Britain, and France
were convinced that a minimum of citizen well-being was necessary to prevent a
recurrence of fascism. The devastation of the USSR’s population and resources made
Stalin increasingly obsessed with national security and compensation for the damage
inflicted by the Nazis. Britain and France faced the end of their imperial might,
underscoring Orwell’s insight that the war had utterly transformed society. The mili-
tarization of society and the deliberate murder of millions of innocent citizens like
Etty Hillesum were tragedies that permanently injured the West’s claims to being an
advanced civilization. Nonetheless, backed by vast supplies of sophisticated weap-
onry, the United States and the Soviet Union used their opposing views on a postwar
settlement to justify threatening one another — and the world — with another hor-
rific war.
[ 1929–1945
] Conclusion 895
N NORWAY
4,780 Leningrad
W
SWEDEN
E
ESTONIA
S
ea
c S
LATVIA
GREAT North
ti
Sea DENMARK
al
IRELAND BRITAIN 4,339 B LITHUANIA
271,311 Königsberg
60,595
Coventry
NETH. Hamburg
USSR
13,700
Bremen 14,500,000
236,300
London Rotterdam Hanover Berlin Warsaw Over 7,000,000
Düsseldorf Dortmund
POLAND
GERMANY
BELG.Cologne 850,000
9,561 2,850,000 Dresden (169,822 as Allies) Kiev
Caen 75,000 5,778,000
2,300,000
Frankfurt
C
Würzburg ZEC
HO
SL OVAKIA
6,683
Munich 310,000
FRANCE AUSTRIA
380,000
210,671 SWITZ. 145,000 HUNGARY
173,260 750,000
ROMANIA
Milan 519,822
465,000 Ploesti
Genoa
Bologna
YUGOSLAVIA Black Sea
1,700,000
Sardinia
0 200 400 miles GREECE
16,357
0 200 400 kilometers 155,300
Review Questions
1. How did the Great Depression affect society and politics?
2. What role did violence play in the Soviet and Nazi regimes?
3. How did the democracies’ responses to the twin challenges of economic depression and
the rise of fascism differ from those of totalitarian regimes?
4. How did the aggression of Japan, Germany, and Italy create the conditions for global war?
5. How and where was World War II fought, and what were its major consequences?
Making Connections
1. Compare fascist ideas of the individual with the idea of individual rights that inspired the
American and French Revolutions.
2. What connections can you make between the Great Depression and the coming of World
War II?
3. What were the major differences between World War I and World War II?
4. What explains the bleak view of writers like George Orwell after the Allied victory over the
Axis powers?
Suggested References
This grim period in human history has yielded an ever-growing crop of excellent books, some of
them coldly examining the worst aspects of the Great Depression and World War II and others
looking at resistance, survival, and intellectual breakthroughs.
Alvarez, Luis. The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II. 2008.
Clavin, Patricia. The Great Depression in Europe, 1929–1939. 2000.
Collingham, Lizzie. The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food. 2011.
Confino, Alon. A World without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide. 2014.
Hellbeck, Jochen. Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin. 2006.
Hoffman, David L. Cultivating the Masses: Modern State Practices and State Socialism. 2012.
Imlay, Talbot C. Facing the Second World War: Strategy, Politics, and Economics in Britain and
France 1938–1940. 2003.
Maas, Ad, and Hans Hooijijers, eds. Scientific Research in World War II: What Scientists Did in the
War. 2009.
Miner, Steven Merritt. Stalin’s Holy War: Religion, Nationalism, and Alliance Politics, 1941–1945.
2003.
Naimark, Norman M. Stalin’s Genocides. 2010.
Roberts, Mary Louise. D-Day through French Eyes: Normandy 1944. 2014.
896
[1929–1945
] Chapter 26 Review 897
Important Events
1929 U.S. stock market crashes; global depression begins; Soviet leadership
initiates “liquidation of the kulaks”; Stalin’s first five-year plan officially
begins
1931 Japan invades Manchuria; Spanish republicans overthrow monarchy
1933 Hitler comes to power in Germany
1935 German government enacts Nuremberg Laws; Italy invades Ethiopia
1936 Purges and show trials begin in USSR; Hitler remilitarizes Rhineland;
Spanish Civil War begins
1937 Japan attacks China
1938 Germany annexes Austria; European leaders meet in Munich to negotiate
with Hitler; Kristallnacht in Germany
1939 Germany invades Czechoslovakia; Spanish Civil War ends; Nazi-Soviet
Pact; Germany invades Poland; Britain and France declare war on
Germany; World War II begins
1940 France falls to German army
1940–1941 British air force fends off German attacks in the battle of Britain
1941 Germany invades Soviet Union; Japan attacks Pearl Harbor; United States
enters war
1941–1945 The Holocaust
1942–1943 Siege of Stalingrad
1944 Allied forces land at Normandy, France
1945 Berlin falls; United States drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki; World War II ends
Consider three events: Global depression begins (1929), Stalin’s first five-year plan
officially begins (1929), and Hitler comes to power in Germany (1933). How did the
global depression contribute to the initial success of Hitler and Stalin?
Seidman, Michael. The Victorious Counterrevolution: The Nationalist Effort in the Spanish Civil War.
2011.
Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. 2010.
Stangneth, Bettina. Eichman before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer. 2014.
Stoltzfus, Nathan, et al., eds. Courageous Resistance: The Power of Ordinary People. 2007.
Tierney, Robert T. Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame.
2010.
Viola, Lynn, ed. Contending with Stalinism: Soviet Power and Popular Resistance in the 1930s.
2003.
Weinberg, Gerhard. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. 2005.
The Cold War and the
27
Remaking of Europe
1945–1960s
L
ate in 1945, with the USSR still reeling from the devastation of World War II,
Soviet poet Boris Pasternak began a new project — Doctor Zhivago, a novel
about a thoughtful medical man caught up in the whirlwind of the Russian
Revolution. Like others in the USSR, Pasternak expected the postwar era to usher
in, as he put it, “a great renewal of Russian life.” So he struggled on with his complex
epic even as the cold war tensions between the United States and the USSR unfolded.
In 1953, Joseph Stalin’s sudden death raised Pasternak’s hopes for his masterpiece to
receive a warm reception; those hopes were
dashed, however, when the Soviets forbade
Doctor Zhivago Poster the book’s publication.
As soon as Boris Pasternak’s for-
A determined Pasternak bypassed the
bidden novel Doctor Zhivago was
published in Italy in 1957, Holly- Soviet authorities and secretly arranged for
wood’s MGM studio went after the Doctor Zhivago to be published first in 1957
rights for the film. Finally completed in Italy — now an anti-Soviet ally of the United
in 1965, the movie was a cold war States in the cold war. The book became a
blockbuster — an epic of life and love best seller, showing its readers that the Rus-
in postrevolutionary Russia. The open-
ing scene, invented for the movie, was
sian Revolution was far from perfect and so
a grim Soviet factory, while the story angering the Soviet leadership that Stalin’s
itself was more or less symbolized in successor, Nikita Khrushchev, forced Paster-
this advertising poster highlighting nak to decline the Nobel Prize for Literature
two incredibly attractive people who awarded him in 1958. The cold war, however,
fall in love and are torn apart by the
allowed Doctor Zhivago to live on when the
crushing Bolshevik system. (MGM /
The Kobal Collection at Art Resource, NY.) famed Hollywood studio MGM turned it into
a blockbuster film (1965), seen by tens of
millions. By that time, Pasternak had died —
a broken victim of cold war persecutions that haunted the world long after the
calamitous years of war and genocide had ended.
Following World War II, people in Europe, Japan, and much of East and South-
east Asia were starving and homeless. Evidence of genocide and other inhumanity
was everywhere, and nuclear annihilation menaced the world. The old international
899
900 Chapter 27 The Cold War and the Remaking of Europe
[ 1945–1960s
]
order was gone, replaced by the rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union
for control of Europe, whose political, social, and economic order was shattered. The
nuclear arsenals of these two superpowers — a term coined in 1947 — grew massively
in the 1950s, but the enemies did not fight outright. Thus, their terrifying rivalry
was called the cold war. The cold war divided the West and led to political persecu-
tion in many areas, even in the wealthy and secure United States.
At the same time, the defeat of Nazism inspired cautious optimism and a revival
of thoughtful reflection like Pasternak’s. Heroic effort had defeated fascism, and that
defeat raised hopes that a new age would begin. Atomic science promised advances
in medicine, and nuclear energy was seen as a replacement for coal and oil. The
creation of the United Nations in 1945 heralded an era of international cooperation.
Around the globe, colonial peoples won independence from European masters, while
in the United States the civil rights movement grew in strength. The welfare state
expanded, and by the end of the 1950s, economic rebirth had made much of Europe
more prosperous than ever before. An “economic miracle” had occurred, bringing
many Europeans and Americans the highest standard of living they had ever known,
including quantities of new consumer goods and simple pleasures such as seeing
technicolor films like Doctor Zhivago.
The postwar period became one of open redefinition as the experience of total
war transformed both society and the international order. New terms arose in the
1950s, dividing the globe into the first world (the West, or capitalist, bloc of coun-
tries); the second world (the East, or socialist, bloc); and the third world (countries
emerging from imperial domination). This last term, third world, was meant as a
favorable comparison of emerging nations to the Third Estate — that is, the rising
citizens of the French Revolution — but is now considered an insulting term.
As the world’s people redefined themselves, the superpowers took the world
to the brink of nuclear disaster. From the
dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan in
CHAPTER FOCUS How did the cold war shape 1945 to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962,
the politics, economy, social life, culture, and fear and personal anguish like that suf-
international concerns of post–World War II
fered by Pasternak gripped much of the
Europe?
world, even in the midst of prosperity and
Europe’s rebirth.
world’s sole economic giant, while the Soviet Union, despite suffering immense dev-
astation, retained formidable military might. Occupying Europe as part of the vic-
torious alliance against Nazism and fascism, the two superpowers used Germany —
at the heart of the continent and its politics — to divide Europe in two. By the late
1940s, the USSR had imposed Communist rule throughout most of eastern Europe
as it gained control of the territory that the Nazis had desired for German settlement.
Western Europeans found themselves at least partially controlled by the very U.S.
economic power that helped them rebuild, especially because the United States main-
tained air bases and nuclear weapons sites on their soil. The new age of bipolar world
politics made Europe its testing ground.
Chaos in Europe
In contrast to the often stationary trench warfare of World War I, armies in World
War II had fought a war of movement on the ground and in the air. Massive bomb-
ing had leveled thousands of square miles of territory, and whole cities were clogged
with rubble. On the Rhine River, almost no bridge remained standing; in the Soviet
Union, seventy thousand villages and more than a thousand cities lay in shambles.
Everywhere people were suffering. In the Netherlands, the severity of Nazi occupa-
tion left the Dutch population close to death, relieved only by a U.S. airlift of food.
To control scarce supplies, Italian bakers sold bread by the slice. Allied troops in
Germany were almost the sole source of food: “To see the children fighting for food,”
remarked one British soldier handing out supplies, “was like watching animals being
fed in a zoo.” There were no mass uprisings as after World War I; until the late 1940s,
people were too absorbed by the struggle for bare survival.
The tens of millions of refugees suffered the most, as they wandered a continent
where the dangers of assault, robbery, and ethnic violence were great. An estimated
thirty million Europeans, many of German ethnicity, were forcibly expelled from
Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary (Map 27.1). The USSR lobbied hard for the
return of several million Soviet prisoners of war and forced laborers, and the Allies
transported millions of Soviet refugees home. The Allies slowed the process when
they discovered that Soviet leaders had ordered the execution of many of the return-
ees for being “contaminated” by Western ideas.
Survivors of the concentration camps discovered that their suffering had not ended
with Germany’s defeat. Many returned home diseased and disoriented, while others had
no home to return to because their property had been confiscated. Anti-Semitism —
official policy under the Nazis — lingered in popular attitudes, and people used it to
justify their claim to Jewish property and to jobs vacated by Jews. In the summer of
1946, a vicious crowd in Kielce, Poland, assaulted some 250 Jewish survivors, killing
at least 40. Survivors fled to the port cities of Italy and other Mediterranean countries,
eventually leaving Europe for Palestine, where Zionists had been settling for half a
century.
902 Chapter 27 The Cold War and the Remaking of Europe
[ 1945–1960s
]
0 200 400 miles Lost by Germany to Poland, 1945
From Finland,
0 200 400 kilometers 1940–56 Territory gained by Soviet Union
FINLAND Allied occupation of
N Germany and Austria, 1945–55
W NORWAY 410,000 Lost by Italy to Yugoslavia, 1945
E
SWEDEN Lost by Romania to Bulgaria, 1940–47
S 40,000
Estonia Zones of occupation
00 To USSR, 1940
60,0 United States
a
British
Se
Latvia 100,000 French
To USSR, 1940
North
90 c
00
ti
Soviet
DENMARK
,0
UNITED Sea 00Lithuania
80,000
al
B 0,0 To USSR, 1940
IRELAND KINGDOM 1,950,000
5 Jointly occupied cities
50,00 3,000,000
GERMANY 0
ne R
Be
International Refugee Organization
ATLANTIC FRANCE
20
ssa
0,0 Budapest
SWITZ. AUSTRIA 00 From Romania, Odessa
rab
OCEAN HUNGARY
5
1940–47
0,
ia
2
00
ROMANIA
5
0
0
Yalta
,0
0
0
Black Sea
Ad YUGOSLAVIA
ria
ITALY tic BULGARIA
Se
SPAIN Rome a
Istanbul
ALBANIA
TURKEY
GREECE
M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a
Sicily
British Soviet
BERLIN
SWITZERLAND AUSTRIA American
miles deep into the Soviet zone and thus cut off from western territory — had been
divided into four occupation zones. The Soviets also refused to allow western
vehicles to travel through the Soviet zone to reach Berlin. The United States
responded decisively with the Berlin airlift — Operation Vittles, as U.S. pilots called
it — flying in millions of tons of provisions to some two million isolated citizens
(Map 27.2). Given the limited number of available transport planes, pilots kept the
plane engines on to achieve a rapid turnaround that would ensure adequate delivery.
The Soviets ended their blockade in May 1949, but the cold war rhetoric of good
versus evil made the divided capital of Berlin an enduring symbol of the capitalist-
communist divide.
The creation of competing military alliances added to cold war tensions (Map
27.3). A few months after the establishment of the West German state in 1948, the
USSR formed an East German state. In 1949, the United States, Canada, and their
allies in western Europe and Scandinavia formed the North Atlantic Treaty Orga-
nization (NATO), which provided a unified military force for its member countries.
In 1955, after the United States forced France and Britain to invite West Germany
to join NATO, the Soviet Union retaliated by establishing with its satellite countries
the military organization commonly called the Warsaw Pact. By that time, both the
United States and the USSR had accelerated arms buildups: the Soviets had exploded
their own atomic bomb in 1949, and both
nations then tested increasingly powerful
nuclear weapons, outstripping the indi- REVIEW QUESTION What were the major
events in the development of the cold war?
vidual might of the formerly dominant
European powers.
908 Chapter 27 The Cold War and the Remaking of Europe
[ 1945–1960s
]
N
MAP 27.3 European NATO
NATO
W Members and the Warsaw Pact
Warsaw Pact E in the 1950s
0 250 500 miles S The two superpowers intensified
0 250 500 kilometers FINLAND their rivalry by creating large military
NORWAY alliances: NATO, formed in 1949,
SWEDEN included the United States and Can-
a
North ada as well as European states; the
Se
DENMARK
c
IRELAND Sea
lti
UNITED Ba Warsaw Pact was formed in 1955
KINGDOM USSR
NETH. EAST after NATO invited West German
GERMANYPOLAND
ATLANTIC BELG. membership. International politics
OCEAN WEST CZ
LUX. GERMANY ECHOSL revolved around these two alliances,
OVAK
IA
FRANCE SWITZ. AUSTRIA which faced off in the heart of Europe.
HUNGARY
ROMANIA War games for the two sides often
L
GA
YUGOSLAVIA Black
ITALY Sea assumed a massive war concen-
U
SPAIN BULGARIA
RT
(until 1961)
GREECE TURKEY
of Germany.
Medite r ranean S ea
Polish Refugees
These refugees, a handful among millions, are waiting for a train that might carry them to a
safer destination. The refugee situation was appalling, as ethnic Poles, Germans, Hungarians,
Croats, Czechs, and others were driven from areas where in some cases their families had lived
for centuries. The goal of many postwar governments was to “ethnically cleanse” regions along
the line of thought that grew up with Wilson’s Fourteen Points: that national ethnicities should
determine the kind of society and government they would have. (Photo by Fred Ramage / Keystone /
Getty Images.)
war. Two events in 1949 — the Soviet Union’s successful test of an atomic bomb and
the Communist revolution in China — brought to the fore Joseph McCarthy, a U.S.
senator fearing a reelection defeat. To win the election, McCarthy warned of a great
conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government. As during the Soviet purges, people
of all occupations — including government workers, film stars, and union leaders —
were called before U.S. congressional panels to confess, testify against friends, and
say whether they had ever had Communist sympathies. The atmosphere was electric
with confusion, for only five years before, the mass media had run glowing stories
about Stalin and the Soviet system. By 1952, however, millions of Americans had
been investigated, imprisoned, or fired from their jobs. McCarthy personally oversaw
book burnings, and although the Senate finally voted to censure him in the winter
of 1954, fearfulness and anticommunism had come to dominate political life.
Given the wartime destruction, the economic rebirth of western Europe was even
more surprising than the revival of democracy. In the first weeks and months after
the war, the job of rebuilding often involved menial physical labor that mobilized
912 Chapter 27 The Cold War and the Remaking of Europe
[ 1945–1960s
]
entire populations for such jobs as clearing the massive urban rubble by hand. Ini-
tially, governments diverted labor and capital into rebuilding transportation, com-
munications, and industrial capacity instead of producing consumer goods. How-
ever, the scarcity of household goods sparked unrest. In the midst of this growing
discontent, the Marshall Plan suddenly boosted recovery with American dollars;
food and consumer goods became more plentiful; and demand for automobiles,
washing machines, and vacuum cleaners accelerated economic growth.
The postwar recovery was helped by the continuation of military spending for
the cold war and the adaptation of wartime technology to meet consumer needs.
Civilian travel expanded as nations organized their own airlines based on improved
airplane technology. Developed to relieve wartime shortages, synthetic goods such
as nylon and a vast assortment of plastic products, ranging from pipes to rainwear,
enriched civilian life. Governments also ordered bombs, fighter planes, tanks, and
missiles and sponsored military research. The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950
(see page 919) increased U.S. orders for manufactured goods to wage that war, further
sustaining economic growth in Europe. Ultimately, the cold war prevented a repeat
of the 1920s, when reduced military spending threw people out of jobs and fed the
growth of fascism.
Large and small European states alike developed and redeveloped modern econ-
omies in short order. In the twelve principal countries of western Europe, the annual
rate of economic growth had been 1.3 percent per inhabitant between 1870 and
1913. Those countries almost tripled that rate between 1950 and 1973, attaining an
annual per capita growth rate of 3.8 percent. Among the larger powers, West Ger-
many surprisingly became the economic leader, achieving by the 1960s a stunning
revival called the “economic miracle.” The smaller Scandinavian countries also
achieved a notable recovery: Sweden succeeded in the development of automobile,
truck, and shipbuilding industries. Finland modernized its industry and agriculture,
which in turn forced the surplus farm population to seek factory work. Scandinavian
women joined the workforce in record numbers, which also boosted economic
growth and expanded prosperity. The thirty years after World War II were a golden
age of European economic revival.
The creation of the Common Market, which evolved over time to become the
European Union, was the final ingredient in the postwar recovery. In 1951, Italy,
France, West Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands took a major
step toward cooperation when they formed the European Coal and Steel Community
(ECSC) — an organization to manage the joint production of basic resources. Accord-
ing to the ECSC’s principal architect, Robert Schuman, ties created by joint produc-
tivity and trade would keep France and Germany from another cataclysmic war.
Then in 1957, the six ECSC members signed the Treaty of Rome, which provided
for a more general trading partnership called the European Economic Community
(EEC), known popularly as the Common Market. The EEC reduced tariffs among
the six partners, developed common trade policies, and brought under one coopera-
tive economic umbrella more than two hundred million consumers. According to
[
1945–1960s
] Political and Economic Recovery in Europe 913
one of its founders, the EEC aimed to “prevent the race of nationalism, which is the
true curse of the modern world.” Increased cooperation produced great economic
rewards for the six members, whose rates of economic growth soared.
Britain pointedly refused to join the partnership at first. Membership would have
required it to surrender certain imperial trading rights among its Commonwealth
partners such as Australia and Canada and, as one British politician put it, make
Britain “just another European country.” Even without Britain, the rising prosperity
of a new western Europe joined in the Common Market was striking.
Economic planning and coordination by specialists (as developed during war-
time) shaped the Common Market. Called technocrats, specialists working for the
Common Market were to base decisions on expertise rather than on personal interest
and on the goals of the organization as a whole rather than on the demands of any
one nation. The aim was to reduce the potential for irrationality and violence in
politics, both domestic and international. Administered by a commission of techno-
crats based in Brussels, Belgium, the Common Market transcended the borders of
the nation-state and thus exceeded the power of many elected politicians.
By contrast, in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, where wartime loss of life
had been enormous, women worked nearly full-time and usually outnumbered men
in the workforce. As in many western European countries, however, child-care pro-
grams, family allowances, and maternity benefits were designed to encourage preg-
nancies by workingwomen. The scarcity of consumer goods and the lack of house-
hold conveniences discouraged workingwomen in Communist countries from having
large families no matter what the government wanted. Because women bore the sole
burden of domestic duties under such conditions on top of their paying jobs, birth-
rates in the eastern bloc stagnated.
Across Europe, welfare-state programs aimed to improve people’s well-being. State-
funded health care systems covered medical needs in most industrial nations except the
United States. The combination of better material conditions and state provision of
health care dramatically extended life expectancy and lowered rates of infant mortality.
Contributing to the overall progress, vaccines greatly reduced the death toll from such
diseases as tuberculosis, diphtheria, measles, and polio. In England, schoolchildren
stood an inch taller, on average, than children the same age had a decade earlier.
State initiatives in other areas played a role in raising the standard of living. A
growing network of government-built atomic power plants brought more thorough
electrification of eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Governments legislated more
leisure time for workers; for example, Italian workers received twenty-eight paid
[
1945–1960s
] Political and Economic Recovery in Europe 915
In March 1953, amid growing repression, Stalin died, and it soon became clear
that the old ways would not hold. Political prisoners in the labor camps rebelled,
leading to the release of more than a million people from the Gulag. In June 1953,
workers in East German cities, many of them socialists and antifascist activists from
before the war, protested the rise of privileged Communists in a series of strikes that
spread like wildfire. At the other end of the social order, Soviet officials, despite
enjoying luxury goods and plentiful food, had come to distrust Stalinism and now
favored change. To calm protests across the Soviet bloc, governments stepped up the
production of consumer goods — a policy called goulash communism (after the Hun-
garian stew) because it resulted in more food for ordinary people.
In 1955, Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971), an illiterate coal miner before the
Bolshevik Revolution, outmaneuvered other rivals to become the undisputed leader
of the Soviet Union — but he did so without the Stalinist practice of executing his
opponents. Khrushchev then made the surprising move of attacking Stalin. At a
party congress in 1956, he denounced the “cult of personality” Stalin had built about
himself and announced that Stalinism did not equal communism. Khrushchev thus
cleverly attributed problems with communism to a single individual. The “secret
[1945–1960s
] Decolonization in a Cold War Climate 917
speech” was a bombshell. Debates broke out in public, and books appeared champi-
oning the ordinary worker against the party bureaucracy. The climate of relative
tolerance for free expression after Stalin’s death was called the thaw.
In early summer 1956, discontented Polish railroad workers struck for better
wages, and angry Hungarians rebelled against forced collectivization in October
1956. As in Poland, economic issues (especially announcements of reduced wages)
and reports of Stalin’s crimes contributed to the outbreak of violence in Hungary.
Soon targeting the entire Communist system, tens of thousands of protesters filled
the streets of Budapest and returned a popular hero, Imre Nagy, to power. When
Nagy announced that Hungary might leave the Warsaw Pact, however, Soviet troops
moved in, killing tens of thousands and causing hundreds of thousands more to flee
to the West. Nagy was hanged. Despite a rhetoric of democracy, the United States
refused to intervene in Hungary, choosing not to risk World War III by challenging
the Soviet sphere of influence.
The failure of eastern European uprisings overshadowed the significant changes
that had taken place since Stalin’s death. While defeating his rivals, Khrushchev
ended the Stalinist purges, reformed the courts, and curbed the secret police. “It has
become more interesting to visit and see people,” Boris Pasternak said of the changes.
“It has become easier to work.” In 1957, the Soviets successfully launched the first
artificial earth satellite, Sputnik, and in 1961 they put the first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin,
in orbit around the earth. The Soviets’ edge in space technology shocked the western
bloc and motivated the creation of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Admin-
istration (NASA). For Soviet citizens, such successes indicated that the USSR had
achieved Stalin’s goal of modernization and might inch further toward freedom.
Khrushchev, however, was inconsistent, showing himself open to changes in
Soviet culture at one moment and then bullying honest writers at another. After
assaulting Pasternak because of his novel Doctor Zhivago, in 1961 he allowed the
publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. This
chilling account of life in the Gulag was useful, however, in underscoring Stalin’s
crimes and excesses. Under the thaw, Khrushchev made several trips to the West
and took steps to expand communism’s
appeal in the new nations of Asia, Africa,
REVIEW QUESTION What factors drove
and Latin America. Despite the USSR’s recovery in western Europe and in eastern
more relaxed posture, however, the super- Europe?
powers moved closer to the nuclear brink.
SOUTH
opposing sides finally agreed to a settlement in
KOREA 1953: Korea would remain split at the thirty-eighth
parallel. As a result of the Korean War, the United
States increased its military spending from almost
$11 billion in 1948 to almost $60 billion in 1953.
0 75 150 miles An Asian counterpart to NATO, the U.S.-backed
0 75 150 kilometers JAPAN Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), was
established in 1954. Another effect of the Korean
The Korean War, 1950–1953 War was the rapid reindustrialization of Japan to
provide the United States with supplies.
The cold war then spread to Indochina (now
modern Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam), where the
CHINA
European-educated Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) NORTH
had built a powerful organization, the Viet Minh, VIETNAM
Dien Bien Phu Hanoi
to fight colonial rule. He advocated the redistribu- 1954
Gulf of
tion of land held by big landowners, who pos- LAOS
Tonkin
Tulkarm
N Nablus
Mediterranean Tel Aviv MAP 27.4 The Partition of
W E
Sea Jaffa Jericho
Palestine and the Creation
Jerusalem
of Israel, 1947–1948
S Gaza Hebron Dead
The creation of the Jewish state of
Port Said Sea
Israel in 1948 against a backdrop
Beersheba
of ongoing wars among Jews and
ISRAEL
Suez Canal
Emerging Nations
in the Cold War
Emerging nations could be the play-
things of the superpowers during
the cold war, but they could also
benefit from the rivalry. When Egyp-
tian president Gamal Abdel Nasser
refused U.S. military aid in the
1950s because of the supervision
the United States demanded,
Nasser turned to the Soviets and
received not only military support
but also a low-interest loan for the
Aswan Dam — the kind of develop-
ment project undertaken by
emerging nations to provide power
and water for both agriculture and
industry. In 1964, Nasser (right),
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev,
and Algerian president Ahmed Ben
Bella inaugurated the opening of
the dam. (Rue des Archives / The Granger
Collection, NYC — All rights reserved.)
Suez Canal. In 1952, Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918–1970) became Egypt’s pres-
ident on a platform of economic modernization and true national independence —
meaning Egyptian control of the canal. In July 1956, Nasser nationalized the canal:
“I am speaking in the name of every Egyptian Arab,” he remarked in his speech
explaining the takeover, “and in the name of all free countries and of all those who
believe in liberty.” Nasser became a heroic figure to Arabs in the region, especially
when Britain, supported by Israel and France, attacked Egypt while the Hungarian
Revolution (see page 917) was in full swing. The British branded Nasser another
Hitler, but the United States, fearing that Egypt would turn to the USSR, made the
British back down. Nasser’s triumph inspired confidence that colonized peoples
around the world could gain true independence.
MAURITANIA
1960 MALI
1960 NIGER
SENEGAL 1960 CHAD
1960 GAMBIA BURKINA 1960 DJIBOUTI
SUDAN
1965 FASO 1956 1977
GUINEA 1960
DAHOMEY
1958 ETHIOPIA
IVORYGHANA1960 NIGERIA
GUINEA COAST 1957 1960 CENTRAL AFRICAN 1941
BISSAU 1960 CAMEROON REPUBLIC
1974 1960 1960
SIERRA TOGO SOMALIA
LEONE LIBERIA 1960 UGANDA 1960
1961 1820s EQUATORIAL CONGO 1962
GUINEA GABON (ZAIRE) KENYA
1968 1960 1960 1963
ATLANTIC BURUNDI
OCEAN CONGO RWANDA
1962
INDIAN
1960 1962
TANZANIA OCEAN
1960 Date of independence 1964
Former Ruler ANGOLA MALAWI 1964
0
Great 500
Britain 1,000 miles
1975 ZAMBIA 5
0 500 1,000 kilometers 1964 97
France 1
UE
MALAGASY
BIQ
Italy ZIMBABWE
1980 REPUBLIC
MOZAM
NAMIBIA 1960
Belgium 1990 BOTSWANA
Portugal From 1966
South Africa
Spain
SWAZILAND
Independent before 1968
World War II SOUTH
AFRICA LESOTHO
Areas of colonial conflict (Republic 1961) 1966
0 500 1,000 miles
Areas of postcolonial conflict
0 500 1,000 kilometers
into being in 1957. Nigeria, the most populous African region, achieved indepen-
dence in 1960, and many other African states also became free (Map 27.5).
In mixed-race territory with large settler populations, Europeans resisted giving
up their control. In British East Africa, where white settlers ruled in splendor and
where blacks lacked both land and economic opportunity, fighting erupted in the
1950s. African men formed rebel groups named Mau Mau but called by some the
Land and Freedom Army. With women serving as provisioners, messengers, and
weapon stealers, Mau Mau bands, composed mostly of war veterans from the Kikuyu
[1945–1960s
] Decolonization in a Cold War Climate 923
ethnic group, tried to recover land from whites. In 1964, Mau Mau resistance helped
Kenya gain formal independence, but only after the British had put hundreds of
thousands of Kikuyus in concentration camps — called a “living hell” and a “British
gulag” by those tortured there. The British slaughtered tens of thousands more.
France followed the British pattern of granting independence with relatively little
bloodshed to territories such as Tunisia, Morocco, and West Africa, where there were
few white settlers. In Algeria, however, which had one million settlers of European
descent, the French fought bitterly to keep control. In the final days of World War II,
the French army massacred tens of thousands of Algerian nationalists seeking inde-
pendence; however, the liberation movement resurfaced with new intensity in 1954
as the Front for National Liberation (FNL). The French dug in and savagely tortured
Algerian Arabs; Algerian women, shielded from suspicion by gender stereotypes,
planted bombs in European cafés and carried weapons to assassination sites. “The loss
of Algeria,” warned one statesman, defending French savagery, “would be an unprec-
edented national disaster,” while the FNL, far less powerful and smaller in number,
took its case to the court of world opinion. Reports of the French army’s barbarous
practices against Algeria’s Muslim population prompted protests in Paris and around
the globe, bringing wartime leader Charles de Gaulle to power in 1958. By 1962, de
Gaulle had negotiated independence with the Algerian nationalists, and hundreds of
thousands of Europeans in Algeria as well as their Arab supporters fled to France.
Violent resistance to the reimposition of colonial rule also ended the empires of
the Dutch and Belgians. As newly independent nations emerged in Asia, Africa, and
the Middle East, structures arose to promote international security and worldwide
deliberations, including representation from the new states. Foremost among these
organizations was the United Nations (UN), convened for the first time in 1945.
One notable change ensured the UN a greater chance of success than the League of
Nations: both the United States and the Soviet Union were active members from the
outset. The UN’s charter outlined a collective global authority that would resolve
conflicts and provide military protection if any members were threatened by aggres-
sion. In 1955, the Indonesian president Sukarno, who had succeeded in wrenching
Indonesian independence from the Dutch, sponsored the Bandung Convention of
nonaligned nations to set a common policy for achieving modernization and facing
the superpowers. Newly independent countries viewed the future with hope but still
had to contend with the high costs of nation building and problems left over from
decades of colonial exploitation.
Newcomers to Europe
World War II disrupted everyday life and patterns of trade not only in Europe but also around
the globe. Some of the first people to immigrate to Europe in search of postwar opportunity
were from the Caribbean (like these men photographed in London in 1956) and South Asia.
An expanding welfare state hired some of them to do menial work in hospitals, clinics, and con-
struction, no matter what their qualifications. Governments and businesses in western Europe
needed these new laborers to rebuild after World War II, and though some objected, many of
these workers — and their wives and children — became not only citizens but political, eco-
nomic, and cultural leaders as well. (© Hulton-Deutsch Collection / Corbis.)
[1945–1960s
] Daily Life and Culture in the Shadow of Nuclear War 925
ser vices, not even needing education because they came as adults. For business-
people, temporary workers made good economic sense; often their menial work was
off the books. “As they are young,” one French business publication added, “the
immigrants often pay more in taxes than they receive in allowances.” Most immi-
grants did jobs that people in the West avoided: they collected garbage, built roads,
and cleaned homes. Although men predominated among migrant workers, women
performed similar chores for even less pay.
Immigrants came to see Europe as a land of relatively good government, wealth,
and opportunity. Living conditions, too, seemed decent to many. The advantages of
living in Europe, especially the higher wages, made many decide to stay and soon
attracted clandestine workers to countries like Italy that had formerly exported labor.
As empires collapsed, European populations became more diverse in terms of race,
religion, ethnicity, and social life. Across Europe and North America, many new-
comers eventually became citizens and
their children achieved good positions in REVIEW QUESTION What were the results
government, business, education, and the of decolonization?
professions.
youth across Europe, including the Soviet bloc, where teens demanded the produc-
tion of blue jeans and leather jackets. In a German nightclub late in the 1950s, mem-
bers of a British rock group of Elvis fans called the Quarrymen performed, yelling
at and fighting with one another as part of their show. They would soon become
known as the Beatles. Rebellious young American film stars like James Dean in Rebel
Without a Cause (1955) created the beginnings of a postwar youth culture in which
the ideal was to be a bad boy. The rebellious and rough masculine style appeared
also in literature, for example in James Watson’s autobiography, The Double Helix
(1968), in which he described how he and Francis Crick had discovered the structure
of the DNA molecule by stealing other people’s findings. American “beat” poets and
writers vehemently rejected the traditional ideals of the upright male breadwinner,
family man, and responsible achiever. The 1953 inaugural issue of the American
magazine Playboy, and the hundreds of magazines that imitated it across Europe,
presented the modern man as sexually aggressive and independent of dull domestic
[
1945–1960s
] Daily Life and Culture in the Shadow of Nuclear War 929
life — just as he had been in the war. The definition of men’s citizenship had come
to include not just political and economic rights but also sexual freedom outside the
restrictions of marriage.
In contrast, Western society promoted a postwar model for women that differed
from their wartime roles, adopting instead the fascist notion of women’s inferiority.
Rather than being essential workers and heads of families in the absence of their
men, postwar women were to symbolize the return to normalcy by leading a domes-
tic and submissive life at home. Late in the 1940s, the fashion house of Christian
Dior launched a clothing style called the “new look.” It featured pinched waists,
tightly fitting bodices, and voluminous skirts. This restoration of the nineteenth-
century female silhouette invited a renewal of clearly defined gender roles. Women’s
magazines publicized the new look and urged women to give up ambitions for them-
selves. Even in the hard-pressed Soviet Union, domesticity flourished; recipes for
homemade face creams, for example, passed from woman to woman, and beauty
parlors did a brisk business. In the West, household products such as refrigerators
and washing machines raised standards for housekeeping by giving women the
means to be “perfect” housewives.
However, new-look propaganda did not necessarily mesh with reality or even
with all social norms. Dressmaking fabric was still being rationed in the late 1940s;
even in the next decade, women could not always get enough of it to make volumi-
nous skirts. In Europe, where people had barely enough to eat, the underwear needed
for new-look contours simply did not exist — although for many, unfortunately, the
semistarved look was not achieved by choice. Moreover, European women continued
to work outside the home after the war; indeed, mature women and mothers were
working more than ever before — especially in the Soviet bloc. Across the Soviet
sphere consumer goods were always in short supply, but opinion makers stressed to
these women the importance of a tasteful and up-to-date domestic interior. East and
West, the female workforce was going through a profound revolution as it gradually
became populated by wives and mothers who would hold jobs all their lives despite
being bombarded with images of nineteenth-century femininity.
The advertising business presided over the creation of these cultural messages
as part of both the return of consumerism and the cold war. Guided by marketing
experts, western Europeans imitated Americans by drinking Coca-Cola; using Amer-
ican detergents, toothpaste, and soap; and driving some forty million motorized
vehicles, including motorbikes, cars, buses, and trucks. While many Europeans
embraced American business practices, the cold war was ever present: the Communist
Party in France led a successful campaign to ban Coca-Cola for a time in the 1950s,
and tastemakers in the Soviet sphere initiated competing products and styles.
Radio remained the most influential medium in the 1950s, carrying much of the
postwar consumer advertising and making the connection between cold war and con-
sumerism. Even as the number of radios in homes grew steadily, television loomed
on the horizon. In the United States, two-thirds of the population had TV sets in
the early 1950s, while in Britain only one-fifth did. Only in the 1960s did television
930 Chapter 27 The Cold War and the Remaking of Europe
[ 1945–1960s
]
become an important consumer item for most Europeans. In radio and television,
though, both East and West tried to exceed the other in advertising their values.
Russian programs stressed a uniform Communist culture, often emphasizing the
importance of family values and practical, if aesthetically pleasing, household tips
for women. The United States, by contrast, promoted debate about current affairs
and filled the airwaves with advertising for consumer goods. The cold war was thus
a consumer as well as a military phenomenon.
their distance both from middle-class prosperity and from fascist bombast. “We are
in rags? Let’s show everyone our rags,” said one Italian director. Many of these left-
leaning directors associated support for the suffering masses with the Communist
cause, while on the pro-American side, the film Doctor Zhivago became a hit celebrat-
ing individualism and condemning the Communist way of life. Overtly or covertly,
the cold war affected virtually all aspects of cultural life.
Conclusion
Nikita Khrushchev was ousted in 1964 for his erratic policies and for the Cuban
missile crisis. In his forced retirement, he expressed regret at his brutal treatment of
Boris Pasternak: “We shouldn’t have banned [Doctor Zhivago]. There’s nothing anti-
Soviet in it.” But the postwar decades were grim times. Two superpowers — the Soviet
Union and the United States — each controlling atomic arsenals, overshadowed Euro-
pean leadership and engaged in a menacing cold war, complete with the threat of
nuclear annihilation. The cold war saturated everyday life, giving birth to bomb
shelters, spies, purges, and witch hunts — all of them creating a culture of anxiety
that kept people in constant fear of war. Cold war diplomacy divided Europe into
an eastern bloc dominated by the Soviets and a freer western bloc mostly allied with
the United States. In this bleak atmosphere, starving, homeless, and refugee people
joined the task of rebuilding a devastated Europe.
Despite the chaos at the end of 1945, both halves of Europe recovered almost
miraculously in little more than a decade. Eastern Europe, where wartime devasta-
tion and ongoing violence were greatest, experienced less prosperity. In the West,
wartime technology served as the basis for new consumer goods and welfare-state
planning improved health. Spurred on by aid from the United States, western Europe
formed the successful Common Market, which became the foundation for greater
European unity in the future. As a result of World War II and the cold war, Germany
recovered as two countries, not one. The war so weakened the European powers that
they lost their colonies to thriving independence movements. Newly independent
nations emerged in Asia and Africa, but they were often caught in the cold war and
faced the additional problems of creating stable political structures and a sound
economic future. As the West as a whole grew in prosperity, its cultural life focused
paradoxically on reviving Western values while enjoying the new phenomenon of
mass consumerism. Above all, the West — and the rest of the world — had to survive
the atomic rivalry of the superpowers.
[ 1945–1960s
] Conclusion 933
ARCTIC OCEAN N
W E
NORWAY S
ICELAND
E. U S S R
CANADA DEN. GER.
U.K.
W. POL. CZECH.
HUN.
LUX. GER.
FRANCE ROM. MONGOLIA
BULG.
UNITED STATES SPAIN ITALY GR. TURKEY N. KOREA
1948 JAPAN
1 CYP. 1960 CHINA
MOROCCO JOR. 1946
1956 ALGERIA PAKISTAN S. KOREA
ATLANTIC LIBYA KUWAIT IRAN 1947 LAOS
1962 1951 EGYPT 1961 1953 1948
OCEAN SAUDI INDIA PACIFIC
MEXICO MAURITANIA MALI ARABIA 1947 BURMA VIETNAM
2 1960 1960 NIGER 1948 1954
OCEAN
1960 CHAD
3 7 SUDAN CAMBODIA
NIGERIA1960 1956 1953
VENEZUELA 4 1960 SOMALIA
13 1960 MALAYSIA
COLOMBIA 5 11 SRI LANKA
9 10 14 1948 1963
6 8 12 CONGO
(ZAIRE) 15 INDONESIA
CONGO 1960 16 INDIAN 1949
BRAZIL 1960
PACIFIC PERU OCEAN
ANGOLA
OCEAN BOLIVIA
MALAGASY
REPUBLIC
1960 AUSTRALIA
SOUTH
CHILE AFRICA
ARGENTINA
Review Questions
1. What were the major events in the development of the cold war?
2. What factors drove recovery in western Europe and in eastern Europe?
3. What were the results of decolonization?
4. How were everyday culture and social life part of the cold war?
Making Connections
1. What was the political climate after World War II, and how did it differ from the political
climate after World War I?
2. What were the relative strengths of the two European blocs in the cold war?
3. What were the main developments of postwar cultural life?
4. Why did decolonization follow World War II so immediately?
Suggested References
New nationhood and the postwar era are charted in exciting new books that study veterans,
youth, and daily life in the aftermath of Nazism and an age of cold war. Historians are also
focusing on the complexities of decolonization.
Anslover, Nicole L. Harry Truman: The Coming of the Cold War. 2014.
Bailkin, Jordanna. The Afterlife of Empire. 2012.
Burleigh, Michael. Small Wars, Faraway Places: Global Insurrection and the Making of the Modern
World, 1945–1965. 2013.
Chin, Rita, et al., eds. After the Nazi Racial State: Difference and Democracy in Germany and
Europe. 2009
Demshuk, Andrew. The Lost German East: Forced Migration and the Politics of Memory 1945–1970.
2012.
Edele, Mark. Soviet Veterans of World War II: A Popular Movement in an Authoritarian Society,
1941–1991. 2008.
Finn, Peter, and Petra Couvée. The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a
Forbidden Book. 2014.
Frommer, Benjamin. National Cleansing: Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslo-
vakia. 2005.
Gaddis, John. George Kennan: An American Life. 2011.
934
[1945–1960s
] Chapter 27 Review 935
Important Events
Consider three events: India and Pakistan win independence from Britain (1947),
Simone de Beauvoir publishes The Second Sex (1949), and Brown v. Board of Education
prohibits segregated schools in the United States (1954). How did colonized peoples,
women, and African Americans use the experience of war to seek liberation and civil
rights?
Jobs, Richard I. Riding the New Wave: Youth and the Rejuvenation of France after World War II.
2007.
Meng, Michael. Shattered Spaces: Encountering Jewish Ruins in Postwar Germany and Poland.
2011.
Nord, Philip. France’s New Deal: From the Thirties to the Postwar Era. 2010.
Pence, Katherine, and Paul Betts, eds. Socialist Modern: East German Everyday Culture and
Politics. 2008.
Shepard, Todd. The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France.
2006.
Shipway, Martin. Decolonization and Its Impact: A Comparative Approach to the End of the Colonial
Empires. 2008.
Smith, Mark B. Property of Communists: The Urban Housing Program from Stalin to Khrushchev.
2010.
Postindustrial Society
28
and the End of the
Cold War Order
1960s–1989
I
n January 1969, Jan Palach, a twenty-one-year-old philosophy student, drove
to a main square in Prague, doused his body with gasoline, and set himself ablaze.
Before that, he had put aside his coat with a message in it demanding an end to
Communist repression in Czechoslovakia. It promised more such suicides unless the
government lifted state censorship. The mani-
Shrine to Jan Palach
festo was signed “Torch No. 1.” Jan Palach’s
Jan Palach was a martyr to the suicide stunned his nation. Black flags hung
cause of an independent Czechoslo- from windows, and close to a million people
vakia. His self-immolation on behalf flocked to his funeral. In the next months, more
of that cause roused the nation. As Czech youth followed Palach’s grim example
makeshift shrines sprang up and
and became torches for freedom.
multiplied throughout the 1970s
and 1980s, they served as common Before his self-immolation, Jan Palach was
rallying points that ultimately contrib- an ordinary, well-educated citizen of an increas-
uted to the overthrow of Communist ingly technological society. Having recovered
rule. Václav Havel, the future presi- from World War II, the West shifted from a
dent of a liberated Czechoslovakia, manufacturing economy based on heavy indus-
was arrested early in the momentous
year of 1989 for commemorating
try to a ser vice economy that depended on
Palach’s sacrifice at a shrine. In light technical knowledge in such fields as engineer-
of so many other deaths in the ing, health care, and finance. This new service
Soviet bloc, why did Jan Palach’s economy has been labeled “postindustrial.” To
death become so powerful a force? staff it, institutions of higher education sprang
(© Marc Garanger / Corbis.)
up at a dizzying rate and attracted more stu-
dents than ever before. Young men like Jan
Palach — along with women, minorities, and many other activists in the 1960s and
1970s — far from being satisfied with their rising status, struck out against war and
cold war, inequality and repression, and even against technology itself. From Czecho-
slovakia to the United States and around the world, protesters warned that post-
industrial nations in general and the superpowers in particular were becoming
937
938 Chapter 28 Postindustrial Society and the End of the Cold War Order
[ 1960s–1989
]
technological and political monsters. Before long, countries in both the Soviet and
U.S. blocs were on the verge of political revolution.
The challenges posed by young reformers came at a bad time for the superpow-
ers and other leading European states. An agonizing war in Vietnam weakened the
United States, and China confronted the Soviet Union on its borders. In a dramatic
turn of events, the oil-producing states of the Middle East reduced the export of oil
to the leading Western nations in the 1970s, bringing on a recession. Despite their
wealth and military might, the superpowers could not guarantee that they would
emerge victorious in this age of increasingly global competition. As the USSR expe-
rienced decay in a climate of postindustrial innovation across the West, a reform-
minded leader — Mikhail Gorbachev —
initiated new policies of economic and
CHAPTER FOCUS How did technological, political freedom. It was too late: in 1989,
economic, and social change contribute to the Soviet bloc collapsed, an event brought
increased activism, and what were the political about in part by countless acts of protest,
results of that activism?
not least of them the individual heroism of
Jan Palach and his fellow human torches.
Valentina Tereshkova,
Russian Cosmonaut
People sent into space became heroes,
representing modern values of courage,
strength, and well-honed skills. Insofar
as the space age was part of the cold
war race for superpower superiority,
the USSR held the lead during the
first decade. The Soviets trained both
women and men, and the 1963 flight of
Valentina Tereshkova — the first woman
in space — supported Soviet claims of
gender equality in contrast to the all-
male superstar image of the early U.S.
space program. (Central Press / Getty
Images.)
[1960s–1989
] The Revolution in Technology 941
space explorers answering questions about life that were formerly the domain of
church leaders. Polish author Stanislaw Lem’s popular novel Solaris (1961), later made
into a film, described space-age individuals engaged in personal quests that drew
readers and ultimately viewers into a futuristic fantasy.
The space age grew out of cold war concerns, and advances in rocket technology
not only launched vehicles into space but also powered destructive missiles. At the
same time, the space age promoted and even depended on global cooperation. From
the 1960s on, U.S. spaceflights often involved the participation of other countries. In
1965, an international consortium headed by the United States launched the first
commercial communications satellite, Intelsat I — a feat envisioned since early in the
postwar period. By the 1970s, some 150 countries were working together at more
than four hundred stations worldwide to maintain global satellite communications.
Although some 50 percent of satellites were for spying purposes, the rest promoted
international communication and transnational collaboration.
Pure science flourished amid the space race. Astronomers used mineral samples
from the moon to calculate the age of the solar system with unprecedented precision.
Unmanned spacecraft provided data on cosmic radiation, magnetic fields, and infra-
red sources. Although the media depicted the space age as one of warrior astronauts
conquering space, breakthroughs depended on the products of technology, including
the radio telescope, which depicted space by receiving, measuring, and calculating
nonvisible rays. These findings reinforced the so-called big bang theory of the origin
of the universe, first outlined in the 1930s by American astronomer Edwin Hubble
and given crucial support in the 1950s by the discovery of low-level radiation perme-
ating the universe in all directions. The big bang theory proposes that the universe
originated from the explosion of superdense, superhot matter some ten to twenty
billion years ago.
health care and medical staff, and government functionaries. As emphasis on service
grew, entire categories of employees such as flight attendants devoted much of their
skill to the psychological well-being of customers. By 1969, the percentage of service-
sector employees had surpassed that of manufacturing workers in several industrial
countries: 61.1 percent versus 33.7 percent in the United States, and 48.8 percent
versus 41.1 percent in Sweden.
Postindustrial work life differed somewhat in the Soviet bloc. There, the percent-
age of farmers remained higher than in western Europe. A huge difference between
professional occupations and those involving physical work also remained in socialist
countries because of declining investment in advanced machinery and cleaner work
processes. Men in both the U.S. and Soviet blocs generally earned higher pay and
had better jobs than women. Uniquely in the Soviet bloc, however, women’s badly
paying jobs included street cleaning, garbage collection, heavy labor on farms, gen-
eral medicine, and dentistry. Somewhere between 80 and 95 percent of women in
socialist countries worked, mostly under difficult conditions.
Farming changed as well, consolidating and becoming more scientific. Small land-
owners sold family plots to corporations engaged in agribusiness — that is, vast acre-
age devoted to commercial rather than peasant farming. Governments, farmers’ coop-
eratives, and planning agencies shaped the decision making of the individual farmer,
while genetic research that yielded pest-resistant seeds and the skyrocketing use of
pesticides, fertilizers, and machinery contributed to economic growth. For example,
in the 1970s, a woman named Fernande Pelletier ran a hundred-acre farm in south-
western France, using the advice of a government expert to produce whatever foods
might sell competitively in the Common Market and joining with other farmers in
her region to buy heavy machinery. Agricultural prosperity required as much mana-
gerial and technical know-how as did success in other parts of the economy.
culture in scornful, critical, and often explicitly sexual lyrics. Sex roles for the young
did not change, however: promoters focused on groups of male musicians, whom
they depicted as heroic, surrounded by worshipping female “groupies.” New models
for youth such as the Beatles were themselves the products of advanced technology,
marketing for mass consumption, and a unique youth culture separating the young
from their parents — the so-called generation gap.
Pop Art
Claes Oldenburg excelled in highlighting
objects of everyday life, such as this ham-
burger (Floor Burger, 1962). He also modeled
vacuum cleaners, shuttlecocks, telephones,
and many other much-used things — a feature
of pop art, which often contained humor in
addition. Can you spot the humor in this cre-
ation? (Claes Oldenburg, Floor Burger, 1962 Canvas
filled with foam rubber and cardboard boxes, painted
with latex and Liquitex, 4 ft. 4 in. [1.32 m] high; 7 ft.
[2.13 m] diameter. Collection Art Gallery of Ontario,
Toronto, Canada, Purchase 1967. Photo courtesy the
Oldenburg van Bruggen Studio. Copyright © 1962 Claes
Oldenburg. Photo provided by The Bridgeman Art Library
International.)
948 Chapter 28 Postindustrial Society and the End of the Cold War Order
[ 1960s–1989
]
make fountains that could move. His partner Niki de Saint Phalle then decorated
them with huge, gaudy figures — many of them inspired by the folk traditions of the
Caribbean and Africa. Their colorful, mobile fountains adorned main squares in
Stockholm, Paris, and other cities.
The American composer John Cage worked in a similar vein when he added to
his musical scores sounds produced by such everyday items as combs, pieces of
wood, and radio noise. Buddhist influence led Cage to incorporate silence in music
and to compose by randomly tossing coins and then choosing notes by the corre-
sponding numbers in the ancient Chinese I Ching (Book of Changes). These tech-
niques continued the trend away from classical melody that had begun with modern-
ism. Other composers, called minimalists, simplified music by featuring repetition
and sustained notes instead of producing the lush melodies of nineteenth-century
symphonies and piano music. Estonian composer Arvo Pärt wrote minimalist pieces
in the 1970s using only three or four notes in total; he called this style “starvation”
music to emphasize the lack of both freedom and goods in the Soviet bloc. Improved
recording technology and mass marketing brought music of all varieties to a wider
home audience than ever before.
The social sciences reached the peak of their prestige in the postindustrial era,
often because of the increasing use of statistical models made possible by advanced
electronic computations. Anthropology was among the most exciting of the social
sciences, for it brought young university students information about societies that
seemed untouched by modern technology and industry. Colorful ethnographic films
revealed different lifestyles and seemingly exotic practices. While studying people
who came to be called “the other,” students had their sense of freedom reinforced
by the vision of going back to nature. Whatever their discipline, social scientists
announced that, like technicians and engineers, their specialized methods and fac-
tual knowledge were key to managing the complexities of postindustrial society and
setting policy for developing nations.
At the same time, the social sciences undermined Enlightenment beliefs that
individuals had true freedom. French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–
2009) developed a theory called structuralism, which insisted that all societies func-
tion within controlling structures — kinship, for example. While challenging existen-
tialism’s claim that humans could create a free existence, structuralism also attacked
the social sciences’ faith in rationality. Lévi-Strauss’s book The Savage Mind (1966)
demonstrated that people outside the West, even though they did not use scientific
methods, had their own effective systems of problem solving. In the 1960s and 1970s,
the findings of some social scientists additionally echoed concerns that technology
and highly managed bureaucratic systems were creating a society in which people
lacked individuality and freedom.
Religious leaders and parishioners responded to the changing times in a variety
of ways. Pope Paul VI (r. 1963–1978) opposed artificial birth control as it became
more prevalent, while also becoming the first pontiff to carry out the global vision
[1960s–1989
] Protesting Cold War Conditions 949
of Vatican II by visiting Africa, Asia, and South America. In some places, grassroots
religious fervor surged in the face of advancing science. Growing numbers of U.S.
Protestants, for example, joined sects that denied the validity of scientific discoveries
such as the age of the universe and the evolution of the species. In western Europe,
however, Christian churchgoing remained at a low ebb. In the 1970s, for example,
only 10 percent of the British population went to religious services — about the same
number that attended live soccer matches. Most striking was the changing composi-
tion of the Western religious public, with immigration of people from former colo-
nies and other parts of the world. Mosques,
Buddhist temples, and shrines to other REVIEW QUESTION How did Western society
creeds appeared in a greater number of cit- and culture change in the postindustrial age?
ies and towns.
Re C H I N A N
d
R.
W E
NORTH S
VIETNAM
BURMA Dien Bien Phu Hanoi
Gulf of
Tonkin
LAOS
Vinh
MAP 28.1 The Vietnam
M Dong Hoi
e
Demarcation Line of 1954 War, 1954–1975
ko
ng
Hue
east Asia had long resisted
Da Nang
incursions by their neigh-
THAILAND Chu Lai
Quang Ngai bors. The Vietnamese beat
the French colonizers in the
battle of Dien Bien Phu in
Bangkok Qui Nhon
1954. The Americans soon
SOUTH became involved, trying to
CAMBODIA VIETNAM stem what they saw as the
Gulf of Phnom tide of Communist influence
Penh
Thailand behind the Vietnamese
My Lai Saigon
South liberation movement. The
Communist nations
Mekong China ensuing war in Vietnam
Nations allied with
Delta Sea in the 1960s and 1970s
United States
Neutral nations spread into neighboring
Ho Chi Minh Trail 0 150 300 miles
countries, making the
Tet offensive, 1968 0 150 300 kilometers
region the scene of vast
destruction.
952 Chapter 28 Postindustrial Society and the End of the Cold War Order
[ 1960s–1989
]
divided Vietnam into North and South, the United States increased its support for
the corrupt leaders of non-Communist South Vietnam. North Vietnam, China, and
the Soviet Union backed the rebel Vietcong, or South Vietnamese Communists. By
1966, the United States had more than half a million soldiers in South Vietnam, yet
the strength of the Vietcong seemed to grow daily. Despite massive bombings by the
United States, the insurgents, who had struggled against colonialism for decades,
rejected a negotiated peace.
or Dante would help them after graduation. “How to Train Stuffed Geese” was
French students’ satirical version of the teaching methods inflicted on them. Long
hair, communal living, scorn for personal cleanliness, and ridicule for sexual chastity
were part of students’ rejection of middle-class values. Widespread use of the pill
and open promiscuity made the sexual revolution explicit and public. Marijuana use
became common among students, who had their own rituals, music, and gathering
places. Hated by students, big business nonetheless made billions of dollars by selling
everything from blue jeans to natural foods as well as by managing the rock stars of
the counterculture.
Women’s activism erupted, too. Working for reproductive rights, women in
France helped end the nation’s ban on birth control in 1965. Middle-class women
eagerly responded to the international best seller The Feminine Mystique (1963), by
American journalist Betty Friedan. Pointing to the stagnating talents of many house-
wives, Friedan helped organize the National Organization for Women (NOW) in
1966 “to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society
now.” NOW advocated equal pay for equal work and a variety of other legal and
(1913–1994) promised to bring peace to Southeast Asia, but in 1970 he ordered U.S.
troops to invade Cambodia, the site of North Vietnamese bases. Campuses erupted
again in protest, and on May 4 the National Guard killed four students and wounded
eleven others at a demonstration at Kent State University in Ohio. Nixon called the
victims “bums,” and a growing reaction against the counterculture led many Ameri-
cans to agree with one citizen who declared that the guardsmen “should have fired
sooner and longer.” In 1975, a determined North Vietnamese offensive defeated
South Vietnam and its U.S. allies and forcibly reunified the country. A strong cur-
rent of public opinion turned against
activists, born of the sense that somehow
they — not the war, government corrup- REVIEW QUESTION What were the main
tion, or the huge war debt — had brought issues for protesters in the 1960s, and how
did governments address them?
down the United States. Both superpowers
were being tested, almost to the limits.
EGYPT
ez
ARABIA
materials — not the industrial powers — controlled
0 25 50 miles
0 50 kilometers Red Sea
the flow of commodities and set prices to their
own advantage (Figure 28.1). As a result, unemploy-
Israel after the Six-Day War, 1967 ment rose by more than 50 percent in Europe and
[1960s–1989
] The Testing of Superpower Domination and the End of the Cold War 959
0
1955 ’60 ’65 ’70 ’75 ’80 ’85
the United States and inflation soared. By the end of 1973, the inflation rate jumped
to over 12 percent in France and 20 percent in Portugal. Eastern-bloc countries,
dependent on Soviet oil, fared little better because the West could no longer afford
their products and the Soviets boosted the price of their own oil. Skyrocketing inter-
est rates discouraged both industrial investment and consumer buying. Prices, unem-
ployment, and interest rates all rising created an unusual combination of economic
conditions called stagflation. Western Europe drastically cut back on its oil depen-
dence by undertaking conservation, enhancing public transportation, and raising the
price of gasoline to encourage the development of fuel-efficient cars.
The U.S. bloc took further blows. In the late 1970s, students, clerics, shopkeepers,
and unemployed men in Iran began an uprising that brought to power the Islamic
ayatollah (a Shi‘ite religious leader) Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989). Using the new
medium of audiocassette recordings to spread his message, Khomeini called for a
transformation of Iran into a truly Islamic society, which meant the renunciation of
the Western ways advocated by the American-backed shah, who was overthrown. In
the autumn of 1979, supporters of Khomeini took hostages at the U.S. embassy in
Teheran even as images of the captives’ stricken faces were sent around the globe via
satellites. The United States was essentially paralyzed in the face of Islamic militancy,
further OPEC price hikes, and a downwardly spiraling economy.
ness profits, as inferior. Under Thatcher, even workers blamed labor leaders or new-
comers for Britain’s troubles.
The policies of “Thatcherism” were based on monetarist, or supply-side, eco-
nomic theory. According to monetarist theory, inflation results when government
pumps money into the economy at a rate higher than the nation’s economic growth
rate. Monetarists believe that the government should keep a tight rein on the money
supply to prevent prices from rising rapidly. Supply-side economists maintain that the
economy as a whole flourishes when businesses grow and their prosperity “trickles
down” throughout society. To implement these theories, the British government cut
income taxes on the wealthy as a way of encouraging investment and increased sales
taxes to compensate for the lost revenue. The result was a greater burden on working
people, who bore the brunt of the higher sales tax. Thatcher also refused to prop up
“outmoded” industries such as coal mining and slashed education and health pro-
grams. Her package of economic policies came to be known as neoliberalism.
In the first years of Thatcher’s government, the British economy did not respond
well to her shock treatment. The quality of universities, public transportation, high-
ways, and hospitals deteriorated, and social unity fragmented as she pitted the lower
classes against one another. In 1981, blacks and Asians rioted in major cities. Thatcher
revived her sagging popularity with a nationalist war against Argentina in 1982 over
ownership of the Falkland Islands off the Argentinian coast. Stagflation ultimately
962 Chapter 28 Postindustrial Society and the End of the Cold War Order
[ 1960s–1989
]
dissipated, and Thatcher’s program became the standard for those facing the chal-
lenge of stagflation and economic decline. Britain had been one of the pioneers of
the welfare state, and now it pioneered in changing course.
In the United States, Ronald Reagan (1911–2004), who served as president
between 1981 and 1989, followed a similar road to combat the economic crisis there.
Dividing U.S. citizens into the good and the bad, Reagan vowed to promote the
values of the “moral majority,” which included commitment to Bible-based religion
and unquestioned patriotism. He blasted so-called spendthrift and immoral “liber-
als” when introducing “Reaganomics” — a program of whopping income tax cuts for
the wealthy combined with massive reductions in federal spending for student loans,
school lunch programs, and mass transit. Funding social programs, he felt, only
encouraged bad Americans to be lazy. In foreign policy, Reagan rolled back détente
and demanded huge military budgets to counter the Soviets. The combination of tax
cuts and military expansion had pushed the federal budget deficit to $200 billion by
1986. As in Britain, inflation was brought under control and business picked up.
Other western European leaders also limited welfare-state benefits in the face of
stagflation, though without Thatcher’s and Reagan’s socially divisive rhetoric. West
German leader Helmut Kohl, who took power in 1982, reduced welfare spending,
froze government wages, and cut corporate taxes. Unlike Thatcher, Kohl did not fan
the flames of class and racial hatreds. Such a strategy would have been particularly
unwise in Germany, where terrorism on the left and on the right continued to flour-
ish. Moreover, the legacy of Nazism loomed menacingly: for example, an unem-
ployed German youth said of immigrant Turkish workers, “Let’s gas ’em.”
By 1981, stagflation had put more than 1.5 million people out of work in France,
but the French took a different political path to deal with the economic crisis. They
elected a Socialist president, François Mitterrand, who nationalized banks and cer-
tain industries and increased wages and social spending to stimulate the economy —
the opposite of Thatcherism. New public buildings like museums and libraries arose
along with new subway lines and improved public transport. When conservative
Jacques Chirac succeeded Mitterrand as president in 1995, he adopted neoliberal
policies. Socially divisive politics that had unfolded during hard economic times
grew in appeal. From the 1980s on, the racist National Front Party won 10 percent
and often more of the French vote with promises to deport African and Middle
Eastern immigrants.
At the same time, smaller European states without heavy defense commitments
began to thrive, some of them by slashing welfare programs. Spain joined the Com-
mon Market in 1986 and used Common Market investment and tourist dollars to
help rebuild its sagging infrastructure, as in the southern cities of Granada and
Córdoba. In Ireland, new investment in education for high-tech jobs combined with
low wage rates attracted business to the country in the 1990s. Prosperity, along with
the rising death toll from decades of violence, led to a political rapprochement
between Ireland and Northern Ireland in 1999. Austria prospered, too, in part by
reducing government pensions and aid to business.
[
1960s–1989
] The Testing of Superpower Domination and the End of the Cold War 963
Almost alone, Sweden maintained a full array of social programs. The govern-
ment offered each immigrant a choice of subsidized housing in neighborhoods
inhabited primarily by Swedes or primarily by people from the immigrant’s native
land. Such programs were expensive, and Sweden dropped from fourth to fourteenth
place among nations in per capita income by 1998. The Swedish welfare state came
to seem extreme to many citizens, and, as elsewhere, immigrants were cast as the
source of the country’s problems — past, present, and future: “How long will it be
before our Swedish children will have to turn their faces toward Mecca?” ran one
politician’s campaign speech in 1993.
factions arose across the political spectrum. In the fall of 1987, one of Gorbachev’s
allies, Boris Yeltsin, quit the government after denouncing perestroika as insufficient
to produce real reform. Yeltsin’s political daring inspired others to organize in oppo-
sition to crumbling Communist rule. In the spring of 1989, in a remarkably free
balloting in Moscow’s local elections, not a single Communist was chosen.
Recognizing how severely the cold war arms race was draining Soviet resources,
Gorbachev began scaling back missile production. His unilateral actions gradually
won over Ronald Reagan. In 1985, the two leaders initiated a personal relationship and
began defusing the cold war. “I bet the hard-liners in both our countries are bleeding
when we shake hands,” said Reagan at the conclusion of one meeting. In early 1989,
Gorbachev withdrew the last of his country’s forces from the debilitating war in
Afghanistan, and the United States started to cut back its own vast military buildup.
As Gorbachev’s reforms in the USSR started spiraling out of his control, dissent
was rising across the Soviet bloc. In the summer of 1980, Poles had gone on strike
to protest government-increased food prices; workers at the Gdańsk shipyards, led
by electrician Lech Walesa and crane operator Anna Walentynowicz, created an
independent labor movement called Solidarity. The organization soon embraced
much of the adult population, including a million members of the Communist Party.
Both intellectuals and the Catholic church, long in the forefront of opposition to
antireligious communism, supported Solidarity workers as they occupied factories
in protest against the deteriorating conditions of everyday life. The members of Soli-
darity waved Polish flags and paraded giant portraits of the Virgin Mary and Pope
John Paul II — a Polish native.
Global media coverage encouraged Solidarity leaders. As food became scarce
and prices rose, tens of thousands of women joined in with marches, crying “We’re
hungry!” They also protested working conditions, but as both workers and the only
caretakers of home life, it was the scarcity of food that sent them into the streets.
The Communist Party teetered on the edge of collapse, until the police and the army,
with Soviet support, imposed a military government and in the winter of 1981 out-
lawed Solidarity. Using world communications networks, dissidents kept Solidarity
alive and workers kept meeting, creating a new culture outside the official Soviet arts
and newscasts. Poets read dissident verse to overflow crowds, and university profes-
sors lectured on such forbidden topics as Polish resistance in World War II. Activism
in Poland and the news about it set the stage for communism’s downfall across the
Soviet bloc.
The year 1989 saw uprisings around the world — in Chile, the Philippines, Haiti,
South Africa, and China, for example. The global Cable News Network (CNN), estab-
lished in 1980, linked many individual movements for democratic change through
its twenty-four-hour coverage of world events. The most widely covered of these was
the attack on the Communist state in China. Inspired by Gorbachev’s visit to Beijing,
in the spring of 1989 thousands of Chinese students massed in the city’s Tiananmen
Square, the world’s largest public square, to demand democracy. They used telex
machines and e-mail to rush their messages to the international community, and they
966 Chapter 28 Postindustrial Society and the End of the Cold War Order
[ 1960s–1989
]
conveyed their goals through the cameras that Western television, broadcasting via
satellite, trained on them. As workers began joining the pro-democracy forces, the
government crushed the movement and executed as many as a thousand rebels.
News of the protests in Tiananmen Square was galvanizing to those in eastern
Europe who were inspired in their long-standing tradition of resistance. In June
1989, the Polish government, weakened by its own bungling of the economy and
lacking Soviet support for further repression, held free parliamentary elections. Soli-
darity candidates overwhelmingly defeated the Communists, and Walesa became
president in early 1990. Gorbachev openly reversed the Brezhnev Doctrine, refusing
to interfere in the political course of another nation. When it became clear that the
Soviet Union would not intervene in Poland, the fall of communism repeated itself
across the Soviet bloc.
Communism had collapsed in Poland; it then collapsed in Hungary, in part
because Hungarians, too, had experimented with “market socialism” since the 1960s.
Hungarian citizens were already protesting the government, lobbying, for example,
against ecologically unsound projects like the construction of a new dam. They
encouraged boycotts of Communist holidays, and on March 15, 1989, they boldly
commemorated the anniversary of the Hungarian uprising. These popular demands
for liberalization led the parliament in the fall of 1989 to dismiss the Communist
Party as the official ruling institution.
The most potent symbol of a divided Europe was the Berlin Wall, and East Ger-
mans had attempted to escape over it for decades. In the summer of 1989, crowds of
East Germans flooded the borders to escape the crumbling Soviet bloc, and hundreds
of thousands of protesters rallied throughout the fall against the regime. Satellite tele-
vision brought them visions of postindustrial prosperity and of free and open public
debate in West Germany. Crowds of demonstrators greeted Gorbachev, taken as a
hero by many, when he visited the country in October. On November 9, guards at
the Berlin Wall allowed free passage to the west, turning protest into a festive holiday.
As they strolled freely in the streets, East Berliners saw firsthand the goods available
in a successful postindustrial society. Soon thereafter, citizens — east and west —
released years of frustration by assaulting the Berlin Wall with sledgehammers.
In Czechoslovakia people also watched televised news of glasnost expectantly.
Persecuted dissidents had maintained their critique of Communist rule. In an open
letter to the Czechoslovak Communist Party leadership, playwright Václav Havel
accused Marxist-Leninist rule of making people materialistic and indifferent to pub-
lic life. In 1977, Havel, along with a group of fellow intellectuals and workers, signed
Charter 77, a public protest against the regime that resulted in the arrest of the
signers. In the mid-1980s, they and the wider population heard Gorbachev on televi-
sion calling for free speech. Protesters clamored for democracy, but the government
turned the police on them, arresting activists in January 1989 for commemorating
the death of Jan Palach. The turning point came in November 1989 when, in response
to police beatings of students, Alexander Dubček, leader of the Prague Spring of 1968,
addressed the crowds in Prague’s Wenceslas Square with a call to oust the Stalinists
[1960s–1989
] The Testing of Superpower Domination and the End of the Cold War 967
a
demonstrations
c Se
SWEDEN Estonia
lti
Nor th
Ba
S ea Latvia
DENMARK Nov. 1989
Fall of Berlin Wall Lithuania N
Bucharest
YUGOSLAVIA Bl ack S ea
Ad
SPAIN ITALY
r ia
BULGARIA
Se
a
ALBANIA
Sardinia
GREECE TURKEY
Medite r ranean S ea
Review Questions
1. What were the technological and scientific advances of the 1960s and 1970s, and how did
they change human life and society?
2. How did Western society and culture change in the postindustrial age?
3. What were the main issues for protesters in the 1960s, and how did governments address
them?
4. How and why did the balance of world power change during the 1980s?
Making Connections
1. What were the differences between industrial society of the late nineteenth century and
postindustrial society of the late twentieth century?
2. Why were there so many protests, acts of terrorism, and uprisings across the West in the
decades between 1960 and 1990?
3. What have been the long-term consequences of Communist rule in the Soviet bloc between
1917 and 1989?
4. How did technology shape politics over the course of the twentieth century?
Suggested References
The history-changing events of the 1960s to 1989 ran the gamut from life-changing technology
to dramatic political upheavals — all of them chronicled in the innovative books below. The story
of television in post-uprising Czechoslovakia illustrates that even dictatorships used this new
technology to “soften” its control.
Bolton, Jonathan. Worlds of Dissent: Charter 77, The Plastic People of the Universe, and Czech
Culture under Communism. 2012.
Bren, Paulina. The Greengrocer and His TV: The Culture of Communism after the 1968 Prague
Spring. 2010.
Carter, David. Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Rights Movement. 2011.
Chaplin, Tamara. Turning On the Mind: French Philosophers on Television. 2007.
*Freedman, Estelle B. The Essential Feminist Reader. 2007.
Gildea, Robert, James Mar, and Anette Warring, eds. Europe’s 1968: Voices of Revolt. 2013.
Green Parties Worldwide: http://www.greens.org
Hadley, Louisa, and Elizabeth Ho, eds. Thatcher & After: Margaret Thatcher and Her Afterlife in
Contemporary Culture. 2011.
*Primary source.
970
[1960s–1989
] Chapter 28 Review 971
Important Events
Consider three events: Betty Friedan publishes The Feminine Mystique (1963),
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn publishes The Gulag Archipelago (1973–1976), and British
prime minister Margaret Thatcher begins dismantling the welfare state (1980). How
can all of these be considered responses to postindustrial society?
Harvey, Brian. Russian Planetary Exploration: History, Development, Legacy, Prospects. 2007.
Horn, Gerd-Rainer. The Spirit of 68: Rebellion in Western Europe and North America, 1956–1976.
2007.
Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. 2013.
Kenney, Padraic. Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe, 1989. 2002.
Kotkin, Steven. Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment. 2010.
McLaren, Angus. Reproduction by Design: Sex, Robots, Trees, and Test-Tube Babies. 2012.
Ouimet, Matthew J. The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine in Soviet Foreign Policy. 2003.
Peniel, E. Joseph. Stokely: A Life. 2014.
Suri, Jeremy. Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente. 2003.
Tignor, Robert. Anwar Sadat. 2015.
A New Globalism
29
1989 to the Present
T
hérèse is a Congolese immigrant to France who arrived in Paris in the
late 1970s with the help of a brother who worked for an airline. Thérèse had
been well-known in Africa as the teenage girlfriend of pop singer Bozi
Boziana, who wrote a hit song about her. Congo’s political instability had made her
search for safety in Paris, however. Once there, Thérèse remained famous among
African immigrants because she ran nganda, or informal bars, for them. Like Thérèse,
the immigrants who frequent her nganda are often Congolese and other Africans
who have settled in Paris, many of them illegally. They flock to her nganda because
they like her stylish dress, the African food she cooks, the African music she plays,
and the African products she sells. Many of
Thérèse’s small bars and eateries have flour-
Global Citizens ished, only to be closed down by landlords
The world’s migrants at the turn
of the millennium sought safety,
who want more of her handsome profits or
education, or jobs in the West’s who object to her running an unlicensed café.
manufacturing and ser vice occupa- Despite such obstacles, Thérèse keeps business
tions. Like these young immigrants going by moving her faithful clientele around
from Senegal who are sharing a her Paris neighborhood from basement to shop
meal at a café in Paris, they also
front to spare room. Thérèse is a new global
appreciated Western amenities.
Children of immigrants were some- citizen, counting on networks back home for
times disillusioned, however, not supplies, constantly on the move because she
wanting the life of extreme sacrifice lives on the margins of legality, and always
that their parents had lived. Their striving to make a good living.
frustrations at not being accepted Thérèse’s story is just one example of the
as full citizens occasionally erupted
into protest and even violence.
ways in which people in the post–cold war
(© Directphoto.org / Alamy.) world crossed national boundaries while main-
taining crucial ties around the globe. The end
of the cold war rivalry between the super-
powers paved the way for a more intimately connected world. In the 1990s, global-
ization advanced further with the dramatic collapse of communism in Yugoslavia and
then of the Soviet Union itself. The world was no longer divided in two by heavily
guarded borders and hostile cold war propaganda, allowing nations and individuals
more opportunity to trade and interact freely. The Common Market transformed
973
974 Chapter 29 A New Globalism
[ 1989 to the Present
]
itself into the European Union, which from 2004 on admitted many states from the
former Soviet bloc. The telecommunication systems put in place in the 1960s
advanced globalization, binding peoples and cultures together in an ever more com-
plicated social and economic web. The World Wide Web and its offspring social
networking even united them to enact stunning social and political change.
The global age brought the vast national and international migration of tens of
millions of people, an expanding global marketplace, and rapid cultural exchange of
popular music, books, films, and television shows. On the negative side, the new
globalization also brought lethal disasters such as epidemic diseases, environmental
deterioration, genocide, and terrorism. Nations in the West faced competition from
the rising economic power of Asia and Latin America. International business merg-
ers accelerated in the 1990s, advancing efficiencies but often threatening jobs. Mil-
lions of workers in this interlinked economy discovered that the global age was one
of both opportunities and insecurities.
The end of superpower rivalry resulted in the dominance of a single power, the
United States, in world affairs. When the United States sought to exercise global power
through warfare, however, European states would often resist, just as the Soviet satel-
lites had pulled away from the USSR. New forces, including the economic power of
non-Western countries and the cultural might of Islam, created new centers of
influence. Some observers predicted a huge “clash of civilizations” because of sharp
differences between Western civilization and cultures beyond the West. Others, how-
ever, saw a different clash — one between a Europe reborn after decades of disastrous
wars as a peace-seeking group of nations confronting an imperial United States that,
like Europe in the nineteenth century, was frequently at war around the world. Glo-
balization in either of these scenarios could bring global splintering or even cata-
strophic warfare.
More immediately, globalization brought economic struggles for many. Begin-
ning in 2007, the global economy collapsed, resulting in widespread hardship. U.S.
recovery came first, but as Europe and the rest of the world flagged, it became appar-
ent that a reenergizing of economic capacities was needed. Illegal immigrants con-
tinued to move into Europe because of its
safety and high standard of living, and to
CHAPTER FOCUS How has globalization
been both a unifying and a divisive influence the United States because of the promise
on the West in the twenty-first century? of opportunity. The fate of Thérèse amid
this uncertainty we do not know.
the five republics of Soviet Central Asia were home to fifty million Muslims. For more
than a century, successive governments had attempted to instill Russian and Soviet
culture, but the policy of Russification failed to build any heartfelt allegiance, lead-
ing to a swift collapse of the USSR. In Yugoslavia, communist rulers had also enforced
unity among religious and ethnic groups, and intermarriage among them occurred
regularly. Beginning in the unstable years of the early 1990s, however, ambitious
politicians seeking to build a following whipped up ethnic hatreds, making it unclear
whether peaceful, democratic nations would emerge.
SLOVENIA S
Belgrade
BOSNIA-
HERZEGOVINA
SERBIA and
Sarajevo MONTENEGRO
A Mostar
dr
ia
ti MONTENEGRO Pec Pristina
c Dubrovnik
BULGARIA
Se Kosovo
a (autonomous
province) Skopje
THE FORMER
ITALY YUGOSLAV REPUBLIC
OF MACEDONIA
ALBANIA
Yugoslavia in 1991
Capital GREECE
1990s, Serb forces moved to attack Muslims of Albanian ethnicity living in the Yugo-
slav province of Kosovo. From 1997 to 1999, crowds of Albanian Kosovars fled their
homes as Serb militias and the Yugoslav army slaughtered the civilian population.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) pilots bombed the region to drive back
both the army and militias, but people throughout the world felt that this interven-
tion came far too late. After a new regime in Serbia emerged alongside the indepen-
dent republics of Bosnia and Croatia, Milosevic was turned over to the International
Court of Justice, or World Court, in the Netherlands to be tried for crimes against
humanity. Across a fragmenting eastern Europe, hateful racial, ethnic, and religious
rhetoric influenced political agendas in the post-communist states.
[1989 to the Present
] Collapse of the Soviet Union and Its Aftermath 977
GERMANY
RUSSIA FINLAND
Tallinn
Riga ARCTIC OCEAN
POLAND N
Vilnius
ESTONIA W
E
LATVIA S
Minsk
BELARUS LITHUANIA
Kiev Moscow
Chisinau
UKRAINE
MOLDOVA R U S S I A N F E D E R A T I O N
B
la
ck
S
ea
GEORGIA
Chechnya
ARMENIA
Grozny
Tbilisi
TURKEY Aral
Yerevan Sea
Sea
Baku KAZAKHSTAN
n
spia
UZ
Ca
AZERBAIJAN TU
R
BE
IRAQ
K IS
KM
KYRGYZSTAN MONGOLIA
TAN
EN
IST
Almaty
Ashgabat Commonwealth of Independent States
Tashkent
AN
Bishkek
Independent in 1991
IRAN Dushanbe
Independence declared 1991;
at war with Russia, 1994 to present
TAJIKISTAN
Boundary of the former USSR to 1991
CHINA Capital cities
0 250 500 miles AFGHANISTAN Capital of the Commonwealth of Independent States
0 250 500 kilometers Violent ethnic conflicts
Assassination in Moscow
In 2009, Russian citizens honored journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya,
assassinated three years earlier in her Moscow apartment building. Politkovskaya relentlessly
investigated the atrocities during the war in Chechnya as well as the corruption in the Putin
government. Honest journalism in post-Soviet Russia was increasingly dangerous; scores of
journalists were murdered in the twenty years following the collapse of communism, and many
of Politkovskaya’s collaborators were also killed. Several men were arrested, tried, and acquit-
ted in the Politkovskaya case. (AP Photo / Pavel Golovkin.)
[1989 to the Present
] The Nation-State in a Global Age 981
FINLAND
NORWAY
SWEDEN ESTONIA
N. RUSSIAN
F E D E R AT I O N
a
Ireland North
Se
Sea LATVIA
tic
IRELAND DENMARK l
UNITED Ba LITHUANIA
RUSSIA
KINGDOM
BELARUS
NETH.
ITALY
GA
Black Sea
HERZEGOVINA
U
SPAIN BULGARIA
RT
MONTENEGRO MACEDONIA
PO
KOSOVO
ALBANIA
TURKEY
GREECE
it welcomed Bulgaria and Romania. Just before its admission to the EU, Poland’s
standard of living was 39 percent of EU standards, up from 33 percent in 1995. The
Czech Republic and Hungary were at 55 and 50 percent, respectively. In all three
cases these figures masked the discrepancy between the ailing countryside and thriv-
ing cities. Citizens in eastern Europe were not always happy at joining the EU. A
retiree foresaw the cost of beer going up and added, “If I wanted to join anything in
the West, I would have defected.” Still others felt that having just established an
independent national identity, they should not allow themselves to be swallowed up
once again. People in older member states were having second thoughts, too: in the
spring of 2005, a majority of voters in France and the Netherlands rejected a complex
draft constitution that would have strengthened EU ties. Commentators attributed
984 Chapter 29 A New Globalism
[ 1989 to the Present
]
the rejection to popular anger at the EU bureaucracy’s failure to consult ordinary
people in decision making.
Although still weak by comparison with most of western Europe, the economic
life of eastern Europe had in fact picked up considerably by 2000. In contrast to the
massive layoffs, soaring inflation, and unpaid salaries of the first post-Communist
years, in 2002 residents of Poland, Slovenia, and Estonia had purchasing power some
40 percent higher than in 1989. Outsourcing by international companies began to
flourish across the region, increasing opportunities for those with language and com-
mercial skills. Even in countries with the weakest economies — Latvia, Bulgaria, and
Romania — a greater number of residents enjoyed such modern conveniences as
freezers, computers, and portable telephones. Shopping malls sprang up, mostly
around capital cities, and superstores like the furniture giant IKEA and the electron-
ics firm Electroworld became a consumer’s paradise to those long starved of goods.
“When Electroworld opened in Budapest [April 2002], it provoked a riot. Two hun-
dred thousand people crowded to get in the doors,” reported one amazed observer,
a sign of U.S.-style “consumania” of materialism and frenzied shopping. For consum-
ers, however, learning to read labels and to compare prices offered by superstores
indicated their membership in a free, global community. Many proudly believed they
had left communist poverty behind.
thousand Japanese in England in the mid-1990s who staffed Japan’s thriving global
businesses. Because these migrants did not aim to become citizens, global cities were
said to produce a “deterritorialization of identities” — meaning that many city dwell-
ers lacked both a national and a local sense of themselves.
Ironically, as globalization took hold economically and culturally, there came
to be more nation-states in Europe in 2000 than there had been in 1945. Claims of
ethnic distinctiveness caused individual nation-states to break apart and separatist
movements — like that in Chechnya — to grow. Despite two centuries aimed at unifi-
cation of the Slavs, for example, Slavs separated themselves from one another in the
1990s and early twenty-first century. Yugoslavia came apart into several states, and
in 1993, Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia (see Map 29.3,
page 983). In 2014, after a heated campaign, Scotland’s voters, however, rejected
separating from the United Kingdom.
Activists also launched movements for regional independence in France, Italy,
and Spain. Some Bretons (residents of the historical French province of Brittany)
and Corsicans demanded independence from France, the Corsicans violently attack-
ing national officials. Sharp cultural differences threatened to split Belgium in two.
Basque nationalists in northern Spain assassinated tourists, police, and other public
servants in an effort to gain autonomy, and although in 2005 they publicly renounced
terrorism, violence often resurfaced. The push for an independent northern Italy began
when politicians saw its attractiveness to voters and loudly demanded secession. As
cities globalized and nations fragmented, new combinations of local, national, and
global identities took shape. Such changing identities, plus the overall expansion of
the EU, called the nation-state into question.
Global Organizations
Supranational organizations, some regulating international politics and others
addressing finance and social issues, also challenged the nation-state. The World Bank,
the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO)
raised money from national governments and dealt, for example, with the terms of
trade among countries and the economic well-being of individual peoples. The IMF
made loans to developing countries on the condition that those countries restructure
their economies according to neoliberal principles. Other supranational organiza-
tions were charitable foundations, think tanks, or service-based organizations acting
independently of governments, many of them based in Europe and the United States;
they were called nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Because some of these
groups — the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Open Society
Foundation, for example — controlled so much money, NGOs often had considerable
international power. Some charitable and activist NGOs, like the French-based Doc-
tors Without Borders, depended on global contributions and used them to provide
medical attention in such places as the former Yugoslavia, where people facing war
986 Chapter 29 A New Globalism
[ 1989 to the Present
]
had no other medical help. Small, locally based NGOs excelled at inspiring grassroots
activism, while the larger NGOs were often criticized for directing government poli-
cies with no regard for democratic processes.
Not everyone supported or was pleased with the process of globalization; some
people formed activist groups to attack globalization or to influence its course. In
1998, the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions and Aid to Citizens
(ATTAC) worked to block the control of globalization by the forces of high finance,
declaring: “Commercial totalitarianism is not free trade.” ATTAC had as its major
policy goal to tax international financial transactions (just as the purchase of house-
hold necessities was taxed) and to create with the tax a fund for people living in
poor countries. Some governments began to suggest such a tax themselves with the
aim of raising much-needed revenue, not to help the poor. Another globally known
opponent, French farmer José Bové, protested the opening of McDonald’s chains in
France and destroyed stocks of genetically modified seeds: “The only regret I have
now,” Bové claimed at his trial in 2003, “is
that I didn’t destroy more of it.” Bové went
REVIEW QUESTION What trends suggest that to jail, but he remained a hero to antiglo-
the nation-state was a declining institution at balism activists who saw him as an enemy
the beginning of the twenty-first century?
of standardization and an honest cham-
pion, in his own words, of “good food.”
many nuclear and other tests had left entire regions of Asia unfit for human, animal,
and plant life.
Other environmental problems had devastating global effects. Pollutants from fos-
sil fuels such as natural gas, coal, and oil mixed with atmospheric moisture to pro-
duce acid rain, a poisonous brew that destroyed forests in industrial areas. In eastern
Europe, the unchecked use of fossil fuels turned trees into brown skeletons and
inflicted ailments such as chronic bronchial disease on children. In other areas, clear-
ing the world’s rain forests to develop the land for cattle grazing or for cultivation of
cash crops depleted the global oxygen supply. By the late 1980s, scientists determined
that the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), chemicals found in aerosol and refrigera-
tion products, had blown a hole in the earth’s ozone layer, the part of the blanket of
atmospheric gases that prevents harmful ultraviolet rays from reaching the planet.
Simultaneously, automobile and industrial emissions of chemicals were infusing
that thermal blanket. The buildup of CFCs, carbon dioxide, and other atmospheric
pollutants produced what is known as a greenhouse effect that results in global
warming, an increase in the temperature of the earth’s lower atmosphere. Already
in the 1990s, the Arctic pack ice was breaking up, and scientists predicted that global
ice melting would raise sea levels by more than ten inches by 2100, flooding coastal
areas, disturbing fragile ecosystems, and harming the fresh water supply. In 2012,
important island nations such as the Maldives were menaced with disappearance
because of rising water levels. Other results of the greenhouse effect included climatic
extremes such as drought, drenching rain, and increasingly catastrophic weather
events such as deadly storms.
Activism against unbridled industrial growth took decades to develop as an
effective political force. Rachel Carson’s powerful critique Silent Spring (1962) advo-
cated the immediate rescue of rivers, forests, and the soil from the ravages of facto-
ries and chemical farming in the United States. In West Germany, environmentalism
united members of older and younger generations around a political tactic called
citizen initiatives, in which groups of people blocked plans for urban growth that
menaced forests and farmland. In 1979, the Green Party was founded in West Ger-
many; two decades later Green Party candidates across Europe forced other politi-
cians to voice their concern for the environment.
Spurred by successful Green Party campaigns, Europeans attacked environmen-
tal problems on local and global levels. Some European cities — Frankfurt, Germany,
for example — developed car-free zones, and in Paris, whenever automobile emissions
reached dangerous levels, cars were banned from city streets until the emission levels
fell. The Smart car, a very small car using reduced amounts of fuel, became fashion-
able in Europe. European cities also developed bicycle lanes on major city streets,
with some U.S. cities following their lead. To reduce dependence on fossil fuels, parts
of Europe developed wind power to such an extent that 20 percent of some countries’
electricity was generated by wind. Many cities in the West undertook extensive recy-
cling of waste materials. By 1999, some eighty-four countries, including EU mem-
bers, had signed the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty whose signatories agreed
988 Chapter 29 A New Globalism
[ 1989 to the Present
]
to reduce their levels of emissions and other pollutants to specified targets. However,
the United States, the world’s second leading polluter after China, failed to ratify this
agreement, suggesting that the West was fragmenting over values.
Population problems were especially urgent in Russia, where life expectancy was
declining at a catastrophic rate from a peak of seventy years for Russian men in the
mid-1970s to fifty-one years at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Heart dis-
ease and cancer were the leading causes of male death, and these stark death rates
were generally attributed to increased drinking, smoking, drug use, poor diet, and
general stress. Between 1992 and 2014, the Russian population declined from 149 to
142 million. Meanwhile, fertility rates throughout the former Soviet bloc were also
declining: the lowest levels of fertility in 2003 were in the Czech Republic and Ukraine
(1.1 children per woman of reproductive age), and children in eastern Europe lived
on average twelve years less than their counterparts in western Europe.
Good health was spread unevenly around the world. Western medicine brought
the less-developed world increased use of vaccines and drugs for diseases such as
malaria and smallpox. However, half of all Africans lacked the basic requirements
of well-being such as safe drinking water. Drought and poverty, along with the cor-
ruption of politicians in some cases, spread famine in Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, and
elsewhere. Around the world, the poor and the unemployed suffered more chronic
illnesses than those who were better off, but they received less care. Whereas in many
parts of the world people still died from malnutrition and infectious diseases, in the
West noncontagious illnesses (heart disease, stroke, cancer, chronic obstructive pul-
monary disease, autoimmune diseases, and depression) were more lethal.
Disease, like population and technology, operated on a global terrain. In the
early 1980s, both Western values and Western technological expertise were chal-
lenged by the spread of a global epidemic disease: acquired immunodeficiency syn-
drome (AIDS). An incurable, highly virulent killer that effectively shuts down the
body’s entire immune system, AIDS initially afflicted heterosexuals in central Africa;
the disease later turned up in Haitian immigrants to the United States and in homo-
sexual men worldwide. Within a decade, AIDS became a global epidemic. The dis-
ease spread especially quickly and widely among the heterosexual populations of
Africa and Asia, passed mainly by men to and through women, but in 2010 the U.S.
capital, Washington, D.C., had a rate of infection as high as that in Africa. Protease-
inhibiting drugs helped alleviate the symptoms, but treatment was often not pro-
vided to poor people living in sub-Saharan Africa and the slums of Asian cities. In
addition to the AIDS pandemic, the deadly Ebola virus, severe acute respiratory
syndrome (SARS), swine flu, and dozens of other viruses smoldered like so many
global plagues in the making. Diseases such as Ebola and the global fears they pro-
voked along with environmental dangers underscored the interconnectedness of the
world’s peoples.
against Iran, but eight years of combat, with extensive loss of life on both sides, ended
in stalemate. In 1990, Saddam tested the post–cold war waters by invading neighbor-
ing Kuwait in hopes of annexing the oil-rich country to debt-ridden Iraq. A United
Nations coalition led by the United States stopped the invasion and defeated the Iraqi
army, but discontent mounted in the region (Map 29.4).
Ca
Istanbul
sp i
ARMENIA UZBEKISTAN
an S
GREECE Ankara
Aegean TURKMENISTAN
ea
TURKEY TAJIKISTAN
Sea AZERBAIJAN
Euph
ra
Tigris R
CYPRUS Teheran
tes
sia
Nil
KUWAIT nG Strait of
LIBYA
e
EGYPT . Hormuz
R
BAHRAIN u lf
Manama Gul
Doha f of O
Riyadh m an
Abu Dhabi
SAUDI QATAR INDIA
Muscat
Re
AR ABIA
dS
Major Hezbollah
a
attacks LEBANON
Major Israeli
attacks
SUDAN SYRIA
Sanaa Golan
YEMEN Heights
West
Countries with majority n
Aden f A de Bank
Shi‘ite population Gulf o Gaza Jerusalem
DJIBOUTI Strip
Countries with majority N
Sunni population ISRAEL
ETHIOPIA S
EGYPT
Iraq War, 2003 engagements
Coalition advances, 2003 0 250 500 miles 0 25 50 miles
SAUDI
Missile and bomb attacks 0 250 500 kilometers 0 50 kilometers ARABIA
On September 11, 2001, the ongoing terrorism in Europe and around the world
caught the full attention of the United States when Muslim militants hijacked four
planes in the United States and flew two of them into the World Trade Center in
New York City and one into the Pentagon in Virginia. The fourth plane, en route to
the Capitol, crashed in Pennsylvania when passengers forced the hijackers to lose
control of the aircraft. The hijackers, most of whom were from Saudi Arabia, were
inspired by the wealthy radical leader of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, who sought
to end the presence of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia. They had trained in bin Laden’s
terrorist camps in Afghanistan and learned to pilot planes in the United States. The
loss of more than three thousand lives led the United States to declare a “war against
terrorism.” The administration of U.S. president George W. Bush forged a multina-
tional coalition, which included the vital cooperation of Islamic countries such as
Pakistan, with the main goal of driving the ruling Taliban out of Afghanistan.
At first, the September 11 attacks and other lethal terrorist attacks around the
world promoted global cooperation. European countries rounded up suspected ter-
rorists and conducted the first successful trials of them in the spring of 2003. Ulti-
mately, however, the West became divided when the United States claimed that Sad-
dam Hussein was concealing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and suggested ties
between him and bin Laden’s terrorist group. Great Britain, Spain, and Poland were
among those who joined the coalition of invading forces, but some powerful Euro-
pean states — including Germany, Russia, and France — refused, sparking the anger
of many Americans, some of whom sported bumper stickers with the demand “First
Iraq, Next France” or participated in happy hours devoted to “French bashing.”
U.S. war fever mounted with the suggestion that Syria and Iran should also be
invaded, while the rest of the world condemned what seemed a sudden American
blood lust. Europeans in general, including the British public, accused the United
States of becoming a world military dictatorship to preserve its only remaining
value — wasteful consumerism. The United States countercharged that the Europeans
were too selfishly enjoying their democracy and creature comforts to help fund the
military defense of freedom under attack. The Spanish withdrew from the U.S. occu-
pation of Iraq after terrorists linked to al-Qaeda bombed four Madrid commuter
trains on March 11, 2004. The British, too, reeled when terrorists exploded bombs
in three subway cars and a bus in central London in July 2005. Barack Obama, who
was elected the first African American U.S. president in 2008, brought home all the
troops from Iraq in 2012, though the United States maintained a presence there of
military advisers. As for al-Qaeda, the United States weakened the organization by
assassinating top leaders, including Osama bin Laden in 2011.
Mandela won, South Africa — like Brazil, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and
Chile — profited from the need for vast quantities of raw materials such as oil and
ores to feed global expansion. India made strides in education and women’s rights
and calmed bitter local rivalries, but the assassination of two successive Indian prime
ministers in 1984 and 1991 raised the question of whether India would be able to
attract investment and thus continue modernization. India’s economy achieved soar-
ing if unsustained growth early in the twenty-first century, taking business from
Western firms and making global acquisitions that gave it, for example, the world’s
largest steel industry.
There was a downside to global economic interconnectedness. Beginning in
1997, when speculators brought down the Thai baht, and continuing with the col-
lapse of the Russian ruble in 1998 and the bursting of the technology bubble in the
early 2000s, the global economy suffered a series of shocks. In 2008, the real estate
bubble burst in the United States, setting in motion a financial crisis of enormous
proportions. For several years, lenders had been making home mortgages available
to U.S. consumers who could not afford them. The boom in housing made the
cessfully by providing call-center and other business services. The Internet allowed
service industries to globalize just as the manufacturing sector had done much ear-
lier through multinational corporations.
Globalization of the economy via the Internet and other technology affected the
West in complex ways. Benefiting from the booming global economy of the 1990s,
the Irish and eastern Europeans became integrated into the Western consumer econ-
omy, and by the 2000s Asians and South Americans were integrated, too. By purchas-
ing automobiles, CD players, and personal computers, non-Westerners may have
taken jobs from the West, but they often sent funds back via their new purchasing
power. For example, a twenty-one-year-old Indian woman, working for a ser vice
provider in Bangalore under the English name Sharon, used her salary to buy West-
ern consumer items such as a cell phone from the Finnish company Nokia. “As a
teenager I wished for so many things,” she said. “Now I’m my own Santa Claus.”
Some Western workers often found this global revolution threatening, as it redistrib-
uted jobs across the West and worldwide.
On the positive side, digital media enabled widespread information sharing and
allowed individuals and organizations to spread awareness of the daunting problems
of contemporary life — population explosion, scarce resources, North–South inequi-
ties, global pollution, ethnic hatred, and global terrorism — which demand, more
than ever, the exercise of humane values and rational thought. Positive social change
has occurred, thanks in part to digital media. In 2011, governments were overturned
relatively peacefully in Tunisia and Egypt because Facebook, Twitter, and other elec-
tronic media brought protesters together with a common purpose, with less public
violence than in revolutions a century earlier. Given the dramatic resurgence in con-
flict in recent years, however, claims that digital communications will ease tensions,
advance democracy, and make violence less likely remain unproven.
As it had done for centuries, the West continued to devour material from other
cultures — whether Hong Kong films, African textiles, Indian music, or Latin Ameri-
can pop culture. One of the most important influences in the West came from what
was called the boom in Latin American literature. Latin American authors developed
a style known as magical realism, which melded everyday events with Latin Ameri-
can history and geography and with elements of myth, magic, and religion. The
novels of Colombian-born Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez were trans-
lated into dozens of languages. His lush fantasies, including One Hundred Years of
Solitude (1967), Love in the Time of Cholera (1988), and many later works, portray
people of titanic ambitions and passions who endure war and all manner of personal
trials. García Márquez narrated the tradition of dictators in Latin America, but he
also paid close attention to the effects of global business. One Hundred Years of Soli-
tude, for example, closes with the machine-gunning in 1928 of thousands of workers
for the American-owned United Fruit Company because they asked for one day off
per week and breaks to use the toilet. Wherever they lived, readers snapped up the
book, which sold thirty million copies worldwide. García Márquez’s work inspired a
host of other outstanding novels in the magical realism tradition, including Laura
Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate (1989). In the 1990s, the work was translated into
two dozen languages and became a hit film because of its setting in a Mexican
kitchen during the revolution of 1910, where cooking, sexuality, and brutality are
intertwined. Innumerable authors in the West adopted aspects of this style.
Magical realism influenced a range of Western writers, including those migrat-
ing to Europe. British-born Zadie Smith, daughter of a Jamaican mother, became
a prize-winning author with her novel White Teeth (2000), which describes post-
imperial Britain through the lives of often bizarre and larger-than-life characters
from many ethnic backgrounds. Odd science fiction technology, deep emotional
wounds, and weird but hilarious situations guide a plot full of heartbreak. Equally
drawn to aspects of the magical realist style, Indian-born immigrant Salman Rushdie
published the novel The Satanic Verses (1988), which outraged Muslims around the
world because it appeared to blaspheme the Prophet Muhammad. From Iran, the
ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa (decree) promising both a monetary reward and
salvation in the afterlife to anyone who would assassinate the writer. Rushdie’s Italian
and Japanese translators were murdered, while his Norwegian publisher survived an
assassination attempt. Soaring above them all in terms of global acceptance was
British author J. K. Rowling's series of Harry Potter novels, selling half a billion cop-
ies worldwide and being translated into more than seventy languages.
As groups outside the accepted circles engaged in artistic production, battles over
culture erupted. U.S. novelist Toni Morrison became, in 1993, the first African Amer-
ican woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. In works such as Beloved (1987),
A Mercy (2008), and Home (2012), Morrison describes the nightmares, daily experi-
ences, achievements, and dreams of those who were brought as slaves to the United
States and their descendants. Some parents objected to the inclusion of Morrison’s
work in school curricula, however. Critics charged that unlike Shakespeare’s univer-
1002 Chapter 29 A New Globalism
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]
sal Western truth, the writing of African Americans, native Americans, and women
represented only propaganda, not great literature. In both the United States and
Europe, politicians on the right saw the presence of multiculturalism as a sign of
national decay similar to that brought about by immigration.
In the former Soviet bloc, artists and writers faced unique challenges. After the
Soviet Union collapsed, celebrated writers like Mikhail Bulgakov, famous in the West
for his novel The Master and Margarita (published posthumously in 1966–1967),
became known in his homeland. At the same time, the collapse put literary dissidents
out of business. In helping bring down the Soviet regime, they had lost their subject
matter — the critique of a tyrannical system. Eastern-bloc writers who formerly
found both critical and financial success in the West seemed less heroic, and some
were shown to have been part of the Soviet system of reformers. New literature
aimed at rethinking the communist experience and eastern Europe’s cultural relation-
ship to the West and to its own past. Andrei Makine, an expatriate Russian author,
described the attraction of western European culture and the role of the war and the
Gulag on the imaginations of eastern-bloc people, including teenagers. Both Dreams
of My Russian Summers (1995) and Once Upon the River Love (1994) describe young
people fantasizing about the wealth, sexiness, and material goods of western Europe
[1989 to the Present
] Global Culture and Society in the Twenty-First Century 1003
and the United States. Victor Pelevin wrote more satirically and bitingly in such
works as The Life of Insects (1993), in which insect-humans buzz around Russia try-
ing to discover who they are in the post-Soviet world. Pelevin, a Buddhist and former
engineer, wrote hilarious send-ups of politicians and the almost sacred Soviet space
program, depicting it as a media sham run from the depths of the Moscow subway
system in which hundreds of cosmonaut-celebrities are killed to prevent the truth
from getting out. For him, “any politician is a TV program,” as he showed in his
novel Homo Zapiens (1999), in which politicians are all “virtual” — that is, produced
by technical effects, clothing, and scriptwriters.
In music and the other arts, much energy was spent on recovering and absorbing
all the underground works that had been hidden since 1917. For example, music
lovers were astonished as the work of first-rate composers emerged. Those compos-
ers had written their classical works in private for fear that they might contain phras-
ings, sounds, and rhythms that would be called subversive. Meanwhile, they had
often earned a living writing for films, as did Giya Kancheli, who wrote immensely
popular music for more than forty films but was in addition a gifted composer of
classical music. Alongside great artists, ordinary people in eastern Europe rethought
the past, creating ceremonies honoring victims of the Gulag and of Stalin’s purges,
with some trying to sort out what the legacy of communism, anti-Semitism, and
massive slaughter of fellow citizens had meant to their lives and to history. By 2015,
Vladimir Putin had slowed such free reflection on the Soviet past.
Simultaneously, the United States’ success in marketing its culture, along with
the legacy of British imperialism, helped make English the dominant international
language by the end of the twentieth century. Such English words as stop, shopping,
parking, okay, weekend, and rock infiltrated dozens of non-English vocabularies.
Across Europe, English served as the main language of higher education, science, and
tourism. Already in the 1960s, French president Charles de Gaulle, fearing the cor-
ruption of the French language, had banned such new words as computer in govern-
ment documents, and succeeding administrations followed his path. The ban did not
stop the influx of English into daily life, even though the EU’s parliament and national
cultural ministries regulated the amount of American programming on television
and in cinemas.
American influence in film was dominant: films such as The Matrix Reloaded
(2003) and Avatar (2009) earned hundreds of millions of dollars from global audi-
ences. Simultaneously, however, the United States itself welcomed films such as the
British Slumdog Millionaire (2009) from around the world. “Bollywood” films —
happy, lavish films from the Indian movie industry — had a huge following in all
Western countries, even influencing the plots of some American productions. The
fastest-growing television market in the United States in the twenty-first century was
Spanish-language programming, just one more indication that even in the United
States culture was based on mixture and global exchange.
Some have called the global culture of the late twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries postmodernism, defined in part as intense stylistic mixing in the arts
1004 Chapter 29 A New Globalism
[ 1989 to the Present
]
without following an elite set of standards. Striking examples of postmodern art
abound in Western society, including the AT&T Building (now known as the Sony
Building) in New York City, which looks sleek and modern. Its entryway, however,
is a Roman arch, and its cloud-piercing top suggests eighteenth-century Chippendale
furniture. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, designed by American Frank
Gehry and considered bizarre by classical or even modern standards, includes forms,
materials, and perspectives that, by rules of earlier decades, do not belong together.
Architects working in a variety of hybrid styles completed the postunification
rebuilding of the Reichstag in Berlin, whose traditional facade was given a modern
dome of glass and steel, along with solar panels. To add to the changing reality, all
of these postmodern buildings could be visited virtually on the World Wide Web.
Some intellectuals defined postmodernism in political terms as part of the
decline of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment ideals of human rights, individual-
ism, and personal freedom, which were seen as modern. This political postmodern-
ism included the decline of the Western nation-state. A structure like the Bilbao
Guggenheim was simply an international tourist attraction rather than an institution
reflecting Spanish traditions or national purpose. It embodied consumption, global
technology, mass communications, and international migration rather than citizen-
ship, nationalism, and rights. These qualities made it a rootless structure, unlike the
Louvre in Paris, for example, which was built by the French monarchy to serve its
own purposes. Critics saw the Bilbao Guggenheim as drifting, more like the nomadic
businesswoman Thérèse, who moved between nations and cultures with no set iden-
tity. Cities and nations alike were losing their function as places providing social
roots, personal identity, or human rights.
For postmodernists of a political bent,
computers had replaced the autonomous, REVIEW QUESTION What social and cultural
questions has globalization raised?
free self and bureaucracy had rendered
representative government obsolete.
Conclusion
Postmodernist thinking has not eclipsed humane values in the global age. The
urge to find practical solutions to the daunting problems of contemporary life —
population explosion, scarce resources, pollution, global warming, ethnic hatred,
North–South inequities, and terrorism — through the careful assessment of facts still
guides public policy. Some of these global problems were briefly overshadowed by
the collapse of the Soviet empire, which initially produced human misery, rising
criminality, and the flight of population during the 1990s and even into the 2000s.
Reformers who sought improved conditions of life by bringing down Soviet and
Yugoslav communism saw unexpected bloodshed and even genocide. What appeared
to be an economic boom resulting from globalization and the collapse of commu-
nism itself had disadvantages, as a series of crises beginning in Thailand in 1997 and
finally exploding in the more sustained crisis from 2007 on cost jobs and harmed
human well-being.
Yet the past twenty-five years have also seen great improvements. Events in
South Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, for example, suggested some
progress toward democracy, even as gains at times appeared fragile. Human health
gradually improved even as scientists sought to cure the victims of global pandemics
and even to prevent such ravages altogether. The global age ushered in by the Soviet
collapse unexpectedly brought denationalization to many regions of the world, lead-
ing to weakening of borders and cooperation among former enemies. The expansion
of the European Union and the tightening of relationships within it are the best
example of this development even as they too dealt with challenges in the face of
economic adversity.
Some consequences of increasing globalization are still being determined. The
Internet and migration suggest that people’s empathy for one another grew worldwide.
1006 Chapter 29 A New Globalism
[ 1989 to the Present
]
One commentator claimed that there was little bloodshed in the collapse of the
Soviet Empire because fax machines and television circulated images of events glob-
ally, muting the violence often associated with political revolution. At the same time,
militants from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Indonesia, the Philippines, North Africa, Britain,
France, and elsewhere unleashed terrorism on the world in an attempt to push back
global forces. Each incident was shocking, including the planned murder of seven-
teen French journalists, Jews, and police in the winter of 2015. Nor did powerful
countries hesitate to wage wars against Ukraine, Chechnya, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghani-
stan and Lebanon — or against their own people, as in Libya and Syria. On a different
level, even as globalization raised standards of living and education in many parts
of the world, in other areas — such as poorer regions in Africa and Asia — people
faced disease and the dramatic social and economic crises specifically associated with
the global age. In contrast, the most hopeful developments in recent globalization
were communication in the arts and in culture more generally and the cooperation
that nations undertook with one another in the realm of health, economics, and
politics. Social media via the World Wide Web offered people in families, localities,
nations, and the world a new way of communicating. Thus, both opportunities and
challenges lie ahead for citizens of the West and of the world as they make the transi-
tion to what some are calling the Digital Age.
The challenge to the making of the West today involves the inventive human
spirit. Over the past five hundred years, the West has benefited from its scientific
and technological advances and perhaps never more so than in the Digital Age.
Although communication and information technology have brought people closer
to one another than ever before, the use of technology has made the period from
1900 to the present one of the bloodiest eras in human history — and one during
which the use of technology has threatened, and still threatens, the future of the
earth as a home for the human race. While technology has enhanced daily life, it
has also facilitated war, genocide, terrorism, and environmental deterioration, all of
which pose great challenges to the West and to the world; the use of digital media
to promote violent causes, inflame others, and network with and recruit new follow-
ers has made some of these challenges even more significant. How will the human
race adapt to the creativity the Digital Age has unleashed? How will the West and
the world manage both the promises and the challenges of Digital Age technology
to protect the human race in the years ahead?
[ 1989 to the Present
] Conclusion 1007
GERMANY
UNITED RUSSIA
CANADA 4
KINGDOM 10
9
6
FRANCE
5
UNITED STATES CHINA JAPAN
SPAIN
1 12 ITALY 2 3
7
INDIA S. KOREA
MEXICO 11 15
14
Highest rank
BRAZIL
8
AUSTRALIA
13
W E
Lowest rank
0 1,000 2,000 miles
11 Specific rank S
of country 0 1,000 2,000 kilometers
Review Questions
1. What were the major issues facing the former Soviet bloc in the 1990s and early 2000s?
2. What trends suggest that the nation-state was a declining institution at the beginning of
the twenty-first century?
3. What were the principal challenges facing the West at the beginning of the twenty-first
century?
4. What social and cultural questions has globalization raised?
Making Connections
1. In what ways were global connections at the beginning of the twenty-first century different
from the global connections at the beginning of the twentieth century?
2. How did the Western nation-state of the early twenty-first century differ from the Western
nation-state at the opening of the twentieth century?
3. Migration has been a major factor across the human past. How has it affected the West
differently in the twenty-first century?
4. Economic crises caused by climate change, the spread of disease, and trade and financial
disturbances have been constants throughout history. How does the economic crisis that
began in 2007 compare to earlier crises?
Suggested References
Studies of the globalized world describe both hopeful efforts to cure disease and survive migra-
tion and devastating effects of terrorism and ethnic conflict. Interesting works portray politics
and everyday life in post-Soviet Russia and eastern Europe.
Bass, Gary J. Freedom’s Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention. 2008.
Brier, Jennifer. Infectious Ideas: U.S. Political Response to the AIDS Crisis. 2009.
Bucur, Maria. Heroes and Victims: Remembering the War in Twentieth-Century Romania. 2009.
Burrett, Tina. Television and Presidential Power in Putin’s Russia. 2010.
Cole, Juan. The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation Changed the Middle East. 2014.
Gleich, James. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. 2011.
*Gorbachev, Mikhail. Memoirs. 1996.
Hsu, Roland, ed. Ethnic Europe: Mobility, Identity, and Conflict in a Globalized World. 2010.
Humphrey, Caroline. The Unmaking of Soviet Life: Everyday Economies after Socialism. 2002.
*Primary source.
1008
[1989 to the Present
] Chapter 29 Review 1009
Important Events
Consider three events: Internet revolution (1990s), Soviet Union is dissolved (1992),
and European Union is officially formed (1994). How did each of these events help to
bring about a more interconnected, globalized world?
This glossary contains definitions of terms and people that are central to your under-
standing of the material covered in this textbook. Each term or person in the glossary
is in boldface in the text when it is first defined. We have also included the page number
on which the full discussion of the term or person appears so that you can easily locate
the complete explanation to strengthen your historical vocabulary.
For words or names not defined here, two additional resources may be useful: the
index, which will direct you to many more topics discussed in the text, and a good
dictionary.
Abbasids (A buh sihds) (285): The dynasty of Alexander the Great (119): The fourth-
caliphs that, in 750, took over from the century b.c.e. Macedonian king whose con-
Umayyads in all of the Islamic realm except quest of the Persian Empire led to the greatly
for Spain (al-Andalus). From their new increased cultural interactions of Greece
capital at Baghdad, they presided over a and the Near East in the Hellenistic Age.
wealthy realm until the late ninth century. Alexius I (Alexius Comnenus) (332): The Byz-
abolitionists (580): Advocates of the abolition antine emperor (r. 1081–1118) whose leader-
of the slave trade and of slavery. ship marked a new triumph of the dynatoi.
absolutism (505): A system of government in His request to Pope Urban II for troops to
which the ruler claims sole and uncontestable fight the Turks turned into the First Crusade.
power. Alfred the Great (304): King of Wessex
agora (AH gore uh) (85): The central market (r. 871–899) and the first king to rule over
square of a Greek city-state, a popular gath- most of England. He organized a successful
ering place for conversation. defense against Viking invaders, had key Latin
agricultural revolution (550): Increasingly works translated into the vernacular, and
aggressive attitudes toward investment in and wrote a law code for the whole of England.
management of land that increased produc- Anabaptists (455): Sixteenth-century Protes-
tion of food in the 1700s. tants who believed that only adults could
Alexander II (713): Russian tsar (r. 1855–1881) truly have faith and accept baptism.
who initiated the age of Great Reforms and anarchism (732): The belief that people should
emancipated the serfs in 1861. not have government; it was popular among
G-1
G-2 Glossary of Key Terms and People
some peasants and workers in the last half Avignon (AH vee NYAW) papacy (399): The
of the nineteenth century and the first period (1309–1378) during which the popes
decades of the twentieth. ruled from Avignon rather than from Rome.
apostolic (ah puh STAH lihk) succession (198): baroque (buh ROHK) (498): An artistic style
The principle by which Christian bishops of the seventeenth century that featured
traced their authority back to the apostles curves, exaggerated lighting, intense emo-
of Jesus. tions, release from restraint, and even a
appeasement (879): Making concessions in the kind of artistic sensationalism.
face of grievances as a way of preventing Basil II (284): The Byzantine emperor
conflict. (r. 976–1025) who presided over the end of
apprentices (318): Boys (and occasionally the Bulgar threat (earning the name Bulgar-
girls) placed under the tutelage of a master Slayer) and the conversion of Kievan Russia
craftsman in the Middle Ages. Normally to Christianity.
unpaid, they were expected to be servants battle of Hastings (339): The battle of 1066
of their masters, with whom they lived, at that replaced the Anglo-Saxon king with a
the same time as they were learning their Norman one and thus tied England to the
trade. rest of Europe as never before.
aretê (ah reh TAY) (52): The Greek value of battle of Waterloo (653): The final battle lost
competitive individual excellence. by Napoleon; it took place near Brussels
Arianism (222): The Christian doctrine named on June 18, 1815, and led to the deposed
after Arius, who argued that Jesus was emperor’s final exile.
“begotten” by God and did not have an Beauvoir, Simone de (see MAWN duh bohv
identical nature with God the Father. WAHR) (926): Author of The Second Sex
Aristotle (118): Greek philosopher famous for (1949), a globally influential work that
his scientific investigations, development of created an interpretation of women’s age-old
logical argument, and practical ethics. inferior status from existentialist philosophy.
art nouveau (793): An early-twentieth-century Beethoven, Ludwig van (660): The German
artistic style in graphics, fashion, and house- composer (1770–1827) who helped set the
hold design that featured flowing, sinuous direction of musical romanticism; his music
lines, borrowed in large part from Asian art. used recurring and evolving themes to con-
asceticism (uh SEH tuh sih zuhm) (225): The vey the impression of natural growth.
practice of self-denial, especially through bin Laden, Osama (990): Wealthy leader of
spiritual discipline; a doctrine for Christians the militant Islamic group al-Qaeda, which
emphasized by Augustine. executed terrorist plots, including the
Atlantic system (541): The network of trade September 11, 2001, attacks on the United
established in the 1700s that bound together States, to end the presence of U.S. forces in
western Europe, Africa, and the Americas. his home country, Saudi Arabia.
Europeans sold slaves from western Africa Bismarck, Otto von (719): 1815–1898. Leading
and bought commodities that were produced Prussian politician and German prime
by the new colonial plantations in North minister who waged war in order to create
and South America and the Caribbean. a united German Empire, which was estab-
Augustine (221): Bishop in North Africa whose lished in 1871.
writings defining religious orthodoxy made Black Death (410): The term historians give to
him the most influential theologian in the disease that swept through Europe in
Western civilization. 1347–1352.
Augustus (177): The honorary name meaning Blitzkrieg (881): Literally, “lightning war”; a
“divinely favored” that the Roman Senate strategy for the conduct of war (used by the
bestowed on Octavian; it became shorthand Germans in World War II) in which motor-
for “Roman imperial ruler.” ized firepower quickly and overwhelmingly
Glossary of Key Terms and People G-3
attacks the enemy, leaving it unable to resist capitalism (318): The modern economic system
psychologically or militarily. characterized by an entrepreneurial class of
blood libel (384): The charge that Jews used property owners who employ others and
the blood of Christian children in their produce (or provide services) for a market
Passover ritual; though false, it led to mas- in order to make a profit.
sacres of Jews in cities in England, France, Carolingian (290): The Frankish dynasty that
Spain, and Germany in the thirteenth ruled a western European empire from 751
century. to the late 800s; its greatest vigor was in the
Bolívar, Simón (665): 1783–1830. The time of Charlemagne (r. 768–814) and Louis
Venezuelan-born, European-educated aris- the Pious (r. 814–840).
tocrat who became one of the leaders of the castellan (KAS tuh luhn) (302): The holder of
Latin American independence movement a castle. In the tenth and eleventh centuries,
in the 1820s. Bolivia is named after him. castellans became important local lords.
Bolshevik Revolution (831): The overthrow of They mustered men for military service,
Russia’s Provisional Government in the fall of collected taxes, and administered justice.
1917 by V. I. Lenin and his Bolshevik forces. Cavour, Camillo di (717): Prime minister
Bonaparte, Louis-Napoleon (699): 1808–1873. (1852–1861) of the kingdom of Piedmont-
Nephew of Napoleon I; he was elected presi- Sardinia and architect of a united Italy.
dent of France in 1848, declared himself chansons de geste (shahn SOHN duh ZHEST)
Emperor Napoleon III in 1852, and ruled (366): Epic poems of the twelfth century
until 1870. about knightly and heroic deeds.
Bonaparte, Napoleon (640): The French gen- Chaplin, Charlie (874): Major entertainment
eral who became First Consul in 1799 and leader, whose sympathetic portrayals of the
emperor (Napoleon I) in 1804; after losing common man and satires of Hitler helped
the battle of Waterloo in 1815, he was exiled preserve democratic values in the 1930s
to the island of St. Helena. and 1940s.
Boniface VIII (397): The pope (r. 1294–1303) Charlemagne (SHAR luh mayn) (291): The
whose clash with King Philip the Fair of Carolingian king (r. 768–814) whose con-
France left the papacy considerably weakened. quests greatly expanded the Frankish
buccaneers (547): Pirates of the Caribbean who kingdom. He was crowned emperor on
governed themselves and preyed on inter- December 25, 800.
national shipping. Charles V (451): Holy Roman Emperor
bureaucracy (510): A network of state officials (r. 1519–1556) and the most powerful ruler
carrying out orders according to a regular in sixteenth-century Europe; he reigned over
and routine line of authority. the Low Countries, Spain, Spain’s Italian
Calvin, John (452): French-born Christian and New World dominions, and the Austrian
humanist (1509–1564) and founder of Habsburg lands.
Calvinism, one of the major branches of the Chartism (697): The British movement of
Protestant Reformation; he led the reform supporters of the People’s Charter (1838),
movement in Geneva, Switzerland, from which demanded universal manhood suf-
1541 to 1564. frage, vote by secret ballot, equal electoral
Capetian (kuh PAY shuhn) dynasty (305): A districts, and other reforms.
long-lasting dynasty of French kings, taking chivalry (367): An ideal of knightly comport-
their name from Hugh Capet (r. 987–996). ment that included military prowess, bravery,
capital-intensive industry (758): A mid- to fair play, piety, and courtesy.
late-nineteenth-century development in Christ (194): Greek for “anointed one,” in
industry that required great investments of Hebrew Mashiach or in English Messiah; in
money for machinery and infrastructure to apocalyptic thought, God’s agent sent to
make a profit. conquer the forces of evil.
G-4 Glossary of Key Terms and People
Christian Democrats (910): Powerful center to World by sailing west across the Atlantic in
center-right political parties that evolved in search of a route to Asia.
the late 1940s from former Catholic parties commercial revolution (314): A term for the
of the pre–World War II period. western European development (starting
Christian humanism (448): A general intel- around 1050) of a money economy centered
lectual trend in the sixteenth century that in urban areas but affecting the countryside
coupled love of classical learning, as in as well.
Renaissance humanism, with an emphasis common law (358): Begun by Henry II
on Christian piety. (r. 1154–1189), the English royal law carried
Cicero (SIH suh roh) (161): Rome’s most out by the king’s justices in eyre (traveling
famous orator and author of the doctrine justices). It applied to the entire kingdom
of humanitas. and thus was “common” to all.
city-state (8): An urban center exercising commune (319): In a medieval town, a sworn
political and economic control over the association of citizens who formed a legal
surrounding countryside. corporate body. The commune appointed or
Civil Code (644): The French legal code formu- elected officials, made laws, kept the peace,
lated by Napoleon in 1804; it ensured equal and administered justice.
treatment under the law to all men and communists (696): Those socialists who after
guaranteed religious liberty, but it curtailed 1840 (when the word was first used) advo-
many rights of women. cated the abolition of private property in
civil disobedience (863): The act of deliberately favor of communal, collective ownership.
but peacefully breaking the law, a tactic used Concordat of Worms (326): The agreement
by Mohandas Gandhi in India and earlier between pope and emperor in 1122 that
by British suffragists to protest oppression ended the Investiture Conflict.
and obtain political change. Congress of Vienna (654): Face-to-face negotia-
civilization (3): Ways of life especially con- tions (1814–1815) between the great powers
nected with life in urban societies. to settle the boundaries of European states
classicism (531): A seventeenth-century style and determine who would rule each nation
of painting and architecture that reflected after the defeat of Napoleon.
the ideals of the art of antiquity; in classicism, conservatism (657): A political doctrine that
geometric shapes, order, and harmony of emerged after 1789 and took hold after 1815;
lines took precedence over the sensuous, it rejected much of the Enlightenment and
exuberant, and emotional forms of the the French Revolution, preferring monarchies
baroque. over republics, tradition over revolution,
cold war (900): The rivalry between the United and established religion over Enlightenment
States and the Soviet Union from 1945 to skepticism.
1989 that led to massive growth in nuclear constitutionalism (505): A system of gov-
weapons on both sides. ernment in which rulers share power
coloni (kuh LOH ny) (216): Literally, “culti- with parliaments made up of elected
vators”; tenant farmers in the Roman Empire representatives.
who became bound by law to the land they consumer revolution (549): The rapid increase
worked and whose children were legally in consumption of new staples produced in
required to continue to farm the same land. the Atlantic system as well as of other items
Colosseum (186): Rome’s fifty-thousand-seat of daily life that were previously unavailable
amphitheater built by the Flavian dynasty or beyond the reach of ordinary people.
for gladiatorial combats and other Continental System (650): The boycott of Brit-
spectacles. ish goods in France and its satellites ordered
Columbus, Christopher (444): An Italian by Napoleon in 1806; it had success but was
sailor (1451–1506) who opened up the New later undermined by smuggling.
Glossary of Key Terms and People G-5
Corn Laws (694): Tariffs on grain in Great Brit- de-Christianization (622): During the French
ain that benefited landowners by preventing Revolution, the campaign of extremist repub-
the import of cheap foreign grain; they were licans against organized churches and in
repealed by the British government in 1846. favor of a belief system based on reason.
cortes (kawr TEHZ) (396): The earliest Euro- Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
pean representative institution, called initially (615): The preamble to the French constitu-
to consent to royal wishes; first convoked in tion drafted in August 1789; it established
1188 by the king of Castile-León. the sovereignty of the nation and equal
Cortés, Hernán (445): The Spanish explorer rights for citizens.
(1485–1547) who captured the Aztec capital, decolonization (918): The process — whether
Tenochtitlán (present-day Mexico City), violent or peaceful — by which colonies
in 1519. gained their independence from the imperial
Council of Trent (459): A general council of the powers after World War II.
Catholic church that met at Trent between decurions (dih KYUR ee uhns) (189): Munici-
1545 and 1563 to set Catholic doctrine, pal Senate members in the Roman Empire
reform church practices, and defend the responsible for collecting local taxes.
church against the Protestant challenge. deists (579): Those who believe in God but give
Cuban missile crisis (931): The confrontation him no active role in human affairs. Deists
in 1962 between the United States and the of the Enlightenment believed that God had
USSR over Soviet installation of missile sites designed the universe and set it in motion
off the U.S. coast in Cuba. but no longer intervened in its functioning.
cult (59): In ancient Greece, a set of official, Delian (DEE lee un) League (82): The naval
publicly funded religious activities for a deity alliance led by Athens in the Golden Age
overseen by priests and priestesses. that became the basis for the Athenian
cult of the offensive (824): A military strategy Empire.
of constantly attacking the enemy that was demes (DEEMZ) (70): The villages and city
believed to be the key to winning World neighborhoods that formed the constituent
War I but that brought great loss of life while political units of Athenian democracy in the
failing to bring decisive victory. late Archaic Age.
cuneiform (kyoo NEE uh form) (11): The Diaspora (die ASS por a) (49): The dispersal of
earliest form of writing, invented in Meso- the Jewish population from their homeland.
potamia and done with wedge-shaped DNA (942): The genetic material that forms the
characters. basis of each cell; the discovery of its struc-
curials (KYUR ee uhls) (216): The social elite in ture in 1952 revolutionized genetics, molecu-
the Roman Empire’s cities and towns, most lar biology, and other scientific and medical
of whom were obliged to serve as decurions fields.
on municipal Senates and collect taxes for domesticity (688): An ideology prevailing in
the imperial government, paying any short- the nineteenth century that women should
falls themselves. devote themselves to their families and the
Cyrus (44): Founder of the Persian Empire. home.
Darwin, Charles (737): The English naturalist dominate (213): The openly authoritarian style
(1809–1882) who popularized the theory of Roman rule from Diocletian (r. 284–305)
of evolution by means of natural selection onward; the word was derived from domi-
and thereby challenged the biblical story of nus (“master” or “lord”) and contrasted with
creation. principate.
debasement of coinage (203): Putting less silver Dual Alliance (775): A defensive alliance
in a coin without changing its face value; between Germany and Austria-Hungary
a failed financial strategy during the third- created in 1879 as part of Bismarck’s system
century c.e. crisis in Rome. of alliances to prevent or limit war. It was
G-6 Glossary of Key Terms and People
joined by Italy in 1882 as a third partner and Enlightenment (566): The eighteenth-century
then called the Triple Alliance. intellectual movement whose proponents
dualism (117): The philosophical idea that the believed that human beings could apply a
human soul (or mind) and body are separate. critical, reasoning spirit to every problem.
dual monarchy (723): The shared power Entente Cordiale (811): An alliance between
arrangement between the Habsburg Empire Britain and France that began with an agree-
and Hungary after the Prussian defeat of the ment in 1904 to honor colonial holdings.
Austrian Empire in 1866–1867. Epicureanism (eh puh KYUR ee uh nizm)
Duma (807): The Russian parliament set up in (131): The philosophy founded by Epicurus
the aftermath of the outbreak of the Revo- of Athens to help people achieve a life of
lution of 1905. true pleasure, by which he meant “absence
dynatoi (DY nuh toy) (283): The “powerful of disturbance.”
men” who dominated the countryside of the epigrams (129): Short poems written by women
Byzantine Empire in the tenth and eleventh in the Hellenistic Age; many were about
centuries, and to some degree challenged other women and the writer’s personal
the authority of the emperor. feelings.
Edict of Milan (217): The proclamation of equites (EHK wih tehs) (164): Literally, “eques-
Roman co-emperors Constantine and trians” or “knights”; wealthy Roman business-
Licinius decreeing free choice of religion in men who chose not to pursue a government
the empire. career.
Edict of Nantes (475): The decree issued by Estates General (611): A body of deputies from
French king Henry IV in 1598 that granted the three estates, or orders, of France: the
the Huguenots a large measure of religious clergy (First Estate), the nobility (Second
toleration. Estate), and everyone else (Third Estate).
Einstein, Albert (792): Scientist whose theory ethnic cleansing (975): The mass murder —
of relativity (1905) revolutionized modern genocide — of people according to ethnicity
physics and other fields of thought. or nationality; it can also include eliminating
Eliot, George (734): The pen name of English all traces of the murdered people’s past.
novelist Mary Ann Evans (1819–1880), who Examples include the post–World War I
described the harsh reality of many ordinary elimination of minorities in eastern and
people’s lives in her works. central Europe and the rape and murders
Elizabeth I (479): English queen (r. 1558–1603) that resulted from the breakup of Yugoslavia
who oversaw the return of the Protestant in the 1990s.
Church of England and, in 1588, the success- euro (982): The common currency in seventeen
ful defense of the realm against the Spanish member states of the European Union (EU)
Armada. and of EU institutions. It went into effect
empire (12): A political state in which one or gradually, used first in business transactions
more formerly independent territories or in 1999 and entering public circulation
peoples are ruled by a single sovereign power. in 2002.
Enabling Act (868): The legislation passed in European Economic Community (EEC or
1933 suspending constitutional government Common Market) (912): A consortium of
for four years in order to meet the crisis in six European countries established in 1957
the German economy. to promote free trade and economic coop-
enlightened despots (592): Rulers — such as eration among its members; its member-
Catherine the Great of Russia, Frederick the ship and activities expanded over the years,
Great of Prussia, and Joseph II of Austria — and it later evolved into the European
who tried to promote Enlightenment reforms Union (EU).
without giving up their own supreme politi- European Union (EU) (982): Formerly the
cal power; also called enlightened absolutists. European Economic Community (EEC, or
Glossary of Key Terms and People G-7
Common Market), and then the European (The word triumvirate means “group of
Community (EC); formed in 1994 by the three.”)
terms of the Maastricht Treaty. Its members Five Pillars of Islam (253): The five essential
have political ties through the European practices of Islam, namely, the zakat (alms);
parliament as well as long-standing common the fast of Ramadan; the hajj (pilgrimage to
economic, legal, and business mechanisms. Mecca); the salat (formal worship); and the
existentialism (926): A philosophy prominent shahadah (profession of faith).
after World War II developed primarily by five-year plans (865): Centralized programs
Jean-Paul Sartre to stress the importance of for economic development begun in 1929
action in the creation of an authentic self. by Joseph Stalin and copied by Adolf Hitler;
family allowance (872): Government funds these plans set production priorities and
given to families with children to boost gave production targets for individual indus-
the birthrate in democratic countries (e.g., tries and agriculture.
Sweden during the Great Depression) and Fourteen Points (830): U.S. president Woodrow
totalitarian ones alike. Wilson’s World War I peace proposal; based
fascism (853): A doctrine that emphasizes vio- on settlement rather than on conquest, it
lence and glorifies the state over the people encouraged the surrender of the Central
and their individual or civil rights; in Italy, Powers.
the Fascist Party took hold in the 1920s as Fourth Crusade (370): The crusade that lasted
Mussolini consolidated power. from 1202 to 1204; its original goal was to
Fatimids (FAT ih mihds) (287): Members of recapture Jerusalem, but the crusaders ended
the tenth-century Shi‘ite dynasty who derived up conquering Constantinople instead.
their name from Fatimah, the daughter of Fourth Lateran Council (380): The council
Muhammad and wife of Ali; they dominated that met in 1215 and covered the important
in parts of North Africa, Egypt, and even topics of Christianity, among them the nature
Syria. of the sacraments, the obligations of the
feudalism (300): The whole complex of lords, laity, and policies toward heretics and Jews.
vassals, and fiefs (from the Latin feodum) as Franciscans (368): The religious order founded
an institution. The nature of that institution by St. Francis (c. 1182–1226) and dedicated
varied from place to place, and in some to poverty and preaching, particularly in
regions it did not exist at all. towns and cities.
fiefs (299): Grants of land, theoretically tempo- Franco, Francisco (877): 1892–1975. Right-wing
rary, from lords to their noble dependents general who in 1936 successfully overthrew
( fideles or, later, vassals) given in recognition the democratic republic in Spain and insti-
of services, usually military, done or expected tuted a repressive dictatorship.
in the future; also called benefices. Frederick I (Barbarossa) (361): King of Ger-
First Consul (641): The most important of many (r. 1152–1190) and emperor (crowned
the three consuls established by the French 1155) who tried to cement the power of the
Constitution of 1800; the title, given to German king through conquest (for example,
Napoleon Bonaparte, was taken from of northern Italy) and the bonds of vassalage.
ancient Rome. Frederick II (392): The grandson of Barbarossa
First Crusade (333): The massive armed pil- who became king of Sicily and Germany, as
grimage to Jerusalem that lasted from 1096 well as emperor (r. 1212–1250), who allowed
to 1099. It resulted in the massacre of Jews in the German princes a free hand as he battled
the Rhineland (1095), the sack of Jerusalem the pope for control of Italy.
(1099), and the setting up of the crusader Frederick William of Hohenzollern (526):
states. The Great Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia
First Triumvirate (167): The coalition formed (r. 1640–1688) who brought his nation
in 60 b.c.e. by Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar. through the end of the Thirty Years’ War
G-8 Glossary of Key Terms and People
and then succeeded in welding his scattered Gothic architecture (352): The style of archi-
lands into an absolutist state. tecture that started in the Île-de-France in
Freemasons (587): Members of Masonic the twelfth century and eventually became
lodges, where nobles and middle-class pro- the quintessential cathedral style of the
fessionals (and even some artisans) shared Middle Ages, characterized by pointed arches,
interest in the Enlightenment and reform. ribbed vaults, and stained-glass windows.
Freud, Sigmund (789): Viennese medical Great Famine (402): The shortage of food and
doctor and founder, in the late nineteenth accompanying social ills that besieged
century, of psychoanalysis, a theory of northern Europe between 1315 and 1322.
mental processes and problems and a method Great Fear (614): The term used by historians
of treating them. to describe the French rural panic of 1789,
Gladstone, William (771): 1809–1898. Liberal which led to peasant attacks on aristocrats or
politician and prime minister of Great Brit- on seigneurial records of peasants’ dues.
ain who innovated in popular campaigning Great Persecution (217): The violent program
and who criticized British imperialism. initiated by Diocletian in 303 to make
glasnost (964): Literally “openness” or Christians convert to traditional religion or
“publicity”; a policy instituted in the 1980s by risk confiscation of their property and even
Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev calling death.
for greater openness in speech and in think- Great Schism (418): The papal dispute of
ing, which translated to the reduction of 1378–1417 when the church had two and
censorship in publishing, radio, television, even (between 1409 and 1417) three popes.
and other media. The Great Schism was ended by the Council
globalization (974): The interconnection of of Constance.
labor, capital, ideas, services, and goods Green Party (987): A political party first
around the world. Although globalization formed in West Germany in 1979 to bring
has existed for hundreds of years, the late about environmentally sound policies. It
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries spread across Europe and around the world
are seen as more global because of the speed thereafter.
with which people, goods, and ideas travel Gregorian reform (324): The papal move-
the world. ment for church reform associated with
global warming (987): An increase in the Gregory VII (r. 1073–1085); its ideals
temperature of the earth’s lower atmosphere included ending three practices: the purchase
resulting from a buildup of chemical of church offices, clerical marriage, and lay
emissions. investiture.
Glorious Revolution (519): The events of 1688 Gregory of Tours (265): Bishop of Tours (in
when Tories and Whigs replaced England’s Gaul) from 573 to 594, the chief source for
monarch James II with his Protestant daugh- the history and culture of the Merovingian
ter, Mary, and her husband, Dutch ruler kingdoms.
William of Orange; William and Mary agreed Gregory the Great (270): The pope (r. 590–604)
to a Bill of Rights that guaranteed rights to who sent missionaries to Anglo-Saxon
Parliament. England, wrote influential books, tried to
Golden Horde (400): The political institution reform the church, and had contact with
set up by the Mongols in Russia, lasting the major ruling families of Europe and
from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. Byzantium.
Gorbachev, Mikhail (963): Leader of the Soviet guild (318): A trade organization within a
Union (1985–1991) who instituted reforms city or town that controlled product quality
such as glasnost and perestroika, thereby and cost and outlined members’ responsi-
contributing to the collapse of Communist bilities. Guilds were also social and religious
rule in the Soviet bloc and the USSR. associations.
Glossary of Key Terms and People G-9
Hammurabi (ha muh RAH bee) (14): King of Hijra (HIJ ruh) (252): The emigration of
Babylonia in the eighteenth century b.c.e., Muhammad from Mecca to Medina. Its
famous for his law code. date, 622, marks the year 1 of the Islamic
Hanseatic League (429): A league of northern calendar.
European cities formed in the fourteenth Hitler, Adolf (867): 1889–1945. Chancellor
century to protect their mutual interests in of Germany (1933–1945) who, with con-
trade and defense. siderable backing, overturned democratic
heliocentrism (493): The view articulated by government, created the Third Reich, perse-
Polish clergyman Nicolaus Copernicus that cuted millions, and ultimately led Germany
the earth and other planets revolve around and the world into World War II.
the sun. Homer (52): Greece’s first and most famous
Hellenistic (122): An adjective meaning “Greek- author, who composed The Iliad and The
like” that is today used as a chronological Odyssey.
term for the period 323–30 b.c.e. home rule (772): The right to an independent
helot (65): A slave owned by the Spartan city- parliament demanded by the Irish and
state; such slaves came from parts of Greece resisted by the British from the second half
conquered by the Spartans. of the nineteenth century on.
Henry II (355): King of England (r. 1154–1189) hoplite (60): A heavily armed Greek infantry-
who ended the period of civil war there and man. Hoplites constituted the main strike
affirmed and expanded royal powers. He is force of a city-state’s militia.
associated with the creation of common law hubris (HYOO bris) (102): The Greek term for
in England. violent arrogance.
Henry IV (324): King of Germany humanism (422): A literary and linguistic
(r. 1056–1106), crowned emperor in movement cultivated in particular during
1084. From 1075 until his death, he was the Renaissance (1350–1600) and founded
embroiled in the Investiture Conflict with on reviving classical Latin and Greek texts,
Pope Gregory VII. styles, and values.
Henry VIII (453): The English king humanitas (161): The Roman orator Cicero’s
(r. 1509–1547) who first opposed the Prot- ideal of “humaneness,” meaning generous
estant Reformation and then broke with and honest treatment of others based on
the Catholic church, naming himself head natural law.
of the Church of England in the Act of
Hundred Years’ War (413): The long war
Supremacy of 1534.
between England and France, 1337–1453
Heraclius (her uh KLY uhs) (257): The Byzan- (actually 116 years); it produced numerous
tine emperor who reversed the fortunes of social upheavals yet left both states more
war with the Persians in the first quarter of powerful than before.
the seventh century.
hunter-gatherers (5): Human beings who roam
heresy (199): False doctrine; specifically, the to hunt and gather food in the wild and do
beliefs banned for Christians by councils of not live in permanent, settled communities.
bishops.
iconoclasm (261): Literally, “icon breaking”;
hetaira (heh TYE ruh) (92): A witty and attrac- referring to the destruction of icons, or
tive woman who charged fees to entertain at images of holy people. Byzantine emperors
a symposium. banned icons from 726 to 787; a modified
hierarchy (4): The system of ranking people ban was revived in 815 and lasted until 843.
in society according to their status and icons (261): Images of holy people such as Jesus,
authority. Mary, and the saints. Controversy arose in
hieroglyphic (19): The ancient Egyptian picto- Byzantium over the meaning of such images.
graphic writing system for official texts. The iconoclasts considered them “idols,”
G-10 Glossary of Key Terms and People
but those who adored icons maintained that Jacobin Club (618): A French political club
they manifested the physical form of those formed in 1789 that inspired the formation
who were holy. of a national network whose members domi-
ideology (674): A word coined during the nated the revolutionary government during
French Revolution to refer to a coherent the Terror.
set of beliefs about the way the social and Jacquerie (zhah kuh REE) (416): The 1358 upris-
political order should be organized. ing of French peasants against the nobles
imperialism (689): European dominance of amid the Hundred Years’ War; it was brutally
the non-West through economic exploita- put down.
tion and political rule; the word (as distinct Jesuits (460): Members of the Society of Jesus, a
from colonialism, which usually implied Catholic religious order founded by Ignatius
establishment of settler colonies, often with of Loyola (1491–1556) and approved by the
slavery) was coined in the mid-nineteenth pope in 1540. Jesuits served as missionaries
century. and educators all over the world.
impressionism (766): A mid- to late-nineteenth- jihad (252): In the Qur’an, the word means
century artistic style that captured the “striving in the way of God.” This can mean
sensation of light in images, derived from both striving to live righteously and striving to
Japanese influences and in opposition to the confront unbelievers, even as far as holy war.
realism of photographs. Joan of Arc (414): A peasant girl (1412–1431)
indulgence (419): A step beyond confession and whose conviction that God had sent her to
penance, an indulgence (normally granted save France in fact helped France win the
by popes or bishops) lifted the temporal Hundred Years’ War.
punishment still necessary for a sin already journeymen/journeywomen (318): Laborers
forgiven. Normally, that punishment was in the Middle Ages whom guildmasters
said to take place in purgatory. But it could hired for a daily wage to help them produce
be remitted through good works (including their products.
prayers and contributing money to worthy Julian the Apostate (219): The Roman emperor
causes). (r. 361–363) who rejected Christianity and
Industrial Revolution (674): The transforma- tried to restore traditional religion as the
tion of life in the Western world over several state religion. Apostate means “renegade from
decades in the late eighteenth and early the faith.”
nineteenth centuries as a result of the intro- Julio-Claudians (184): The ruling family of the
duction of steam-driven machinery, large early principate from Augustus through Nero,
factories, and a new working class. descended from the aristocratic families of
Innocent III (380): The pope (r. 1198–1216) the Julians and the Claudians.
who called the Fourth Lateran Council; he Justinian and Theodora (236): Sixth-century
was the most powerful, respected, and pres- emperor and empress of the eastern Roman
tigious of medieval popes. Empire, famous for waging costly wars to
Investiture Conflict (325): The confrontation reunite the empire.
between Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Kennedy, John Fitzgerald (931): U.S. president
Henry IV that began in 1075 over the (1961–1963) who faced off with Soviet
appointment of prelates in some Italian cities leader Nikita Khrushchev in the Cuban
and grew into a dispute over the nature of missile crisis.
church leadership. It ended in 1122 with the Khrushchev, Nikita (nyih KEE tuh kroosh
Concordat of Worms. CHAWF) (916): Leader of the USSR from
in vitro fertilization (943): A process devel- c. 1955 until his dismissal in 1964; known
oped in the 1970s by which human eggs are for his speech denouncing Stalin, creation of
fertilized with sperm outside the body and the “thaw,” and participation in the Cuban
then implanted in a woman’s uterus. missile crisis.
Glossary of Key Terms and People G-11
Koine (koy NAY) (135): The “common” or Levellers (516): Disgruntled soldiers in Oliver
“shared” form of the Greek language that Cromwell’s New Model Army who in 1647
became the international language in the wanted to “level” social differences and
Hellenistic period. extend political participation to all male
Kollontai, Aleksandra (852): A Russian activist property owners.
and minister of public welfare in the Bolshe- liberalism (693): An economic and political
vik government who promoted social pro- ideology that — tracing its roots to John
grams such as birth control and day care for Locke in the seventeenth century and Enlight-
children of working parents. enment philosophers in the eighteenth —
Kulturkampf (737): Literally, “culture war”; a emphasized free trade and the constitutional
term used in the 1870s by German chancel- guarantees of individual rights such as free-
lor Otto von Bismarck to describe his fight dom of speech and religion; its adherents
to weaken the power of the Catholic church. stood between conservatives on the right
and revolutionaries on the left in the nine-
ladder of offices (154): The series of Roman
teenth century.
elective government offices from quaestor
to aedile to praetor to consul. limited liability corporation (758): A legal
entity, such as a factory or other enterprise,
laissez-faire (LEH say FEHR) (581): French for
developed in the second half of the nine-
“leave alone”; an economic doctrine devel-
teenth century whose owners were liable for
oped by Adam Smith that advocated freeing
only restricted (limited) amounts of money
the economy from government intervention
owed to creditors in the case of financial
and control.
failure.
lay investiture (322): The installation of clerics
Linear B (33): The Mycenaeans’ pictographic
into their offices by lay rulers.
script for writing Greek.
League of Nations (838): The international Lombards (258): The people who settled in
organization set up following World War I Italy during the sixth century, following
to maintain peace by arbitrating disputes Justinian’s reconquest. A king ruled the
and promoting collective security. north of Italy, while dukes ruled the south.
Lebensraum (876): Literally, “living space”; the In between was the papacy, which felt threat-
land that Hitler proposed to conquer so that ened both by Lombard Arianism and by the
the people he defined as true Aryans might Lombards’ geographical proximity to Rome.
have sufficient space to live their noble lives. Louis IX (393): A French king (r. 1226–1270)
Lenin, V. I. (831): Bolshevik leader who executed revered as a military leader and a judge; he
the Bolshevik Revolution in the fall of 1917, was declared a saint after his death.
took Russia out of World War I, and imposed Louis XIV (506): French king (r. 1643–1715)
communism in Russia. who in theory personified absolutism but
Leopold II (747): King of Belgium (r. 1865–1909) in practice had to gain the cooperation of
who sponsored the takeover of the Congo nobles, local officials, and even the ordinary
in Africa, which he ran with great violence subjects who manned his armies and paid
against native peoples. his taxes.
Lepanto (477): A site off the Greek coast where, Louis XVI (610): French king (r. 1774–1792)
in 1571, the allied Catholic forces of Spain’s who was tried for treason during the
king Philip II, Venice, and the papacy defeated French Revolution; he was executed on
the Ottoman Turks in a great sea battle; the January 21, 1793.
victory gave the Christian powers control of Luther, Martin (450): A German monk
the Mediterranean. (1483–1546) who started the Protestant
leprosy (384): A bacterial disease that causes Reformation in 1517 by challenging the
skin lesions and attacks the peripheral nerves. practices and doctrines of the Catholic
In the later Middle Ages, lepers were isolated church and advocating salvation through
from society. faith alone.
G-12 Glossary of Key Terms and People
Lyceum (118): The school for research and materialism (131): A philosophical doctrine of
teaching in a wide range of subjects founded the Hellenistic Age that denied metaphysics
by Aristotle in Athens in 335 b.c.e. and claimed instead that only things consist-
Maastricht Treaty (982): The agreement ing of matter truly exist.
among the members of the European Com- Mazzini, Giuseppe (691): An Italian nationalist
munity to have a closer alliance, including (1805–1872) who founded Young Italy, a
the use of common passports and eventually secret society to promote Italian unity. He
the development of a common currency; believed that a popular uprising would create
by the terms of this treaty, the European a unified Italy.
Community became the European Union Medici (MEH dih chee) (434): The ruling family
(EU) in 1994. of Florence during much of the fifteenth to
Maat (MAH aht) (20): The Egyptian goddess the seventeenth centuries.
embodying truth, justice, and cosmic order. Médicis, Catherine de (974): Italian-born
(The word maat means “what is right.”) mother of French king Charles IX
Magna Carta (359): Literally “Great Charter”; (r. 1560–1574); she served as regent and
the charter of baronial liberties that King tried but failed to prevent religious warfare
John was forced to agree to in 1215. It between Calvinists and Catholics.
implied that royal power was subject to Mediterranean polyculture (30): The cultiva-
custom and law. tion of olives, grapes, and grains in a single,
mandate system (838): The political control interrelated agricultural system.
over the former colonies and territories of Mehmed II (417): The sultan under whom the
the German and Ottoman Empires granted Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople
to the victors of World War I by the League in 1453.
of Nations.
mercantilism (511): The economic doctrine
Marie-Antoinette (610): Wife of Louis XVI and that governments must intervene to increase
queen of France who was tried for treason national wealth by whatever means possible.
during the French Revolution and executed
in October 1793. Merovingian (mehr oh VIN jian) dynasty (262):
The royal dynasty that ruled Gaul from
Marshall Plan (905): A post–World War II about 486 to 751.
program funded by the United States to get
Europe back on its feet economically and mestizo (547): A person born to a Spanish
thereby reduce the appeal of communism. father and a native American mother.
It played an important role in the rebirth of metaphysics (116): Philosophical ideas about
European prosperity in the 1950s. the ultimate nature of reality beyond the
martyr (197): Greek for “witness,” the term for reach of human senses.
someone who dies for his or her religious Methodism (584): A religious movement
beliefs. founded by John Wesley (1703–1791) that
Marxism (732): A body of thought about the broke with the Church of England and
organization of production, social inequality, insisted on strict self-discipline and a
and the processes of revolutionary change “methodical” approach to religious study
as devised by the philosopher and economist and observance.
Karl Marx. metic (90): A foreigner granted permanent resi-
masters (318): Men (and occasionally women) dence status in Athens in return for paying
who, having achieved expertise in a craft, taxes and serving in the military.
ran the guilds in the Middle Ages. They Metternich, Klemens von (KLAY mehnts fawn
had to be rich enough to have their own MEH tur nihk) (654): An Austrian prince
shop and tools and to pay an entry fee into (1773–1859) who took the lead in devising
the guild. Often their positions were the post-Napoleonic settlement arranged by
hereditary. the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815).
Glossary of Key Terms and People G-13
Milosevic, Slobodan (975): President of Serbia nationalism (691): An ideology that arose in
(1989–1997) who pushed for Serb control the nineteenth century and that holds that
of post-Communist Yugoslavia; in 2002, he all peoples derive their identities from their
was tried for crimes against humanity in the nations, which are defined by common
ethnic cleansing that accompanied the disso- language, shared cultural traditions, and
lution of the Yugoslav state. sometimes religion.
mir (mihr) (714): A Russian farm community nation-state (716): An independent political
that provided for holding land in common unit of modern times based on representing
and regulating the movements of any indi- a united people.
vidual by the group. Nazi-Soviet Pact (881): The agreement reached
Mitteleuropa (miht el oy ROH pah) (811): in 1939 by Germany and the Soviet Union
Literally, “central Europe,” but used by mili- in which both agreed not to attack the other
tary leaders in Germany before World War I in case of war and to divide any conquered
to refer to land in both central and eastern territories.
Europe that they hoped to acquire. neoliberalism (961): A theory first promoted
modernism (791): Artistic styles around the by British prime minister Margaret Thatcher,
turn of the twentieth century that featured a calling for a return to liberal principles of the
break with realism in art and literature and nineteenth century, including the reduction
with lyricism in music. of welfare-state programs and the cutting of
taxes for the wealthy to promote economic
moral dualism (46): The belief that the world growth.
is the arena for an ongoing battle for control
Neoplatonism (201): Plotinus’s spiritual
between divine forces of good and evil.
philosophy, based mainly on Plato’s ideas,
Morrison, Toni (1001): The first African which was very influential for Christian
American woman to win the Nobel Prize for intellectuals.
Literature; her works include Beloved (1987),
new unionism (769): A nineteenth-century
Jazz (1992), and A Mercy (2008).
development in labor organizing that replaced
mos maiorum (144): Literally, “the way of the local craft-based unions with those that ex-
elders”; the set of Roman values handed tended membership to all kinds of workers.
down from the ancestors. new woman (787): A woman who, from the
Muhammad (250): The prophet of Islam 1880s on, dressed practically, moved about
(c. 570–632). He united a community of freely, and often supported herself.
believers around his religious tenets, above Nicene Creed (223): The doctrine agreed
all that there was one God whose words had on by the council of bishops convened by
been revealed to him by the angel Gabriel. Constantine at Nicaea in 325 to defend
Later, written down, these revelations became orthodoxy against Arianism. It declared that
the Qur’an. God the Father and Jesus were homoousion
multinational corporation (944): A business (“of one substance”).
that operates in many foreign countries by Nicholas II (799): Tsar of Russia (r. 1894–1917)
sending large segments of its manufacturing, who promoted anti-Semitism and resisted
finance, sales, and other business compo- reform in the empire.
nents abroad. Nietzsche, Friedrich (791): Late-nineteenth-
Mussolini, Benito (852): Leader of Italian fascist century German philosopher who called for
movement and, after the March on Rome in a new morality in the face of God’s death at
1922, dictator of Italy. the hands of science and whose theories
mystery cults (90): Religious worship that pro- were reworked by his sister to emphasize
vided initiation into secret knowledge and militarism and anti-Semitism.
divine protection, including hope for a better Nightingale, Florence (713): The Englishwoman
afterlife. who in the nineteenth century pioneered
G-14 Glossary of Key Terms and People
the professionalization of nursing and the the late 1960s in which West Germany
use of statistics in the study of public health sought better economic relations with the
and the well-being of the military. Communist countries of eastern Europe.
Nixon, Richard (956): U.S. president ostracism (AHS truh sizm) (84): An annual
(1969–1974) who escalated the Vietnam War, procedure in Athenian radical democracy
worked for accommodation with China, by which a man could be voted out of the
and resigned from the presidency after trying city-state for ten years; its purpose was to
to block free elections. prevent tyranny.
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) Ottonian (ah TOH nee uhn) kings (306): The
(985): Charitable foundations and activist tenth- and early-eleventh-century kings of
groups such as Doctors Without Borders Germany; beginning with Otto I (r. 936–973),
that work outside of governments, often on they claimed the imperial crown and worked
political, economic, and relief issues; also, closely with their bishops to rule a vast
philanthropic organizations such as the territory.
Rockefeller, Ford, and Open Society Founda- outwork (755): The nineteenth-century process
tions that shape economic and social policy of having some aspects of industrial work
and the course of political reform. done outside factories in individual homes.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Pacific tigers (994): Countries of East Asia so
(907): The security alliance formed in 1949 named because of their massive economic
to provide a unified military force for the growth, much of it from the 1980s on; fore-
United States, Canada, and their allies in most among these were Japan and China.
western Europe and Scandinavia. palace society (29): Minoan and Mycenaean
Nuremberg Laws (870): Legislation enacted by social and political organization centered on
the Nazis in 1935 that deprived Jewish Ger- multichambered buildings housing the rulers
mans of their citizenship and imposed many and the administration of the state.
other hardships on them. Pankhurst, Emmeline (797): 1858–1928.
Opium War (690): War between China and Organizer of a militant branch of the British
Great Britain (1839–1842) that resulted in suffrage movement, working actively for
the opening of four Chinese ports to Europe- women’s right to vote.
ans and British sovereignty over Hong Kong. Pan-Slavism (723): The nineteenth-century
optimates (op tee MAH tehs) (164): The Roman movement calling for the unity of all Slavs
political faction supporting the “best,” or across national and regional boundaries.
highest, social class; established during the Parnell, Charles Stewart (772): Irish politician
late republic. (1846–1891) whose advocacy of home
orders (152): The two groups of people in the rule was a thorn in the side of the British
Roman republic — patricians (aristocratic establishment.
families) and plebeians (all other citizens). Parthenon (PAR thuh non) (85): The massive
Organization of Petroleum Exporting temple to Athena as a warrior goddess built
Countries (OPEC) (958): A consortium atop the Athenian acropolis in the Golden
that regulated the supply and export of oil Age of Greece.
and that acted with more unanimity after partition of Poland (594): Division of one-
the United States supported Israel against the third of Poland-Lithuania’s territory between
Arabs in the wars of the late 1960s and early Prussia, Russia, and Austria in 1772.
1970s. patria potestas (PAH tree uh po TEHS tahs)
orthodoxy (199): True doctrine; specifically, the (146): Literally, “father’s power”; the legal
beliefs defined for Christians by councils of power a Roman father possessed over the
bishops. children and slaves in his family, including
Ostpolitik (949): A policy initiated by West owning all their property and having the
German foreign minister Willy Brandt in right to punish them, even with death.
Glossary of Key Terms and People G-15
patriarchy (10): Dominance by men in society ernization of Russia and built a new capital
and politics. city named after himself, St. Petersburg.
patrilineal (303): Relating to or tracing descent Petrarch, Francis (422): An Italian poet
through the paternal line (for example, (1304–1374) who revived the styles of
through the father and grandfather). classical authors; he is considered the first
patron-client system (145): The interlocking Renaissance humanist.
network of mutual obligations between Philip II (476): King of Spain (r. 1556–1598)
Roman patrons (social superiors) and clients and the most powerful ruler in Europe; he
(social inferiors). reigned over the western Habsburg lands
Pax Romana (176): Literally “Roman Peace”; and all the Spanish colonies recently settled
the two centuries of relative peace and pros- in the New World.
perity in the Roman Empire under the early Philip II (Philip Augustus) (359): King of
principate begun by Augustus. France (r. 1180–1223) who bested the
Peace of Augsburg (467): The treaty of 1555 English king John and won most of John’s
that settled disputes between Holy Roman continental territories, thus immeasurably
Emperor Charles V and his Protestant strengthening the power of the Capetian
princes. It recognized the Lutheran church dynasty.
and established the principle that all Catho- philosophes (fee luh SAWF) (576): French for
lic or Lutheran princes enjoyed the sole “philosophers”; public intellectuals of the
right to determine the religion of their lands Enlightenment who wrote on subjects rang-
and subjects. ing from current affairs to art criticism with
Peace of God (303): A movement begun by the goal of furthering reform in society.
bishops in the south of France around 990, Pietism (555): A Protestant revivalist movement
first to limit the violence done to property of the early eighteenth century that empha-
and to the unarmed, and later, with the Truce sized deeply emotional individual religious
of God, to limit fighting between warriors. experience.
Peace of Paris (836): The series of peace treaties plantation (542): A large tract of land that pro-
(1919–1920) that provided the settlement of duced staple crops such as sugar, coffee, and
World War I. The Treaty of Versailles with tobacco; was farmed by slave labor; and was
Germany was the centerpiece of the Peace owned by a colonial settler.
of Paris.
Plato (116): A follower of Socrates who became
Peace of Westphalia (484): The settlement Greece’s most famous philosopher.
(1648) of the Thirty Years’ War; it established
enduring religious divisions in the Holy plebiscites (PLEH buh sites) (155): Resolutions
Roman Empire by which Lutheranism would passed by the Plebeian Assembly; such reso-
dominate in the north, Calvinism in the lutions gained the force of law in 287 b.c.e.
area of the Rhine River, and Catholicism in polis (54): The Greek city-state, an independent
the south. community of citizens not ruled by a king.
perestroika (963): Literally, “restructuring”; politiques (poh lih TEEK) (975): Political
an economic policy instituted in the 1980s advisers during the sixteenth-century
by Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev French Wars of Religion who argued that
calling for the introduction of market compromise in matters of religion would
mechanisms and the achievement of greater strengthen the monarchy.
efficiency in manufacturing, agriculture, polytheism (10): The belief in and worship of
and services. multiple gods.
Pericles (PEHR uh kleez) (83): Athens’s political pop art (947): A style in the visual arts that
leader during the Golden Age. mimicked advertising and consumerism
Peter the Great (560): Russian tsar Peter I and that used ordinary objects as a part of
(r. 1689–1725), who undertook the West- paintings and other compositions.
G-16 Glossary of Key Terms and People
reconquista (ray con KEE stuh) (324): The Romanization (191): The spread of Roman law
collective name for the wars waged by the and culture in the provinces of the Roman
Christian princes of Spain against the Empire.
Muslim-ruled regions to their south. These romanticism (584): An artistic movement of
wars were considered holy, akin to the the late eighteenth and early nineteenth cen-
crusades. turies that glorified nature, emotion, genius,
redistributive economy (10): A system in and imagination.
which state officials control the production Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (zhahn zhahk roo
and distribution of goods. SOH) (581): One of the most important
Reform Act of 1884 (771): British legislation philosophes (1712–1778); he argued that
that granted the right to vote to a mass male only a government based on a social contract
citizenry. among the citizens could make people truly
Reform Bill of 1832 (668): A measure passed moral and free.
by the British Parliament to increase the ruler cults (136): Cults that involved worship of
number of male voters by about 50 percent a Hellenistic ruler as a savior god.
and give representation to new cities in Rushdie, Salman (1001): Immigrant British
the north; it set a precedent for widening author whose novel The Satanic Verses (1988)
suffrage. led the ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran
res publica (REHS POOB lih kuh) (150): to issue a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s murder.
Literally, “the people’s matter” or “the public Russification (716): A program for the integra-
business”; the Romans’ name for their re- tion of Russia’s many nationality groups that
public and the source of our word republic. involved the forced learning of the Russian
restoration (655): The epoch after the fall of language and the practice of Russian Ortho-
Napoleon, in which the Congress of Vienna dox religion as well as the settlement of
aimed to “restore” as many regimes as pos- ethnic Russians among other nationality
sible to their former rulers. groups.
revocation of the Edict of Nantes (510): sacraments (327): In the Catholic church, the
French king Louis XIV’s 1685 decision to institutionalized means by which God’s
eliminate the rights of Calvinists granted heavenly grace is transmitted to Christians.
in the edict of 1598; Louis banned all Cal- Examples of sacraments include baptism,
vinist public activities and forced those the Eucharist (communion), and marriage.
who refused to embrace the state religion salon (534): An informal gathering held regu-
to flee. larly in a private home and presided over
Robespierre, Maximilien (roh behs PYEHR) by a socially eminent woman; salons spread
(619): A lawyer from northern France who, from France in the seventeenth century to
as leader of the Committee of Public Safety, other countries in the eighteenth century.
laid out the principles of a republic of virtue samizdat (950): A key form of dissident activity
and of the Terror; his arrest and execution across the Soviet bloc in which individuals
in July 1794 brought an end to the Terror. reproduced government-suppressed publica-
rococo (554): A style of painting that emphasized tions by hand and passed them from reader
irregularity and asymmetry, movement and to reader, thus building a foundation for the
curvature, but on a smaller, more intimate successful resistance of the 1980s.
scale than the baroque. Sand, George (685): The pen name of French
Romanesque (351): An architectural style that novelist Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin
flourished in Europe between about 1000 Dudevant (1804–1876), who showed her
and 1150. It is characterized by solid, heavy independence in the 1830s by dressing like a
forms and semicircular arches and vaults. man and smoking cigars. The term George-
Romanesque buildings were often decorated Sandism became an expression of disdain
with fanciful sculpture and wall paintings. for independent women.
G-18 Glossary of Key Terms and People
Sappho (SAF oh) (71): The most famous woman social contract (520): The doctrine, originated
lyric poet of ancient Greece, a native of by Hugo Grotius and argued by both
Lesbos. Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, that all
Schlieffen Plan (825): The Germans’ strategy political authority derives not from divine
in World War I that called for attacks on right but from an implicit contract between
two fronts — concentrating first on France citizens and their rulers.
to the west and then turning east to attack socialism (695): A social and political ideology,
Russia. originating in the early nineteenth century,
scholasticism (385): The method of logical that advocated the reorganization of society
inquiry used by the scholastics, the scholars to overcome the new tensions created by
of the medieval universities; it applied industrialization and restore social harmony
Aristotelian logic to biblical and other authori- through communities based on cooperation.
tative texts in an attempt to summarize and Socratic method (97): The Athenian philoso-
reconcile all knowledge. pher Socrates’ method of teaching through
scientific method (493): The combination of conversation, in which he asked probing
experimental observation and mathematical questions to make his listeners examine their
deduction used to determine the laws of most cherished assumptions.
nature; first developed in the seventeenth Solidarity (965): A Polish labor union
century, it became the secular standard of founded in 1980 by Lech Walesa and Anna
truth. Walentynowicz that contested Communist
Scott, Sir Walter (662): A prolific author Party programs and eventually succeeded
(1771–1832) of popular historical novels; in ousting the party from the Polish
he also collected and published traditional government.
Scottish ballads and wrote poetry. Solon (68): Athenian political reformer whose
Sea Peoples (34): The diverse groups of changes promoted early democracy.
raiders who devastated the eastern Mediter- Sophists (SAH fists) (95): Competitive intellec-
ranean region in the period of violence tuals and teachers in ancient Greece who
1200–1000 b.c.e. offered expensive courses in persuasive
Second International (770): A transnational public speaking and new ways of philosophic
organization of workers established in and religious thinking beginning around
1889, mostly committed to Marxian 450 b.c.e.
socialism. South African War (803): The war (1899–1902)
secularization (492): The long-term trend between Britain and the Boer (originally
toward separating state power and science Dutch) inhabitants of South Africa for con-
from religious faith, making the latter a trol of the region; also called the Boer War.
private domain; begun in the seventeenth soviets (831): Councils of workers and soldiers
century, it prompted a search for nonreli- first formed in Russia in the Revolution of
gious explanations for political authority 1905; they were revived to represent the
and natural phenomena. people in the early days of the 1917 Russian
Seven Years’ War (593): A worldwide series of Revolution.
battles (1756–1763) between Austria, stagflation (959): The combination of a stagnant
France, Russia, and Sweden on one side and economy and soaring inflation; a period of
Prussia and Great Britain on the other. stagflation occurred in the West in the 1970s
Shi‘ite (255): A Muslim of the “party of Ali” as a result of an OPEC embargo on oil.
and his descendants. Shi‘ites are thus opposed Stalin, Joseph (865): Leader of the USSR who,
to the Sunni Muslims, who reject the with considerable backing, formed a brutal
authority of Ali. dictatorship in the 1930s and forcefully
simony (SY muh nee) (322): The sin of giving converted the country into an industrial
gifts or paying money to get a church office. power.
Glossary of Key Terms and People G-19
Statute in Favor of the Princes (392): A statute Thermidorian Reaction (627): The violent
finalized by Frederick II in 1232 that gave backlash against the rule of Robespierre that
the German princes sovereign power within dismantled the Terror and punished Jacobins
their own principalities. and their supporters.
St. Bernard (330): The most important Cister- Third Republic (772): The French government
cian abbot (early twelfth century) and the that succeeded Napoleon III’s Second Empire
chief preacher of the Second Crusade. after its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War
Stoicism (131): The Hellenistic philosophy of 1870–1871. It lasted until France’s defeat
whose followers believed in fate but also in by Germany in 1940.
pursuing excellence (virtue) by cultivating Torah (47): The first five books of the Hebrew
good sense, justice, courage, and temperance. Bible, also referred to as the Pentateuch. It
contains early Jewish law.
Suleiman the Magnificent (465): Sultan of the
Ottoman Empire (r. 1520–1566) at the time total war (822): A war built on the full mobili-
of its greatest power. zation of soldiers, civilians, and technology
of the nations involved. The term also refers
Synod of Whitby (270): The meeting of
to a highly destructive war of ideologies.
churchmen and King Oswy of Northumbria
in 664 that led to the adoption of the Roman Treaty of Verdun (295): The treaty that, in 843,
brand of Christianity in England. split the Carolingian Empire into three parts;
its borders roughly outline modern western
Terror (620): The policy established under the European states.
direction of the Committee of Public Safety
triremes (TRY reems) (82): Greek wooden
during the French Revolution to arrest dissi-
warships rowed by 170 oarsmen sitting on
dents and execute opponents in order to
three levels and equipped with a battering
protect the republic from its enemies.
ram at the bow.
tetrarchy (213): The “rule by four,” consisting
troubadours/trobairitz (364): Male (trouba-
of two co-emperors and two assistant
dours) and female (trobairitz) vernacular
emperors/designated successors, initiated
poets in southern France in the twelfth and
by Diocletian to subdivide the ruling of the
early thirteenth centuries who sang of love,
Roman Empire into four regions.
longing, and courtesy.
Thatcher, Margaret (960): Prime minister of Truman Doctrine (904): The policy devised
Britain (1979–1990) who set a new tone by U.S. president Harry Truman to limit
for British politics by promoting neoliberal communism after World War II by counter-
economic policies and criticizing poor people, ing political crises with economic and mili-
union members, and racial minorities as tary aid.
worthless, even harmful citizens.
Twelve Tables (154): The first written Roman
theme (260): A military district in Byzantium. law code, enacted between 451 and 449 b.c.e.
The earliest themes were created in the sev-
Umayyad caliphate (oo MAH yuhd KAY
enth century and served mainly defensive
luhf ayt) (255): The caliphs (successors of
purposes.
Muhammad) who traced their ancestry to
Themistocles (thuh MIST uh kleez) (79): Umayyah, a member of Muhammad’s tribe.
Athens’s leader during the great Persian The dynasty lasted from 661 to 750.
invasion of Greece. United Nations (UN) (923): An organization
Theodora — See Justinian. set up in 1945 for collective security and for
Theodosius I (219): The Roman emperor the resolution of international conflicts
(r. 379–395) who made Christianity the state through both deliberation and the use of
religion by ending public sacrifices in the force.
traditional cults and closing their temples. In Urban II (332): The pope (r. 1088–1099)
395, he also divided the empire into western responsible for calling the First Crusade
and eastern halves to be ruled by his sons. in 1095.
G-20 Glossary of Key Terms and People
urbanization (680): The growth of towns and and British settlers in the North American
cities due to the movement of people from colonies.
rural to urban areas, a trend that was Warsaw Pact (907): A security alliance of the
encouraged by the development of factories Soviet Union and its allies formed in 1955,
and railroads. in retaliation for NATO’s admittance of
Vatican II (925): A Catholic Council held West Germany.
between 1962 and 1965 to modernize some Weimar Republic (835): The parliamentary
aspects of church teachings (such as condem- republic established in 1919 in Germany to
nation of Jews), to update the liturgy, and replace the monarchy.
to promote cooperation among the faiths
welfare state (913): A system (developed on
(i.e., ecumenism).
both sides during the cold war) comprising
Visigoths (231): The name given to the bar- government-sponsored social programs to
barians whom Alaric united and led on a provide health care, family allowances, dis-
military campaign into the western Roman ability insurance, and pensions for veterans
Empire to establish a new kingdom; they and retired workers.
sacked Rome in 410.
wergild (234): Under Frankish law, the pay-
Voltaire (568): The pen name of François-
ment that a murderer had to make as com-
Marie Arouet (1694–1778), who was the most
pensation for the crime, to prevent feuds of
influential writer of the early Enlightenment.
revenge.
Walpole, Robert (559): The first, or “prime,”
Westernization (560): The effort, especially in
minister (1721–1742) of the House of Com-
Peter the Great’s Russia, to make society and
mons of Great Britain’s Parliament. Although
social customs resemble counterparts in
appointed initially by the king, through his
western Europe, especially France, Britain,
long period of leadership he effectively estab-
and the Dutch Republic.
lished the modern pattern of parliamentary
government. William, prince of Orange (519): Dutch ruler
war guilt clause (838): The part of the Treaty of who, with his Protestant wife, Mary (daughter
Versailles that assigned blame for World of James II), ruled England after the Glorious
War I to Germany. Revolution of 1688.
War of the Austrian Succession (564): The war wisdom literature (22): Texts giving instruc-
(1740–1748) over the succession to the tions for appropriate behavior.
Habsburg throne that pitted France and Zionism (803): A movement that began in the
Prussia against Austria and Britain and pro- late nineteenth century among European
voked continuing hostilities between French Jews to found a Jewish state.
Index
Aachen, 291, 293(i). See also defined, 505 by women, 841, 927, 953–954,
Aix-la-Chapelle Hobbes and, 520 953(i)
Abandonment. See Infant exposure Locke and, 520–521 World War I and, 828
Abbasid caliphate, 280, 285–286, Louis XIV and, 505, 506–514 Act of Supremacy (England, 1534),
295–296, 332 in Russia, 528–530 454
Abbesses, Merovingian, 269 Abstract painting, 793 Act of Union (Britain)
Abd al-Rahman I (caliph of Academies in 1707, 559
Córdoba), 287 in Athens, 116, 243 in 1801, 693
Abd al-Rahman III (caliph of in Enlightenment, 588 Adam, Robert, 589(i)
Córdoba), 288, 288(i) of Louis XIV, 508 Adam and Eve, 225
Abdul Hamid II (Ottoman sultan), Royal Academy of Sciences Adams, John, on French
809–810 (France), 532 Revolution, 633
Abelard, Peter, 349–350, 385 of Sciences (Russia), 560, 561 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 877
Abgar (Osrhoëne), 224(i) Achilles, 52 Addison, Joseph, 553
Abolitionism, 521, 579–580, 602, Acid rain, 987 Adenauer, Konrad, 910
673, 689–690. See also Slaves Acquired immunodeficiency Admass (mass advertising), 947
and slavery syndrome (AIDS), 964, Administration. See also
Abortion 989 Bureaucracy; Government;
in Byzantine Empire, 260 Acropolis (Athens), 85–86, 87(i). specific locations
in France, 843 See also Parthenon (Athens) of England, 305
in Nazi Germany and, 870 Actium, battle of, 177 of France, 616(m)
prevalence of, 785 Activism. See also specific of Russia, 715
Romania and, 967 movements Adrianople
in Soviet Union, 851–852 anticolonial, 864 battle of, 231
Abraham (Hebrew patriarch), antiglobalization, 986 Treaty of, 664
46–47 antiwar, 954 Adultery, 592
Absolutism citizen, 949, 952–954 Advancement of Learning, The
in Austria, 722 collective, 768–770 (Bacon), 495
Bodin and, 497 environmental, 987–988 Advertising
in Brandenburg-Prussia, 526 Irish, 771–772 admass (mass advertising), 947
in central and eastern Europe, in Poland, 965 culture and, 929, 930, 947
525–530 student, 952–953 Roman coins as, 178
I-1
I-2 Index
[ A ed i l es — A l l ia n ces
]
Aediles (Rome), 154 Agamemnon Albigensians, 369
Aegean Sea region, 27, 31(m), 34, 54, Schliemann on, 32 Alchemy, 499
82 vase painting of, 101, 101(i) Alcibiades, 106, 107
Aeneas, 183 Agincourt, battle of, 414 Alcohol and alcoholism, 682, 963
Aeneid, The (Virgil), 183 Agnosticism, of Sophists, 96 Alcuin, 293
Aeschylus, 101 Agora, in Athens, 85, 86(m) Aldrin, Edwin “Buzz,” 940
Affair of the Placards (France,1534), Agribusiness, 945, 952 Alemanni people, 233
452, 466 Agriculture. See also Farms and Alexander I (Russia)
Afghanistan farming; Irrigation; Land death of, 664
Alexander the Great in, 121 in Africa, 750 Holy Alliance and, 657
Greek philosophy and, 133 in ancient world, 4 Napoleon and, 649, 652
Russia and, 751 Black Death and, 413 Poland and, 667
Soviet Union and, 133, 963, 965, Byzantine, 259 reforms of, 650
980 Dutch, 488, 550 Alexander II (Russia)
Taliban in, 992 in early 19th century, 682–683 ascension to throne, 713
terrorists in, 993 economic activity and, 266 assassination of, 776, 777(i)
Africa. See also Egypt (ancient); Egyptian, 747 reforms of, 714, 716, 734
Imperialism; North Africa; Flemish, 550 Alexander III (Russia), 776
South Africa; specific locations genetic research in, 942, 945 Alexander VI (Pope), 444
c. 1890, 748(m) in Great Depression, 861, 863 Alexander the Great (Macedonia),
AIDS in, 989 Greek, 50, 55 113–114, 119, 120–122, 120(i),
Catholic discrimination in, 460 industrial innovation in, 756 121(m). See also Hellenistic
colonization in, 547, 690, in Mediterranean region, 34 world
745–750, 748(m), 754, 756, men in, 8 Alexandria, Egypt
803–804, 805(m) Mesopotamian, 13 arts in, 129
conflict and genocide in, 990 Minoan, 30 founding of, 121
decolonization in, 921–923, in Neolithic Revolution, 6–8 Jewish community in, 125
922(m) reforms in, 597 Neoplatonist school at, 243
economic development and, 990 revolution in, 550–551, 675 Rome and, 191
human movement from, 4–5 in Soviet Union, 903 Alexei (Russia, son of Peter the
immigrants from, 924, 973, 973(i) in western Europe, 313 Great), 562
imperialism in, 745–746, workers in, 551, 677, 678 Alexei I (Russia), 528–529
747–750, 756, 803–804, Ahriman (god), 46 Alexius I (Alexius Comnenus,
805(m), 810, 844, 990 Ahura Mazda (god), 45–46, 79(i) Byzantine Empire), 332, 334,
missionaries and, 754 Aïda (Verdi), 708(i), 731 338
slavery and, 444–445, 524, 542, AIDS. See Acquired Alfonso IX (Castile-León), 396
543, 656–657 immunodeficiency syndrome Alfonso X (Castile-León), 396
violence in, 749(i) Ai-Khanoum, Afghanistan, 133 Alfred the Great (Wessex),
white settlements in, 547 Airbus, 944 304–305, 304(m)
World War I and, 824, 827 Air force, Luftwaffe, 882 Algebra, 15
World War II and, 887, 888, Airline industry, international Algeria, 921(i), 924
889(m) ventures in, 944 France and, 682, 690, 712, 731, 923
Africa (Carriera), 549(i) Airplanes World War II and, 888, 892
African Americans, 918 World War I and, 834 Ali (caliph), 254–255, 287
literature by, 1001, 1002, 1002(i) World War II and, 881 Allah, 251
music and, 851 Aix-la-Chapelle. See also Aachen Alliances. See also Allies; specific
rights for, 725, 927, 950–951 Peace of (1748), 564 alliances
as U.S. president, 993 Treaty of, 511 Athenian, 81, 82
violence after King’s death, 954 Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV, Egypt), in cold war, 907, 908(m), 919,
African people 25 932(m)
European attitudes toward, Akhmatova, Anna, 915 against France, 512
749–750 Akkadian Empire, 12–13, 12(m) in Seven Years’ War, 593–594,
in North American colonies, Alaric (Visigoth), 231 593(m)
491 Albania, 813 against Sparta, 118
in World War I, 829 Albanian Kosovars, 976 Spartan, 81
Afterlife Albert (England), 723, 724, 727, 736 before World War I, 810–813
Egyptian belief in, 2(i), 3, 21–22 Alberti, Leon Battista, 424, 424(i) World War I and, 822–824, 840
Paleolithic, 5 Albigensian Crusade, 374, 374(m) before World War II, 877, 881
[ A l l i es — A ra b s a n d A ra b w o rl d
] Index I-3
Assembly of Notables (France), 611 trade in, 115 Congress of Vienna and, 654, 656
Assembly of the Land (Russia), women in, 85, 115 Crimean War and, 712
528–529 Athletes. See also Sports dissent in, 663
Assignats (paper money), 616 male, 765 France and, 593, 617, 621, 648,
Association for the Taxation of women as, 235(i) 649, 712
Financial Transactions and Aid Atlantic Charter, 892 German Anschluss with, 878–879
to Citizens (ATTAC), 986 Atlantic Ocean region. See also in Great Depression, 874
Assyria, 13–14 Atlantic system; specific Habsburgs in, 485, 527–528
invasions of, 34 locations Hungary and, 528, 564(m)
Neo-Assyrian Empire and, 43 division between Portugal and iron industry in, 676
Astarte figurines, 49 Spain, 444 Italy and, 667, 700, 717, 719
Astell, Mary, 570 slave trade and, 603(m) Napoleon and, 640, 648, 649
Astrologia (Gole), 567(i) Atlantic revolutions, 608 Poland and, 630–631, 631(m)
Astrology, 499 Atlantic system Poland-Lithuania and, 563, 593
Astronauts, 940 settlement and, 546–548 Prussia and, 720–721
Astronomy slave trade in, 524, 542–548 Social Democratic Party in, 769
Hellenistic, 134, 136 trade and expansion in, 541 suppression of revolutionary
Mesopotamian, 15 Atomic bomb, 792, 891–892, 891(i), movements by, 663
Neo-Babylonian, 44 900, 904, 907, 911. See also War of the Polish Succession and,
revolution in, 493–495 Nuclear weapons 563
solar system and, 134, 941 Atomic theory, 96, 160, 792 World War I and, 814–815, 836,
universe and, 875, 941 ATTAC. See Association for the 837
Aswan Dam, 921(i) Taxation of Financial Austria-Hungary. See also Austria;
AT&T Building, 1004 Transactions and Aid to Hungary
Aten (god), cult of, 25 Citizens anti-Semitism in, 801
Athaulf (Visigoths), 234 Attalid kingdom, 123(m), 124 Balkan region and, 813
Atheism, 579, 623 Attila (Huns), 231 in Dual Alliance, 775
Athena (god), 57, 58, 86, 115(i), Attlee, Clement, 910 heir to throne assassinated in,
148 Auerstädt, battle at, 649 784
Athenagoras I (Patriarch), 323n Augsburg industry in, 757
Athenian Empire, 81–83 League of, 512 liberalism in, 774
Athens, 57. See also Greece Peace of (1555), 467, 473, 474, 482 monarchy in, 722–723, 723(m)
(ancient); Philosophy; specific Augustine (archbishop of nationalism in, 801
philosophers Canterbury), 270 in Three Emperors’ League, 773
in 5th century, 86(m) Augustine of Hippo (Saint), 221, in Triple Alliance, 775, 810
alliances of, 82 224–225, 274, 304 World War I and, 814–815,
architecture in, 85–87, 87(i) Augustinus (Jansen), 509 822–823, 830
citizenship in, 68 Augustus (Octavian, Rome), Austrian Empire. See also Austria;
civil war in, 78 170(m), 183(i) Austria-Hungary
coins of, 69, 115(i) death of, 185 1848 revolution in, 701–702
Delian League and, 82–83, 85 Egypt and, 128(i) industrialization in, 676–677
democracy in, 68–70, 83–85, 96 forum of, 178, 179(i) nationalism in, 691–692
in Greek Golden Age, 81–89 Pax Romana under, 176 War of the Austrian Succession
lifestyle in, 115–116 principate under, 177–178 and, 564
Long Walls in, 86(m), 105, 115, public buildings of, 178 Austrian Netherlands
115(m) in Second Triumvirate, 176–177 c. 1715, 558(m)
Macedonians and, 120 succession to, 184 agriculture in, 551
navy of, 78, 82(i), 83, 85, 119 title of, 177 Congress of Vienna and, 656
Peloponnesian War and, 78, Aung San Suu Kyi, 1000 France and, 621, 629
104–107, 105(m) Aurelian (Rome), 205 revolt in, 608, 609, 641
after Peloponnesian War, 114–116 Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration War of the Austrian Succession
Persian Wars and, 77, 78–79, 81 camp, 859, 885 and, 564
philosophy in, 71–73, 96–99, Austerlitz, battle of, 649 Authoritarianism
116–118 Australia, 579, 763, 913, 989 Bismarck and, 710
silver in, 115 Austrasia, 263(m), 269 Napoleon I and, 640
Sparta and, 77, 81, 85 Austria, 998. See also Austria- Napoleon III and, 710, 711
Thirty Tyrants in, 107 Hungary; Austrian Empire in Russia, 833
Tower of the Winds in, 132(i) Balkan region and, 811, 813 in Soviet Union, 851–852
I-6 Index
[ A uth o r it y — Belgium
]
Authority. See also Government; French expansion and, 634(m) Barcelona, bombing in, 879(i)
Political power superpowers and, 900, 957–959 Barnard, Christiaan, 942
clerical, 460 Thirty Years’ War and, 482–487 Barons (England), 340, 359, 396
growth of state, 486–487 War of the Spanish Succession Baroque arts, 498, 530–531, 531(i),
Hobbes on, 520 and, 556–557 588
Locke on, 520–521 after World War I, 844 Barter, in Sumer, 8
in Merovingian dynasty, 269 Baldwin of Flanders, 370 Barth, Karl, 875
Authors. See Literature; specific Balkan region, 975. See also specific Basil I (Byzantine Empire), 282
works and authors locations Basil II (Byzantine Empire), 284
Autobahn, 869 in 17th century, 537(m) Basil of Caesarea (“the Great”), 227
Automobiles, 755, 844, 959, 987 in c. 1878, 776(m) Basket case, use of term, 840
Smart car, 987, 988(i) in 1908–1914, 811–813, 812(m) Basques, 960, 960(m), 985
Avaris (Hyksos capital), 23 Bulgars in, 258, 259 Basset, Ralph, 358(i)
Avars, 257, 258, 259, 291 Byzantine Empire and, 258–259, Bastille (Paris), fall of, 612(i), 613–614
Avatar (movie), 1003 281(m), 283 Bastille Day (France), 873
Aviation. See Airplanes Germany and, 811 Bathing, 566, 727
Avicenna. See Ibn Sina (Avicenna) nationalism in, 664–665, 664(m), Battle of the Nations (1813), 653
Avignon papacy, 399, 410, 418 810, 811–812 Battles. See specific battles and wars
Axis powers, 882, 883, 886, 889(m), Ottomans in, 410, 417, 481, 528, Baudelaire, Charles-Pierre, 734
909 774, 775 Bauhaus, 850–851
Aztecs, 445 Roman Empire and, 214 Bavaria, 631(m)
Russia in, 774–775 Baxter, George, 704(i)
Baby boom, 946 World War I and, 828 Bayeux Tapestry, 339, 339(i)
Babylonia, 14 Balkan Wars, 813 Bayle, Pierre, 534, 566–567
collapse of, 34 Ballet, 794 Bay of Pigs invasion, 931
Hittites in, 28 Ballot Act (Britain, 1872), 771 Beatles, 928, 947
Israelites in, 48 Baltic region. See also specific Beat poets, 928
Neo-Babylonian Empire and, locations Beatrice of Burgundy, 362
43–44 balance of power in, 562 Beauharnais, Eugène de, 643
Babylonian captivity, of Roman cities and towns of, 373–374 Beaumarchais, Pierre-Augustin
Catholic Church, 399, 423 Dutch trade in, 560 Caron de, 600
Bacchus (god). See Dionysus (god) Great Northern War and, 562, Beauvoir, Simone de, 926
Bacon, Francis (scientist), 495 563(m) Beccaria, Cesare, 595, 661
Bacteria, 727, 942 Hanseatic League and, 429 Becket, Thomas, 358–359
Bactria independence in, 968(m), 977 Beckford, William, 546
Alexander the Great and, 122 Northern Crusades and, 373–374 Becquerel, Antoine, 792
Greeks in, 124 Soviet annexation of, 882 Bede (English monk), 271–272
Badr, battle of, 252 World War II and, 881, 888 Bedouins, 250–251
Bagatelle, battle at, 826(i) Balzac, Honoré de, 684–685 Beer Hall Putsch, 842, 854
Baghdad Bandung Convention, 923 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 660–661
Abbasid capital in, 280, 285–286 Bankruptcy, 486, 758 Beguines, 368–369, 369(i), 383
Seljuk Turks in, 332 Banks and banking Behn, Aphra (woman author), 534
Bahamas, Columbus in, 444 Bank of England, 560 Beijing, Tiananmen Square protests
Baht (Thai), 995 in Dutch Republic, 608 in, 965–966, 999
Bailouts, in global economic crisis, economic crisis (2008–) and, Béla III (Hungary), 363
995(i) 995(i), 996 Belarus, Russia and, 981
Baker, Josephine, 851 EU, 982 Belgium. See also Austrian
Baker Arent Oostward and His Wife, in France, 557, 642 Netherlands
The (Steen), 523(i) Fugger family and, 465–466 birthrate in, 946
Bakunin, Mikhail, 732 in Germany, 774 after Charlemagne, 295
Baku region, 807 Baptism, Christian, 194, 455 cultural differences in, 985
Balance of power. See also Baptists, 516 decolonization and, 923
Diplomacy Barbados, 524 in ECSC, 912
1750–1775, 593 Barbarians. See also specific groups German invasion of, 881
Crimean War and, 712 Roman Empire and, 212, 229–235 imperialism of, 747, 749(i)
diplomacy and, 564–565 society of, 230–235 independence and, 609, 667
in eastern Europe, 562 Barbarossa. See Frederick I Napoleon and, 653
economic, 490–492 Barbarossa (Germany) railroads in, 676
[ B e lgrad e — B o lsh ev ik Revo l ut io n
] Index I-7
revolt in, 667 Big bang theory, 941 Kulturkampf and, 737
urbanization in, 763 Big business, 953 power politics and, 709, 773–774
voting rights in, 772 “Big Three,” at Yalta (1945), 892 Triple Alliance and, 810
war reparations for, 838 Bildung (importance of education), Bithynia, king of, 131
World War I and, 815, 822, 825, 796 Black and Tans, 843
839 Bill of Rights Black codes, 524
Belgrade, 564 in England, 1689, 519 Black Death, 409–413, 411(m). See
Bellini, Gentile, 408(i), 409, 433 in United States, 1791, 602 also Plague
Beloved (Morrison), 1001 bin Laden, Osama, 990, 993 Black-figure style, of painting, 40(i)
Ben Bella, Ahmed (Syria), 921(i) Biology Black monks, 329–330
Benedictines and Benedictine rule, Darwin and, 737–738 Black Panthers, 952
228, 321–322, 329 research on reproduction, 738, Black power, 952
Benedict of Nursia (Saint), 228 942–943 Black Sea region, 713
Benevento, duchy of, 273, 274 revolution in, 942 Greek settlements in, 56
Bentham, Jeremy, 694 Birth, out of wedlock, 490, 591, 681 Black Shirts (Italy), 852, 853, 853(i)
Benz, Karl, 755 Birth control, 942, 948, 994 Black Skin, White Masks (Fanon),
Berbers, in Africa, 244(m) in 17th century, 490 927
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, in early 19th century, 682 Blanc, Louis, 696
926 dissemination of information on, Blanche of Castile, 393, 394(i)
Berlin 764, 785 Blenheim, battle of, 557
airlift in, 907, 907(m) France and, 843 Blitz (battle of Britain), 882
blockade of, 906–907, 907(m) Great Depression and, 862 Blitzkrieg (“lightning war”), 881, 886
cold war in, 906–907 in Nazi Germany, 870 Blockade
Congress of, 775 Romania and, 967 of Berlin, 906–907, 907(m)
expansion of, 773, 773(m) in Rome, 193 in Cuban missile crisis, 931
population growth in, 552 in Soviet Union, 851–852, 866 in World War I, 825
postmodern architecture in, 1004, Birth-control pill, 942–943, 953 Blood libel, 384
1004(i) Birth of the Virgin (Giotto), 391(i) Blood pressure, Hellenistic medicine
reuniting of, 966 Birth of Venus, The (Botticelli), 425, and, 134
uprising in, 700, 701 426(i) Blood sports, 688
World War II and, 889 Birthrate Bloody Sunday
Berlin conference (1884–1885), 749, in 1960s and 1970s, 946 in Northern Ireland, 960, 960(m)
804 decline in, 784, 785, 913, 946 in Russia (1905), 807
Berlin Wall, 907(m), 925, 931, 950, in eastern bloc, 914 Blue-collar workers, 944
966 in Great Depression, 860, 862 “Blue Rider” artists, 793
Bernadette (Saint), 737 rise in, 927 Blues (faction), 237, 240
Bernard (Franks), 279 in Rome, 180–181, 191–192 Blum, Léon, 873
Bernard, Jean Frédéric, 569(i) Soviet, 866, 903 Bodin, Jean, 496–497, 499, 570
Bernard of Clairvaux (St. Bernard), U.S. baby boom and, 946 Boers, 749
330, 336, 356–357 World War II and, 888, 913 Boer War, 803–804, 813
Bernini, Gian Lorenzo, 530–531, Biscop, Benedict (England), 271 Bohemia
531(i) Bishops (Christian), 198–199, 221 Christianity in, 308
Berthold (Franciscan preacher), of Alexandria, 223 Habsburgs and, 482, 526, 527, 528
382 Byzantine, 260 in Holy Roman Empire, 428
“Best circles,” upper classes as, German, 307 Hus and, 420, 421
761–762 medieval, 303 industry in, 757
Betrothed, The (Manzoni), 661 monasteries and, 228–229 official language in, 774
Bible power of, 267, 268 Peace of Westphalia and, 485
Christian New Testament, 194, 196 of Rome, 221, 223 political formations in, 429
Darwin and, 737, 738 in Spain, 272–273 Thirty Years’ War and, 483
Enlightenment challenges to, 567 Bismarck, Otto von, 957 Boleslaw the Brave (Poland), 308
Erasmus and, 449 Africa and, 747 Boleyn, Anne, 454, 466
Hebrew Old Testament, 43, authoritarianism, 710 Bolívar, Simón, 665, 665(i)
46–47, 49–50, 138, 196 Berlin conference and, 749 Bolivia, 665
Latin, 293, 448, 449, 460 Congress of Berlin and, 775 Bollywood films, 999, 1003
translations of, 458, 458(i) dismissal of, 795 Bologna, university in, 348, 349, 351
Bicycle, 755, 765, 987 German unification and, 705, Bolshevik Revolution (Russia), 831,
Bicycle Thief, The (movie), 930 719–722 916
I-8 Index
[ Bolsh ev iks — Britain
]
Bolsheviks, 795, 831–832, 834, 836, Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne (Bishop), China and, 690
848, 851 509, 567 Christianity in, 270–272
Bombs and bombings. See also Boston Tea Party, 601 colonies of, 546, 603(m), 690, 864,
Atomic bomb; Nuclear weapons Botticelli, Sandro, 425, 426(i), 427, 923
anarchist, 770, 796 435 Common Market and, 913, 949
in Ireland, 960 Boucher, François, 554(i) Congress of Vienna and, 654, 655,
NATO, 976 Boudica (Britain), 186 656
of Pearl Harbor, 883 Boulanger, Georges, 772 Crimean War and, 712–713
in Spanish Civil War, 878, 879(i) Boulton, Matthew, 674 decolonization and, 918, 922–923
terrorist, 992 Boundaries. See also Frontiers Dutch and, 518, 523, 557, 608
in Vietnam, 952 of Egypt, 23 education in, 729, 946
World War I and, 824 of Roman Empire, 240 Egypt and, 747, 811, 920–921
World War II and, 883, 888, Boundaries. See also Borders enclosure and, 551
890–891, 891(i), 901 Bourbon dynasty, in France, 474, Enlightenment and, 582
Bomb shelter, 931 653, 655, 658, 669(m) in Entente Cordiale, 811
Bonald, Louis de, 657 Bourgeoisie, 587, 696. See also foreigners in, 960–961, 984–985
Bonaparte family. See also Napoleon Middle class formation of Great Britain, 559
I Bonaparte; Napoleon III Bourges, cathedral of, 389(i) France and, 621
Caroline, 643 Bouvines, battle of, 359 German occupation by, 892, 906,
Jerome, 649 Bové, José, 986 907(m)
Joseph, 643, 651, 653 Boxer Uprising (China), 808, 809(i) government of, 910
Louis, 643, 650 Boys. See also Men in Great Depression, 861, 872–873
Bonhomme, Jacques (name for Athenian, 94–95 Hitler and, 882, 883
peasants), 416 Spartan, 65–66 imperialism by, 730, 747,
Boniface (Bishop), 272, 290 Bracciolinus, Poggius, 422 749–750, 752, 843, 844
Boniface VIII (Pope), 395, 397–399 Bradbury, Ray, 930 India and, 809
Book of Common Prayer Brahe, Tycho, 494, 499 industrialization in, 674–675, 755,
(Anglican), 517, 518 Brain drain, 945, 956, 979–980 756
Book of Hours, 419, 420(i) Brandenburg, 485, 526 Iraq War and, 993
Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Brandenburg-Prussia, 526, 527(m). Ireland and, 693, 724, 798, 830,
(Kundera), 956 See also Prussia 843, 960
Book of Psalms (Psalter), 260 Brandt, Willy, 949 liberalism in, 694, 798
Book of the Dead (Egypt), 2(i), 26 Braque, Georges, 793 Liberal Party in, 771
Book of the New Moral World, The Brasidas (Sparta), 106 manufacturing in, 676–677
(Owen), 695 Braun, Eva, 889 Monroe Doctrine and, 666
Books. See also Literature; specific Brazil, 990, 994 Napoleon and, 640–641, 648–649,
works and authors Napoleon and, 651 650, 652
burning by Nazis, 869 Portugal and, 444 navy of, 594, 648–649, 813–814
for children, 590 slavery in, 445, 542, 657, 690 political participation in, 771–772
in Christian Britain, 271 Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of, 831 poor laws in, 688
consumer revolution and, 553 Brethren of the Common Life, 419, Prussia and, 593
in Enlightenment, 575, 582–583, 448–449 reforms in, 723–724
583(f), 589–590 Bretons, 985 religious revival in, 658
in France, 582–583 Brezhnev, Leonid, 950 rise of, 560
in late Roman Empire, 242–243, Brezhnev Doctrine, 956, 966 Rome and, 185, 187, 191
242(i) Britain. See also England; Ireland; St. Domingue and, 632
novels, 534, 556, 684–686 Scotland; specific leaders Scotland and, 985
printing press and, 447–448, agriculture in, 550–551 slave trade and, 543, 656, 689
447(i) American Revolution and, southern Africa and, 749–750
Bordeaux, 413 601–602 Suez Canal and, 921
Borders. See also Boundaries; Anglo-Saxons in, 233, 270 suffragists in, 796–797
Frontiers Balkan region and, 774–775 terrorism in London and, 993
Common Market and, 981–982 banking in, 560 Thatcher in, 957, 960–962
globalization and, 998 battle of, 882, 883 urbanization in, 680–681, 763
Borodino, battle at, 652 Boer War and, 803–804 Vikings and, 297–298
Bosnia, 976 British Isles, 270(m) voting rights in, 668, 724
Bosnia-Herzegovina, 774, 775, 811, Canada and, 726 War of the Austrian Succession
814, 975 Chartism in, 697, 702–703 and, 564
[ B r ita i n — Cal v i n
] Index I-9
water in, 680–681 Soviet, 852, 865, 963 Russia and, 283–285
welfare state and, 913, 914 Thirty Years’ War and, 487 scholars in, 289
World War I and, 815, 822, Burgundian people, 233 Seljuk Turks and, 332
823–824, 825, 826, 836, 838, Burgundy use of term, 250
843 in 15th century, 430–431 warfare in, 257–259
World War II and, 881, 882, 889, duchy of, 414–415 women in, 260
895 in Frankish kingdom, 269 Byzantium (Constantinople), 250.
after World War II, 900, 910 Germany and, 362 See also Byzantine Empire;
British Commonwealth, 824, 913 Merovingians and, 263(m) Constantinople
British East Africa, 922–923 Philip II (Spain) and, 467
British East India Company, 546, Burials Cabet, Étienne, 696
690, 730 catacombs for, 195(i) Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, The
Brittany, 985 in Crete, 30 (movie), 848
Broken Eggs (Greuze), 591(i) in Egypt, 26 Cable News Network (CNN), 965
Brontë, Charlotte, 685 Etruscan, 152(i) Cabral, Pedro Alvares, 444
Bronze, 12, 51 in Greece, 33 Cádiz, 444
Bronze Age, 12, 31, 33 at Mycenae, 32 Caesar, Julius (Rome), 163, 166(i),
Brown, Louise, 943, 943(i) Paleolithic, 5 167–169, 176
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, Burke, Edmund, 657 Caesarion (Cleopatra’s son), 128(i)
683 Burma, 750, 750(m), 883 Cafés, 549
Brown Shirts (Germany), 842 Burschenschaften (student societies), Cage, John, 948
Brown v. Board of Education (1954), 663 Cairo, 747
927 Bush, George W., 993 Calas, Jean, 579
Bruno, Giordano, 493 Business. See also Commerce; Trade Calculus, 532
Bruno of Cologne, 330 in 1870s and 1880s, 758–759 Calcutta, 678
Brunswick, Charles William in Canaan, 15 Calendar
Ferdinand (duke of), 618 commercial revolution and, in Egypt, 25
Brussels, Common Market in, 913 314–321 in French Republic, 623
Brutus, Marcus Junius, 169, 169(i) forms of, 318 Gregorian, 561, 830
Bubonic plague. See Black Death; in France, 644–645, 757 Islamic, 252
Plague in Germany, 759 Julian, 561n, 830n
Buccaneers, 547 globalization and, 974, 984, 985, Calico, from India, 548
Budapest, 801 998–999 Calicut, India, 443
Buddha, Greek-style, 135(i) in Great Depression, 860–861 California, 724
Buddhism, 135 multinational corporations and, Caligula (Rome), 185
Building. See also Architecture; 944 Caliphs and caliphates (Islamic). See
specific buildings revolution in, 759–761 also specific locations and
Bulgakov, Mikhail, 1002 temporary workers for, 925 individuals
Bulgaria, 968(m), 981, 984 Byron, George Gordon (Lord), 660, Abbasid, 280, 285–286, 295–296,
Balkan region and, 812, 813 664 392
Byzantines and, 280, 283, 284 Byzantine Empire. See also Eastern of Córdoba, 288
migration from, 841 Roman Empire dissolution of, 289
Ottoman Empire and, 774 in c. 600, 258(m) dual roles of, 250
Russia and, 774 in 1025, 281(m) as successors to Muhammad,
Soviets and, 892, 904 in 12th century, 364 254–255
World War II and, 882, 888 in c. 1215, 375(m) Umayyad, 251(i), 254–255, 256
Bulgarians, nationalism of, 809 Comnenian dynasty in, 338 Call centers, 999
Bulgars, 257, 258, 259 dynatoi in, 283, 286, 332 Calvin, John, and Calvinism. See
Bulls (papal). See Papal bulls eastern Roman Empire as, 236 also Puritanism
Bundesrat (Germany), 722 emperors in, 364 in c. 1648, 501(m)
Burden, The (Daumier), 735(i) fall of, 409 in France, 466, 474–476, 510, 579
Bureaucracy, 1005 government in, 259–260, 364 in Germany, 526
Byzantine, 259 icons and iconoclasm in, 260–262 in Netherlands, 478
of EU, 984 Macedonian renaissance in, 280, Peace of Augsburg and, 467, 474,
expansion of, 727–728 282–283, 282(i) 482
of Louis XIV, 510–511 Muslims in, 253, 254 Peace of Westphalia and, 485
Roman, 185, 189 religion in, 260–262 religious reform and, 452–453
Russian, 828 Roman Catholicism and, 274 in Scotland, 467, 480
I-10 Index
[ Camb o d ia — Central Eu ro p e
]
Cambodia, 751, 919, 957 Caroline minuscule, 294 Cathedrals. See also specific
Cambridge University, 496, 729 Carolingian Empire cathedrals
Cameroon, 747, 804, 838 capital at Aachen, 291, 293(i) Gothic, 346(i), 347–348, 351,
Camus, Albert, 926 economy in, 295–297 354(i), 389, 390(i), 424
Canaan (Palestine), 15, 47, 48, 49(i) end of, 305 schools in, 348
Canada, 913 establishment of, 269 at Trier, 263
cession to Britain, 558(m), 594 expansion of, 292(m) Catherine II (the Great, Russia)
French, 446, 491, 511 invasions of, 297–299 Enlightenment and, 650
NAFTA and, 981 local rule after, 299–308 law code reforms and, 595
self-determination for, 690 monarchs, 289, 291–293, 294–295 nobility and, 587
United States and, 726 rise of, 290 Peter III and, 594
World War II and, 889 Roman Catholicism and, 290 Poland and, 594(i), 609, 631
Canals Carolingian renaissance, 289–290, portrait of, 574(i)
European food distribution and, 293–294 Pugachev uprising and, 599
682 Carpaccio, Vittore, 434(i) Voltaire and, 575, 592
in Mesopotamia, 8 Carpathian Mountains, 826 Catherine de Médicis, 474
Suez, 712, 731, 747, 888, 921 Carrier, Jean-Baptiste, 625, 627 Catherine of Alexandria, 227(i)
Cancino, Fernandez Luis, 665(i) Carriera, Rosalba, 549(i) Catherine of Aragon, 454
Cannae, battle at, 158 Cars. See Automobiles Catholicism. See Roman Catholicism
Cannons, 416 Carson, Rachel, 987 Catholic League, 475
Canon (church) law, reforms of, 328 Cartels, 759 Cato, Marcus Porcius, 147, 159, 160
Canon of Medicine (Ibn Sina), 289 Carthage Cavaliers (England), 515
Canossa, Investiture Conflict and, Phoenicians in, 56, 57(m) Cavendish, Margaret, 532–533
325, 326(i) Punic Wars and, 158–160 Cavour, Camillo di, 709, 717, 719
Cantons, Swiss, 629 Rome and, 158–160 Ceauçescu, Nicolae, 967
Cape Colony, 803 Syracuse and, 81 Celibacy, Christian clerical, 199, 328,
Cape Horn, 443(m) Carthusian order, 330 350, 368, 459
Cape of Good Hope, 443, 547 Cartwright, Edmund, 674 Celtic peoples. See also Gauls (Celts)
Capetian dynasty (France), 305–306, Casino Royale (Fleming), 930 Anglo-Saxons and, 233
374 Cassatt, Mary, 767, 767(i) in Britain, 270
Capital cities, 726. See also specific Cassiodorus, 236 Censors (Rome), 155
locations Castellans, 302, 303 Censorship
Capital-intensive industry, 758 Castiglione, Baldassare, 462 by Catholic Church, 459
Capitalism Castile, 371, 372, 372(m), 396, 430 in France, 508, 568, 611, 642, 645,
Marxists on, 770 Castile-León, cortes of, 396 667
medieval business forms and, Castle, The (Kafka), 850 in German states, 448, 664
318 Castlereagh, Robert, 654–655, 657 in Nazi Germany, 868, 869
Capitalists, 695 Castles, 301–302, 314–315, 316 in Russia, 807
Caporetto, battle at, 834 Castro, Fidel, 931 in Soviet bloc, 915
Caracalla (Rome), 203, 203(i), 204 Casualties in World War II, 887
Caravels, 443 in Afghanistan, 963 Census
Carbonari, 651, 662, 663 in Chechnya, 981 Domesday survey as, 340
Cardinals, papacy and, 418 in Crimean War, 713 Italian catasto as, 435
Caribbean region. See also specific in Napoleonic wars, 652, 654 routinization of, 727
locations in Seven Years’ War, 594 Central America, 524, 994. See also
colonization of, 491, 492, 492(m), in War of the Spanish Succession, Americas; Latin America;
603(m), 608, 631–633, 648, 557 specific locations
675, 678, 689 in World War I, 821, 823(m), 824, Central Asia. See also Asia; specific
French in, 631–633, 648 825, 826, 834 locations
immigrants to Europe from, 923, in World War II, 881, 883, 886, Muslims in, 975
924(i) 891, 892, 894(m), 903 Central Europe, 900. See also
pirates (buccaneers) in, 547 Catacombs, Christian, 195(i) Europe; specific locations
slavery in, 446, 492, 524, 543, Çatalhöyük, housing at, 7(i) 1848 revolutions in, 700–702
545–546 Catallus (Roman poet), 161 absolutism in, 525–530
Carib people, 444, 492, 547 Catalonia, 483 in Great Depression, 874
Carlsbad Decrees (1819), 664 Catasto (Italian census), 435 Hitler and, 878–881
Carnegie, Andrew, 757 Cateau-Cambrésis, Treaty of, 464 Jews in, 802
Carnival, 536 Cathars, 369, 374 monarchies in, 306–308
[ Central Eu ro p e — Christ ian humanism
] Index I-11
Peace of Augsburg in, 467 Schmalkaldic League and, 467 of middle and upper classes, 592,
power politics in, 773–777 wealth of, 461 759
Thirty Years’ War in, 482–487, welfare tax imposed by, 459 mortality of, 490
485(m), 488 Charles VI (Holy Roman Empire), in Nazi Germany, 869
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 564 in postindustrial society,
930, 931 Charles VII (France), 414 946–947
Centralization Charles IX (France), 474, 475, 477 in Romania, 967
in England, 305 Charles X (France), 666 in Rome, 148
by Napoleon, 642 Charles Albert (Piedmont- sexuality of, 592, 789
Central Powers (World War I), Sardinia), 663, 700 Soviet Union and, 963
822–823, 828, 830, 834 Charles Martel (Franks), 290 upper class, 761, 762
Central Short Time Committee Charles of Anjou, 393 welfare state and, 913, 914, 914(i)
(Britain), 680 Charles the Bald (Carolingians), working class, 687, 764
Centuriate Assembly (Rome), 155 278(i), 279, 295 World War II and, 887
Ceramics, Greek, 50, 51 Charles the Bold, 415, 430, 431 Chile, 446, 965, 995
Cervantes, Miguel de, 480, 555 Charles the Great. See Charlemagne China
Cézanne, Paul, 792 Charles the Simple (Frankish king), Boxer Uprising in, 808, 809(i)
CFCs. See Chlorofluorocarbons 298 civilization in, 4
Chaeronea, battle of, 120 Charter 77 (Czechoslovakia), 966 Communists in, 911, 918, 957
Chalcedon, Council of, 223–224, Charter of the Nobility (Russia), 587, economy in, 994, 1006(m)
241 599 European imperialism in, 730,
Chaldeans, 43–44 Chartism, 697, 702–703 731
Chamberlain, Neville, 880 Chartres cathedral, 346(i), 347–348, foreigners in, 547
Chamber of Deputies (France), 658, 354(i), 389 Japan and, 804, 808, 876
772, 873 Chastity, Augustine on, 225. See also missionaries in, 547, 730, 731, 808
Chamber of Peers (France), 658 Celibacy Mongols in, 400–401, 401(m)
Champagne, France, fairs in, 314 Chateaubriand, François-René de, Nixon in, 957–958
Chansons de geste, 366–367 645–646 opium in, 690, 690(m), 691
Chaplin, Charlie, 874 Châtelet, Émilie du, 577 pollution from, 988
Chariots Chávez, César, 952 population growth in, 550
Byzantine, 237 Chechnya, 980–981, 980(i), 985 resistance to colonialism in, 808
Hittite, 28 Cheka (secret police), 833 revolution in (1949), 911, 918,
Mycenaean, 33–34 Chelmno concentration camp, 885 957
Roman, 174(i) Chernobyl catastrophe (1986), 964, Russia and, 751, 981
Charity(ies), 459, 590, 687, 688, 764, 986 Soviet Union and, 938, 949, 957
985–986 Chevet (apse), in churches, 352 Tiananmen Square protests in
Charlemagne (Frankish king) Chiefdoms, barbarian, 230 (1989), 965–966, 999
cultural renaissance and, 289–290, Childbearing as U.S. creditor, 994
293–294 in Greece, 92 Vietnam and, 952
empire of, 289–290, 291–294 in Rome, 192(i), 193 World War II and, 884
Harun al-Rashid and, 285 Childbirth Chingiz (Genghis) Khan, 400
Charles I (England), 514–515, 516, medicine and, 727, 943 Chirac, Jacques, 962
619 postponement of, 682 Chivalry, 367, 416
Charles II (England), 518, 520 risks of, 490 Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), 987
Charles II (Spain), 512 in Sweden, 872 Cholera, 681, 681(m), 727
Charles IV (Spain), 651, 652 test-tube babies and, 943, 943(i) Chopin, Frédéric, 686
Charles V (Holy Roman Empire, Child labor, 678, 679–680, 679(i), Choricius (rhetoric professor),
Charles I of Spain) 703 243
Catherine of Aragon and, 454 Children. See also Child labor; Chosen people, 47
colonies inherited by Philip II Education; Infant exposure Chosroes II (Sasanid), 257
from, 477 in concentration camps, 885, Christ. See also Jesus (Christ)
Diet of Worms and, 451 885(i) use of term, 194
Erasmus and, 449 in eastern Europe, 989 Christian IV (Denmark), 482
Fugger family and, 466 government support for, 787, Christian Bible. See Bible
Habsburg-Valois-Ottoman wars 951 Christian Democrats, in Italy, 910,
and, 463(i), 464, 465 in Great Depression, 862 960
New Spain and, 445 illegitimate, 681 Christian humanism, 448–450, 451,
resignation of, 467 of immigrants, 925 454
I-12 Index
[ C h r ist ian it y — C i v i l iz at i o n ( s )
]
Christianity. See also Bible; Churchill, Winston, 761, 882, 892, religious orders in, 368–370
Crusades; Great Schism; Jesus 904, 910 in Rome, 179–181, 180(i)
(Christ); specific groups Church of England (Anglican sanitation and health in, 565,
in Americas, 441 Church) 680–681
Arian, 222–223, 233 Charles I and, 514, 515 social life in, 551–554
in Britain, 270–272 under Elizabeth I, 466, 479–480 technopoles and, 950
Byzantines and, 283 on family limitation, 785 after World War II, 901
in China, 730, 731, 808 Henry VIII and, 453–454 Citizen initiatives (political tactic),
of Clovis, 234 Ireland and, 798 987
competing beliefs about, 221–226 Puritans and, 479 Citizens and citizenship. See also
Constantine and, 211–212 Test Act and, 518 Democracy; Voting and voting
conversion to, 196, 211, 217, 218, Wesley and, 584–585, 658 rights
441 Church of the Holy Wisdom. See in Athens, 68, 83, 85
Coptic, 223 Hagia Sophia global, 973(i)
deist criticisms of, 579 CIA. See Central Intelligence Agency in Greece, 42, 59–60, 62
in Denmark, 298 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 242, 421, 422 Jews and, 316
in eastern Roman Empire, 237, daughter of, 147 of non-European immigrants,
241 education for young men and, 148 924(i), 925
in England, 270–272 as Roman “new man,” 182 in Rome, 143, 150, 165, 181, 189,
in Germany, 308 writings of, 161 204
growth of, 196–199 Cimon (Athens), 85 in Sparta, 64–65
Hebrew Bible and, 46 Cincius Romanus, 422 City of God, The (Augustine of
hierarchy in, 221 Ciompi Revolt, 434 Hippo), 225
imperialism and, 754 CIS. See Commonwealth of City-states. See also Citizens and
in Islamic Spain, 287 Independent States citizenship; Polis; specific
Jews in society of, 383–384 Cisalpine Republic, 629 locations
lay piety and, 382–383 Cistercians, 330, 331(f), 373 Greek, 42, 54–63, 64–73, 73(m),
in Lithuania, 429 Cîteaux, monastery of, 330 114, 118, 120
polytheism and, 218–221 Cities and towns. See also Urban Mesopotamian, 8–9
Roman, 175, 193–201, 205, 207, areas; Urbanization; Walled Minoan and Mycenaean, 27
212, 217–229, 220(m), 271, 272 cities; specific locations in Near East, 6(m)
in Russia, 284–285 in 1050–1150, 313–314 Civil cases, in England, 357–358
Spanish reconquista and, 324, in mid-1800s, 726–727 Civil Code (Napoleonic)
371–372 along Baltic coast, 373–374 annexed territories and, 649
spread of, 220(m) bombings in World War II, 883, establishment of, 640
of Vikings, 298 888, 890–891, 891(i) Louis XVIII and, 658
women in, 221 Byzantine, 259–260 paternalism and, 644–645
Christine de Pisan, 423 characteristics of, 316–317 women and, 688
Church(es). See also Religion(s); commerce in, 314–315 Civil Constitution of the Clergy
specific religions development of, 4 (France, 1790), 615–616
in cities, 316 in Egypt, 16 Civil disobedience
decline in attendance, 737, 949 electricity in, 755 in India, 863
Gothic, 346(i), 347–348, 351, environmentalism in, 987 in U.S. civil rights movement,
352–354, 354(i), 389, 389(i) in Frankish kingdoms, 262–263 927
government control of, 596 globalization of, 981, 984–985 Civilians
Hagia Sophia as, 240 government of, 319–320 World War I and, 827–829, 837,
hierarchy of Christian, 198–199 in Great Famine, 402 845
music sponsored by, 428 in Greece, 85–89 World War II and, 860, 878,
reform of, 321–331, 450–455 as Hanse, 429 879(i), 883–886, 891
Romanesque, 351–352, 352(i), Hellenistic, 125, 126 Civilization(s). See also Culture;
353(i) industrialization and, 680–681 Geography; West, the; specific
Church and state, Investiture Jews in, 315–316 locations
Conflict and, 324–327, 341 Mesopotamian, 8, 15, 36 ancient, 3–37
Church fathers movement to, 590, 591, 763 defined, 3–4
on orthodoxy disputes, 224 nation building and, 726–727 Greek, 4, 27
writings of, 271, 379 poor people in, 681 in Mesopotamia, 3–4, 8–13
Churchill, Jeanette Jerome, 761 population growth and, 548, Sen, Amartya, on, 996
Churchill, Randolph, 761 551–552, 680–681 violent ends to, 34–36
[ C i v i l iz i n g , th ro u g h i m p e r ial is m — C o l l e c t i v iz at i o n
] Index I-13
Civilizing, through imperialism, 754 Clement XIV (Pope), 596 Coal and coal industry, 674, 676,
Civil rights Cleon (Athens), 106 677, 679(i), 680, 755, 759, 843,
in France, 579, 597 Cleopatra VII (Egypt), 128, 128(i), 961, 987
in Nazi Germany, 868 139, 168, 177, 188(m) Coalitions
in U.S., 900, 927, 950–951, 952 Clergy. See also Monasticism and anti-Swedish, 562
Civil Rights Act (U.S., 1964), 951 monasteries; specific groups English-Dutch, 634(m)
Civil service. See Bureaucracy Byzantine, 260 in Iraq War, 993
Civil service law (Britain, 1870), 728 celibacy of, 199, 328, 350, 368, Kuwait invasion and UN, 991
Civil war(s) 459 in Seven Years’ War, 593–594,
in Athens, 78 church reform and, 460 593(m)
in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 975 education and, 419 Coca-Cola, in France, 929
in China, 731 in France, 611, 615–616, 626 Cochin China, 730, 751. See also
in England, 340, 432, 515 in Germany, 307 Indochina; Vietnam
between French Catholics and in Great Famine, 402 Codes. See also Law(s); Law codes
Huguenots, 474–476 Luther on, 451 Christian monastic, 228
in French Revolution, 624–625 masters and students as, 351 in World War II, 882, 888
in Rome, 163–169, 176–177, 186, medieval, 300, 303 Codex (Justinian), 241
204 in Prussia, 737 Coffee (kavah), 541
in Russia, 285, 832–834, 833(m), taxation of, 397–398, 490–491 Coffeehouses, 540(i), 549, 553, 575
841 Clermont, Council of, Urban II and, Coins
in Spain, 874, 877–878 332 from Athens, 69, 115(i)
in United States, 714(i), 725 Client armies, in Rome, 163, debasement in Rome, 203
Clair, René, 874 164–165 devaluation of, 465
Clairvaux, 330 Client republics, of Napoleon, 640 Roman, 169(i), 178
Clans, non-Roman, 230–231 Clients, in Rome, 145–146, 160 Coitus interruptus, 785
Clare (Order of the Sisters of St. Climate Colbert, Jean-Baptiste, 510–511, 532
Francis), 368 in Egypt, 22 Cold war, 899–900, 904(f), 911(i),
Classes. See also Aristocracy; Estates global warming and, 987 949–952, 968–969, 992
(French classes); specific classes Great Famine and, 402 in Asia, 918–919
in ancient civilizations, 4 in Mediterranean region, 34 Cuba and, 931
in cities, 682 of Mesopotamia, 8, 13 culture of, 915, 925–927, 930–931
in England, 432, 724 Paleolithic, 5–6 decolonization during, 917–925
in feudal society, 300–301 Clito, William, 320 détente and, 958
in France, 475–476, 698–699, Cloning, 942 division of Germany and, 901,
873 Cloth and clothing. See also Textile 906–907, 907(m)
in Italy, 399–400, 700 industry; specific types emerging nations in, 900, 921(m)
Marx on, 732 in 1920s, 845, 846 end of, 965
Plato on, 117 gender roles and, 688–689 military spending during, 912
in Rome, 152–156, 191–192, 216 industrialization and, 319, 674, origins of, 893, 903–906
in Russia, 529 675 space exploration and, 917,
in Venice, 433 new look in, 929 940–941, 940(i)
World War I and, 827 of new woman, 787 world during (1960), 932(m)
Classical culture. See also Classical of rock-and-roll culture, 928(i) “Cold war,” before World War I, 810
Greece; Literature in Russia, 561 Cole, Thomas, 683
in late Roman Empire, 241–243 social status and, 553 Collaborators, in World War II, 908
in Renaissance, 421, 423 of upper classes, 762 Collection in 74 Titles, 323
Classical Greece. See also Golden workers for, 994 Collective action, by workers, 768
Age; specific locations Clotilda (Franks), 234 Collective security. See also
duration of, 77 Clouds, The (Aristophanes), 98 Alliances; specific alliances
after Peloponnesian War, 114–119 Clovis (Franks) Hobbes on, 520
Classical music, 588–589 Gregory of Tours on, 249 Little Entente for, 840
Classicism as honorary consul, 233 after World War I, 840
in French arts, 531, 532(i) law code under, 234–235 World War II and, 892
vs. romanticism, 659 Visigoths and, 272 Collectivization
Claudius (Rome), 185 Cluniac monks, 321–322 in China, 918
Cleisthenes (Athens), 70, 84 Cluny, Benedictine monastery of, in Soviet bloc, 915, 916(i)
Clemenceau, Georges, 836 321–322, 329, 330, 351 in Soviet Union, 865, 903
Clement VII (Pope), 418, 454 Cnut (Canute), 298, 305 World War II and, 883
I-14 Index
[ Colleges — Condition of th e Wo rking Class in England, Th e
]
Colleges. See Universities crafts and, 318–319 in eastern Europe, 901, 904,
Colloquy of Marburg, 452 Dutch, 479, 522–523, 522(m) 915–916
Coloni (tenant farmers), 216, 265 fairs and, 314 of English Diggers, 516
Colonies and colonization. See also Greek, 51 in Germany, 842, 867
Decolonization; Empire(s); Islamic, 288 origins of, 696–697
Imperialism; specific locations in Mycenae, 32 in Soviet Union, 851–852,
in Africa, 547, 690, 745–750, Napoleon and, 650 865–867, 963–965, 973
748(m), 754, 756, 803–804, Commercial revolution, 314–321 war, 833, 851
805(m) Committee of Public Safety World War I and, 822
in Americas, 491–492, 492(m), (France), 619, 620, 623, in World War II resistance, 887
511, 546–548 625–626 Communist China. See China
black slavery and, 524 Commodities, Russian sale of, 981 Communist International
British, 491, 492, 521, 524–525, Common land (Comintern), 833–834
546, 564, 601–602, 690 conversion to private property, Communist Manifesto, The (Marx
in Caribbean region, 491, 492, 682 and Engels), 696
492(m), 603(m), 608, 631–633, defined, 550 Communist Party. See also
648, 675, 678, 690 enclosure movement and, 551 Communism; specific
colonialism compared to Common law (England), 358 locations
imperialism, 689 Common Market, 912–913, 933, in Czechoslovakia, 954, 966
criticism of, 579 944, 945, 949, 958, 962, in France, 873, 929
Dutch, 524 981–982 in Hungary, 966
European attitudes toward, European Union and, 912, in Poland, 965
749–750, 752–754 973–974, 982 in Soviet Union, 831–832, 852,
French, 491, 492, 511, 512, 564, Common people 963, 964, 977
631–633, 690 in France, 611 Communities
French and Indian War and, political power and, 418 Christian, 220
593–594 in Rome, 152–155, 165 Internet, 998
in Great Depression, 863–864 Commonwealth, British, 824, 913 socialist, 695
imperialism and, 745–754 Commonwealth of Independent worker activities in, 770
independence movements in, States (CIS), 977, 978(m) Comnenian dynasty (Byzantine
900 Communal values, in Rome, 216 Empire), 338
nation building and, 729–731 Communards, 733 Company of Pastors, 474
resistance to, 808–810 Communes. See also Paris Competition
slave trade and, 488, 524, 543–548 Commune control of, 759
Spanish, 476–477, 492 in Italy, 319–320, 327, 361 EU and, 983(m)
World War I and, 824, 827, 829, in Middle Ages, 319–320 globalization and, 974, 986
829(i) in Paris (1871), 733, 741, 769 among great powers, 810–813
after World War I, 837(m), 838, Communication. See also superpowers and, 900
843–844 Languages; Writing Composers, 499, 555, 736, 794. See
World War II and, 875, 887, 892 global, 963, 965, 977, 996, 998, also specific individuals
Colonization, use of term, 56 1007 Computers, 1005
Colosseum (Rome), 153(i), 186, global culture and, 1006 evolution of, 939–940
187(i) information age and, 938–940 networks for, 939, 998
Colossus (computer), 939 mass journalism and, 771, 938 Comte, Auguste, 689, 739
Columbanus (Saint), 268 in Mesopotamia, 11 Concentration camps
Columbian exchange, 442, 446 Persian, 45 Armenians in, 828
Columbus, Christopher, 442, 444 telecommunications and, 974 in Boer War, 804
COMECON. See Councils (political) Tiananmen Square protests and, in Kenya, 923
Comedy (drama) 965–966, 999 Nazi, 859, 869, 884–886, 884(m)
Greek, 102–103 Communications satellites, 939, 940, survivors of, 886, 901
Hellenistic, 130 941 Concert of Europe, 654, 710, 716,
of manners, 533–534 Communism, 917. See also 775
Commerce. See also Business; Socialism Conciliar movement, 419
Commercial revolution; in China, 911, 918 Concordat of Worms (1122), 326,
Economy; Seaborne commerce; cold war and, 904, 931 341, 361, 363
Trade collapse of, 966–967, 968, 968(m), Concorde (aircraft), 944
Assyrian, 13–14 973, 977 Condition of the Working Class in
with colonies, 491 in Czechoslovakia, 954, 966–967 England, The (Engels), 696
[ Con doms — C o u n c ils (C h r ist ian )
] Index I-15
Condoms, 682, 785 in France, 614–616, 617, 628, 641, Contraception. See Birth control
Confederate States of America, 725 699, 772, 910 Contracts, business and, 318
Confederation of the Rhine, 649, in Germany, 701, 722 Convention, the. See National
653, 654 in Japan, 752 Convention (France)
Confessions (Augustine of Hippo), in Poland, 609, 667 Convents, 269, 300
225 in Russia, 664 Conversion, to Christianity, 196,
Confraternities, 535 in United States, 601–602, 927 211, 217, 218, 441
Congo region. See also Africa in West Germany, 910 Conversos (Spain), 436
Belgium and, 747, 749(i) Constitutionalism Cook, James, 579
immigrants from, 973 defined, 475, 505 Cooperatives
Congregationalism, in England, 515 in Dutch Republic, 521–523 farmers’, 945
Congress (U.S.), 951 in England, 505–506, 514–521, 559 producer and consumers’, 695
Congress of Berlin, 775 in English North America, 521, Copernicus, Nicolaus, 493, 494
Congress of Vienna 525 Coptic alphabet, 19(i)
allies at, 654–657 Enlightenment and, 582 Coptic Christians, 223
caricature of, 655(i) Locke and, 520 Corday, Charlotte, 624
Europe after, 656(m) natural law, natural rights, and, Córdoba, 287, 288, 289, 962
France and, 654, 712, 713 497 Corinne (Staël), 645
Netherlands and, 667 in Poland-Lithuania, 525–526 Corinth, 64(m)
Conrad III (Germany), 336, 341 Constitutional monarchy in anti-Spartan coalition, 118
Conscription. See Military draft in Belgium, 667 black-figure vase from, 40(i)
Conservatism, 961(i) in Britain, 655 navy of, 81
emergence of, 657–658 in France, 614, 615, 667 Rome and, 160
in France, 654, 699 in Italy, 798 tyranny in, 67
liberalism vs., 693 Constitutions of Melfi (Frederick II), Corinthian style, 86, 88(i)
Nazis and, 869 392 Corneille, Pierre, 509, 534
women and, 703 Consulate, in France, 641 Cornelia (Rome), 147
Conservative Party (Britain), 724, Consuls Corn Laws (Britain), repeal of, 694
771, 814, 910, 960 in Milan, 320 Coronation, of Charlemagne, 292
Constance, Council of, 419, 421, 422 in Rome, 154–155, 165, 167, 177 Coronation of Napoleon and
Constantine (Rome), 207 Consumer economy, 999 Josephine, The (David), 643(i)
coin portrait of, 217(i) Consumer goods Corporations, 318, 758, 944
conversion to Christianity, in 1920s, 847, 851 Corruption
211–212, 217, 218 in eastern Europe, 914, 984 in former Soviet Union, 977, 979,
Council of Nicaea and, 223 in postindustrial society, 929, 946 980(i)
as emperor, 212, 214 in Soviet bloc, 916, 929, 949, 950 in Italy, 798
Constantine (Russia), 664 after World War II, 900, 903, 912 Corsica and Corsicans, 158, 640, 985
Constantine Porphyrogenitos Consumerism, 927 Cortes (Spain)
(Byzantine Empire), 283 empire and, 761 of Castile-León, 396
Constantinople. See also Byzantine gender norms and, 929 defined, 430
Empire in Soviet bloc, 929 Cortés, Hernán, 440(i), 445
Black Death in, 411 teenagers and, 946–947 Corvée labor, 22
as Byzantium, 250 Consumer revolution (1600s and Cosimo de’ Medici, 434
Constantine and, 218 1700s), 549–550 Cosmetics industry, in 1920s, 847
economic and cultural life in, 257 Consumption Cosmonauts, 917, 940
fall of, 409 agricultural revolution and, 550 female, 940, 940(i)
in Fourth Crusade, 370 conspicuous, 552 Cosmos, use of term, 72
as Istanbul, 215, 864 industrial growth and, 758, Cossacks, 525, 599
Ottoman conquest of (1453), 760–761 Cotton and cotton industry
417–418 patterns of, 446, 546 in India, 548, 548(i)
patriarch of, 260 Contado (countryside), 320, 433 industrialization and, 675
sack of (1204), 364 Continental Europe. See also Europe; slavery and, 678
siege of (1453), 417(m) specific locations Councils (Christian)
suffering of people in, 338 industrialization in, 677 in 430 and 431, 223
Constantius (Roman Empire), 213 labor movement in, 697 of Chalcedon, 223–224, 241
Constitution(s) liberalism in, 694 of Clermont, 332
EU and, 983–984 workday in, 680 of Constance, 419, 421, 422
in Florence, 434 Continental System, 650 Fourth Lateran, 380–382
I-16 Index
[ C o u n c i ls ( C h r ist ia n ) — Cu lt u re
]
Councils (Christian) (continued) Crete, 23 in Europe, 370–374
of Lyon, 392 Minoans in, 23, 26, 28–30, 31(m) impact of, 337
of Nicaea, 223 Mycenaeans and, 33 Jews during, 383
of Pisa, 419 Crick, Francis, 928, 942 Louis IX (France) and, 393, 395
of Soissons, 350 Crime. See also Punishment Northern, 373–374
Third Lateran, 384–385 in cities, 682 “Cry of the Children, The”
Vatican II as, 925 in England, 668 (Browning), 683
Councils (political). See also Senate in former Soviet Union, 977 Crystal Palace exhibition (London),
of the Areopagus (Athens), 69, Israelite punishment of, 48 703–704, 704(i)
83, 84 Crimea, Putin and, 981 Ctesibius (scientist), 134
in Athens, 69, 70 Crime and Punishment Ctesiphon, 257
of Fifteen (England), 397 (Dostoevsky), 734 Cuba
of Five Hundred (Athens), 83, 94 Crimean War, 710, 712–713, 712(m), slavery in, 690
of Four Hundred (Athens), 70 714(i), 731 Spain and, 665
government and, 396–397 Crimes against humanity U.S. and, 804, 931
for Mutual Economic Assistance by Milosevic, 976 Cuban missile crisis, 900, 925, 931,
(COMECON), 915 Nuremberg trials and, 909 932
in Sparta, 64 Critias (Greece), 96 Cubism, 793, 794
of State (England), 517 Critique of Pure Reason, The (Kant), Cult(s)
of State (France), 641 583, 583(f) of Amun-Re, 25
Counterculture, 953, 957 Croatia, 527, 691, 975, 976 of Asclepius, 148
Counter-Reformation, 455, 459–461 Croats (Croatians), 906 of Aten, 25
Counterrevolutionaries in Austrian Empire, 691 of Demeter, 58, 62, 90, 199
in French Revolution, 617 independence of, 834 of Dionysus, 136
in Russian civil war, 832 nationalism of, 801 of dukes of Burgundy, 430
Countryside. See Rural areas Serb massacre by, 975 Greek, 59, 89–90, 135–138
Coups World War I and, 828 imperial (Rome), 186
in Germany, 842 Cromwell, Oliver, 515, 516–517, of Isis, 137, 200
in Russia, 977 517(i), 518 of Lenin, 852
Courbet, Gustave, 736 Cromwell, Thomas, 454 of Mithras, 200, 200(i), 201
Couriers, Persian, 45 Crop rotation, Carolingian, 296 mystery, 90, 137, 199
Courtier, The (Castiglione), 462 Crops. See also Agriculture; specific of the offensive, in World War I,
Courtly love, 365 crops 824
Courtly manners, 533–534 fertilizers and, 756 of personality (Khrushchev), 916
Court of Star Chamber (England), fodder, 550–551 of Reason, 623
515 in Great Famine, 402, 403, 403(i) religious, 199–201
Courts (law) in Greece, 55 Roman, 148–149
in England, 358–359 New World, 441 ruler, 136
in France, 506–507, 597, 620 plague and, 413 of the Supreme Being, 623
in Russia, 715 Crossbows, 416 of Vesta, 148–149
Courts (papal), 323 Cross-cultural connections. See of Virgin Mary, 535
Courts (royal) Culture; specific cultures and women and, 62
culture of, 461–463 locations Cultivation. See Agriculture; Crops;
of Louis XIV, 505, 508–509 Cross in the Mountains (Friedrich), Farms and farming
music in, 427–428 660, 661(i) Culture. See also Art(s); Classical
Covenant, Hebrew, 47, 48 Crucifixion, of Jesus, 194–195 culture; Intellectual thought;
Cracow University, 413 Crusader states, 332, 334, 335–336, Society; specific cultures
Craft-based unions, 769 336(m), 342(m), 370 in 1920s, 847–851
Crafts Crusades in 1930s, 874–875
in Crete, 30 First, 332, 333–336, 333(m), 337, of Anglo-Saxons in England, 340
in Middle Ages, 318–319 383 in Byzantine Empire, 260
Cranach, Lucas, 458(i) Second, 334, 336–337, 372–373, in cold war, 915, 925–927,
Cranmer, Thomas, 454 383 930–931
Crassus, Marcus Licinius, 167 Third, 359, 370 counterculture and, 953, 957
Creation myths, 10 Fourth, 364, 370, 380 courtly, 461–463
Credit Albigensian, 374, 374(m) Egyptian, 16
collapse of, 996 anti-heretic campaigns and, during Enlightenment, 585–592
Great Depression and, 860 371(m) Etruscan, 151
[ Cult u re — D efen s e
] Index I-17
in Hellenistic kingdoms, 135 Domitian (Rome), 186, 232(m) decolonization and, 923
linguistic, 692(m) Donation of Constantine, 291 England and, 518, 521, 523
in Muslim world, 286–288 Donation of Pippin, 290 independence of, 478, 485
Roman, 189–190 Donatus and Donatist Christianity, revolts against Spain, 477, 478
Dives (Bible, rich man), 312(i), 313 223 in southern Africa, 749, 803
Divided Heaven (Wolf), 950 Don Quixote (Cervantes), 480, 555 Thirty Years’ War and, 488
Divination, in Rome, 151 Doric style, 86, 88(i) trade and, 522–523, 522(m), 547
Divine Comedy (Dante), 387 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 734, 736, 775, after World War I, 843
Divine right of monarchs 776 after World War II, 901
Hobbes on, 520 Double Helix, The (Watson), 928 Dutch East India Company, 522(m)
James I (England) on, 487 Double monasteries, 269 Dutch Republic. See also Dutch;
Locke on, 520 Downsizing, 998 Netherlands
Divinity. See also Gods Dowry in 17th century, 537(m)
concept of, 3 barbarian, 230 agriculture in, 551
healing by, 136 in Greece, 62 commerce of, 479, 522–523,
Division of labor Merovingian, 267–268 522(m)
in barbarian society, 230 Draco (Athens), 68 Congress of Vienna and, 656
by gender, 8 Draft. See Military draft constitutionalism in, 521–523
Smith on, 581 Drama. See also Comedy (drama); decline of, 523, 560
Divorce Tragedy (drama) England and, 557, 601
advocacy for, 724 Greek, 90, 99–103 establishment of, 477
in Byzantine Empire, 260 Hellenistic, 130 France and, 511, 523, 621, 629,
Council of Trent on, 460 Roman, 160 656
in France, 624, 644, 787 Dreadnought, HMS (ship), 813 homosexuals in, 592
in Greece, 91 Dream of Philip II, The (El Greco), literacy in, 523, 590
Hammurabi on, 14 478(i) political reform and, 602
Milton on, 530 Dreams of My Russian Summers population growth in, 488
Protestantism and, 459 (Makine), 1002 Prussia and, 608
rising rates of, 784 Dresden, World War II and, 883 religious toleration and, 478–479,
in Rome, 148 Dreyfus, Alfred, and Dreyfus Affair, 567
in Soviet Union, 851–852, 866 799–800, 800(i) revolts in, 608–609
DNA, 928, 942 Drinking water, 680–681, 989 scientific research in, 495, 496
Doctors. See also Medicine Drought, 756, 989 slave trade and, 543
childbirth and, 727 Dual Alliance, 775 Dutch War, 512
professionalization of, 728 Dualism Dynamite, 813
public health care and, 565–566 as heresy, 369–370 Dynasties. See Kings and kingdoms;
Doctors Without Borders, 985 moral, in Zoroastrianism, 46 Monarchs and monarchies;
Doctor Zhivago (novel and movie), Plato on, 117 specific dynasties and rulers
898(i), 899, 917, 931, 932 Dual monarchy, 723, 801, 811. See Dynatoi (Byzantine Empire), 283,
Doctrine (Christian), 198, 450, 459, also Austria-Hungary 286, 332
460 Dubček, Alexander, 954, 955,
Dollfuss, Engelbert, 874 966–967 Earth. See Astronomy
Doll’s House, A (Ibsen), 766 Dublin, 830 Earthquakes, in Rome, 204–205
Dome of the Rock (Jerusalem), Dubrovnik, destruction of, 975 East, the, 4, 900, 915–917
255(i), 256 Duchies East Africa, 745, 747, 804, 810,
Domesday survey (England), 340 of Burgundy, 414–415 922–923
Domestication, of animals, 4, 6 in Germany, 306 East Anglia, 305
Domesticity Dukes (Burgundy), personal cult of, East Asia, 730, 731, 876, 887, 899,
ideology of, 673, 688, 689 430 918–919, 994
in postwar society, 929 Duma (Russia), 807, 831 Easter, dating of, 270
Domestic service. See also Servants Duncan, Isadora, 794 Eastern Christianity. See Greek
women in, 490, 553, 591 Dunkirk, 882 Orthodox Church; Orthodox
Domestic system, of manufacturing, Duns Scotus, John, 386–387 Christianity; Russian Orthodox
675 Dürer, Albrecht, 449(i) Church
Dominate (Rome), 212–218 Dutch. See also Dutch Republic; Eastern Europe. See also specific
Dominic (Saint), 374 Netherlands locations
Dominicans, 374, 385 in Africa, 749 1848 revolutions in, 701–702
Dominions, British, 726 agriculture of, 488, 550 1989 revolutions in, 966–967
I-20 Index
[ Easte rn Eu ro p e — Ed u cat i o n
]
Eastern Europe (continued) East Germany, 907, 916, 931, 949, redistributive, 10, 13
absolutism in, 525–530 966, 967(i), 968(m). See also in Rome, 161, 188–189, 203–204,
brain drain from, 956, 979–980 Germany 215–217
after Charlemagne, 295 East India Company in Russia, 713
cold war in, 933 British, 546, 690, 730 serfdom and, 491
collapse of communism in, 965, Dutch, 522(m) service, 937
966–967, 968, 968(m), 982 French, 546 Soviets and, 851, 865, 963, 977
communism in, 901, 904, East Indies, 444, 547 Thirty Years’ War and, 487–492
915–916 East Prussia, 526, 825, 837 in United States, 902–903, 962,
eastern Roman Empire as, Ebert, Friedrich, 835, 836 996
249–250 Ebla, Syria, 13 in Ur III, 13
economy of, 984, 999 Ebola virus, 989 in western Europe, 313–314,
empires in, 481 Ecce Homo (Nietzsche), 849(i) 911–912
in EU, 982–983 Economic democracy, 840, 871 world’s top fifteen economies
formation of, 283–285 Economics (2015), 1006(m)
governments in, 363–364 laissez faire, 774 after World War I, 838–839, 841
Great Depression in, 862 liberalism in, 693–695 after World War II, 900
Huns in, 230 monetarist (supply-side), 961 ECSC. See European Coal and Steel
industrialization in, 677–678, 915 Smith, Adam, on, 580–581 Community
Jews in, 481, 802, 862 Economic shocks, 995 Ecstasy of St. Teresa of Ávila
literature in, 1002–1003 Economist, The (periodical), 694, 998 (Bernini), 531(i)
monarchies in, 306–308 Economy. See also Agriculture; Ecumenism, Vatican II and, 925
oil and, 959 Farms and farming; Global Edessa
outsourcing to, 984 economy; Great Depression; crusaders and, 334
peasants in, 551 Labor; Trade; Wealth mosaic of family from, 224(i)
political formations in, 429–430 in 1920s, 844–845 Edgar (England), 305
pollution in, 987 in Athens, 68, 115 Edict of Milan, 217
power in, 428 balance of power and, 490–492, Edict of Nantes
power politics in, 773–777 958 enactment of, 475
religion in, 284–285, 481 boom and bust cycles in, 841 revocation of, 510, 526, 542
serfdom in, 491 Carolingian, 295–296 Edict of Restitution, 482–483
social welfare in, 914, 980 collapse of global economy, 974, Edmund (Saint), 358(i)
Soviet Union and, 888–889, 904, 995–996, 1005 Education. See also Higher
915, 949 commercial, 314–321 education; Learning; Schools
women in, 787 Common Market, 913 Black Death and, 413
after World War I, 841–842 crisis in 1870s and 1880s, 758–759 Byzantine, 260
World War II and, 883, 900 in Dutch Republic, 479 in France, 623, 772, 799
Eastern Europe. See also Soviet bloc dynastic wars and, 465–466 in Germany, 756, 796
Eastern front, World War I and, 825, in eastern Europe, 984 Great Depression and, 862
826 in Egypt, 747 in Greek Golden Age, 93–95
Eastern Orthodox Church. See emerging, 944, 994–995 in Hellenistic kingdoms, 127
Greek Orthodox Church; in England, 358, 359, 723–724, improvement through, 592
Orthodox Christianity; Russian 961 in Ireland, 962
Orthodox Church in former Soviet Union, 977, 979 Islamic, 289
Eastern Roman Empire, 139(m). See in France, 962 Jesuit, 460
also Byzantine Empire; Roman in Germany, 869, 906 literacy and, 553
Empire; Western Roman in global south, 989–990 Locke and, 521
Empire in Great Depression, 859, in Merovingian society, 268
in c. 600, 244(m) 860–861, 862, 863 Napoleonic, 644
Christianity in, 237 in Greece, 50 for nation building, 728–729
classical culture in, 241–243 Hittite, 28 in postindustrial society, 946
as eastern Europe and Turkey, 249 Marx on, 732 reforms of, 596, 687–688
under Justinian, 234, 236, Mesopotamian, 8–9, 13 in Rome, 148, 182–183
239–241, 257 money economy, 313–314 school attendance and, 728, 729
lifestyle in, 236–239 in non-Roman kingdoms, 231 segregation in, 927
Theodosius and, 212 oil and, 958–959 in Sparta, 65
western Roman Empire and, in peasant society, 266–267 for women, 94
214–215, 215(m) in Ptolemaic kingdom, 125 of workers, 728, 729, 795
[ Ed ward — England
] Index I-21
Edward (the Confessor, England), in population, 988 Emerging economies, 944, 994–995
338 poverty of, 913 Emerging nations, in cold war, 900,
Edward I (England), 397–398 Eleanor of Aquitaine, 337, 355–357, 921(m)
Edward III (England), 413, 414(f) 357(i) Emigration. See also Immigrants and
Edward VI (England), 454, 466 Elect, in Calvinism, 453, 480 immigration; Migration
EEC. See Common Market; Elections. See also Voting and voting to Americas, 547
European Economic rights from Europe, 682
Community in Soviet Union, 965 from French Revolution, 626
Ego, id, and superego, Freud on, 789 Electoral system, in Germany, 722 Greek, 56
Egypt (ancient), 17(m). See also Electors from Ireland, 698
Ptolemaic rulers of Brandenburg, 485, 526 from Nazi Germany, 870
Abbasids and, 285 of Holy Roman Emperor, 482 Emir (commander), 287
afterlife in, 2(i), 3l, 21–22 of Saxony, 467 Emissions, from autos and industry,
Alexander the Great and, 121 Electricity 987
Caesar in, 168 atomic power plants for, 914 Emperors. See also Holy Roman
Christianity in, 223 industrial growth and, 755 Empire; specific empires and
civilization in, 4 in London, 757(i) rulers
Hellenistic gods and, 137 from wind power, 987 Byzantine, 364
Hellenistic kingdom in, 125–126, Elements of the Philosophy of Newton in central and eastern Europe, 482
128 (Voltaire), 568 Charlemagne as, 292–293
Hittites and, 27 El Greco, 478(i), 498 church reform and, 322–323
Islam and, 253, 254 Eliezer, Israel ben, 584 German kings as, 362
Israelites and, 47 Eliot, George (Mary Ann Evans), in Rome, 181
magic in, 26 734 Empire(s), 12. See also Imperialism;
Middle Kingdom in, 22–23 Elisabeth de Valois, 477 specific empires and rulers
monks in, 226 Elisabeth of Hungary, 383 competition before World War I,
New Kingdom in, 23–26 Elites. See also Aristocracy; Nobility 810–813
Nubia and, 20 in Byzantine Empire, 280–285 decolonization and, 918–919,
Old Kingdom in, 16–22 in eastern Roman Empire, 241 921–923, 925, 933
peoples of, 18–19 in England, 516, 517 economies and technology of,
religion in, 25, 26 English in North America, 524 755–761
in Roman Empire, 177, 188(m) French Revolution and, 633 in Near East, 42–50
Sasanids in, 257 Greek, 51, 54, 92 Empiricism, 583
social hierarchy in, 22 in India, 750 Employment. See also Labor
unification of, 15–16 in Italy, 299 after World War I, 845
warfare and, 34, 36(m) Merovingian, 265, 267–269 Enabling Act (Germany, 1933), 868
writing in, 16, 19, 19(i), 112(i) Mesopotamian, 12 Enclosure, 551
Egypt (modern), 958 middle-class, 586, 587–590 Encyclopedia (Diderot), 576–577,
Britain and, 747, 811, 920–921 Nubian, 20 598
digital media and government in, in Rome, 145, 163, 185, 189, 191, Energy
999 192 alternative sources, 988(i)
Fatimids in, 287 socialist, 796 Einstein’s theory of, 792
imperialism in, 747 social order and, 682–683 from nuclear power, 941–942
Israeli peace accords with, 961(i) working class and, 688 politics of, 981
Napoleon in, 641 Elizabeth (Russia), 594 wind power, 987
nationalism in, 810 Elizabeth I (England), 454, 466, 474, Engels, Friedrich, 696–697
revolt in (1920s), 843 479–480, 479(i), 481 Engineering. See Inventions;
Suez Canal and, 712, 731, 747, Ellis, Havelock, 787–788 Technology; Weapons
921 Ellison, Ralph, 951 England. See also Britain; specific
World War II and, 888 Elpinike (Greece), 92 rulers
Eiffel Tower, 755 Emancipation in 15th century, 429
Einstein, Albert, 790, 792 of Russian serfs, 714–715, 715(i) Alfred the Great in, 304–305,
Eisenhower, Dwight, 888 of U.S. slaves, 725 304(m)
Eisenstein, Sergei, 848, 849, 867 Embargo black slavery and, 524, 543
Elba, Napoleon on, 653 oil, 958, 959(f) Calvinism in, 473
Elderly UN arms, 975 civil wars in, 340, 432, 514, 515
in concentration camps, 885 by U.S. against Japan, 876 classes in, 432
in Nazi Germany, 870, 885 Embassies, diplomacy and, 565 colonies of, 491, 492, 492(m)
I-22 Index
[ England — Ethnic groups
]
England. (continued) Enheduanna (Akkad), 12 Epigrams, by Hellenistic women,
constitutionalism in, 505–506, Enlightened despots (absolutists), 129–130
514–521 592, 597 Equal Employment Opportunity
Domesday survey in, 340 Enlightenment, 948 Commission (EEOC), 951
Dutch and, 518, 521, 523, 557 birth of, 566–570 Equality. See also Gender and gender
economy in, 359, 488 conservative thinkers on, 657 issues
finances in, 358 Declaration of Independence and, in French Revolution, 614, 615
formation of Great Britain and, 576, 601 in Greece, 59, 61
559 in France, 567–568, 582–583, 614 in marriage, 787
France and, 359, 394, 511, 594, 633 Freemasonry and, 587–588 in Russia, 715
gentry in, 432, 586 in Germany, 583 Equestrian order (Rome), 191
Glorious Revolution in, 519 individual and society in, 580–582 Equiano, Olaudah, 580
house of Hanover and, 559 intellectual thought in, 542 Equites (Roman equestrians,
human capital in, 565 philosophes in, 576–580, 578(i), knights), 164
Hundred Years’ War and, 413–416 583, 597 Erasmus, Desiderius, 449–450, 454
Industrial Revolution in, 674–675, society and culture during, Eratosthenes, 134
755 585–592 Erhard, Ludwig, 910
Ireland and, 517, 559, 693, 724, spreading, 582–584 Eridu (Mesopotamian city-state), 8
960 state power in, 592–602 Eriksen, Vigilius, 574(i)
Jews in, 383, 384 women in, 567(i), 570, 577–578, Ermengard (wife of Louis the
kingdom in, 262 589–590 Pious), 294, 295
literacy in, 553, 590 Enlil (god), 13 Esquivel, Laura, 1001
Luddite riots in, 675 Ennius (Roman poet), 160 Essay Concerning Human
Magna Carta and, 359 Entente Cordiale, 811, 822 Understanding (Locke), 521
in Middle Ages, 355–359 Entertainment. See also Drama; Estates (French classes). See also
naming of, 270 Leisure; Sports specific estates
nobility in, 586 in eastern Roman Empire, 237 deputies from, 611
Normans in, 338–340, 338(m), for peasants, 590 in Hundred Years’ War, 416
339(i) Roman, 181 Estates (land), expansion of, 682
Parliament in, 514 Entrepreneurs Estates General
peasant rebellion in, 416 Assyrian, 14 in Dutch Republic, 521–522
Peterloo massacre in, 667 industrial, 993 in France, 396n, 398, 611, 612
plague in, 518 in United States, 757 Este, Isabella d’, 428
playwrights in, 481, 498 Environment Esterházy family, Haydn and, 589
political reforms in, 771–772 disease and, 565, 987 Estonia, 881, 977, 982, 984, 998
political system in, 304–305 globalization and, 974, 986–988 Ethics
Protestantism in, 453–455, protesters (1960s) and, 969 Aristotle on, 118
479–481 Ephialtes (Athens), 84 Christianity and, 242
published materials in, 555 Ephors, in Sparta, 64 in Judaism, 196
railroads in, 673, 676 Epic literature. See also Homer; Socrates on, 97–98
reform societies in, 633, 687, 688 specific works Ethiopia, 989
religious divisions in, 466 Iliad as, 32 Christianity in, 223
representative government in, in Middle Ages, 366–367 European struggle for (1896), 798,
396–397 Epic of Creation (Mesopotamia), 10 803(m)
Restoration in, 518–520 Epic of Gilgamesh, 10 Italy and, 798, 876–877
St. Domingue and, 632 Epicurus and Epicureanism, 131 Ethnic cleansing, 909(i), 975
Scotland and, 517, 557, 559 Epidaurus, Greece, 137(i) Ethnic groups. See also specific
Spanish Armada and, 480 Epidemics. See also Black Death; groups and countries
theaters in, 498 Diseases; specific diseases in Africa, 748(m), 922(m)
vernacular language in, 304–305 AIDS as, 964, 989 in Austria-Hungary, 723, 801
Vikings in, 298, 305 in Athens, 106 in Austrian Empire, 691–692
Wessex in, 304 in cities, 727 in Balkan region, 774, 811–812
working class in, 668, 678, 795 in eastern Roman Empire, 240 in former Soviet Union, 977, 979
English language globalization and, 974 in Germany, 701
Anglo-Saxons and, 304–305 influenza pandemic and, 834 in Holy Roman Empire, 482
as dominant international in mid-19th century, 681, 681(m) in Hungary, 701, 723, 801
language, 1003 among native Americans, 446 independence movements and,
European continent and, 340 in Rome, 204–205 985
[ Eth n i c g ro u p s — Fam i l i es
] Index I-23
Forum expansion of, 511, 629, 630(m), Second Empire in, 699, 722, 772
of Augustus, 178, 179(i) 634(m), 730–731 Seven Years’ War and, 593–594
in Rome, 153(i) explorations by, 446 slavery and, 524, 543, 689–690
Fossil fuels, 987 families in, 302–303 socialism in, 695–696, 962
Fouché, Joseph, 642 Germany and, 811, 838, 839, 906, Soviet bloc and, 950
Foundling hospitals, 591 907(m) Spain and, 511–512, 557, 663
Fountains Abbey, 331(f) government in, 391 student strike in, 954
Fourier, Charles, 695 Grand Army in, 646–649 Suez Canal and, 712, 731, 921
Fourteen Points (1918), 830, 836, in Great Depression, 873 taxation in, 486, 510, 512, 610,
909(i) Greek settlements in, 56 614, 615
Fourth Crusade, 364, 370, 380 Hitler and, 877 terrorism in, 1006
Fourth Lateran Council, 380–382 Huguenots (Calvinists) in, Thirty Years’ War and, 483
Fourth Republic (France), 910 474–476, 526 Tunisia and, 747
France, 983. See also French Hundred Years’ War and, 413–416 United States and, 602
Revolution; Napoleon I Huns in, 231 urbanization in, 763
Bonaparte; Paris; Second imperialism by, 512, 730–731, Vichy France in, 882
Empire; specific rulers 747, 751, 843, 844 Vietnam and, 731, 919, 951(m)
in 12th century, 340–341 Indochina and, 751, 810, 919 voting in, 611, 612, 615, 618, 641,
in 15th century, 429 industry in, 757 658, 667, 698, 699
Algeria and, 682, 690, 731, 923 inflation in, 959 War of the Polish Succession and,
American Revolution and, 601 Iraq War and, 993 563
American settlement by, 546 Italian unification and, 717, 719 War of the Spanish Succession
Austria and, 563, 564, 593, 617, Italian Wars and, 463–464 and, 556–557
712 Jews in, 383–384, 395 wars of religion in, 474–476, 580
authority of state in, 510–514 July revolution in, 667 woman suffrage in, 841, 841(f)
birthrate in, 785 June Days in, 699, 699(i), 703 women in, 644, 908, 953, 953(i)
Bourbon restoration in, 653, 655, liberalism in, 694 World War I and, 815, 822,
658 literacy in, 553, 590 823–824, 826
Breton and Corsican Louis IX and, 395(m) after World War I, 836, 837, 838,
independence and, 985 in Middle Ages, 359–360, 360(m) 840, 842–843
Burgundy in, 430 middle class in, 587 World War II and, 881–882, 888,
Calvinism in, 473, 474, 579 Milan and, 431 892, 895
Canada and, 594 monarchy in, 505, 506–514, 614, Franche-Comté, 512
Capetian dynasty in, 305–306 617–619, 658 Francia, Gaul as, 233
after Charlemagne, 295 Morocco and, 811 Francis (Saint), 368
colonies of, 491, 492, 492(m), 682, Muslims in, 997 Francis (son of Henry II, France),
754, 864 Naples and, 431 467, 474
Congress of Vienna and, 654, 655, Navarre and, 372(m) Francis I (France), 461, 462(i),
712, 713 non-Europeans in, 923–924, 973 463(i), 464, 465, 466
constitutional monarchy in, 614, Peace of Westphalia and, 484, Francis I (Holy Roman Empire),
615, 667 485(m) 564, 691
constraints on power of, 556 peasants in, 611, 614 Franciscans, 368, 385
Crimean War and, 712–713 plague epidemic in, 489 Francis Ferdinand (Austria), 814,
crusades in, 374 political system in, 305–306 815(i)
de Gaulle in, 910, 923, 939, 950 Protestants in, 452 Francis Joseph (Austrian Empire),
diplomacy in, 564–565 Prussia and, 617–618, 720, 702, 712, 720, 722, 723, 726
division of (1940), 882(m) 721–722 Francis Xavier, 461
divorce in, 787 railroads in, 711 Franck, Hans Ulrich, 484(i)
Dreyfus Affair in, 799–800 reforms in, 597–598 Franco, Francisco, 877, 878, 960
Dutch and, 511, 523, 621, 629 regional departments in, 615, Franco-Prussian War, 722, 732, 756,
economic crises in, 962 616(m) 773, 811, 823
in ECSC, 912 religion in, 466, 658 Frank, Anne, 926
education in, 687, 946 republics in, 618, 628, 698–699, Frankenstein (Shelley), 639, 660
Egypt and, 747 772, 799–800 Frankfurt, 987
England and, 359, 394, 558(m) revolution and civil war in Frankfurt parliament (1848), 701
in Enlightenment, 567–568, (1870–1871), 733 Frankish kingdoms, 262–266, 269,
582–583 Rome and, 160 280, 290. See also Carolingian
in Entente Cordiale, 811 Russia and, 710, 712–713, 811 Empire
I-26 Index
[ Fra n ks — G e n d e r a n d ge n d e r issu es
]
Franks. See also Carolingian Empire; in former Soviet Union, 979 Frontiers. See also Boundaries;
Frankish kingdoms in grain, 599 Invasions
Clovis and, 249 NAFTA and, 981 Byzantine, 257–259
under Hugh Capet, 305, 306(m) Smith, Adam, on, 581 of Carolingian Empire, 291, 299
Roman Empire and, 233 Free Woman, The (newspaper), 696 Christianity along, 372–373
settlement patterns of, 264 Freikorps, 835 Congress of Vienna and, 656(m)
Frederick I (Brandenburg-Prussia), French Academy of Science, 792 of Roman Empire, 202–205
526 French and Indian War. See Seven Fugger family, 465–466
Frederick I Barbarossa (Germany) Years’ War Führer, Hitler as, 868
conquests of, 361–363 French East India Company, 546 Fulbert (cleric), 349, 350
imperial power of, 341 French Empire, 628, 639 Fur trade, 491, 511
portrait of, 361(i) French Indochina. See Indochina
territory held by, 356(m) French language, 388, 623 Gaelic language, 693, 798
Third Crusade and, 370 French Revolution (1787–1800) Gagarin, Yuri, 917, 940
Frederick II (Sicily, Germany, Holy conservative thinkers on, 657 Gaius. See Caligula
Roman Empire), 392–393 Directory in, 625, 628, 629, Gaius Gracchus. See Gracchus
Frederick II (the Great, Prussia), 640–641 family
564 education during, 623 Galatians. See Gauls (Celts)
Freemasonry and, 587 fall of Bastille and, 612(i), Galen, 495
partition of Poland and, 594(i), 613–614 Galerius (Roman Empire), 213
595 family life in, 624 Galicia, 693, 826
reforms by, 595, 596, 597 Freemasonry and, 588 Galileo Galilei, 494–495, 494(i)
Sanssouci palace built by, 588 major events of, 627(f) Gallicanism, 432
Seven Years’ War and, 593, 594 as model of modern revolution, Gallienus (Rome), 205
Frederick V (Palatinate), 482 607–608 Gallo-Romans, 265
Frederick the Wise (elector of monarchy in, 614, 617–619 Gambling, 590
Saxony), 451 origins of, 609–614 Game laws, in England, 586
Frederick William I (Prussia), Paris in, 613–614, 618, 620–621, Gandharan style, 135(i)
562–563 626 Gandhi, Mohandas (“Mahatma”),
Frederick William II (Prussia), 608 reforms after, 614–616 863–864, 863(i), 918, 927
Frederick William III (Prussia), 650 Republic of Virtue during, 620, García Márquez, Gabriel, 1001
Frederick William IV (Prussia), 621–624 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 700, 718–719
700, 701 resistance to, 624–625 Gas (natural gas), in Russia, 981
Frederick William of Hohenzollern Rousseau and, 582 Gas (poison), in World War I, 824
(Great Elector of Brandenburg- Terror in, 619–628 Gas chambers, in World War II,
Prussia), 526 Vendée Rebellion and, 624–625, 885
Free Companies, 416 626 Gasoline engine, 755
Free Corps (Dutch Republic), 608 wars during, 617, 619, 620–621, Gaul. See also France
Freedom(s). See also Religious 626, 628–633, 630(m) kingdom in, 249, 262
toleration; Rights women in, 606(i), 607, 615, 624 Magyars in, 298
in cities and towns, 319 worldwide reaction to, 633–635 monasteries in, 268
in Greece, 61, 91 French Wars of Religion, 474–476, Rome and, 160, 185, 191, 231
philosophes on, 576, 577 580 Visigoths and, 231, 272
religious, 596–597 Freud, Sigmund, 783, 784, 785, Gauls (Celts), 157
in Rome, 150 789–790, 790(i), 802 Gay liberation movement, 952
for slaves, 9 Friars. See also Religious orders Gays. See Homosexuals and
Freedom of a Christian (Luther), 451 Dominican, 374 homosexuality
Free French, 883, 887, 910 Franciscan, 368 Gaza, 958
Free markets. See also Market(s) Friedan, Betty, 953 Gehry, Frank, 1004
physiocrats and, 597–598 Friedland, battle at, 649 Gender and gender issues. See also
Smith, Adam, on, 580, 598 Friedrich, Caspar David, 660, Homosexuals and
Freemasons, 587–588. See also 661(i) homosexuality; Men; Women
Masons and Masonic lodges Friends of Blacks, 632 division of labor and, 8
Free peasants, 301 Froissart, Jean, 415 in Egypt, 22
Free people, in England, 357–358, Fronde, The (France), 506–507, in Great Depression, 862
359 508 among Israelites, 49
Free trade Front for National Liberation (FNL, in Nazi Germany, 869
in 19th century, 693, 694, 711, 759 Algeria), 923 Olympic Games and, 52–53
[ G e n d e r a n d ge n d e r issu es — G l o b a l iz at i o n
] Index I-27
in postwar society, 927–929, 947 Germanic peoples and kingdoms. Social Democratic Party in, 769,
in protest movements, 954 See Barbarians; specific groups 949
religion and, 737 German people in Thirty Years’ War, 482, 483
social distinctions in mid-19th in Austria-Hungary, 774, 801 in Three Emperors’ League, 773
century, 688–689 in Austrian Empire, 691 in Triple Alliance, 810
social roles and, 523, 592, in Baltic region, 373 unification and, 526, 701, 705,
784–785, 828–829, 947 as refugees, 901 719–722, 721(m), 773
in space race, 940(i) Germany. See also East Germany; urbanization in, 763
wages and, 770, 845 Nazis and Nazism (Germany); war guilt of, 838
in welfare state, 913 West Germany; World War I; women in, 796, 869, 908, 911(i)
General Maximum (France), 620 World War II; specific leaders workhouses in, 590
General School Ordinance (Austria), anti-Semitism in, 800 working class in, 774
596 antisocialist laws in, 795 World War I and, 814–815, 822,
General strike birthrate in, 785 825–826, 830, 834
in England (1926), 843, 845 Bismarck in, 773–774, 775, 777 Zollverein in, 692
in Germany, 835 after Charlemagne, 295 Germ theory, 727
in Russia (1914), 808 colonies of, 754, 804, 838, 843 Gerome, Jean-Léon, 711(i)
Syndicalists on, 796 division of, 901, 906–907, 907(m) Gestapo, 868–869, 884
unionism and, 769 in Dual Alliance, 775 Geta (Rome), 203(i), 204
General will, Rousseau on, 581–582 duchies in, 306 Ghana, state of, 203(i), 921–922
Generation gap, 947 economy in, 756, 842, 906 Ghettos, Jews in, 776–777, 802, 884
Genetics, 738, 914, 942, 945 empire in, 392–393 Ghibellines, 361
Geneva, Calvin in, 453 in Enlightenment, 583 Ghiberti, Lorenzo, 424–425, 425(i),
Geneva Conference (1954), 919, France and, 633, 838, 839 427
951–952 government of, 360–363 Giacometti, Alberto, 893(i)
Genghis Khan. See Chingiz Great Depression in, 861(i), 867 Giant Hamburger with Pickle
(Genghis) Khan imperialism by, 745, 747, 804 Attached (Oldenburg), 947,
Genius of Christianity industry in, 756 947(i)
(Chateaubriand), 646 intellectual thought in, 633 Gibbon, Edward, 582
Genoa, Black Death in, 410–411 Investiture Conflict and, 321, Gibraltar, 513
Genocide, 974. See also Holocaust 324(m), 326, 327, 337, 341 Gift economy, in western Europe,
in Africa, 990 Iraq War and, 993 266
ethnic cleansing as, 975 Jews in, 413, 801 Gilgamesh (Mesopotamian hero),
World War II and, 881, 899, 909 Kulturkampf in, 737 10, 11
Gentilhomme, 533 in League of Nations, 840 Giolitti, Giovanni, 798
Gentry, in England, 432, 586 literary works in, 686 Giotto, 390, 391(i)
Geoffrey of Anjou, 355n Magyars in, 298 Girls. See Gender; Women
Geoffrin, Marie-Thérèse, 578, in Middle Ages, 360–363 Girondins (France), 618–619, 620,
578(i) Morocco and, 811 621, 624, 626
Geography. See also specific Muslims in, 997(i) Girton (women’s college), 729
locations Napoleon and, 649, 651, 653 Giza, pyramids at, 20–21, 21(i)
of Egypt, 17 nationalism in, 633 Gla, palace at, 35
of Greece, 41, 54 non-European immigrants to, Gladiators (Rome), 155, 181, 182(i),
mathematical, 134 923–924 187(i)
of Mesopotamia, 8 occupation of, 892, 901 Gladstone, William, 771
Paleolithic, 5–6, 6(m) Pietism in, 584, 658 Glanvill, 358
of Rome, 150, 190(m) Poland and, 892 Glasnost (openness), 964, 969
Geology, 567 princes in, 362–363 Glenn, John, 940
Geometry, Euclid and, 133 principalities in, 392–393 Global economy, 979, 993–995
George I (England), 559 Realpolitik in, 719–722 Atlantic system in, 541, 542–550
George II (England), 559 reparations after World War I, collapse of, 974, 995–996, 1005
George III (England), 600 837–839 shocks in, 995
George V (England), 825 republic in, 834 Globalization, 1005–1007. See also
German Confederation, 656, 721 reuniting of, 966, 967(i) Immigrants and immigration;
German Democratic Party, 839(i) Russian Revolution and, 831 Market(s); Market economy;
German Federal Republic. See West Saxons from, 233 Migration; specific issues
Germany Schmalkaldic League and, 467 attacks on, 986
Germania (Germany), 264(i), 307(i) settlers in Poland from, 429 of cities, 981, 984–985
I-28 Index
[ G l o b a l iz at i o n — G reat M os q u e
]
Globalization (continued) churches, 347–348, 351, 352–354, of Sparta, 64–67
of communications, 963, 996 354(i), 389, 389(i) technological development and,
of culture and society, 996–1005 painting, 389–390 941–942
immigrants and, 973, 974 in Venice, 434 of United States, 601–602,
nation-states and, 981–986 Gouges, Olympe de, 615, 621 910–911
pollution, environmentalism, and, Goulash communism, 916 of Venice, 433
986–988 Government. See also of Wessex, 304
population growth and, 988–989 Administration; Authority; in West Germany, 910
telecommunication systems and, Kings and kingdoms; Law in World War I, 828
974 codes; Politics; Society; State World War II and, 886–887
Global markets, 974 (nation); specific locations and after World War II, 910
Global organizations, 981, 985–986 rulers Goya y Lucientes, Francisco Jose
Global warming, 987 of Athens, 68–70, 83–85 de, 651(i)
Glorious Revolution (England, of barbarian tribes, 231 Gracchus family
1688), 519 in Byzantine Empire, 259–260, Gaius Sempronius, 147, 163, 164
Gödel, Kurt, 875 364 Tiberius, 147, 163–164
God figurines, from Judah, 49(i) after Carolingians, 299–308 Grain
Gods. See also Cult(s); Polytheism; of cities and towns, 319–320 deregulation of trade and, 597
Religion(s); specific deities constitutionalism and, 505–506 in Great Famine, 402, 403
Babylonian, 14 of Dutch Republic, 521–522 Paleolithic, 5
Egyptian, 3, 25, 26 in eastern Europe, 363–364 Soviet imports of, 963
Greek, 57–59, 88, 89 in eastern Roman Empire, as staple crop, 489
Hittite, 27–28 238–239 Granada, Spain, 447, 962
Indo-European, 27 economy and, 581 Grand Alliance. See Allies, World
Mesopotamian, 4, 10 of Egypt, 20 War II and
Mycenaean, 34 of England, 305, 340, 355–359, Grand Army (France)
Roman, 148–149 396–397, 505–506, 559, 910 conquests of, 646–649
Goering, Hermann, 869 of English North American retreat from Moscow by, 652
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 584, colonies, 524 Grand tours, of Europe, 588
660 of France, 359–360, 505, 582, 624, Gratian (church reformer), 328
Golan Heights, 958 625, 733, 873, 910 Great Awakening, 584, 585(i), 659
Gold, from New World, 441, 445, of Germany, 308, 360–363 Great Britain. See also Britain;
446, 465, 477, 487, 488 in Great Depression, 861, 862, 867 England
Gold Coast (Africa), 750, 921–922 Greek, 64–70 formation of, 559
Golden Age of Hellenistic kingdoms, 125 Great Charter. See Magna Carta
in Greece, 77–109 Hittite, 27 Great Council (Venice), 433
of Latin literature (Rome), Hobbes on, 520 Great Depression (1930s)
183–184 as institution, 355–364 in Britain, 861, 872–873
in Roman politics and economy, intervention in society by, 688, in central Europe, 874
186–187, 188–193, 204 764 culture during, 874–875
Golden Ass, The (Apuleius), 191, 201 of Italy, 362, 910 in democracies, 871–875
Golden Horde, 400 of Japan, 731, 752 economy in, 859, 860–861, 862,
Gole, Jacob, 567(i) labor strikes and, 768–769 863
Gömbös, Gyula, 874 Locke on, 520–521 in France, 873
Gonne, Maud, 798 Mesopotamian, 10 global suffering due to, 892
Good Emperors. See Five Good in Middle Ages, 391–404 in non-Western countries,
Emperors under Napoleon, 642–643 862–864
Goods and services, in online nation-states and, 710 society and, 862
marketplace, 998 in Near East, 42 in Sweden, 871–872
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 938, 957, parliamentary, 559, 960 totalitarianism during, 859–860,
963–965, 964(i), 966, 977 popolo in, 399–400 864–870
Gorbachev, Raisa, 964(i) reforms after Seven Years’ War, in United States, 871
Gordon, George, 600 595–598 Great Famine, 391, 402–404
Gordon riots (London, 1780), 600 representative, 396–397, 524 Great Fear, in rural France, 614
Gospels, 194, 451 Roman, 152–156, 163, 188, Great Fire (London), 518, 519(i)
Gothic arts and architecture 212–215, 235–236 Great Khan (Mongols), 400. See also
cathedral elements, 347, 351, 389, Smith, Adam, on role of, 581 Chingiz (Genghis) Khan
389(i), 424 of Spain, 396 Great Mosque (Damascus), 256(i)
[ G reat N o r th e rn War — Hamlet
] Index I-29
Great Northern War, 562, 563(m) reemergence of, 42, 50–54 Guam, 804, 883
Great Persecution, of Christians, religion in, 57–59, 89–90 Guangzhou, China, foreigners in,
217, 218 Rome and, 150–151, 160–161, 201 547, 690
Great powers Sea Peoples and, 35 Guardianship, of children, 787
Britain as, 560 slavery in, 61, 90 Guelphs, 361
at Congress of Vienna, 654 trade in, 55–56 Guernica (Picasso), 878
Diplomatic Revolution and, 593 urban areas in, 85–89 Guest workers, 924–925
Great Pyramid (Giza), 9(i), 21, 21(i) women in, 42, 59, 62, 89, 90–92, Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao),
Great Reforms (Russia), 714 91(i) 1004, 1005
Great Schism Greece (modern) Guilds
of 1054, 328 Balkan region and, 812, 813 abolition of, 597
of 1378–1417, 410, 418–421 Byzantine Empire and, 283 Byzantine, 281
Great Society, 951 in cold war, 904–905 in Middle Ages, 318
Great Sphinx, 16, 18(i) democracy in, 960 universities as, 351
Great War. See World War I in EU, 982 Guillotin, J. I., 619(i)
Greece (ancient). See also Athens; independence of, 664–665 Guillotine, 619, 619(i), 620, 621, 624
Classical Greece; Hellenistic migration from, 841 Guise family, 474, 475
world; Ionia; Minoan Crete; Turks and, 664–665 Guizot, François, 687
Mycenaeans; Sparta; specific World War II and, 892 Gulag, 866, 916, 917, 956, 1002
locations Greek fire, 260 Gulag Archipelago, The
in 400 b.c.e., 108(m) Greek language, 15 (Solzhenitsyn), 956
Aegean region and, 31(m) classical, 242, 243 Gunpowder, 416
agriculture in, 55 Hebrew Bible in, 138 Gustavus Adolphus (Sweden), 483
Alexander the Great and, in Hellenistic kingdoms, 124, 135 Gutenberg, Johannes, 447, 448
113–114, 120, 122 Linear B and, 33 Guyenne, 413
arts in, 70–71, 99–103 in Mycenae, 32 Guyon, Jeanne Marie, 556
citizenship in, 56–58, 59–60 Rome and, 148, 237 Gypsies
city-states in, 54–63 Greek Orthodox Church in Britain, 998
civilizations in, 4, 27 Ottoman Turks and, 481, 501(m) Nazis and, 860, 870, 886
competition in, 52–53, 53(i) separation from Catholic church,
cross-cultural contacts in, 51 323 Habsburg dynasty. See also Dual
drama in, 99–103 in Sicily, 309(m) monarchy; Holy Roman
expansion of, 35, 55–56, 57(m) Green Armies, 851 Empire
Golden Age in, 77–109 Greenhouse effect, 987 in Austria, 485, 722
government in, 64–70 Greenland, Vikings and, 297 in Austro-Hungarian Monarchy,
Hellenistic gods and, 137 Green Party, 987 723
hero cults in, 89–90 Greens (faction), 237, 240 Balkan region and, 811, 812
hoplites in, 60 Gregoras, Nicephorus, 410 challenges to, 828
intellectual thought in, 70–73, Gregorian calendar, 561, 830 France and, 512
93–103 Gregorian reform, 324 German unification and, 721(m)
Jews in, 138 Gregory VII (Pope), 321, 323, in Holy Roman Empire, 393, 482,
Macedonia and, 119–120 324–326, 326(i), 328, 369 483, 527–528, 564
metallurgy in, 51 Gregory XI (Pope), 418 Peace of Westphalia and, 484–485,
metics in, 90 Gregory of Tours (Bishop) 485(m)
Minoan impact on, 28–30, 31(m) on Clovis, 249 state building by, 527(m)
Mycenaeans and, 31–34, 31(m) Histories by, 265, 269 wars with Valois dynasty and
noncitizens in, 61 Jews, commerce, and, 267 Ottomans, 463–465
Olympic Games in, 52–53 power of bishops and, 268 World War I and, 814, 836
Peloponnesian War and, 78, on relics of St. Martin, 266 Hadith literature, 256
104–107, 105(m) on Roman Empire, 249, 250 Hadrian (Rome), 186–187, 188(m)
after Peloponnesian War, 114–116 Gregory the Great (Pope), 270, Hagia Sophia, 240, 417
Persian wars with, 78–81 273–274, 304 Hague, The, women’s peace meeting
philosophers in, 42, 71–72 Greuze, Jean-Baptiste, 591(i) in, 828
Phoenician alphabet in, 51 Gros, Antoine-Jean, 648(i) Haiti, 965, 989. See also St.
polis in, 42 Grosz, George, 849–850, 849(i) Domingue
political disunity in, 118–119 Grotius, Hugo, 497 Hajj (pilgrimage), 253
red-figure painting in, 40(i), 58(i), Grozny, Chechnya, 981 Hamas, 991(m)
76(i) Guadalcanal, battle at, 889 Hamlet (Shakespeare), 481, 498
I-30 Index
[ Ham m u ra b i — H itl e r
]
Hammurabi (Babylon), laws of, Help-desk services, 998–999 Heterosexuality, 846
14–15, 47 Helsinki accords, on human rights, AIDS and, 989
Handbook of the Militant Christian 958 Hezbollah, 991(m), 992
(Erasmus), 449, 449(i) Hemingway, Ernest, 846 Hierarchy. See also Classes
Handel, George Frideric, 555 Henry I (England), 340 in Athens, 68–69
Handguns, 416 Henry I (Saxony), 306 in Christian churches, 198–199,
Hannibal (Carthage), 158, 160 Henry II (England), 337, 355–359, 221, 321, 368
Hanover, house of, 559 356(m), 357(i), 358(i) in Egyptian society, 22
Hanseatic League, 429 Henry II (France), 464, 466, 474 Mesopotamian, 9, 10, 14
Hanukkah, origins of, 138 Henry III (England), 393, 394, Neolithic, 8
Harald Hardrada (Norway), 338, 396–397 Paleolithic, 5
339 Henry III (France), 475, 477 Plato on, 117
Hard Times (Dickens), 734 Henry III (Holy Roman Empire), in Rome, 191
Harold (Wessex), 338, 339 322–323, 325 social, 4, 276, 300–301
Harry Potter novels, 1001 Henry IV (Germany), 321, 324–326, Hieroglyphs (Egypt), 19, 19(i), 112(i)
Harun al-Rashid (Abbasid caliph), 326(i), 341 High culture
285 Henry IV (Henry of Navarre, during cold war, 930
Harvey, William, 495 France), 474, 475–476, 510 in vernacular, 364–367
Hashim clan, 255 Henry V (Germany), 326, 341, Higher education, 688, 716, 729,
Hasidism, 584 360 937. See also Universities
Hastings, battle of, 339 Henry VI (Holy Roman Empire), in Greece, 95
Hatshepsut (Egypt), 24–25, 24(i) 392 High schools, in France, 772
Hattusas (Hittite capital), 28, 35 Henry VII (England), 432 High-tech industries
Haussmann, Georges-Eugène, Henry VIII (England), 453–455, in Ireland, 962
726–727 459, 461, 466 in Japan, 994
Havel, Václav, 966, 967, 1000 Henry of Anjou. See Henry II Hijra, 252
Hawaii, 804 (England) Hildebrand, 323. See also Gregory
Haydn, Franz Joseph, 589 Henry of Navarre. See Henry IV VII
Haywood, Eliza, 555 (France) Hillel (Rabbinic teacher), 194
Headscarf, controversy over, 997(i) Henry the Lion (Saxony and Hillesum, Etty, 859, 860, 885, 895
Health. See also Diseases; Health Bavaria), 363, 373 Hilliard, Nicholas, 479(i)
care Henry the Navigator (Portugal), Himmler, Heinrich, 868
air quality and, 565, 987 442 Hindenburg, Paul von, 825
as global issue, 989, 1005 Henry the Younger (England), 357 Hindus, 547, 730, 809, 863, 864, 918
healing by gods and, 136, 137(i) Hephaestus (god), 58 Hip-hop, 1000
insurance for, 873 Hera (god), 58, 148 Hipparchia (female Cynic), 133
malaria treatments and, 756 Heraclius (Byzantine Empire), 257 Hippias (Athens), 70
in Rome, 179 Herakles (Hercules), cult of, 90 Hippocrates of Cos (physician), 99
Health care, 729, 764, 913, 914 Herculaneum, Italy, 180(i), 588 Hippocratic Oath, 99
Hebrew Bible. See Bible Heredity principles, 738 Hirohito (Japan), 876, 883
Hebrews. See Jews and Judaism Heresy, 199. See also Inquisition Hiroshima, bombing of, 891(i), 892
Heisenberg, Werner, 875 anti-heretic campaigns and, 237, Hispaniola, 546, 631
Heliocentrism, 134, 493, 494 371(m) Historians
Hellenistic world, 113–114, 122–139 Cathars and, 369 Herodotus as, 45, 98–99
arts in, 129–131 clarification on acts of, 221 on Punic Wars, 160
culture in, 122, 129–138 dualism as, 369–370 Thucydides as, 98, 99, 104, 106
fall of, 128 Fourth Lateran Council on, 382 Historical and Critical Dictionary
kingdoms in, 122–128, 123(m) Lollards and, 420 (Bayle), 567
languages in, 135 Hermes (god), 58 Histories (Gregory of Tours), 265
Macedonia and, 119–120 Hermit monks, 330 Histories, The (Herodotus), 98
philosophy in, 131–133 Hero cults, 89–90 History of the Decline and Fall of the
religions in, 135–138 Herodotus (historian), 45, 98–99 Roman Empire, The (Gibbon),
Rome and, 128, 139(m), 160, 161, Hero of Alexandria, 134 582
191 Hervier, Louis Adolphe, 699(i) History of the Peloponnesian War
science in, 133–134 Herzen, Alexander, 695 (Thucydides), 99
society in, 126–128 Herzl, Theodor, 803 Hitler, Adolf
Heloise, 349–350 Hesiod (poet), 54, 55, 63 anti-Semitism of, 854, 870, 876
Helots, 65, 119 Hetaira, 92 assassination attempt against, 888
[ H itl e r — H yg i e n e
] Index I-31
Brown Shirts and, 842 Holy wars, crusades as, 331, 332 Hubris (arrogance), 102
in central Europe, 878–881 Home (Morrison), 1001 Hudson Bay region, 513
charisma of, 873 Home front, in World War I, 827–829 Hugenberg, Alfred, 867
expansion by, 876–877 Homeland security, in Rome, 157 Hugh (abbot of Cluny), 326(i)
Final Solution and, 884 Homelessness. See also Refugees Hugh Capet (France), 305
media and, 847 in cities, 553 Hugh of St. Victor, 327–328
Munich Pact and, 880–881 and economic crisis (17th Huguenots, 474–476, 510, 526. See
Mussolini and, 854 century), 490 also Protestantism
rise to power, 859–860 in Middle East, 997 Human capital, 565
Spain and, 878 after World War II, 899 Humanism
suicide of, 889 Homer, 32, 41, 52, 53–54 Christian, 448–450, 451, 454
totalitarianism of, 867–870 Home rule in Renaissance, 422–423
World War II and, 653, 882 for Ireland, 772, 798 Humanitas doctrine (Cicero), 161
Hitler Youth, 869 for Magyars, 701 Human rights, 497, 871, 958, 980(i),
Hittites, 26, 27–28 “Homes for heroes,” 845–846, 846(i) 982
Egypt and, 25, 27 Homo sapiens, 4–5 Humbert of Silva Candida, 323
invasions of, 34–35 Homosexuals and homosexuality Hume, David, 578, 583(f)
Hobbes, Thomas, 506, 520, 582 activism by, 952 Hundred Days (France), 653, 655
Ho Chi Minh, 864, 919 AIDS and, 989 Hundreds (government units), 305
Hogenberg, Franz, 472(i) in eastern Roman Empire, 241 Hundred Years’ War, 410, 413–416,
Hohenlinden, battle at, 648 in Greece, 66, 95 415(m)
Hohenstaufen dynasty, 361 Nazis and, 869, 886 Hungary, 956, 982, 983. See also
Hohenzollern family, 485 persecution of, 592, 788–789 Magyars
Holbein, Hans, 461 in Soviet Union, 866 after 1529, 437(m)
Holland. See Dutch Republic as “third sex,” 788 in 17th century, 537(m)
Holocaust, 883–886, 884(m), 920, Homo Zapiens (Pelevin), 1003 1848 revolution in, 701–702
926 Hong Kong, 691, 918, 994, 994(m), Austria and, 528, 564, 564(m)
Holstein, 720 999 in Austria-Hungary, 723, 723(m)
Holy Alliance (1815), 657 Honorius (western Roman Empire), bureaucracy in, 728
Holy communion. See Eucharist 215, 231 communism in, 905, 966
Holy Land. See Crusader states; Hoover, Herbert, 871 economy in, 950, 979, 998
Crusades; Israel; Jerusalem; Hoplites, in Greece, 60, 60(i), 71(i), fascism and, 860
Middle East; Palestine 76(i), 79 government in, 363
Holy Roman Emperor Horace (Rome), 183 in Great Depression, 874
election of, 526 Hospitals, 565, 713, 943 Huns in, 230–231
as emperor of Austria, 649 Hostage crisis (Iran), 959, 990 liberalism in, 694
use of title, 393 Hotchkiss machine guns, 813 Magyars in, 308, 701, 723, 841
Holy Roman Empire. See also House, Edward, 810 Mongols in, 400
Hapsburg dynasty; Ottonian Households nationalism in, 801
kings in postindustrial society, 929, 946 after Peace of Westphalia, 485
in c. 1340, 405(m) in Soviet Union, 963 protests in, 917
Brandenburg-Prussia and, 526 House of Commons (England), 515, Social Democratic Party in, 769
Burgundy and, 415, 431 559, 560 Turks and, 564
capital of, 428 House of Lords (England), 516, 668 after World War I, 835, 836, 837,
France and, 512 Housing 841
German Confederation after, in 1920s, 845–846, 846(i) World War II and, 882, 888–889,
656 at Çatalhöyük, 7(i) 892
Luther and, 451 in cities, 553, 726, 984 after World War II, 901
Otto I and, 306 in Frankish villages, 265 Hunger. See Famines
Peace of Augsburg and, 473 in Greece, 85 Huns, 229, 230–231, 232(m)
Peace of Westphalia and, 484–486, real estate bubble and, 995–996 Hunter-gatherers, 3
485(m) in Rome, 162(i), 167, 179 Hunting, 6, 462, 761–762
political formations in, 429 Sumerian, 8 Hus, Jan, 420, 421, 451
Protestantism in, 469, 482 in Sweden, 963 Huskisson, William, 673
Thirty Years’ War and, 482–484, urbanization and, 680 Hussein, Saddam, 990, 991, 993
485(m), 488 after World War II, 903 Hussites, 420–421
weakening of, 393, 527 Howitzers, 813, 825 Hydrostatics, 133
Holy Synod, 562 Hubble, Edwin, 875, 941 Hygiene, 847, 852
I-32 Index
[ Hyksos p e ople — Industrialization
]
Hyksos people, in Egypt, 23, 47 in Athenian Golden Age, 83 Britain and, 678, 690, 730, 750,
Hyperinflation, in Rome, 215 British, 730, 747, 749–750 863, 918
in China, 730, 731, 808 civilization in, 4
Iberian peninsula, 430. See also “civilizing mission” of, 754 decolonization in, 918
Portugal; Spain compared to colonialism, 689 economy in, 995, 998, 1006(m)
IBM, 944 French, 512, 730–731, 747, 751 Europeans and, 443, 547–548
Ibn Sina (Avicenna), 289 German, 745, 754 French Revolution and, 633
Ibsen, Henrik, 766 Japanese, 751–752, 876 Gandharan style from, 135(i)
Iceland, Vikings in, 297 missionaries and, 659, 730, 731, Gandhi in, 863–864, 863(i), 918
Iconoclasm, 261–262, 294 754 in Great Depression, 863
Icons, 260–262, 261(i), 282 multinationals and, 944 independence for, 918
Idealism, Kant and, 583 new imperialism, 746–754 Jesuits in, 461
Ideal Marriage: . . . (van de Velde), Roman, 156–163 nationalism in, 730
846 after World War I, 843–844 outsourcing to, 998
Ideas, modernity and, 790–794 World War II and, 875–877 partition of, 918
Identity Imperium (power in Rome), 154, railroads in, 676
deterritorialization of, 985 177 resistance to colonialism in,
Greek, 53, 73–74 Imports 808–809
Islamic, 990 Dutch, 522–523 Russia and, 751, 981
sexual, 784, 952 of New World gold and silver, 488 sati in, 659, 730
Ideologies, 337, 674, 688, 689, slave, 545(f) Seven Years’ War in, 594
691–697. See also specific Impressionism, 766–767, 767(i) textiles in, 678
ideologies Inanna (Ishtar, god), 10. See also War of the Austrian Succession
Ides of March, 169, 169(i) Ishtar and, 564
Ignatius (bishop of Antioch), 197 Incas, 445, 536 World War I and, 824
Ignatius of Loyola, 460 Income tax World War II and, 887, 892
Île-de-France, 306, 341 in Britain, 961 Indian National Congress, 750, 808
Iliad, The (Homer), 32, 41, 52 in U.S., 962 Indian Ocean region, 23, 443(m),
Illegal immigrants, 974, 998 Indentured servants, 543, 547 731
Illegitimate children, 547, 681 Independence, 900, 979. See also Indian Rebellion (1857), 730
Illiteracy, 553, 728. See also Literacy specific locations Indians. See Native Americans
Illness. See Diseases; Health; in Africa, 921–923 Indigenous peoples
Medicine in Asia, 918–919 in Americas, 445
Illuminated manuscripts, 378(i), 379 of Austrian Netherlands, 609 Catholic missionaries and, 460,
Illyria, 119 of Czechs, 482 461
Imam, 255, 287 Dutch, 478, 485, 521 Individuals, roles in society, 580–582
Immaculate Conception doctrine, of Greece, 664–665 Indochina. See also Cochin China;
737 of India, 863–864 Vietnam
Immigrants and immigration. See of Ireland, 830, 843 in 1954, 919(m)
also Migration in Latin America, 665–666, 666(m) cold war in, 919
French racism and, 962 in Middle East, 919–920 France and, 751, 810, 919
in Hellenistic kingdoms, 124 125 of Portugal, 483 Indochinese Communist Party, 864
illegal, 974, 998 regional, 985 Indo-European languages
industrialization and, 680 of Serbs, 664 in Greece, 31
motivation for, 762–763 in Soviet bloc, 968(m) of Hittites, 27
non-European to Europe, of United States, 601–602 Minoan and, 28–29
923–925, 973, 973(i), 974 Independence movements. See also Indonesia, 843, 844, 883, 923
in Sweden, 963 specific locations Inductive reasoning, 495
transnational culture of, 1000 in 1820s, 663(m) Indulgences, 419, 450, 460
to Western Hemisphere, 744(i) decolonization and, 918–919, Indulgents (France), 625–626
Imperial cult (Rome), 186 920–921, 933 Industrialization. See also Factories
Imperial Diet of Worms (1521), 451 Independents (England), 515, 516 in Austria-Hungary, 757
Imperialism Index of forbidden books (Vatican), birthrates and, 785
in Africa, 745, 747–750, 748(m), 459, 570 in Britain, 674–675, 755, 756
749(i), 803–804, 805(m), 810, India in eastern Europe, 677–678, 915
990 Alexander the Great and, 122 in Europe (c. 1850), 677(m)
in Asia, 730–731, 750–752, 750(m), Amritsar massacre in, 843 in Germany, 756
751(m), 804, 806, 806(m) Ashoka and, 135 in Great Depression, 862
[ Industrialization — In v itro fertilization
] Index I-33
Marx and Engels on, 696–697 Inheritance tax, in Rome, 178 Intelsat I (satellite), 941
railroads and, 673, 676 Inner light, religious, 516 Intendants (France), 510
roots of, 674–675 Innocent III (Pope), 380–382, 392 Interesting Narrative of the Life of
in Russia, 678, 758, 807 Innovation. See Intellectual thought; Olaudah Equiano, The, 580
Saint-Simon on, 695 Inventions; specific types Interest payments, in Middle Ages,
in Scandinavia, 757 Inoculation, 565–566 319
in Soviet Union, 865 Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of Interest rates, 959
in Spain, 757 the Wealth of Nations, An Intermarriage
in United States, 756–757 (Smith), 581, 583(f) in American colonies, 547
urbanization and, 680–682 Inquisition in Yugoslavia, 975
working class and, 678 censorship authority of, 459 International Court of Justice. See
Industrial Revolution, 945, 1006(m). courts of, 380 World Court
See also Industrialization defined, 382 International Monetary Fund, 985,
in England, 674–675 Galileo and, 495 990
second, 755 in Spain, 436, 459 International organizations. See
socialist thinkers and, 695 Installment buying, 847 specific organizations
use of term, 673 Institutes (Justinian), 241 International politics. See Global
Industry Institutes of the Christian Religion entries; specific locations
in Britain, 961 (Calvin), 453 Internationals, Marxist, 770, 795,
colonization and, 746 Institutions (Cassiodorus), 236 833
in eastern Europe, 982 Instruction (Catherine II, Russia), International trade. See Trade
emerging, 981 595 International Woman Suffrage
emissions from, 987 Instructions for Merikare (Egypt), 3 Alliance, 796
in former Soviet Union, 979 Insurance International Women’s Day, 830
in France, 757 disability, 774, 913 International Zionist Congress
in Great Depression, 862 in England, 798 (Basel), 803
home, 755–756 French mutual aid societies and, Internet, 998, 1005
innovation in, 755–758 697 Interpretation of Dreams, The
in Japan, 751–752 in Germany under Bismarck, 774 (Freud), 789
management of, 759, 845 health, 873 Invasions. See also specific locations
outwork and, 763–764, 939 unemployment, 873 of 4th and 5th centuries, 232(m)
service, 998–999 U.S. Social Security Act (1935) c. 790–955, 297–299
after World War I, 844–845 and, 871 Akkadian, 12–13
World War II and, 886, 902 Integrated circuit, 939 Magyar, 298–299, 306
“I Never Died for Love” (troubadour Intellectual thought. See also Mongol, 400–401, 401(m)
song), 366(f) Philosophy; Renaissance; Muslim, 298
Infant exposure, 127 Scholars and scholarship; of Roman Empire, 202, 205
Infanticide, 592, 681 Schools; Universities; specific by Sea Peoples, 34
Infant mortality, 193, 591, 679, 914 issues and thinkers Viking, 297–298
Infantry. See Military; Soldiers in Balkans, 776(m) Inventions. See also Technology;
Inflation, 962, 984 brain drain and, 956 specific inventions
in 17th century, 487 Byzantine, 282–283 ancient, 4
economic impact of, 586 in Enlightenment, 542, 566–570, industrial, 755–758
in Germany, 839, 839(i), 867 576–584 Investiture
oil and, 959 Erasmus and, 449–450 of German bishops, 307
in Rome, 215 in Germany, 633–634, 651 lay, 322
in Spain, 446 in Greece, 70–73, 93–103 Investiture Conflict, 321, 323(i),
Influenza pandemics, 834 Mesopotamian, 15 324–327, 324(m), 337, 341,
Information, sharing of, 938, 999 modernism in, 790–794 360, 361
Information age, 938–940 Napoleon and, 645–646 Investment
Information revolution, 996 politics and, 496–497 in Africa, 990
Infrastructure, in Rome, 236 on postmodernism, 1004–1005 in eastern Europe, 982
Inheritance (biological), 942 revolutions of 1848 and, 683 in railroads, 676
Inheritance (property) in sciences, 473–474, 492–496 in Soviet bloc, 915, 959
in Greece, 90–91 Social Darwinism, 739 in United States, 860
medieval patrilineal, 303 on social order, 733–734 Investors, Assyrian, 14
in non-Roman tribes, 230 on technology, 938 Invisible hand, Smith on, 581
in revolutionary France, 624 Intelligentsia (Russia), 807 In vitro fertilization, 943, 943(i)
I-34 Index
[ I o n ia — Jacq u e r i e
]
Ionia, 72 Abbasid caliphate in, 280, 285–286 families in, 304
philosophers from, 72 Black Death in, 411 fascism in, 852–854
revolt against Persians in, 78 caliphs and, 253–255 fertility rate in, 988
Ionic style, 86, 88(i) commerce in, 288 France and, 648
Iran, 993, 995. See also Khomeini, growth and expansion of, Frederick Barbarossa in, 362
Ruhollah (Ayatollah); Persia; 252–253, 254(m), 275(m) government of, 299, 362, 910
Persian Empire Hebrew Bible and, 46 Greeks in, 56, 73(m), 150
hostage crisis in, 959, 990 in Holy Land, 370 Huns in, 231
Mongols in, 401(m) languages in, 288 imperialism by, 804
Persia as, 864 Muhammad and, 250, 251–252 industry in, 757
Iraq, 3, 991(m). See also Babylon; nomads and, 250–251 after Investiture Conflict, 326,
Baghdad; Iraq War; in Ottoman Empire, 809–810 327, 341
Mesopotamia Qur’an and, 50, 251–252, 251(i) Jewish commerce in, 315
Iraq-Iran war, 990–991, 997 radical, 990–993 kingdom in, 262
Iraq War, 991(m), 993, 997 regional lords in, 286 Lombards in, 258, 273(m)
Ireland, 999 renaissance in, 289 Magyars in, 298
Christianity in, 233, 270, 271 in Roman Empire, 249 major powers in, 429
in Common Market, 949 scholars in, 289 monasteries in, 268
Easter protests in (1916), 830 Soviet Union and, 852 Napoleon and, 640, 648, 649, 651
education for high-tech jobs in, in Spain, 287 nationalism in, 691–692, 700
962 West and, 974 Normans and, 324, 342(m)
England and, 515, 517, 520, 559, Islamic State, 997 Ostrogoths in, 233
633, 693, 724, 798, 960 Israel. See also Jews and Judaism; Otto in, 306
famine in, 698 Middle East; Palestine papacy and, 392
France and, 633 Arab wars with (1967, 1973), 958, at Peace of Lodi, 433(m)
in Great Britain, 517, 557, 559 958(m) political system in, 304
home rule for, 772, 798 creation of, 920, 920(m) pope and, 290
immigrants from, 762 kingdom of, 48 railroads in, 672(i)
independence for, 830, 843 Palestinians and, 920, 991(m), 992 Roman expansion in, 156–158
nationalism in, 693, 960(m) peace accords with Egypt, 961(i) Rome in, 722
Northern, 843, 843(m), 960, Suez Canal and, 921 secession in, 985
960(m), 962 Israelites, 42–43, 46–50. See also signori in, 391, 399–400
outsourcing to, 998 Jews and Judaism Spain and, 513
protests in, 771–772 Istanbul (Constantinople), 215, 409, terrorism in, 960
Irish Free State, 843, 843(m) 417, 864 trade and, 315
Irish National Land League, 771 Italian language, Dante’s Divine in Triple Alliance, 775, 810
Irish Republican Army (IRA), 960 Comedy in, 387 unification of, 700, 705, 717–719,
Iron and iron industry Italian people, in Austrian Empire, 718(m), 798
in 1870s and 1880s, 755 691 voting rights in, 773
Greek, 51 Italian Wars (1494), 463–464 welfare state in, 914–915
Hittite, 28 Italy. See also Papacy; Roman women in, 854, 886, 910
in Middle Ages, 319 Empire; Rome; Sicily; specific World War I and, 822, 824
railroads and, 676 rulers after World War I, 836
in Rome, 150 in 13th century, 393(m) World War II and, 881, 888, 901
“Iron curtain,” 967(i) ancient (500 b.c.e.), 151(m) Ivanhoe (Scott), 662
Iroquois Indians, 511 assassinations by anarchists in, Ivan III (Russia), 481
Irrigation 796 Ivan IV (the Terrible, Russia), 474,
Mesopotamian, 8, 13 Austria and, 558(m), 667, 700, 481
in Neolithic Revolution, 8 701 Iwasaki Yataro, 752
Isabella of Castile, 430, 436, 444, Black Death in, 411–412
447, 454 Carolingians and, 290 J’accuse (Zola), 799
Isabelle (Bavaria), 423 after Charlemagne, 295 Jacob (Israelites), 47
Ishtar (god), 10, 43–44 city-states in, 433 Jacobin Clubs (France), 618, 628,
Isis (god), 20 communes in, 319–320, 327, 361 629
cult of, 137, 200 divisions of (1848), 700(m) Jacobite rebellion (Scotland), 559
Islam, 918. See also Arab-Israeli in ECSC, 912 Jacobitism, 559
wars; Middle East; Muslims education in, 728 Jacobs, Aletta, 764, 828
c. 1000, 286(m) Ethiopia and, 798, 876–877 Jacquerie, 416
[ Jad w i ga — J u r i es
] Index I-35
Jadwiga (Poland), 429 Jesuits, 460–461, 491, 596, 658, 737 Joan of Arc, 414
James I (England), 467, 480, 481, Jesus (Christ), 193–196 Job Corps, 951
487, 514, 559 catacomb painting of, 195(i) Jobs. See also Employment
James II (England), 518, 519, 520, as Messiah, 196 in Great Depression, 862
559 mosaic as Sun God, 222(i) white-collar, 787, 944–945
James V (Scotland), 467 nature of, 223 Jogailo (Lithuania), 429
James Edward (England), 559 Jesus movement, 193, 194, 195 John (England), 359
Jane Eyre (Brontë), 685 Jews and Judaism. See also John II (France), 416
Janissaries, 417–418 Anti-Semitism; Holocaust; John II (Portugal), 442
Jansen, Cornelius, 509 Israel; Israelites; Nazis and John XXIII (antipope), 419
Jansenism, 509–510, 556 Nazism John XXIII (Pope), 925
Japan assimilation of, 801 John of Leiden, 457(i)
art influences from, 766–767, 849 Black Death blamed on, 413 John Paul II (Pope), 965
atomic bombing of, 891–892, Christianity and, 193, 381(i), Johnson, Lyndon B., 951
891(i), 900, 904 383–384, 453 John the Baptist, 194
China and, 804, 808 crusades and, 334 Joint-stock companies, 491
economy in, 994 in Dutch Republic, 479, 523, 567 Jolliet, Louis, 511
European imperialism and, 731 in eastern Europe, 481, 801–802 Jordan, Israel and, 958
fascism and, 860 in England, 383, 384, 517 Joseph (Israelites), 47
high-tech industries in, 994 Enlightenment and, 578, 583 Joseph II (Austria and Holy Roman
imperialism by, 751–752, 804, Fourth Lateran Council on, 382 Empire), 594(i), 595, 596–597,
806, 876 in France, 383–384, 772, 1006 598, 609
Jesuits in, 461 in Germany, 413, 801, 842 Josephine (France), 643(i), 644
migrants from, 984–985 in Hellenistic world, 125–126, 138 Journalism
modernization in, 751–752, 752(i) Holocaust and, 883–886, 884(m), mass, 771, 938
reindustrialization of, 919 920, 926 in post-Soviet Russia, 980(i)
Russia and, 804, 806, 806(m), 807, impact on West, 46–50 terrorism against, 1006
810, 834 Islam and, 252–253, 288 Journeymen and journeywomen,
World War I and, 822 Jesus and, 194 318, 552
after World War I, 844 lifestyle of, 315–316 Joyce, James, 850
World War II and, 883, 884, 889, in Lithuania, 525 Juan Carlos (Spain), 960
890(m), 891 Louis IX (France) and, 395 Judaea, 193
after World War II, 899 in Merovingian world, 267 Judah (kingdom), 48, 49(i)
Japanese Americans, internment migration from Europe, 763, 802, Judah the Maccabee, 138
camps for, 887 802(m), 870 Judaism. See Jews and Judaism
Java, Europeans in, 541, 547 monotheism of, 194 Judiciary. See also Courts (law);
Jazz, 846, 851 Napoleon and, 649 Law(s)
Jedwabne, Poland, 884 nationalism of, 802–803 in Athens, 83, 84
Jefferson, Thomas Nazis and, 859, 860, 869, 870 in Rome, 155–156
Declaration of Independence and, Nietzsche and, 791 Judith (wife of Louis the Pious), 295
601 origins of term, 48 Julia (Rome, daughter of Augustus),
on French Declaration of Rights, Palestine and, 803, 876, 920 185
615 in Poland, 429, 525, 901 Julia (Rome, daughter of Julius
on French Revolution, 633 religion and, 597, 737 Caesar), 168
Jena, battle at, 649 revivalism and, 584 Julia Domna (Rome), 203(i)
Jenner, Edward, 566 revolts by, 194, 196 Julian calendar, in Russia, 561n,
Jerome (Saint), 224, 228 rights of, 737 830n
Jerome, Jeanette. See Churchill, Rome and, 186, 219 Julian the Apostate, 219
Jeanette Jerome in Russia, 776–777, 777(i), 799, Julio-Claudians (Rome), 184
Jerusalem 977 Julius Caesar (Shakespeare), 795
crusades and, 331–337 in Soviet Union, 903, 956 Julius II (Pope), 454, 461
Dome of the Rock in, 255(i), 256 in Spain, 436, 447 July revolution (Paris), 667
Jesus in, 194 Spinoza and, 523 June Days (Paris), 699, 699(i), 703
Jewish temple in, 48, 138, 196, 336 terrorism against, 1006 Jünger, Ernst, 850
Rome and, 186 trade and, 315 Junkers, 526, 597, 719
Saladin in, 370 World War I and, 828, 829 Juno (god), 148, 199
Sasanids in, 257 after World War II, 901 Jupiter (god), 148, 199
Turks in, 332 Jihad, 252 Juries, in Rome, 155, 164
I-36 Index
[ J u st i ce — Land
]
Justice Kings and kingdoms. See also Kuril Islands, World War II and,
in Carolingian Empire, 291 Empire(s); specific kings and 890(m), 892
in England, 357 kingdoms Kuwait, Iraq invasion of, 991
Greek, 54 in 15th century, 430–432 Kyoto Protocol, 987–988
in Hammurabi’s code, 14–15 in Egypt, 20
Justices of the peace, 459 in England, 305 Labor. See also Slaves and slavery;
Justinian (Byzantine Empire) European, 275(m) Workers; Working class
eastern Roman Empire under, Frankish, 262–266 agricultural, 677, 678
234, 236, 239–241, 257 German, 308, 361 child, 678, 679–680, 679(i), 703
law code of, 241 Hellenistic, 122–128, 123(m) colonists as, 824, 829, 829(i)
in Ravenna, 239(i) Hittite, 27 compulsory services, serfdom,
St. Catherine at Mount Sinai Israelite, 48 and, 551
monastery and, 227(i) Merovingian, 269 of concentration camp prisoners,
Jutland, battle at, 825 in Middle Ages, 355–364 885
Juvenal (Rome), 191 non-Roman in West, 229–236 corvée, 22
Persian, 44–45, 46(i) in Egypt, 22, 25–26
Ka’ba, 251, 252 post-Carolingian, 299 in England, 551
Kádár, János, 950 in Sparta, 64 in Hellenistic kingdoms, 126
Kadesh, battle of, 28 in Sumer, 10 Mesopotamian, 9
Kafka, Franz, 850 in western Europe, 262–274 for multinationals, 944
Kaiser. See William I (Prussia and King’s Peace (Greece), 118 non-Europeans as, 923–925
Germany); William II Kinship, barbarian, 230 political power of, 795–796
(Germany) Kipling, Rudyard, 804 slave, 543
Kamikaze tactics, World War II and, Kissinger, Henry, 957 in World War II, 886
891 Kleptocracies, 979, 990 Labor-intensive production, 758
Kanchei, Giya, 1003 Knight, Death, and the Devil, The Labor strikes. See Strikes
Kandinsky, Wassily, 793 (Dürer), 449(i) Labor unions. See also Strikes
Kant, Immanuel, 576, 583–584, Knights. See also Warriors in 19th century, 768–770
583(f), 633 chivalry and, 367 in 1920s, 845
Karlowitz, Treaty of, 528 in crusades, 336 emergence of, 678, 732
Kay, John, 674 epic poems and, 367 in England, 668, 960
Kazakhstan, 285 in Hundred Years’ War, 416 Mussolini and, 854
Kellogg-Briand Pact, 840 in medieval society, 300, 302 in Nazi Germany, 869
Kemal, Mustafa (Atatürk), 864 as mercenaries, 449(i) new unionism and, 769
Kennedy, John F., 931, 950, 951 in Rome, 164 political power of, 795
Kent State University, 957 Knights Templar, 336, 373(i) women in, 770
Kenya, 923 Knossos, Crete, 29, 29(i), 30, 33 Labour Party (England), 764, 769,
Kepler, Johannes, 494, 496 Kohl, Helmut, 962 798, 843, 873, 910
Kerensky, Aleksandr, 831 Koine language, 135 Labyrinth, for healing, 137(i)
Khadija, 251 Kolkhoz (collective farms), 865 Ladder of offices (Rome), 154
Khagan, 283 Kollontai, Aleksandra, 852 Lady of the Lake, The (Scott), 662
Khomeini, Ruhollah (Ayatollah), Köllwitz, Käthe, 820(i), 849 Lafayette, Madame de (Marie-
959, 990, 1001 Korea Madeleine de la Vergne), 508,
Khrushchev, Nikita, 899, 916–917, Japan and, 804, 806 534
921(i), 930, 931, 932, 950 World War II and, 892 Lafayette, Marie-Joseph (Marquis
Khufu (Cheops, Egypt), 21, 21(i) Korean War, 912, 919, 919(m), de), 614, 618
Kiev (city), 284, 400, 525 932(m) Laissez-faire, 581, 730, 774
Kievan Rus, 282, 283–285 Kościuszko, Tadeusz, 631 Laity, 322, 419, 460
Kikuyu people, 922–923 Kosovo, Albanians in, 976 Lakshmibai (India), 730
King, Martin Luther Jr., 927, 954 Kossuth, Lajos, 694–695, 701, 702 Lamb, Ann, 689
Kingdom of Naples, 643, 663 Kosygin, Alexei, 950 Land
Kingdom of Poland, 630(m) Kotzebue, August, 663 in Byzantine Empire, 283
Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Kristallnacht, 870 in Carolingian Empire, 296–297
Slovenes, 836. See also Kronstadt revolt (1921), 851 commerce and, 320
Yugoslavia Kulak, in Russia, 865 in England, 550–551
King Lear (Shakespeare), 481 Kulturkampf (culture wars), in in Frankish kingdoms, 264
King Philip. See Metacomet (King Germany, 737, 774 Jews and, 315
Philip) Kundera, Milan, 956 native Americans and, 524–525
[ L an d — Lep rosy
] Index I-37
peasants and, 490, 551, 861 fascism and, 860 Japanese expansionism and, 876
in Rome, 162, 163, 164, 167 globalization and, 974 mandate system of, 838
in Russia, 714–715, 865 independence in, 665–666, membership in, 838, 855(m)
Land and Liberty (Russia), 775 666(m) nondiscrimination clause of, 844
Landlords, in Ireland, 771 literature from, 1001 sanctions imposed by, 875
Landowners Latin language, 150, 189–190 United Nations and, 892
agricultural changes and, 551 classical, 242, 243 United States and, 838, 872
expansion of estates, 682 in eastern Roman Empire, 237 Learning. See also Education;
papacy as, 273 in Frankish kingdoms, 265 Intellectual thought
in Russia, 715 law code in, 234 in Germany, 307–308
in western Europe, 267, 302 in Merovingian society, 268 traditional, 495
Languages. See also Greek language; in Rome, 157, 160 Lebanon, Israeli attack on, 991(m),
Latin language; Writing; scholarship and, 242 992
specific languages Silver Age of literature in, 191 Lebensraum (living space), 876, 881
of 19th century Europe, 692(m) Latin peoples, 151(m) Lechfeld, battle of, 298, 306
in Akkad, 13 Latvia, 881, 977, 982, 984 Legal systems, reforms of, 595
Anglo-Saxon (Old English), 272 Laud, William, 515 Legion of Honor, 643, 645
Arabic, 288 Law(s). See also Law codes; specific Legions (Roman), 189
Aramaic, 43 acts Legislation. See Law(s); specific acts
from battlefield, 840 Byzantine, 259–260 Legislature. See Assemblies;
Celtic, 233 church, 380–381 Councils; Senate; specific
Chinese, 447 in England, 358 bodies and countries
in eastern Roman Empire, 237 Frederick Barbarossa and, 361 Legnano, battle of, 362
Egyptian, 16, 19, 19(i) of Hammurabi, 14 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 532,
English, 340, 1003 to improve marriage, 787 577
of Franks, 265 in Mesopotamia, 14 Leisure, 761–762, 765, 914–915
French, 388, 623 natural, 496–497 Lem, Stanislaw, 941
Gaelic, 693, 798 to protect women, 765 Lemonnier, Anicet Charles, 578(i)
in Islam, 288 Roman, 154, 191, 213, 234–235 Lenin, V. I., 795, 831, 832, 832(i),
Italian, 387, 718(m), 719 schools of, 349 833, 851
Koine, 135 scientific, 493, 496 Leningrad, 977. See also Petrograd;
Magyar, 701 of universal gravitation, 496 St. Petersburg
in Merovingian society, 268 Law, John, 557 as Petrograd, 852
Minoan, 28–29 Law codes siege of, 882, 887
Occitan as, 364 in Austria, 595 Le Nôtre, André, 509
of Roman Empire, 190(m) Civil Code of Napoleon as, 640, Leo III (Pope), 292
Semitic, 8 644–645 Leo III the Isaurian (Byzantine
Languedoc, 369, 374, 394 in England, 305 Empire), 261
Laodice (Seleucids), 127 of Hammurabi, 14–15 Leo IX (Pope), 323–324
Laon, convent at, 269 of Israelites, 47 Leo X (Pope), 454
Laos, 751, 919 of Justinian, 241 Leo XIII (Pope), 737
Larrey, Dominique-Jean, 645 Roman, 154, 231, 234–235 León, 372(m)
La Salle, René Robert Cavelier in Russia, 529, 595 Leonardo da Vinci, 425, 426(i), 427
(Sieur de), 511 of Ur III rulers, 13 Leopold (Austria, 12th century),
Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 445 Lawrence, D. H., 846 370
Las Meninas (Velázquez), 486(i) Laws of War and Peace, The Leopold I (Austria), 512
Las Navas de Tolosa, battle at, 372 (Grotius), 497 Leopold I (Belgium), 667
Last Judgment, 389, 389(i) Lay investiture, 322 Leopold I (Holy Roman Emperor),
Last Supper, The (Leonardo da Lay piety, in Middle Ages, 382–383 486(i), 526, 527, 528
Vinci), 425, 426(i) Lazarus (Bible), 312(i), 313 Leopold II (Belgium), 747, 749(i)
Lateen (triangular) sail, 443 Leadership, in Athenian radical Leopold II (Holy Roman Empire),
Lateran Agreement (1929), 854 democracy, 68 596(i), 597, 609, 617
Lateran Councils. See Councils League of Augsburg, 512 Leovigild (Visigoths, Spain), 272
(Christian) League of Nations, 923 Lepanto, battle of, 477–478, 477(i),
Latifundia (farms), in Rome, 163 Congress of Vienna as model for, 481
Latin America. See also specific 654 Lepidus (Rome), 176–177
locations Germany and, 838, 840, 876 Leprosy, in medieval society,
economic development in, 990 Italian aggression and, 877 384–385
I-38 Index
[ Lesb ia — Lombards
]
Lesbia, 161 in medieval cities, 316–317 humanist, 422–423
Lesbians. See Homosexuals and of middle class, 762 Latin American, 1001
homosexuality Minoan, 29 masculine style in, 928
Lesbos, 71 of nobility, 586–587 Neo-Babylonians and, 44
Lessing, Gotthold, 583 plague and, 413 novels and, 534, 555, 684–686
Letter, The (Cassatt), 767, 767(i) in postindustrial society, 944–945, oral, in Mycenae, 32
Letters Concerning the English 946–947 realist, 734, 736
Nation (Voltaire), 568 in recession of 17th century, Renaissance, 462–463
Levellers (England), 516, 600 488–490 Roman, 183–184, 191
Levi, Primo, 886 religion and, 382–383, 419 romance, 367
Leviathan (Hobbes), 520 in Rome, 150–151, 167, 179–181, romanticism in, 584, 662,
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 948 188–193 684–686
Lewes, battle of, 397 rural, 682–683 Russian, 775
Liberal arts, 348–349 of slaves, 544–545 Soviet, 866–867, 899, 915, 917,
Liberalism. See also Neoliberalism in Stone Age, 4–8 930, 956
in Austria, 723 of students, 953 Soviet-bloc, 950, 1002–1003
in Britain, 694, 798 technology and, 938 space race and, 941
conservatism vs., 693 of upper class, 761–762 Sumerian, 13
economic, 693–695, 774 urban, 551–554, 681–682 travel, 568–570
in Germany, 722, 774 of women, 553, 787–788 vernacular, 364–367, 387
in Hungary, 694–695 of working class, 682, 761–764 wisdom literature, 22
mass politics and, 799 Ligeti, Gyorgy, 956 by women, 534, 570, 685–686,
in Prussia, 719 Like Water for Chocolate (Esquivel), 849, 850, 926, 953, 1001, 1002,
in Russia, 695 1001 1002(i)
Liberal Party (Britain), 724, 771, 798 Limited liability corporation, 758 World War II and, 892–893
Liberation movements Lincoln, Abraham, 725 Lithography, 683, 685(i), 704(i)
in Algeria, 923 Lindisfarne Gospels, 271(i) Lithuania, 977, 982. See also
in Asia, 806(m), 919 Linear A script, 28 Poland-Lithuania
Fanon on, 927 Linear B script, 33, 35, 50 in 14th century, 429
Liberty, representation of, 621, Lipstick Ascending on Caterpillar Northern Crusades and, 374
622(i) Tractor (Oldenburg), 947(i) Russia and, 595, 631
Libido, Freud on, 789 Lister, Joseph, 727 World War II and, 881
Libraries Literacy. See also Illiteracy Little Entente, 840
at Alexandria, 129 of Beguines, 369(i) Liverpool and Manchester Railway,
in Christian Britain, 271 book availability and, 448 673
Enlightenment and, 589 in Dutch Republic, 523 Livestock, 550–551
Libya, Italy and, 804 growth of, 550, 684 Livia (wife of Augustus, Rome), 178,
Licinius (Rome), 217 in lower classes, 553, 590 183(i), 184
Liebknecht, Karl, 835 in public sphere, 771 Livingstone, David, 753(i)
Liège, baptismal font at, 317, 317(i) social reality and, 734 Livy (Rome), 183–184, 422
Life and Martyrdom of St. William of social status and, 553 Lloyd George, David, 836
Norwich (Thomas of Soviet, 851, 852 Loans
Monmouth), 384 Literature. See also Books; Classical contracts for, 319
Life expectancy culture; Epic literature; Poets for economic development, 985,
in Russia, 989 and poetry; specific works and 990
in welfare state, 914 authors student, 962
Life of Insects, The (Pelevin), 1003 in 1920s, 849 Locarno, Treaty of, 840
Life sciences, 942–943 in 1930s, 874–875 Locke, John, 506, 520–521, 568, 582,
Lifestyle. See also Society; Standard in cold war, 915, 926, 930 693, 732
of living; specific locations on decolonization, 927 Locomotives, 676, 755
in Athens, 114–115, 115–116 Enlightenment, 566–568, 570, Logic, 348–349
during cold war, 925, 927–930 577, 583(f) Aristotle on, 118
disposable income and, 541–542, epic, 366–367 Lollards, 420
549 Greek influence on Roman, Lombard League, 362
in eastern Roman Empire, 160–161 Lombards
236–239 hadith, 256 Byzantine Empire and, 257, 258,
in former Soviet Union, 977, 979 Hellenistic, 129–130 258(m)
in Germany, 842 of Holocaust, 926 in Italy, 273(m), 291
[ Lombards — M agellan
] Index I-39
Masons and Masonic lodges, 586, McCarthy, Joseph, and Europeans in, 731
587–588 McCarthyism, 911 Greeks in, 55, 57(m)
Mass (Christian), 328, 388, 420–421 McDonald’s, protests against, 986 Jews of, 315
Massacre at Chios (Delacroix), Measles, 914, 942 Muslim invasions and, 298
662(i) Mecca, 252, 253 Phoenicians and, 35, 51, 56,
Massacres. See specific massacres Mechanics, Archimedes and, 57(m), 73(m)
Mass culture, in 1920s, 846, 847–851 133–134 population decline in, 488
Mass journalism, 771, 938 Mechanization Rome and, 160, 167, 188(m)
Mass media. See also Media in farming, 756 violence in, 36(m)
dictators and, 860 Luddite protests against, 675 Megarons (rooms), in Mycenaean
Roosevelt, F. D., and, 871 Medea (Euripides), 90 palaces, 33
Mass politics. See also Mass media; Media. See also Mass media; specific Mehmed II (“Mehmet the
Politics types Conqueror,” Ottomans), 408(i),
anti-Semitism in, 799–803 authoritarianism and, 847 409, 417, 418, 433
birth of, 767–777 digital, 999 Meiji Restoration (Japan), 731
tensions in, 794–803 global, 965 Mein Kampf (Hitler), 854, 868
Mass production. See Hitler and, 868 Meir, Golda, 920
Industrialization; Industry; Roosevelt, F. D., and, 871 Memphis, Egypt, 16, 20
Production social, 999, 1007 Men. See also Boys; Gender
Mass society, World War II and, 887 World War I and, 847 in agriculture, 8
Master and Margarita, The Medici family (Florence) education of, 688
(Bulgakov), 1002 Catherine de, 474 in Egypt, 22
Masters, 318 Cosimo de’, 434–435 emigration to Americas, 547
Mastersingers of Nuremberg, The Lorenzo the Magnificent, 435 in Great Depression, 862
(Wagner), 736 Medicine. See also Diseases in Greece, 59–60, 63
Masturbation, 592 breakthroughs in, 493, 495 Neo-Assyrian, 43
Match Girls strike (1888), 768, childbirth and, 727, 943, 943(i) Paleolithic, 5
769(i) in concentration camps, 886 in postwar society, 927–929
Materialism, 131, 693, 732, 984 global health and, 988, 989 in Sparta, 65–66, 67
Maternity leave, 913 healing divinities and, 136 Menander (playwright), 130, 160
Mathematical geography, 134 health care and, 565–566 Mendel, Gregor, 738
Mathematics. See also Science in Hellenistic kingdoms, 127, 134 Mendelssohn, Moses, 583
in 1930s, 875 Hippocrates and, 99 Mendicant orders, 368, 383
Archimedes and, 133–134 Mesopotamian, 15 Menes (Narmer, Egypt), 16
in Enlightenment, 566 as profession, 728 Mennonites, 457
Euclid and, 133 schools of, 349 Mensheviks (Russia), 795
in Greece, 72 women in, 729 Mental illness
Mesopotamian, 15 Medieval period. See Middle Ages Freud and, 783
Matilda (Tuscany), 325, 326(i) Medina, Hijra to, 252 Nazis and, 870
Matrimonial Causes Act (England), Meditations (Marcus Aurelius), 201 Soviets and, 956
724 Mediterranean polyculture, 30 Mercantilism
Matrix Reloaded, The (movie), 1003 Mediterranean region. See also Colbert and, 511
Mau Mau, 922–923 specific locations in England, 517
Mauser rifles, 813 in 400 b.c.e., 108(m) Smith, Adam, on, 581
Maximian (Roman Empire), 213 in c. 1050, 309(m) Mercenaries
Maximianus (bishop of Ravenna), in c. 1150, 342(m) in Habsburg-Valois-Ottoman
239(i) c. 1715, 558(m) wars, 464
Maximilian (Austria), in Mexico, in 1871, 740(m) in Hellenistic kingdoms, 124
712 Akkadian Empire in, 12–13, of Holy Roman Empire, 527–528
Maximilian I (Holy Roman 12(m) in Hundred Years’ War, 414,
Empire), 465–466 attacks on, 34–35 415–416
Maximilla (Roman Christian), 199 Black Death in, 411(m) knights as, 449(i)
Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 852 civilizations in, 4 in Thirty Years’ War, 482
Mayflower (ship), 491 cultural interactions in, 32, Merchants, Dutch, 560
Mayor of the palace, 269 113–114 Mercia, 305
Mazarin, Jules (Cardinal), 483, Dark Age in, 37, 42–43 Mercy, A (Morrison), 1001
506–507, 508 economic decline of, 491 Mergers, 944, 974, 982
Mazzini, Giuseppe, 691–692, 700 Egypt in, 17 Merian, Maria Sibylla, 531, 533(i)
I-42 Index
[ M e rove ch — M i l itar y
]
Merovech (Franks), 234 Mickiewicz, Adam, 693 terrorists from, 992
Merovingian society Middle Ages. See also Renaissance World War I in, 824
in 7th century, 263(m) architecture in, 347–348 Middle Kingdom
aristocracy in, 267–269 beginning of, 250 in Egypt, 22–23
Carolingians and, 290 castles in, 301–302 in Europe, 295, 306
elites in, 267–269 church in, 380–385 Middlemarch (Eliot), 734
Frankish kingdoms and, 262 classes in, 300–303 Midrash, 219
gift economy in, 266 commercial revolution of, Midway Island, battle at, 889
law code in, 234–235 314–321 Midwives, 943
Mesopotamia, 3. See also Babylonia; crafts in, 318–319 in Ostia, 192(i)
Sumer England in, 355–359 in Rome, 193
Akkad and, 12–13 feudalism in, 300–301 Miélot, Jean, 431(i)
cities in, 8, 36 France in, 359–360, 360(m) Mieszko I (Poland), 308
civilizations in, 3–4, 8–13 Germany in, 360–363 Migrant workers
economy in, 9 governments in, 355–364 Mexican Americans as, 952
Egypt and, 24 interest payments in, 319 money sent home by, 924–925,
irrigation in, 13 peasants in, 300–301 997
law in, 14 political power in, 300–303, Migration. See also Immigrants and
polytheism in, 10 391–404 immigration; specific groups
Rome and, 186, 187, 188(m) schools in, 348–351 in 4th and 5th centuries, 232(m)
slavery in, 9 society in, 300–301 to colonies, 745–746
Messenia, helots in, 64 synthesis in, 379 global, 973(i), 974, 984–985, 996,
Messiah, 48, 194 universities in, 348–351 997–998, 1005
Messiah (Handel), 555 warriors in, 302–303 Greek, 56
Mestizos, 460, 547 Middle class, 949. See also human, 4–5
Metacomet (King Philip), 525 Bourgeoisie; Classes; specific internal, 763
Metals and metallurgy. See also locations international, 762–763, 973(i)
Gold; Iron and iron industry; in Athens, 68 of Jews, 802, 802(m), 803
Silver Enlightenment and, 575, 582, 586, from newly independent
17th century inflation and, 487 587–590 countries, 923–925
civilization and, 4 expansion of, 762 to Nile River region, 16
in Greece, 51, 55 liberalism and, 694 population of migrants, 997
Hittites and, 28 lifestyle of, 552 into Rome, 230, 235
in Mesopotamia, 12 literacy of, 553 by working people, 762–763
in Rome, 150 music and, 588–589 after World War I, 841
Metamorphoses (Ovid), 184 and nobility, 588 Milan, 431, 433, 700, 798
Metaphysics, 116–117 socialism and, 697 Militance. See also Activism; specific
Metaphysics (Aristotle), 378(i), 379 use of term, 587 groups
Methodism, 585, 658 women in, 673, 688, 689, black, 952
Metics (foreigners in Greece), 90, 93 759–760, 785, 796, 953 global forces and, 1006
Metric system, in France, 623–624 Middle-Class Gentleman, The Islamic, 959, 992, 993
Metternich, Klemens von, 654, 663, (Molière), 533–534 Military. See also Navies; Soldiers;
667, 691, 701 Middle East. See also Islam; Near Warriors; Wars and warfare;
Metz, Jews in, 588 East; specific peoples and states specific battles and wars
Meulen, Adam Frans van der, in 1919–1920, 837(m) in Brandenburg-Prussia, 526
504(i) in 21st century, 991(m) Byzantine, 260, 280, 281
Mexican Americans, as migrant in Arab world, 249 in Egypt, 23–24
workers, 952 Byzantine trade with, 282 in First Crusade, 332, 334, 335(i)
Mexican Ecclesiastical Provincial crusades and, 337 in France, 511, 617, 621, 629,
Council (1555), 460 decolonization in, 918, 920–921 640–641, 646–649, 772, 799
Mexico foreign workers in, 997 in Greece, 60, 78–79
Maximilian in, 712 Great Depression and, 864 Hellenistic, 124
NAFTA and, 981 homelessness in, 997 Hittite, 27, 28
rebellions in, 665 imperialism in, 844 in India, 548, 690
societies of, 445 Islam and, 990 in Japan, 876
U.S. war with, 724 oil policy and, 938 medieval, 302
Michael Romanov (Russia), 481 Russian expansion in, 712 Minoan, 27
Michelangelo Buonarroti, 435, 461 Suez Canal and, 712, 731, 921 Mycenaean, 27
[ M i l itar y — M o nten eg ro
] Index I-43
in Napoleonic France, 646–649, Missiles, 900, 925, 931, 965 in Germany, 341, 360–363
652, 653 Missions and missionaries. See also Hellenistic, 123, 136
Neo-Assyrian, 43 specific orders Israelite, 48
in Prussia, 562–563, 592, 594, 650 in Africa, 754 in Mesopotamia, 10
Roman, 151–152, 153, 165, 178, in Asia, 460–461, 730, 731, 754 in Middle Ages, 348, 355–364
189, 202, 204 Calvinist, 474 in Near East, 42
of Romanus IV, 332 in China, 730, 731, 808 in northeastern Europe, 429
in Russia, 529, 562, 715–716, 977 European imperialism and, 658, Ottoman, 417
in Sparta, 64, 81 659 reforms by, 595–598
in Wessex, 304 in India, 659 revival of, 337–341
after World War I, 838 in Ireland, 270 in Rome, 150–152
Military draft Jesuit, 460–461, 491 in Spain, 960
in France, 619, 621, 641 in New World, 441, 460, 461, 491 in western Europe, 428–429
Napoleonic, 646, 649 in Scandinavia, 298 Monasticism and monasteries. See
World War I and, 813, 824, 828 Mitanni people, Egypt and, 25 also Clergy; Convents;
World War II and, 887, 892 Mithras (god), cult of, 200, 200(i), Religious orders
Military spending 201 Augustinian Order, 449, 450
for cold war, 912 Mithridates VI (Pontus), 165–166, Benedictine, 321–322, 329
Korean War and, 918 167 Boniface and, 290
under Reagan, 962 Mitteleuropa, 811, 814 Carthusian, 330
in Soviet Union, 963 Mitterrand, François, 962 Cistercian, 330, 331(f)
in U.S., 962 Mobile warfare, 888 Columbanus and, 268
Military technology. See also Mobility commercial centers near,
Weapons in Athenian society, 69 314–315
in 16th century, 465 labor, 677 conduct in, 228
of Alexander the Great, 121 women and, 591 emergence of, 226–229
Hellenistic, 134 Mobilization in French Revolution, 615
Militia. See Military World War I and, 822 orders of poverty and, 329–331
Mill, Harriet Taylor, 739, 796 World War II and, 886 Monet, Claude, 766–767
Mill, John Stuart, 739, 796 Modern, use of term, 784 Monetarist theory, 961
Mill on the Floss, The (Eliot), 734 Modern art, 792–794 Money. See Coins
Mills, water, in Middle Ages, 319 Modernism, 791 Money economy, in 1050–1150,
Milosevic, Slobodan, 975, 976, Modernity, 580, 784, 817 313–314
976(m) Modernization Moneylending, by Jews, 383, 384
Miltiades (Athenian general), 243 in China, 994 Mongols and Mongol Empire
Milton, John, 530 Great Depression and, 862 invasions by, 400–401, 401(m)
Milvian Bridge, battle of, 217 in Japan, 731, 751–752, 752(i) in Poland, 429
Mind-body dualism, 117 Napoleon III and, 711 Monks. See also Monasticism and
Minerva (god), 148, 199 by Peter the Great, 560–562, monasteries; specific orders
Minimalist composers, 948 561(i) black, 329–330
Mining, 465, 679, 679(i) in Soviet bloc, 915, 967 Christian, 226–229
Ministerials, 308 Mohács, battle at, 465 white, 330
Minitel (computer network), 939– Moissac, monastery of, 313 Monogamy, in Greece, 62
940 Moldavia, 713 Mono no aware (Japan), 766–767
Minnesingers (love singers), 365 Molecular biology, 942 Monophysite Christianity, 223, 224,
Minoan Crete, 23, 26, 28–30, 31(m), Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), 227(i), 241, 254
33 508, 533–534 Monopolies, in Assyria, 13
Mycenaeans and, 32, 33 Monarchs and monarchies. See also Monotheism
Minorities. See also Ethnic groups; French Revolution; Kings and of Islam, 252
specific groups kingdoms; Queens; specific of Israelites, 42, 43, 49–50, 49(i)
in Poland, 842, 842(m) kingdoms and rulers of Jews, 194
in Russia, 716 Bodin on, 497 in Roman Empire, 250
Minos (King), 28 in Byzantine Empire, 338 Monroe, James, 666
Minotaur (mythical creature), 28 in central Europe, 306–308 Monroe Doctrine, 666
Mir (Russian community), 714, 758, in England, 338–340, 355–359, Montagu, Mary Wortley, 566
807 454, 514–516, 518–520, 724 Montaigne, Michel de, 475, 495,
Mishnah, 219 in France, 340–341, 359–360, 505, 499
Missi dominici, 291 506–514, 614, 617–619, 658 Montenegro, 774, 775, 812, 813
I-44 Index
[ M o ntesquieu — Naples
]
Montesquieu (Charles-Louis de during cold war, 899 Muslims. See also Crusades; Islam;
Secondat, baron of), 569–570, ethnographic, 948 Ottoman Empire; Shi’ite
595 globalization and, 1003 Muslims; Sunni Muslims
Montessori, Maria, 787, 788(i) neorealist, 930–931 in Algeria, 923
Monteverdi, Claudio, 499 about space, 940–941 in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 975
Montgolfier brothers, 577(i) World War II and, 887 Byzantine Empire and, 257
Montpellier, university in, 348, 349 Mozarabs, 287, 372 crusades and, 332, 334, 337
Moon, astronauts on, 940 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 589 in EU, 982
Moral dualism, in Zoroastrianism, 46 Mrs. Dalloway (Woolf), 850 in France, 997
Moralistic family paintings, 588, Muhammad. See also Islam in India, 547, 730, 864, 918
591(i) conversion of others to Islam, invasions by, 298
Morality 252–253 in Jerusalem, 332
of cult of Isis, 200–201 dual roles of, 250 in Kosovo, 976
in Greek tragedies, 101, 102 Qur’an and, 251 Moriscos and, 478
Hebrew, 47 successors to, 253–255 in Morocco, 477
Roman, 144, 149, 161 Mühlberg, battle at, 467 Rushdie and, 1001
Socrates and, 116 Mulattoes, 460 in Sicily, 309(m)
Moral majority (U.S.), 962 Multiculturalism, 1002 in Soviet Union, 852, 887, 975
Moravia, 527 in Near East, 114 in Spain, 254, 324, 371–372,
More, Thomas, 454 Multiethnicity. See also Diversity 436, 447, 461, 474, 492,
Moriscos, 478 of non-Roman kingdoms, 229 557
Morocco, 477, 811, 888, 923, 998 Multinational corporations, 944 Sunni/Shi’ite split in, 286–287
Morris, William and May, 766 Multinationalism in Third Crusade, 370
Morrison, Toni, 1001, 1002(i) in Austria-Hungary, 801 in Yugoslavia, 906
Mortality in Soviet Union, 834 Mussolini, Benito
decline in, 549 Mummies, 26 Black Shirts and, 852, 853(i)
infant and child, 591, 679, 682, Mumps, 942 charisma of, 873
914 Munch, Edvard, 782(i), 793 death of, 888
Mortgages, 995, 996 Munich Pact (1938), 880–881 expansion by, 876–877
Mosaics, 243 Münster, Anabaptists in, 457, 457(i) France and, 881
Byzantine, 256(i) Münter, Gabriele, 793 media and, 847
of chariot racing, 174(i) Müntzer, Thomas, 455 Munich Pact and, 880
of Christ as Sun God, 222(i) Murat, Joachim, 643 rise to power, 852–854
of family from Edessa, 224(i) Mursili II (Hittites), 27 Spain and, 878
from Great Mosque at Damascus, Muscovy, 411n, 481 Mutiny, in World War I, 830
256(i) Museum(s), 686, 930 Mycenaeans, 8, 26, 31–34, 31(m),
in Ravenna, 215, 238(i), 239(i) in Alexandria, 129 36(m)
from villa, 182(i) Music. See also Opera Minoans and, 32, 33
of women exercising (Sicily), baroque, 588 Treasury of Atreus and, 35
235(i) Beethoven symphonies as, Myrdal, Alva, 871–872
Moscow, 652, 807, 831, 977, 984, 998 660–661 Mysteries (initiation ceremonies),
Moses, 47 classical, 588–589 in Greece, 90
Hellenistic play about, 130 Enlightenment and, 588–589 Mystery cults, 90, 137, 199
Mos mairoum (way of the elders), in in former Soviet bloc, 1003 Mythology
Rome, 144, 156 jazz, 846, 851 Greek, 41, 42, 58–59, 101(i)
Mosques, Dome of the Rock as, minimalists and, 948 Mesopotamian, 10–11
255(i), 256 modern, 794
Motet, 388, 389(i) oratorios and, 555 NAFTA. See North American Free
Mothers. See Families; Women orchestral, 588–589 Trade Agreement
Mountain the (France), 619, 620 public concerts and, 554–555 Nagasaki, bombing of, 892
Mount Olympus, 58 Renaissance, 427–428 Nagy, Imre, 917
Mount Sinai rock, 946–947, 1000 Names (personal), in French
monastery at, 227(i) rock-and-roll culture and, Revolution, 623
Moses at, 47 927–928, 928(i) Nanking, Treaty of, 690–691
Movable type, 447–448 romantic, 660–661 Nantes, Edict of, 475
Movies, 939 sacred and secular, 387–388 Naples
in 1920s, 847–848 troubadours and, 365 France and, 431, 635, 649, 718
in 1930s, 874 Muslim League, 809 Greek settlements in, 56
[ Naples — Nav igation Act
] Index I-45
kingdom of, 643, 663, 667 Robespierre and, 626 Nation-states. See also Nation
railway in, 672(i) slavery and, 633 building; State (nation)
Napoleon I Bonaparte (France). National debt, in United States, 957, in global age, 981–986
See also specific locations 958, 994 government and, 710
conquests by, 629, 646–654 National Front Party (France), 962 nationalism and, 716
coronation of, 642, 643(i) National Guard protests in Europe against,
in Egypt, 641 in France, 614, 626, 733 731–733
empire of, 628, 646–649, 647(m), in United States, 957 religion and, 736–737
652 National health care, 913 Native Americans
Europe after, 654–659, 656(m) National Insurance Act (England, Columbus and, 444
fall of, 652–653 1911), 798 conversion of, 441
Goethe and, 584 Nationalism discrimination against, 460
as military hero, 638(i) artists and, 793 diseases and, 446, 488, 491, 524
religion and, 641–642 in Austria-Hungary, 801 Europeans and, 445, 524–525,
rise of, 639, 640–646 in Austrian Empire, 691–692 547
Rosetta stone and, 112(i), 641 in Balkans, 664–665, 664(m), forced labor of, 465
Russia and, 652 774 imperialism and, 804
slavery and, 633 Basque, 960, 960(m) literature by, 1002
Napoleon III (France) French Revolution and, 621 missionaries and, 441, 460, 461
authoritarianism and, 710, 711 of German peoples, 692 reservations for, 724
Crimean War and, 710, 712, 713 in Germany, 722 U.S. expansion and, 725(m)
defeat of, 733 growth of, 716 NATO. See North Atlantic Treaty
election of, 699 in Hungary, 701 Organization
Franco-Prussian war and, 722 ideology of, 691–693 Natural gas, 981, 987
Italian unification and, 700, 717, in India, 730, 809 Natural harmonization, Smith on,
718 in Ireland, 693, 960, 960(m) 581
rise of, 685(i) of Islamic fundamentalists, 990 Natural History of Religion, The
Siamese ambassadors and, in Italy, 651, 691–692, 719 (Hume), 578, 583(f)
711(i) Jewish, 802–803 Natural law, 496–497, 577
Suez Canal and, 712, 731 Napoleon and, 651 morality and, 161
Napoleon Crossing the Alps at St. in Ottoman Empire, 664(m), 809 Natural resources
Bernard (David), 638(i) in Poland, 693 in Russia, 977, 979
Napoleonic Code. See Civil Code revolutionary, 809 in United States, 756–757
(Napoleonic) after revolutions of 1848, 702–703 Natural rights, 497, 577, 579, 581
Napoleonic wars, 646–654 romanticism and, 661 Natural science, in 19th century,
Naram-Sin (Akkad), 13 in Russia, 693 737–738
Narmer (Menes, Egypt), 16 World War I and, 816, 827 Natural selection, 738
Naseby, battle of, 515 Nationalist Party (China), 808 Nature
Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 921, 921(i) Nationalities. See also Ethnic groups; laws of, 493
Nation. See State (nation) Minorities romanticism and, 584, 659, 660
National Aeronautics and Space in Austria-Hungary, 774 Navarino Bay, battle at, 664
Administration (NASA), 917 Nationalization Navarre, 372(m), 430
National Assembly (France), of private property, 915 Navies
612–613, 614–616, 699 of Suez Canal, 921 Athenian, 78, 82(i), 83, 85, 119
National Association for the National Organization for Women British, 304, 594, 648–649,
Advancement of Colored (NOW), 953–954 813–814
People (NAACP), 927 National Socialists (Germany). See of Corinth, 81
National Congress of the Chechen Nazis and Nazism (Germany) German, 813–814, 838
People, 980 National workshops (France), 698, Persian, 79
National Convention (France) 699, 732 Roman, 158
abolishment of monarchy by, Nation building. See also Russian, 562
618 Imperialism; Unification Washington Conference (1921)
clubs, societies, and, 625 in Africa, 922(m) and, 839
constitution created by, 628 cities and, 726–727 World War I and, 825
education and, 623 education and, 728–729 World War II and, 889
execution of Louis XVI and, 619 social order for, 726–733 Navigation. See Exploration; Ships
General Maximum and, 620 in United States, 724–726 and shipping
inheritance laws and, 624 warfare and, 710, 716–726 Navigation Act (England), 517–518
I-46 Index
[ Nazis and Nazism — Nobilit y
]
Nazis and Nazism (Germany), 900. Nazi conquest of, 859 New York, 952, 984, 1004
See also Fascism Philip II and, 467 immigrants in, 744(i)
anti-Semitism of, 870, 883–886 Spain and, 478, 483, 511–512 September 11, 2001, attacks on,
Austria and, 874, 878–879 urbanization in, 763 992(i), 993
central European conquests by, World Court in, 976 skyscrapers in, 851
878–881 World War II and, 881, 901 New Zealand, 579, 690, 763, 989
denazification program and, 909 Networks NGOs. See Nongovernmental
emigration from, 870 computer, 939, 998 organizations
expansion by, 876–877, 878–881 global communication, 965 Nicaea
growth of, 880(m) Neustria, 263(m), 269 Council of, 223
Hitler and, 854, 867–870 Neutrality, of Belgium, 667 in crusades, 334
Holocaust by, 883–886, 884(m) Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, 319 Nice, France, 465, 717
Jews and, 790(i), 870 New Deal (U.S.), 871 Nicene Creed, 223
Nuremberg trials and, 909 New Economic Policy (NEP), 851, Nicephorus I (Byzantine Empire),
religious opposition to, 875 865 283, 284
resistance to, 874 New England, blacks in, 545 Nicephorus II Phocas (Byzantine
totalitarianism of, 864, 867–870 Newfoundland, 513 Empire), 283
visual power of, 858(i) New France. See Canada Nicetius (bishop), 269
West Germany and, 962 New Harmony, 695 Nicholas I (Russia)
young people and, 862 New imperialism, 746–754 Austria and, 702
Nazi-Soviet Pact (1939), 881, 903 New Kingdom (Egypt), 23–26, 35 Crimean War and, 712
Near East. See also Hellenistic world; New Lanark, Scotland, 695 death of, 713
Mesopotamia; Middle East; New Left, in France, 954 on education, 688
specific locations New man, in Rome, 164–165, 182 liberalism and, 695
ancient, 4–8, 6(m) New Model Army (England), 515, Poland and, 667
Dark Age in, 42–50 516 succession of, 664
empires in, 42–50 New Netherland, 524 Nicholas II (Russia)
environment of, 5 Newnham (women’s college), 729 anti-Semitism and, 799
Greek culture and, 70–73, 114 New Plymouth Colony, 491 revolution of 1905 and, 807
Hellenistic Greeks and, 114, 123 New right, in Germany, 800 Russian Revolution and, 831
violence in, 36(m) News from the Republic of Letters World War I and, 815, 828
Necker, Jacques, 613, 645 (Bayle), 566–567 Nicholas III (Pope), 398(i)
Nelson, Horatio, 641, 649 New Spain, 445 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 787, 791, 849(i)
Neo-Assyrian Empire, 42–43 Newspapers, 964, 977 Nigeria, 922, 995
Neo-Babylonian Empire, 43–44 consumer revolution and, Nightingale, Florence, 713, 728
Neoclassical style, 588, 589(i) 553–554 Night of the Long Knives (Nazi
Neoliberalism, 961, 962, 980, 985 Enlightenment and, 589 Germany), 869
Neolithic (New Stone) Age, 5 Estates General coverage by, 612 Nihilism, in Russia, 716, 734
Neolithic Revolution, 6–8 growth of, 686 Nijmegen, Treaty of, 512
Neoplatonism, 201, 243 mass culture and, 847 Nika Riot, 240
Neorealism, in movies, 930–931 mass politics and, 770, 771 Nile River region, 16, 17, 17(m), 25.
NEPmen, in Soviet Union, 851 political coverage by, 600 See also Egypt (ancient)
Nero (Rome), 186, 187(i), 197 public, 561 Nîmes, France, aqueduct at, 157(i)
Nerva (Rome), 186 New Stone Age. See Neolithic Age 1984 (Orwell), 892, 930
Nestlé, 844 New Testament. See Bible Ninety-five theses (Luther), 450–451
Nestorian Christianity, 223 Newton, Isaac, 493, 496, 499, 532, Nippur, map from, 15
Nestorius, 223 568, 577, 579 Nixon, Richard, 956–957, 957–958
Netherlands, 983, 998. See also New unionism movement, 769 Nkrumah, Kwame, 921–922
Dutch; Dutch Republic New woman, 787–788, 800, 829 Noah, biblical account of, 11
Austrian, 551, 558(m), 564, 608 New World. See also Americas; Nobel, Alfred, 796, 813
Belgium and, 667 Colonies and colonization; Nobel Prize, 899, 926, 1000, 1001
Calvinism in, 473, 474 specific locations Nobility. See also Aristocracy
after Charlemagne, 295 conversion of Indians in, 441, 460, as ambassadors, 565
Congress of Vienna and, 654 461 in Austria, 528, 597
in ECSC, 912 Dutch trade with, 560 in Brandenburg-Prussia, 526
France and, 648 gold and silver from, 477, 487, Byzantine, 338
kingdom of, 656 488 in England, 340, 432
male suffrage in, 773 slave trade and, 445, 544–547 in Enlightenment, 585–587
[ N obil it y — O n th e Baby lonian Captiv it y of th e Church
] Index I-47
Prisca (Roman Christian), 199 Protectorates, French, 690 Prussia. See also Junkers
Prison camps, Soviet, 866, 916 Protest(s). See also Strikes; specific agriculture in, 551
Prisoners of war movements aristocracy in, 587
German, 910 of 1968, 954–957 armed forces in, 562–563, 592
Grotius on, 497 in Czechoslovakia, 937, 966 Bismarck and, 719–722
Soviet, 901, 902(m) against globalization, 986, 995(i) clergy in, 737
Privatization, in eastern Europe, 982 in Ireland, 771–772, 960 Congress of Vienna and, 654
Production. See also Agriculture; in Italy, 798 Dutch Republic and, 608
Industry labor, 768 education in, 596
in 1870s and 1880s, 758–759 against nation-state, 731–733 France and, 617–618, 621, 733
World War II and, 886 in Russia, 807 German unification and, 692–693,
Productivity in Soviet bloc, 916, 917, 950, 965, 719–722, 721(m)
in 1920s, 844 966–967 Great Britain and, 593
Soviets and, 915, 964 by students, 952–953, 954, 957 after Great Northern War,
Professions technology and, 937, 966, 977 562–563
middle class in, 587, 762 in Tiananmen Square, 965–966, industrialization in, 676
in 19th century, 728 999 Napoleon and, 649
women in, 729 by women, 953–954, 953(i) Pietism in, 556
Profits in World War I, 830 Poland and, 630–631, 631(m)
in money economy, 313–314 after World War I, 835 Poland-Lithuania and, 526, 563,
from slave trade, 445 Protestantism. See also Calvin, John, 593
Project Head Start, 951 and Calvinism; Luther, Martin; reforms in, 650
Prokofiev, Sergei, 867 Lutheranism; specific groups revolts against, 662
Proletarians, in Rome, 165, 166 in c. 1648, 501(m) revolutionary movement in, 700
Proletariat, 696, 697, 770, 954 in Dutch Republic, 567 Seven Years’ War and, 594
Prometheus, 660 Edict of Nantes and, 475, 510, slave trade and, 543
Propaganda 579 War of the Austrian Succession
during cold war, 911(i), 931, 973 in England, 453–455, 466, and, 564
in fascist Italy, 854 479–481, 520, 559 War of the Polish Succession and,
Hitler’s use of, 868 in France, 466, 474–476, 510, 579, 563
Soviet, 916(i) 596–597 Psalters, 260, 283, 369(i)
in World War I, 828, 836, 847 in Holy Roman Empire, 469, 482 Psychoanalysis, 783, 789–790
World War II and, 879, 886, 887 in Ireland, 843, 960 Psychology, 789–790
Property. See also Inheritance paganism and, 535 Ptolemaic rulers (Egypt), 123–124,
church (France), 615 in Poland-Lithuania, 526 125, 126–127, 128, 129. See also
in Greece, 90–91 in postindustrial society, 949 Cleopatra VII
in Napoleonic code, 644 reform societies and, 687 Ptolemy I, 123
private, 582, 696, 903 religious reform and, 442 Ptolemy II, 129, 138
in Rome, 216 revivalism and, 448, 555–556, Ptolemy III, 136
slaves as, 61 584–585, 658–659 Ptolemy V, 112(i)
of women, 14, 63, 127, 148, 724, Schmalkaldic League and, 467 Ptolemy VIII, 147
787 in Scotland, 467, 559 ruler cults and, 136
Prophets. See also Muhammad spread of, 452–453 Ptolemy (astronomer), 493
Christian women as, 199 Protestant Reformation, 450–453, Public health, 565–566, 681(m), 727
Greek, 59 452(f), 455–459, 466, 468(m). Public life. See also Lifestyle
Jewish, 48–49 See also Calvin, John, and arts in, 554–555
Prosperity Calvinism; Luther, Martin; coffeehouses and, 540(i)
in 1920s, 847 specific groups Public opinion, 599–600, 957
after World War II, 902, 912, 925 Proto-industrialization, 675 Public policy, 1005
Prostitutes and prostitution Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph, 696, Public works
in cities, 682 732 in Great Depression, 871
in former Soviet Union, 979 Provence, Germany and, 362 of Louis XIV, 509
international sex rings and, 997 Provinces, Roman, 186, 189–190, in Rome, 157(i), 236
regulation of, 592, 728 191, 235–236 Publishing, in France, 582–583
rehabilitation of, 535 Provincial Letters (Pascal), 510 Puccini, Giacomo, 794
in Rome, 148, 181 Provisional Government (Russia), Puerperal fever, 727
women’s work against, 673, 687 831 Puerto Rico, 665, 804
Protagoras (Athens), 95, 96 Proxy wars, 919 Pugachev, Emelian, 599
I-54 Index
[ P u ga ch ev re b e l l i o n — Refo rm ( s )
]
Pugachev rebellion, 599, 599(m) World War I and, 827–828 Raynal, Guillaume (Abbé), 578(i),
Pump priming, 869, 873 World War II and, 887 579, 583(f)
Punic Wars, 158–160 Racine, Jean-Baptiste, 509, 534 Razin, Stenka, 529, 529(i)
Punishment Radical democracy, in Athens, Re (god), 20
in Hammurabi’s code, 14–15 83–85, 107 Reading, 553–554, 589–590. See also
in Israelite law, 48 Radical Islam, 990–993 Literacy
in Rome, 213 Radicalism Reagan, Ronald, 962, 965, 969
of slaves, 545 France and, 699 Reaganomics, 962
torture and, 497 Russia and, 775–776 Real estate bubble, 995–996
wergeld as, 234–235 after World War I, 835 Realism
Purges Radical right, 799 in arts, 161, 733–736, 735(i)
Lenin and, 851 Radio, 847, 848–849, 854, 869, 871, Greek, 161
by Stalin, 866, 903 872(i), 887, 929–930, 931, 938, Roman, 161
Puritanism. See also Calvin, John, 939, 946 socialist, 866, 950
and Calvinism Radioactivity, 792, 964, 986 Realpolitik, 709, 710, 717, 719–722,
in England, 479–480, 514, 515, Radio telescope, 941 724, 737, 957
516, 517 Railroads Reason. See also Logic; Rationalism
paganism and, 535 in Asia, 676 Descartes on, 496
Putin, Vladimir, 977, 980(i), 981, in Belgium, 676 Enlightenment and, 576, 580, 583
1003 Crimean War and, 713 faith and, 379
Putting-out system, 675, 678 in England, 673, 676, 703 limits of, 584–585
Pylos, 35, 106 in Hungary, 694 scholastics and, 385, 386
Pyramids, in Egypt, 9(i), 16, 20–21, industrial growth and, 755 Rebellions. See Revolts and
21(i) in Italy, 672(i), 717 rebellions
Pythagoras (mathematician), 72 in Russia, 683, 758 Rebel Without a Cause (movie), 928
Pyxis, 288(i) state power and, 676 Reccared (Visigoths, Spain), 272
in United States, 676 Receipt Rolls (England), 358
Qaddafi, Muammar, 990 Rain, Steam, and Speed: . . . Recessions
Qing dynasty (China), 731, 806(m), (Turner), 684 in 17th century, 487–490
808 Rainforests, clearing of, 987 oil and, 938
Quaestors (Rome), 154 Raison d’état, 487 Reconquista (Spain), 324, 371–372,
Quakers, 516, 689 Rákóczi, Ferenc, 564 372(m), 373(i)
Quantum theory, 792 Ramadan, 253 Recovery
Quebec, 511 Ranters (England), 516 in Europe (1920s), 840–847
Queens. See also Kings and Rape, 591, 908, 975 after World War II, 910–913,
kingdoms; Monarchs and Rape of Nanjing, 876 915–917
monarchies; specific rulers Rational investigation, Bayle on, Recycling, 987
in Egypt, 24–25, 24(i) 567 Red Army (Soviet), 832(i), 834, 836,
Hellenistic, 126–127 Rationalism, 72, 693, 948 910, 915
Hittite, 27 Rationing Red Army Faction, 960
in Sumer, 10 in World War I, 829 Red Brigades, 960
Quest of the Holy Grail, 387 in World War II, 887 Red-figure painting, 40(i), 58(i),
Quietism, 556 Rauschenberg, Robert, 947 76(i)
Quinine, Africa and, 756 Ravenna Redistributive economy, 10, 13, 50
Quirini, Lauro, 409, 423, 433 Aachen and, 291 Reds (faction), in Russian civil war,
Qur’an, 50, 251–252, 251(i), 253, 256 Exarchate of, 258, 274 832
Quraysh tribe, 251, 252 Justinian in, 239(i) Red Sea, 23, 731
Theodora in, 238(i) Red Shirts (Italy), 717(i), 718, 719
Race and racism as western Roman capital, 215 Red Terror (Jacobin France), 628
in Catholic church, 460 Raw materials. See also specific Reflections upon Marriage (Astell),
in colonies, 547, 927 materials 570
Darwin and, 739 from Africa, 746, 747, 995 Reform(s). See also specific reforms
decline in fertility and, 786 from Asia, 746, 750 and locations
in France, 962 global need for, 995 in agriculture, 597
in Great Depression, 862 natural resources in U.S. and, in Athens, 83
imperialism and, 745, 750 756–757 British parliamentary, 600
in Nazi Germany, 870 producers’ control of, 958 in Czechoslovakia, 954–955
in United States, 871, 927 Raymond d’Aguiliers, 335 Diocletian and, 212
[ Refo rm(s ) — Republic, Th e
] Index I-55
educational, 687–688, 728–729 Relics and reliquaries (Christian), Religious Customs and Ceremonies of
in England, 304–305, 357, 515, 226–227, 248(i), 261, 266 All the Peoples of the World
667–668, 771–772 Relief. See also Social welfare; (Bernard), 569(i)
Enlightenment and, 575–576, 577, Welfare state Religious orders. See also
579–580, 582 organizations for, 687 Monasticism and monasteries;
in France, 597, 598, 698–699 for poor, 458–459 specific orders
Gregorian, 324 in World War I, 828 in Middle Ages, 368–370, 374
industrialization and, 673 Religion(s). See also Caliphs; poverty of, 329–331
in Japan, 731 Crusades; Gods; Monotheism; for women, 368–369, 383, 737
of popular culture, 535–536 Polytheism; Reformation; Religious Society of Friends. See
in Prussia, 650 specific religions Quakers
religion and, 442, 450–455, in 19th century, 736–737 Religious toleration. See also
455–457, 687, 764 in 1930s, 875 Anti-Semitism
in Roman Catholic church, Black Death and, 412–413 Charles V and, 467
321–331, 455, 459–461 in Byzantine Empire, 260–262, in Dutch Republic, 478–479, 567
in Russia, 650, 713–716, 807–808 284–285 in Enlightenment, 566–567, 576,
social, 687–689, 764–765 in cities, 368–370 579, 583
in Soviet Union, 851, 917, civilization and, 4 in France, 466, 475, 596–597, 644
963–965, 977 comparisons of, 569(i) by Joseph II (Austria), 596–597
state-sponsored, 595–598 cults in, 199–201 by Ottoman Turks, 481
in urban areas, 682 in Dutch Republic, 478–479 Remarque, Erich Maria, 850, 869
Reform Act (England, 1884), 771 education and, 728–729 Renaissance, 461–463
Reformation in Egypt, 20, 25, 26 arts in, 423–428
Catholic Counter-Reformation, in England, 466, 514, 515 Byzantine, 280, 282–283
455, 459–461, 468(m) Enlightenment and, 566–568, 575, Carolingian, 289–290, 293–294
Protestant, 450–453, 452(f), 576, 578–580 classical culture of, 421, 423
455–459, 466, 468(m) in Europe (c. 1648), 501(m) humanism in, 422–423
Reform Bills (England) in France, 466, 474–476, 509–510, Islamic, 289
in 1832, 668, 703 621 Italian, 422–428
in 1867, 724 Greek, 57–59, 62, 89–90 Reparations
Reformed church, 453 Hellenistic, 135–138 after World War I, 837–839
Refrigeration, 756 Hittite, 27 World War II and, 906
Refugees Holy Alliance and, 657 Representative government
in Lebanon, 991(m) in homes, 419 in England, 396–397
in Middle East, 997 humanism and, 448–450, 451, 454 in English North American
after World War I, 841 Israelites and, 47–50 colonies, 524
after World War II, 901, 902(m), Judaism and, 138 in Spain, 396
909(i) Mesopotamian, 8 Repression
Regents, in Dutch Republic, 479, Minoan, 32–33 in France, 694
521–522 Napoleon and, 641–642, 645–646 in Russia, 777
Regional departments, in France, Neo-Assyrian, 43 in Soviet bloc, 904, 950, 955(i)
615, 616(m) paganism and, 535 Reproduction
Regional nationalism, 985 after Peace of Westphalia, 485 Aristotelian view of, 570
Regulus, Marcus Atilius (Rome), Persian, 45–46 biological research on, 738, 942
161 polytheism and, 10 ovism doctrine and, 570
Reichstag (Germany) in postindustrial society, 948–949 in Rome, 192–193
authority of, 722 reforms and, 442, 450–455, technology for, 938, 942–943
Enabling Act and, 868 455–457, 687, 764 Reproductive rights, 953
German Social Democratic Party revivals in, 448, 555–556, Republic(s). See also Roman
and, 795 584–585, 658–659 republic; specific locations
Nazi Party and, 867 in Rome, 148–149, 175 in 15th century, 432–435
postmodern style of, 1004, secular worldview vs., 492–500 in France, 618, 623, 628, 698–699,
1004(i) Sophists on, 96 772, 799, 910
World War I and, 830 in Spain, 436 in Italy, 700, 910
Reims, 348, 390(i) Thirty Years’ War and, 482–487 in Rome, 152–156
Reinsurance Treaty, 775, 777 wars of, 466–467, 474–476, 514, Rousseau on, 582
Relativists, 791 580 in Spain, 877
Relativity theory, 792 in Wessex, 304–305 Republic, The (Plato), 117
I-56 Index
[ Republicanism — Ro man Cath olicism
]
Republicanism (Spain), 877–878 against state power, 598–602 Roads and highways
Republican Party (U.S.), 725 Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, 416 in 12th century, 317
Republic of letters, 576 Revolution(s). See also specific Autobahn and, 869
Republic of Virtue (France), 620, locations Ottoman, 418
621–624 of 1830s, 640, 666–668 Roman, 157(m)
Research of 1848, 697–703, 702(f), 704–705 Roaring Twenties, 822, 840
genetic, 914, 942, 945 of 1989, 966–967 Robber-knights, 449(i)
investments in, 944, 945–946 English, 600 Robespierre, Maximilien, 619–620,
military, 902, 912 suppression of movements, 623, 625–627
scientific, 496 664–665 Robins, John, 516
Resistance. See also Protest(s); in technology, 938–943 Robinson Crusoe (Defoe), 555
Revolts and rebellions; specific World War I and, 830–834 Robots, in Japan, 994
locations Revolutionary Tribunal (France), Rob Roy (Scott), 662
to imperialism, 750, 922–923 620–621, 626, 628 Rock-and-roll music, culture of,
movements in World War II, Revolutionary War in America. See 927–929, 928(i)
887–888, 908 American War of Rockefeller, John D., 757, 759
Res publica (public business), in Independence Rockefeller Foundation, 985
Rome, 150 Rhetoric, training in, 95 Rocket (railroad engine), 673, 674
Restoration Rhineland Rocket technology, 941
in England, 518–520 demilitarization of, 840 Rock music, 946–947, 1000
of European regimes, 655, 658, German invasion of, 877 Rococo style, 549(i), 554, 554(i), 588
662 Jews in, 334 Roehm, Ernst, 869
Resurrection, in cults of Isis, 200 Rhine River region Roger I (Norman), 324
Reunification cities in, 315 Roland, Jeanne, 619, 621
of Germany, 966, 967(i) after World War I, 837 Rolin, Nicolas, 427, 427(i)
of Poland, 842 after World War II, 901 Rolling Stones, 1000
Revenue. See Economy Rhodes, Cecil, 749–750, 803 Rollo (Vikings), 298
Revisionism, in socialism, 795 Rhodes, earthquake in, 127 Roma. See Gypsies
Revivals, religious, 448, 555–556, Rhône River region, 263 Roman alphabet, 15
584–585, 658–659 Richard I (the Lion-Hearted, Roman Catholicism. See also
Revolts and rebellions. See also England), 359, 366, 370 Councils (Christian);
Protest(s) Richelieu, Armand-Jean du Plessis Inquisition; Investiture
in 1820s, 662–666, 663(m) (Cardinal), 483, 487, 506 Conflict; Papacy; Popes;
in 1830s, 640, 666–668 Rich people. See Wealth specific orders
in Austrian Netherlands, 608, 609 Riga, 763 in c. 1648, 501(m)
by Boudica, 186 Right (political), 842, 873 in Austria, 596, 723
against British in India, 730 multiculturalism and, 1002 Babylonian captivity of church,
Dutch, 477, 478, 608–609 Rights. See also specific groups 399
in France, 416, 506–507, 512, 599, civil rights movement and, 900, Byzantium and, 274
624–625, 626, 733 927, 950–951, 952 Carolingian dynasty and, 290
in Greece, 61–62, 664–665 in France, 657 Concordat of Worms and, 326,
in Italy, 700 of Jews, 737 341
Jacobite, 559 in Magna Carta, 359 Counter-Reformation of, 455,
Jacquerie, 416 in Nazi Germany, 868 459–461
by Jews, 194, 196 of women, 688, 739, 787, in Dutch Republic, 567
in Neo-Assyrian Empire, 43 796–797, 953 in eastern Europe, 284, 915
in Ottoman Empire, 774, 809 Rijswijk, Peace of (1697), 512 in England, 271, 453, 466, 479,
Paris Commune and, 733 Ring of the Nibelung, The (Wagner), 514, 515, 517, 518, 520, 600,
by peasants, 403–404, 483, 599 736 668
in Poland, 609 Riots. See also Revolts and rebellions in France, 474–476, 509–510, 582,
Pugachev Rebellion and, 599, in Britain (1981), 961 611, 615–616, 623, 658
599(m) food shortages and, 598, 599 Galileo and, 495
in Rome, 163 Gordon, 600 in Germany, 308, 875
in Russia, 683 Nika, 240 Greek Orthodox church and,
in St. Domingue, 632–633, urban, 952, 954 324
632(m) Rite of Spring, The (Stravinsky), 794 hierarchy in, 368
in Soviet Union (1921), 851 Rivers. See Transportation; specific in Holy Roman Empire, 482
in Spain, 483, 651–652 river regions in Hungary, 308
[ Ro man Cath oli cis m — Ro u n dh eads
] Index I-57
in Ireland, 559, 798, 960 lifestyle in, 179–181 Romanus IV (Byzantine Empire),
in Italy, 854 literature in, 191 332
Luther and, 451 natural features and languages of, Rome. See also Italy; Papacy; Roman
of Magyars, 299 190(m) Empire; Roman republic; Wars
in Middle Ages, 380–385 politics in, 184–187 and warfare; specific wars
Napoleon and, 640 polytheism in, 199–201 army in, 151–152
paganism and, 535 population of, 204 bishops of, 221
Philip II (Spain) and, 477 principate in, 177–178 citizenship in, 143, 150, 165
in Poland, 965 reproduction in, 192–193 civil wars in, 163–169, 176–177,
politics and, 737 republic transition to, 176–184 186
Protestant Reformation and, society in, 191–193 classes in, 155–156
451–455 spending in, 203–204 Diocletian and, 213
reforms of, 321–331, 442, 925, Vandals and, 232 education in, 148
948–949 Romanesque architecture, 351–352, Etruscans and, 142(i)
religious orders of poverty and, 352(i), 353(i) expansion of, 150
329–331 Romania, 983, 984 families in, 146–148
revival of, 556, 658 abandoned children in, 967 founding of, 142(i), 143
in Scotland, 467 Balkan region and, 812 Greece and, 150–151, 160
social reform and, 687 collapse of communism in, 967, Hellenistic kingdoms and, 128,
in Spain, 272, 557, 652, 773 968(m) 139(m)
Zwingli and, 452 formation of, 713 housing in, 162(i)
Romance literature, 367 in Little Entente, 840 land in, 167
Roman Empire, 178. See also migration of Magyars from, 841 Latin language in, 150
Byzantine Empire; Cult(s); Rome and, 186 law in, 154, 191, 213, 234–235
Eastern Roman Empire; Holy Soviets and, 892, 904 lifestyle in, 150–151
Roman Empire; Pax Romana; World War II and, 882, 888 monarchy in, 150–152
Roman republic; Rome; Romanian people, 691, 801 patron-client system in, 145
Western Roman Empire Romanization, 191 population of, 150, 158, 167
in 3rd century, 205(m) Roman law, 213, 234–235 religion in, 148–149
barbarians in, 212 Romanov dynasty, 831. See also republic of, 700
British invasion by, 185 specific tsars rise of, 143–149
chariot racing in, 174(i) Roman republic, 152–156. See also society in, 144–149
Charlemagne and, 292–293 Roman Empire; Rome unification of Italy and, 719,
Christianity in, 175, 193–201, aqueduct of, 157(i) 722
205, 207, 217–229, 220(m) arts in, 156, 160–161 values in, 144, 148, 163, 165
civil wars in, 204 after Augustus, 178 women in, 144–145, 146–148,
creation of, 175–207 Carthage and, 158–160 147(i)
crisis in (284 c.e.), 206(m) civil wars in, 163–169, 176–177 Rome (city)
division of, 213, 214–215, 214(m), classes in, 152–155 housing in, 179
215(m) economy in, 161 population of, 179
dominate in, 212–218 Egypt and, 168 under Republic, 154
earthquakes and epidemics in, end of, 170(m) sacks of, 156–157, 231, 464
203–204 expansion of, 156–158, 159(m) Rome, Treaty of, 912
economy in, 215–217 Forum in, 153(i) Rome-Berlin Axis, 877
education in, 182–183 government in, 155–156 Rommel, Erwin, 888
expansion of, 186, 188(m) Greece and, 150–151, 160–161 Romulus and Remus, 142(i), 143,
five good emperors in, 186–187 housing in, 162(i) 149
Flavians in, 186 imperialism by, 156–163 Romulus Augustulus (Rome),
Frankish kingdoms and, 262 land in, 162, 164 233
frontiers of, 202–205 Latin language in, 157 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 871, 872(i)
Golden Age of politics and navy of, 158 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 871,
economy in, 186, 188–193 roads in, 157(m) 872(i), 876, 883, 892, 904, 951
heirs to (c. 750), 275(m) social stresses from imperialism, Roosevelt, Sarah, 872(i)
Hellenistic world and, 139(m), 161–163 Rosetta stone, 112(i), 125–126, 641
191 struggle of the orders in, 152–153 Rossbach, battle at, 594
invasions of, 202 transition to Roman Empire, Rosselini, Roberto, 930
Islam in, 249 176–184 Rotten boroughs (England), 600
Jews in, 193 Romanticism, 584–585, 659–662 Roundheads (England), 515
I-58 Index
[ Ro u ss ea u — St . Bar th o l o m ew ’s Day M assa c re
]
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 577, 578(i), Crimean War and, 712–713 Westernization of, 560–563, 693
580, 581–582, 583, 583(f), 588, Danubian principalities and, 664 women in, 561, 716, 807
592, 621 Decembrist Revolt in, 664 World War I and, 815, 822, 823,
Roxane (wife of Alexander the domestic problems in, 775–777 825, 826
Great), 122 education in, 688, 703, 729 Russian Academy of Sciences, 560,
Royal Academy of Sciences (France), Enlightenment and, 582 561
532 epidemics in, 681 Russian Orthodox Church, 411, 474,
Royal African Company (England), as European power, 560–563 481, 529, 562, 737
521 France and, 710, 712–713, 811 Russian Republic, 977. See also
Royal courts. See Courts (royal) Franco-Austrian alliance and, 593 Russia; Soviet Union (former)
Royal Dutch Shell, 844 Great Northern War and, 562, Russian Revolution
Royalists 563(m) of 1905, 807
in England, 515, 516 Huns in, 230 of 1917, 795, 830–834, 899
in France, 628, 642, 645, 658 imperialism of, 712, 729–730, Russification, 975
Royal Society (London), 532, 568 751, 751(m) under Alexander II (Russia),
Royalty. See Kings and kingdoms; industrialization in, 678, 758, 807 716
Monarchs and monarchies; Iraq War and, 993 in eastern Europe, 915
Queens; specific kingdoms and Jews in, 777, 777(i), 799, 977 nationalism and, 807
rulers landowners in, 715 Russo-Japanese War, 806, 806(m),
Rubber, vulcanization of, 682, 785 liberalism in, 695 810, 813
Ruble (Russia), 995 Lithuania and, 429, 595 Russo-Polish war, 525
Rudolf (Habsburgs, Germany), 393 minorities in, 716 Ruthenians, in Hungary, 801
Ruhr basin, World War I and, 839, Mongols in, 400, 401(m) Rwanda, 990
842 Muscovy and, 481
Ruler cults, 136 Napoleon I and, 649, 652 SA (Stürmabteilung), 868, 869
Rump Parliament (England), 516, nationalism in, 693 Saar basin, after World War I, 837
518 nobility in, 529, 530, 562, 586, Sabines, 143
Runnymede, Magna Carta and, 359 695, 713, 715, 716 Sachs, Nelly, 926
Rural areas. See also Farms and Orthodox Christianity in, 474 Sacks
farming Ottoman Empire and, 775 of Constantinople, 364
arts and customs from, 766 Pan-Slavism and, 723, 774 of Rome, 156–157, 231, 464
Byzantine, 259–260 peasants in, 599, 634 Sacraments (Christian)
commercial revolution in, Poland and, 630–631, 631(m), Fourth Lateran Council on, 381
320–321 656, 667, 716 penance and, 450
in France, 614 Poland-Lithuania and, 481, reform and, 327–328
in Hellenistic kingdoms, 126 481(m), 563, 593, 595 Sacred music, 387–388
industrialization and, 680 political persecution in, 795 Sacred texts, 49–50
migration from, 763 population decline in, 989 Sacrifice of Isaac, The (Ghiberti),
peasants in, 301 Putin in, 977, 980(i), 981, 1003 425, 425(i)
television in, 939 realist literature in, 734, 736 Sacrifices
Rus, 280. See also Russia reforms in, 650, 713–716, in Crete, 30
Rushdie, Salman, 1001 807–808 in Greece, 59, 89
Russia, 978(m), 995. See also Russian revolts against, 662, 667 in Rome, 149, 219
Republic; Russian Revolution; serfs in, 529, 562, 587, 599, 650, al-Sadat, Mohammed Anwar,
Soviet Union; World War II; 683 961(i)
specific rulers Seven Years’ War and, 594 Saddam Hussein. See Hussein,
1848 revolutions and, 703 Slavophiles in, 693 Saddam
absolutism in, 528–530 social order in, 730 Saduccees, 194
agriculture in, 551 Sweden and, 481, 481(m) Sahara region, 16
Balkan region and, 284–285, 774, threats to empire of, 807–808 Saigon, 731
811, 813 in Three Emperors’ League, 773 Sailors. See also Navies; Ships and
Baltic region and, 562 Time of Troubles in, 481 shipping
Black Death in, 411 Turks and, 664 Kronstadt revolt by, 851
Britain and, 811 Ukraine and, 525 Pharos lighthouse and, 134
Byzantines and, 280, 283–285 violence and ethnic conflict in, Saint(s). See also specific individuals
Chechnya invasion by, 980–981 768 relics of, 226–227, 261, 266
civil war in, 832–834, 833(m), 841 War of the Polish Succession and, St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre
Congress of Vienna and, 654 563 (1572), 475
[ St . Cath e r i n e at M o u nt Si n a i — S c i e nt if i c m eth o d
] Index I-59
St. Catherine at Mount Sinai, Sanssouci (palace of Frederick II), Schoenberg, Arnold, 794
monastery of, 227(i) 588 Scholars and scholarship. See also
Saint-Denis, church of, 314, 341, San Stefano, Treaty of, 774 Intellectual thought; specific
353 Santa Maria Novella, 424, 424(i) disciplines and individuals
St. Domingue, 545–546, 631–633, Sant’Andrea, church of (Vercelli), in 12th century, 348–351
632(m), 648 354, 354(i) Byzantine, 282–283
Saint-Germain-des-Près San Vitale (Ravenna), 291 in Carolingian renaissance, 293
(monastery), 296 Sappho (poet), 71 Islamic, 289
St. Giles (London), 680 Saracens, Muslims as, 287 Jewish, 219
St. Helena, Napoleon on, 653 Sarajevo, Francis Ferdinand in late Roman Empire, 242–243
St. Paul’s Outside the Walls (Rome), assassination in, 814 Latin, 242
398(i) Sardinia, 158, 563, 621, 709, 718(m). printing and, 448
St. Peter’s Basilica (Rome), 531 See also Piedmont-Sardinia Scholastica, 228
St. Petersburg, 561, 562, 807. See also Sargon (Akkad), 12 Scholasticism, 385–387
Leningrad; Petrograd Sartre, Jean-Paul, 926 Schools. See also Education
St. Peter’s Fields, Peterloo massacre Sasanid Empire in 12th and 13th centuries, 347
at, 667 c. 600, 253, 258(m) attendance in, 728, 729
Saint Phalle, Niki de, 948 Byzantine Empire and, 257, 258(m) in Byzantine Empire, 260
Saint-Simon, Claude Henri de, 695 Muslims in, 253, 254 Christianity and, 448
Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy Rome and, 202, 205, 213 classical, 243
(duke of ), 513 Satanic Verses, The (Rushdie), 1001 in France, 623, 644
Saisset (bishop of Pamiers), 398 Satellite kingdoms, of Napoleon, 649 in Hellenistic kingdoms, 127
Sakhalin Islands, World War II and, Satellite republics, of revolutionary Islamic, 289
892 France, 629 in Middle Ages, 348–351
Saladin (Seljuk Empire), 370 Satellites (artificial) parish, 553
Salamis, battle at, 81 in 1960s, 938 reforms of, 596, 687–688
Salat (Muslim worship), 253 communications, 939, 940, 941 in Rome, 182
Salem, Massachusetts, witchcraft Sputnik, 917, 940 Schuman, Robert, 912
trials in, 500 Satellite states. See Soviet bloc; Soviet Science. See also Astronomy;
Sales taxes, in Britain, 961 Union Medicine; Scientific revolution;
Salian dynasty (Germany), 308 Satellite television, 999 Technology; specific fields
Salisbury, earl of, 423 Sati, in India, 659, 730 in 1930s, 875
Salons, 534, 577–578, 578(i), 587 Satire Alexander the Great and, 122
Salt, taxation on, 586 in 1920s, 849–850 Aristotle and, 118
SALT I. See Strategic Arms by Erasmus, 449 in Athens, 96, 132(i)
Limitation Treaty Satraps (regional governors), in atomic, 900
Salvation Persian Empire, 44 brain drain and, 945
in Calvinist doctrine, 452 Satyagraha (Gandhi), 927 in Enlightenment, 566–568
in Christianity, 193, 196, 198 Saudi Arabia, 990, 993, 995 gender stereotypes and, 689
Council of Trent on, 460 Saul (Israelite king), 48 Greek philosophy and, 93
by faith alone, 451 Savage Mind, The (Lévi-Strauss), 948 Hellenistic, 133–134
Jansenists on, 510 Savoy, 717 of the mind, 789–790
by kings, 136 Saxons, 233, 291 Napoleon and, 645–646
Mass and, 328 Saxony, 451, 467, 562, 593, 594, 654 origins of, 474
in mystery cults, 37 Scandinavia. See also Baltic region; paradigm shift in, 792
Samizdat culture, 950 Vikings; specific locations physics and, 791, 792, 875
Samurai (Japan), 752 economy in, 912 in postindustrial society, 945–946
Sand, George (Amandine-Aurore- England and, 298, 305 rationalism and, 72
Lucile Dupin Dudevant), immigrants to, 924 revolution in, 791–792
685–686, 685(i) industrialization in, 757 space race and, 941
Sanitation Lutheranism in, 451 training in, 729
in cities, 565, 727 Vikings and, 298 women in, 532–533, 534, 792
in Crimean War, 713, 714(i) Schiller, Friedrich, 661 Scientific method
in Rome, 179–180 Schism. See Great Schism breakthroughs resulting from,
in Soviet Union, 852 Schleswig, 720 493, 496
urbanization and, 680–681 Schlieffen Plan, 825 elite and, 495
Sans-culottes (French workers), 611, Schliemann, Heinrich, 31–32 Enlightenment and, 566
613, 618, 625 Schmalkaldic League, 467 social laws uncovered by, 764, 791
I-60 Index
[ Scientific research — Seven Years ’ War
]
Scientific research. See Research Second Triumvirate (Rome), 176–177 Senatorial order (Rome), 191, 216
Scientific revolution, 492–496 Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), Senegal, immigrants from, 972(i)
Scientific societies, 532 925 Sensationalist press, 771
Scotland Second world (socialist bloc), 900 Separate spheres, 688–689, 845
Calvinism in, 474 Second World War. See World September 11, 2001, terrorist
Christianity in, 270, 271 War II attacks, 992(i), 993
England and, 515 Secret ballot, 771 “September massacres” (French
in Great Britain, 517, 557, 559 Secret police Revolution), 618
literacy in, 553 in Russia, 775, 807, 977 Septuagint, 138
New Lanark in, 695 Soviet (KGB), 977 Serbia, 280, 284, 774, 775, 811, 812,
Protestant and Catholic divisions Secret societies, in 1820s, 662 813, 814, 815, 906, 975
in, 466, 467 “Secret speech,” of Khrushchev, Serbs
United Kingdom and, 985 916–917 in Austrian Empire, 691
Scott, Walter, 662 Sects. See also Religion(s); specific Bosnian, 975
Scottish Parliament, 559 groups nationalism of, 801, 809, 975
Scotus, John Duns. See Duns English religious, 516 revolt against Turks, 664
Scotus, John Protestant, 949 slaughter of Albanian Kosovars
Scramble for Africa, 747–750, Secularism by, 976
748(m) Catholic church and, 321 Srebrenica massacre by, 975
Scream, The (Munch), 782(i), 793 in French Revolution, 623 World War I and, 828
Scribes, Roman, 242(i), 243 religion and, 737 World War II and, 887, 906
Script. See Writing Secularization Serfs and serfdom. See also Peasants;
Scriptures, Hebrew, 49–50 Enlightenment and, 580 Slaves and slavery
Sculpture nonreligious foundations and, compulsory labor services and,
baroque, 531(i) 492–493 551
of Buddha, 135(i) Secular music, 387–388 in eastern Europe, 491
Gothic, 389 Security Council (U.N.), 919 in England, 416
Greek, 60(i), 70, 88–89 Sedition laws, 828 in France, 614
Hellenistic, 130–131, 130(i) Seekers (England), 516 industrialization and, 677
of Parthenon, 88 Segregation, civil rights movement Joseph II and, 597
Persian, 46(i) and, 927, 951 medieval, 300
postindustrial, 947–948 Seigneurial dues, 586, 611, 614 in Poland, 631
Roman, 161, 183(i), 184 Selective breeding, 550–551 in Prussia, 597, 650
Scutage (tax), 359 Seleucid kingdom, 123–124, 123(m) in Russia, 529, 562, 587, 599, 650,
Seaborne commerce Jews in, 194 683
Dutch and, 479 Rome and, 167 Russian emancipation of,
Greek, 51 ruler cults and, 136 714–715, 715(i), 758
Sea Peoples, 34–35, 36(m) Seleucus (Hellenistic king), 123 Serious Proposal to the Ladies, A
Secondary education, 729 Self-determination (Astell), 570
Second Balkan War, 813 for Canada, 690 Servants
Second Continental Congress, 601 of Czechs, 828 indentured, 543
Second Crusade, 334, 336–337, ethnic, 691, 701, 828 of upper class, 762
372–373, 383 Wilson on, 878 women as, 490, 553, 591
Second Empire (France), 699, 722, World War II and, 878, 892 Servetus, Michael, 453
772 Self-government, for cities and Service economy, 937
Second Estate (France), 611 towns, 319–320 Service industries, Internet and, 998
Second Great Awakening, 659 Self-interest, Smith, Adam, on, 581 Service workers, 944–945
Second Industrial Revolution, 755 Seljuk Turks Settlements. See also Cities and towns;
Second Intermediate Period (Egypt), in Anatolia, 342(m) Villages; specific locations
23 Byzantine Empire and, 338 Greek, 56
Second International, 770, 795 First Crusade and, 332 permanent, 4, 7
Second Moroccan Crisis, 811 Third Crusade and, 370 Phoenician, 56
Second of May, 1808, The (Goya), Semitic languages, 8 world trade and, 546–548
651(i) Sen, Amartya, 996 Seurat, Georges, 766
Second Punic War, 158–159 Senate Sevastopol, siege of, 713
Second Reform Bill (England), 724 in France, 653 Seven Years’ War
Second Republic (France), 699 in Rome, 153(i), 155, 163, 166, casualties in, 594
Second Sex, The (Beauvoir), 926 167, 177 coalitions in, 593–594, 593(m)
[ Seven Years ’ War — Slovak Fascist Part y
] Index I-61
France after, 609–610 Shopping malls, 984 Slave code (Barbados), 524
reforms after, 595–598, 601 Show trials, 866 Slaves and slavery. See also Forced
Severe acute respiratory syndrome Shtetls, 525 labor; Serfs and serfdom; Slave
(SARS), 989 Siberia, 695, 751, 751(m), 834 trade
Severus, Septimius (Rome), 203, Sic et Non (Abelard), 349 from Africa, 444–445, 524, 542, 543
203(i) Sicily Africa-New World system of, 441
Seville, 444 Byzantines in, 258 in American colonies, 524,
Sewage system Frederick II in, 392 544–547
Mesopotamian, 15 governing of, 393 in Athens, 68
in Rome, 179 Greeks in, 56, 73(m), 150 in Caribbean region, 446, 524,
Sex and sexuality. See also immigration from, 762 631–633
Homosexuals and liberation of, 718 cotton industry and, 678
homosexuality Muslims in, 309(m) criticism of, 445, 579
in 17th century, 490 Normans in, 309(m), 332, 342(m) before European voyages, 444
in 1920s, 846 Peloponnesian Wars and, 105(m), France and, 523, 631–633
bishops and, 268 106 in Greece, 61, 90, 93
Christian doctrine on, 225–226 revolt in, 700 in Hellenistic kingdoms, 126
Freud on, 789 Roger I and, 324 helots and, 65
in Greece, 62, 92 Rome and, 158 justification of, 546
men and, 928–929 Syracuse and, 80 lifestyle of, 544–545
patterns of, 590–591 World War II and, 888 Locke and, 521
pill and, 942–943 Sickingen, Franz von, 449(i) Portuguese and, 444–445, 690
in postindustrial society, 946 Sidonius Apollinaris (Rome), 231 in Rome, 150, 163, 181
reproductive technology and, Sieyès, Emmanuel-Joseph, 611 Rousseau on, 582
942–943 Sigismund (Holy Roman Empire), in Russia, 529
sexual identity and, 784, 787–788, 421, 429 Spain and, 444, 690
789, 952 Signori (Italy), 391, 399–400, 433 in Sumer, 9
in Sparta, 66 Sikhs, 547 treatment of, 544–545
urbanization and, 681 Silent Spring (Carson), 987 in United States, 602, 690,
women and, 237, 763, 787–788 Silesia, 527, 564, 594 724–725
Sexism, Marie Curie and, 792 Silicon chips, 939 Slave trade. See also Africa; Slaves
“Sexology,” 787–788 Silver, 441, 446, 465, 477, 487, 488 and slavery
Sex rings, international, 997 in Athens, 115, 115(i) abolition of, 689–690
Sexual harassment, 770 Silver Age, of Latin literature, 191 in Atlantic system, 524, 541,
Sexual Inversion (Ellis), 787–788 Simeon (hermit), 264(i) 542–548
Sexual revolution, 946, 953 Simon de Montfort (England), 397 Congress of Vienna and, 656–657
Shahadah (profession of faith), Simon Magus, 322n denunciation of, 579
253 Simons, Menno, 457 in European colonies, 544(f),
Shakespeare, William, 191, 481, Simony, 322, 323 545(f)
498, 795 Simyonov, Yulian, 930 growth of, 488, 524
Shamash (god), 14 Sin patterns of, 446
Shapur I (Sasanids), 205 indulgences for, 419 slave ships in, 544
Shelley, Mary, 639, 660 original, 225 Spain and, 444
Sheriffs, in England, 357 Sinai peninsula, 17, 920 (m), 958 Slavophiles, in Russia, 693
Shi’at Ali, 255 Singapore, 690, 883, 994, 994(m) Slavs
Shi’ite Muslims, 255, 285, 286–287, Sino-Japanese War, 804 in Austrian Empire, 691
332, 337, 959, 990, 991(m) Sinope, 713 in Balkan region, 283, 811
Ship money, 514 Sinti people, 860, 870, 886 Byzantine Empire and, 257, 258,
Ships and shipping Sister republics, of France, 629, 259, 280
convoy system of, 830 630(m), 639 Christianity among, 284
lateen sail and, 443 Sistine Chapel, 461 in concentration camps, 886
navies, 813–814 Six Acts (England), 668 nationalism of, 801, 985
technology of, 442–443 Six Books of the Commonwealth, The in Nazi Germany, 860, 870
transatlantic, 491 (Bodin), 496–497 Northern Crusades and, 373
triremes and, 82, 82(i) Six-Day War, 958, 958(m) in Ottoman Empire, 308, 774
Shires (England), 305, 340 Skepticism, doctrine of, 475 Pan-Slavism and, 723
Shock treatment (economic), 961 Skeptics, 133 separate states of, 985
Shopkeepers, 552 Slav congress, 701 Slovak Fascist Party, 874
I-62 Index
[ Slovakia — Sophie
]
Slovakia, 982, 985 Social security religion and, 455–461, 736–737
Slovaks in Germany, 913 Roman, 144–149, 161–163,
in Austro-Hungarian Empire, 801 in Italy and Spain, 988 191–193, 216–217, 234–236
fascism and, 874 in United States, 871 rural, 682–683
independence of, 834 Social Security Act (U.S., 1935), 871 scientific approach to problems
nationalism of, 801 Social status of, 764
Slovenes (Slovenians), 828 in cities, 553 socialists on, 695
Slovenia, 975, 982, 984 clothing and, 553 Soviet, 866
Slumdog Millionaire (movie), 1003 of rich, 586–587 in World War I, 822, 827–829, 830
Slums, of global cities, 984 Social War (Rome), 165 after World War I, 840
Smallpox, 446, 565–566, 989 Social welfare. See also Welfare state World War II and, 886–887
Smart car, 987, 988(i) Britain and, 688, 913, 962 after World War II, 927–930
Smith, Adam, 580–581, 582, 583, in former Soviet bloc, 980 Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
583(f) in France, 654, 873, 962 to Animals, 688
Smith, Zadie, 1001 global south and, 989–990 Society of Jesus (Jesuits). See Jesuits
Smuggling, British, 650 in Sweden, 871–872, 963 Society of Revolutionary Republican
Sobieski, Jan (Poland-Lithuania), in United States, 962 Women, 625
526 Social work, 790 Society of Supporters of the Bill of
Social classes. See Classes Society. See also Art(s); Culture; Rights, 600
Social Contract, The (Rousseau), Lifestyle; Religion; specific Society of United Irishmen, 633
581–582, 583(f) locations Sociology, 739
Social contract theory, 520–521, 602 in 1920s, 845–847 Socrates, 96–98, 114, 115, 116
Social Darwinism, 739, 750, 761, agricultural revolution and, Socratic method, 97, 98
789 550–551 Sodomy, 592
Social Democratic Parties arts and, 733–734, 736 Soissons, Council of, 350
in Germany, 774, 795, 800, 814, in Babylon, 14 Solaris (Lem), 941
834, 835, 949–950, 960 barbarian, 230–235 Solar system
Marxism and, 769 Byzantine, 259–260, 283 age of, 941
in Sweden, Hungary, and Austria, capitalist, 580 Aristarchus on, 134
769 Christian, 220 Soldiers. See also Military; Veterans;
Socialism. See also Communism in cities, 551–554 specific battles and wars
in China, 808 consumer, 549–550 as Christians, 219–220
divisions in, 795 in Crete, 29–30 in crusades, 332, 334, 335(i)
in France, 695–696, 962 Dutch, 523 in French revolutionary army, 629
labor movement and, 695–697 in England, 552–553, 688–689, Hellenistic, 124
Nazis and, 869 723–724 mercenaries as, 414, 415–416
World War I and, 827, 835 during Enlightenment, 585–592 in Napoleonic army, 652
Socialist Parties, in France, 769, 962 European, 299 permanent army and, 416
Socialist realism, 866, 950 feudal, 300–303 Roman, 156, 161–162, 165, 166,
Socialist Revolutionaries (Russia), global, 996–1005 168, 178, 189, 202, 203
795–796 in Great Depression, 862 in Russia, 830, 979
Social laws, 791 Greek, 60, 64, 93–94 Spartan, 65, 81
Social media, 999, 1007 Hellenistic, 126–128 in Thirty Years’ War, 483–484
Social networking, 974 Hittite, 28 in World War I, 824, 825–827,
Social order imperialism and, 761–767 826(i), 834
conservatism and, 657 individuals and, 580–582 after World War I, 834, 835, 841,
culture of, 733–739 Jews in Middle Ages, 383–384 845–846
for nation building, 726–733 leprosy in, 384–385 in World War II, 882, 887
reform of, 683–691 manners in, 533–534 after World War II, 908
rural, 683–684 Marx on, 732 Solidarity movement, 965, 966
World War I and, 828–829 medieval, 300–301 Solomon (Israelite king), 48
Social programs. See also Social under Napoleon, 645–646 Solon (Athens), 68–69, 71
welfare Neo-Assyrian, 43 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 917, 956
Reagan on, 962 peasant, 266–267 Somalia, 989, 990
after World War I, 845 Plato on, 117 Somme region, battle in, 826
Social sciences postindustrial, 943–949 Sony Corporation, 939
in 19th century, 739 reforms of (mid-19th century), Sophia (Russia), 529
in postindustrial society, 948 687–689 Sophie (Austria), 814
[ S o p h ists — Sp a i n
] Index I-63
Sophists, 93, 95–96 Soviets (councils), 807, 831 Space exploration, 917
Sophocles (Athens), 101 Soviet Union. See also Russia; Soviet Space race, 940–941
Sorbonne, student riots at, 954 Union (former) Spain. See also Cortes (Spain);
Sorrows of Young Werther, The in 1920s, 851–852 Spanish Civil War; Spanish
(Goethe), 584 Afghanistan and, 133, 963, 965, Empire; specific rulers
Soubirous, Bernadette. See 980 in 15th century, 430
Bernadette (Saint) Berlin and, 906–907, 907(m), 925 American settlement by, 546
Soulforce (King), 927 Chernobyl catastrophe in, 964, baroque churches of, 498
South (global), 989–990, 994 986 Basque nationalists in, 960,
South (U.S.), 725, 951 China and, 938, 949, 957 960(m), 985
South Africa, 749, 803–804, 965, in cold war, 903–904, 949 Charles V and, 467–469
994–995 collapse of, 963–965, 973, in Common Market, 962
South African War (Boer War), 974–975, 977 constitutional monarchy in, 960
803–804, 813 Cuba and, 931 creation of, 430
South America. See also specific Czech protests and, 955–956, crusades in, 371–372
locations 955(m), 956(i) decline of, 556
colonization of, 491, 524, 546 détente and, 958, 962 Dutch and, 477, 478, 521
migration to, 762, 763 dissidents in, 956, 1002 England and, 479, 480, 601
slavery in, 524 eastern Europe and, 901, 904, 949 Enlightenment and, 582
western consumer economy and, education in, 946 explorations by, 441, 442, 444
999 effects of collapse, 977, 979–980 fascism in, 860, 873, 877–878
South Carolina, blacks in, 545 German occupation by, 892, fertility rate in, 988
Southeast Asia, 899, 951(m). See also 906–907, 907(m), 908 France and, 511–512, 557,
specific locations Gorbachev in, 938, 957, 963–965 558(m), 621, 634
France and, 712 under Khrushchev, 916–917, as global power, 469
sea routes to, 442 921(i), 930, 931, 932 gold imports by, 446
World War II and, 884 naming of, 852 Greek settlements in, 56
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization Nazi attack on, 882 industry in, 757
(SEATO), 919 Nazi-Soviet Pact and, 881 Inquisition in, 436
Southern Africa, imperialism in, nuclear power in, 942, 964 Iraq War and, 993
749 oil and, 959 Jews in, 315, 436
Southern Europe, economies of, Poland and, 881, 965 kingdom in, 262
490 purges in, 851, 866 Latin American independence
South Korea, 919, 994, 994(m) reforms in, 851, 917, 950 from, 665–666
South Vietnam, 919, 952, 957. See social welfare in, 914 Muslims and, 254, 324, 371–372,
also Vietnam Spanish Civil War and, 878 436, 474
Southwest (U.S.), 724 Stalin in, 860, 865–867, 903, Napoleon and, 643, 651–652
Southwest Africa, 804 915–916 nobility in, 586
Southwestern Asia, migrations from, as superpower, 900, 902–903, 946 Ottoman Turks and, 474
26–27 television in, 939, 956 Peace of Utrecht and, 513
Sovereignty, types of, 497 Vietnam and, 952 Peace of Westphalia and, 484–485,
Soviet bloc, 907, 958, 959, 969 women in, 866, 886, 915, 940, 485(m)
birthrate in, 946, 989 940(i) peasant revolt in, 483
collapse of, 938, 957, 963, World War II and, 882, 886, 887, reconquista in, 324, 371–372,
966–967, 968, 968(m) 888–889 372(m), 373(i)
dissent in, 916, 917, 954–956, after World War II, 901, 903 religious uniformity in, 436
965 Soviet Union (former). See also representative government in, 396
postindustrial work life in, 944 Commonwealth of revolts in, 662–663, 663(m)
recovery in, 915–917 Independent States; Russia Roman Catholicism in, 272, 557
reforms in, 950 artists and writers in, 1002–1003 Rome and, 160
revolutions of 1989 in, 966–967 Chechnya and, 980–981 St. Domingue and, 632
scientific findings in, 945–946 consequences of Soviet collapse slave trade and, 444, 690
Stalinism and, 915 and, 977, 979–980 succession in, 557
starvation music in, 948 corruption in, 977, 979, 980(i) terrorism in Madrid, 993
women in, 929, 945 countries of (c. 2000), 978(m) theaters in, 498
youth in, 928, 979–980 international politics and, in Thirty Years’ War, 483
Soviet republics, after World War I, 980–981 Umayyads in, 287
836 market economy in, 979 unemployment in, 996
I-64 Index
[ Spain — Sub -Saharan Africa
]
Spain (continued) Staël, Anne-Louise Germaine de, Steen, Jan, 523(i)
unity in early medieval, 272–273 645, 645(i), 652 Stephen I (Saint, Hungary), 308
Visigoths in, 231, 272–273 Stagflation, 959, 961–962 Stephen II (Pope), 274
voting rights in, 772 Stained-glass windows, 347, Stephenson, George, 673, 674, 676
War of the Polish Succession and, 353–354, 389, 389(i) Sterilization, 786
563 Stalin, Joseph, 903, 906 Stilicho (Vandals), 210(i)
Spanish-American War (1898), 804 cold war and, 904, 905 Still Life (Daguerre), 686(i)
Spanish Civil War, 874, 877–878, death of, 916 Stock market
878(m), 879(i) eastern Europe and, 904, 915 crash in 1929, 855, 859, 860–861
Spanish Empire, 446, 476–477, Hitler and, 881 limited liability corporations and,
476(m), 478 media and, 847 759
Spanish Fury, 472(i), 473, 478 rise to power, 852 Stoicism, 131–132, 199, 201
Spanish-language television, 1003 totalitarianism of, 860, 865–867 Stolypin, Pyotr, 807–808
Spanish Netherlands, 511–512 World War II and, 892, 893, 895, Stone Age, 3, 4–8. See also Neolithic
Sparta, 64(m). See also Allies, Greek 904 Age; Paleolithic Age
alliances of, 81 Stalingrad, battle of, 888 Stonewall riot, 952
Athens and, 77, 81, 85 Stalinism, 903, 915, 916 Stopes, Marie, 846
coalition against, 118 Stamp Act (1765), 601, 602(i) Stores, department, 760
families in, 62 Standard of living. See also Lifestyle Storm troopers (SA,
helots (slaves) in, 65 in Africa, 750 Stürmabteilung), 868, 869
men in, 65–66, 66(i), 67 of Dutch, 522(m) Story of My Misfortunes, The
oligarchy in, 64–67 of EU members, 983 (Abelard), 349
Peloponnesian War and, 78, globalization and, 1006 Story of Sinuhe, The (Egypt), 23
104–107 in global south, 989–990 Strasbourg, seizure of, 512
Persian Wars and, 81 medieval, 301 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty
population of, 67 plague and, 413 (SALT I, 1972), 958
women in, 66, 67 in Soviet Union, 949, 963 Strategos (general), 260
Spartacists, 835 welfare state and, 914–915 Strauss, Richard, 794
Spectator, The, 553 after World War II, 900, 908 Stravinsky, Igor, 794
Spencer, Herbert, 739 Standard Oil Trust, 759 Stream of consciousness technique,
Spending. See also Economy Starvation. See also Famines in literature, 850
on military, 813, 912, 918, 962, in Crimean War, 713 Strikes. See also Labor; Labor unions
963 in Soviet Union, 865 in British coal industry (1926),
in Rome, 203–204 World War II and, 885(i), 887 843
Speyer, Germany, Jews of, 334 Starvation Act (1834), 688 in colonies, 863
Sphinx, 16, 18(i) “Starvation” music, 948 in France, 954
Spices, 442, 443 State (nation). See also Church and government response to, 768–769
Spies and spying state; Nation-state; specific in London, 668, 768, 769(i)
books about, 930 states in Russia, 807, 808
former Nazis as, 906 in 18th century, 592–598 in Soviet bloc, 965
satellites for, 941 bureaucratic growth and, 727–728 in World War I, 830
Spinning jenny, 674 European system of, 556–564, after World War I, 843
Spinoza, Benedict, 523 558(m) Structuralism, 948
Spirit of the Laws, The power of, 676 Struggle of the orders (Rome),
(Montesquieu), 570 rebellions against power of, 152–153
Spoleto, duchy of, 273, 274 598–602 Stuart family (Scotland), 559
Spontaneous ovulation, 738 after Thirty Years’ War, 486–487 Students, 946
Sports State of nature, Hobbes on, 520 activism by, 701, 952–953, 954,
blood sports, 688 Statue of Liberty, 622(i) 957
in Greece, 52–53, 53(i) Statues. See Sculpture as clerics, 351
team, 765 Status. See Classes; Hierarchy; Social nationalistic, 664
Sputnik, 917 status; specific classes Styria, 527, 757
Square II, The (Giacometti), 893(i) Statute in Favor of the Princes, 392 Subjection of Women, The (Mill), 739
Srebrenica, massacre in, 975 Staufer clan, 361 Subjectivism, 95
SS (Schutzstaffel), 868 Steamboats, 676, 684, 694, 756 Submarines, in World War I, 824,
Stadholder (Dutch official), 522, 557, Steam engines, 674, 676 825, 830
560, 608, 656 Steel, 755, 995 Sub-Saharan Africa, 747, 824,
Stadium, Greek, 52 Steele, Richard, 553 921–922, 924, 989
[ Su b s iste n ce a g r i cu lt u re — Ta x at i o n
] Index I-65
Subsistence agriculture, 551 cold war and, 917, 919, 921(i), Syracuse
Subsistence economy, 549 932–933, 932(m) Carthage and, 81
Suburbs, 903, 915, 984 U.S. as dominant power and, Greek settlements in, 56
Succession 974 Peloponnesian Wars and, 106
in England, 518, 559 World War II and, 900 Persian Wars and, 80–81
in French Valois dynasty, 414(f) Superstition, religion and, 535, 567 Syria, 958, 993
to Muhammad, 253–255 Superstores, 984 Abbasids and, 285
in Rome, 184 Supply-side economics, 961 Christianity in, 223
in Spain, 557 Supranational organizations, Fatimids in, 287
Sudan, 989, 990 985–986 Greek trade and, 56
Sudetenland, 879–880 Supreme Court (U.S.), 927 Islam and, 253, 254
Suetonius (Rome), 293 Suras, 251, 251(i) nationalism in, 810
Suez Canal, 712, 731, 747, 888, 921 Surplus, agricultural, 7, 30, 266 refugees from, 997
Suffrage. See also Voting and voting Suttner, Bertha von, 796 Rome and, 167
rights Swabia, 362, 393 Sasanids in, 257
in Britain, 559, 600, 668, 702, 771 Sweden after World War I, 838
in France, 618, 698, 699 balance of power and, 562 Széchenyi, Stephen, 694, 701, 702
in Germany, 722, 768 birthrate in, 785
for men, 618, 668, 768, 772–773, Danes in, 298 Taaffe, Edouard von, 774
798 economy in, 912 Table of Ranks (Russia, 1772), 562
universal, 831 education in, 946 Tabula rasa, 521
universal male, 618, 722, 772–773 Franco-Austrian alliance and, Tacitus (historian)
for women, 796–797, 831, 841, 593 on Augustus, 178
841(f), 864, 910 in Great Depression, 871–872 historical works of, 191
Suffragists, in Britain, 796–797, 845 Great Northern War and, 562, Tagmata (mobile armies), 281
Sugar and sugar industry 563(m) Tahiti, as French protectorate, 690
in Caribbean region, 492 migration from, 762–763 Taifas (independent regions), 288,
slavery in, 446, 492, 544–545 Peace of Westphalia and, 484, 324
as standard food item, 546 485(m) Taiping (“Heavenly Kingdom”
Suger (abbot of Saint-Denis), 341, religious conflict in, 526 movement), 731
353–354 Russia and, 481, 481(m), 561, 562 Taiwan, as Pacific Tiger, 994, 994(m)
Suicide bombers, 981, 992 Social Democratic Party in, 769 Taliban, 992, 993
Sukarno, Achmed, 923 social welfare in, 871–872, 963 Talking cure, of Freud, 789–790
Suleiman I (the Magnificent, in Thirty Years’ War, 483 Talleyrand, Charles Maurice de,
Ottoman Empire), 464(i), 465 in War of Devolution, 511 655
Sulla, Lucius Cornelius (Rome), women in, 787, 954 Talmud, Palestinian and Babylonian,
163, 165–166 Swift, Jonathan, 565 219
Sultans, Ottoman, 408(i), 528 Swine flu, 989 Tanks, in World War I, 824, 834
Sumer and Sumerians, 8–12, 9(i), 13. Swiss Confederation, 429, 432–433 Tariffs
See also Mesopotamia Switzerland in Britain, 694, 873
Summa, 385 after Charlemagne, 295 in Germany, 774
Summa Theologiae (Thomas education in, 553 Tartuffe (Molière), 508
Aquinas), 386 egalitarianism in, 432–433 Tatars (Tartars), 400, 776, 807. See
Sun Also Rises, The (Hemingway), non-Europeans in, 923–924 also Mongols
846 Syllabus of Errors, The, 737 Tavernier, Jan, 431(i)
Sunday, naming of, 218 Symeon (monk), 226 Taxation
Sunday school movement, 687 Symmachus (Rome), 219 antiglobalization and, 986
Sun King, Louis XIV as, 508 Symposium, Greek, 94(i) of clergy, 397–398
Sunna, 255 Synagogues, 315(i), 316, 479. See in colonies, 601, 753
Sunni Muslims, 991(m) also Temples in Egypt, 22
crusades and, 332, 337 Syndicalists, 796 in England, 359, 514, 518, 961
Shi’ites and, 255, 286–287 Synods in France, 486, 510, 512, 610, 614,
Sun Yat-Sen (China), 806(m), 808 Henry IV excommunicated by, 615
“Superman,” Nietzsche on, 791 325 of gasoline, 988(i)
Superpowers, 902–903, 938, 973. See of Sutri (1046), 322 in Germany, 838, 839
also Soviet Union; United States of Whitby (664), 270, 272 in Hellenistic kingdoms, 125
balance of power and, 900, Synthetics, 912 of Jews, 383, 384
957–959 Syphilis, 446, 728, 796 by Justinian, 239–240
I-66 Index
[ Ta x at i o n — Th olos to mbs
]
Taxation (continued) Temperance, 673, 687 Thatcher, Margaret, 957, 960–962,
in Mesopotamia, 10 Templars, 336, 373(i) 961(i), 969
of peasants, 486–487, 490–491, Temples. See also Synagogues Theater(s). See also Drama
586 Egyptian, 20 professional, 497, 498, 533
representation and, 601 Greek, 86–88, 87(i) public, 686
in Rome, 178, 189, 215–216 Jewish, in Jerusalem, 48, 196, 336 in Russia, 529
in Russia, 562, 587, 807 in Rome, 150 Thebes, 23, 24
in Spain, 430, 459 Temporary workers, foreign, Alexander the Great and, 120
tithe as, 301, 490–491 924–925 Macedonians and, 120
in United States, 962 Tenant farmers Sparta and, 118, 119
Taylor, Frederick, 844 coloni as, 216, 265 Themes (Byzantine military
Tea Act (1773), 601 in England, 551 districts), 260, 281, 283
Teachers, women as, 687, 729 in Ireland, 771 Themistocles (Athens), 80, 81
Team sports, 765 Ten Commandments, 47 Theocracy, in Geneva, 453
Technocrats, 913 Ten Days That Shook the World Theocritus (poet), 129
Technology, 912, 937. See also (movie), 848 Theodora (Byzantine empress), 236,
Metals and metallurgy; Tennis court oath, 612 237–238, 238(i), 240
Science; Weapons Tennyson, Alfred (Lord), 688 Theodoric (Ostrogoths), 233
in 1920s, 850–851 Tenochtitlán (Mexico City), 445 Theodorus the Atheist, 133
in Britain, 756, 946 Tereshkova, Valentina, 940, 940(i) Theodosius I (Rome), 212, 214, 219,
bubble in, 995 Terror, the (France), 619–628 231
communications, 998 Terrorism Theogony (Hesiod), 54
in Crimean War, 713 in Algeria, 923 Theology. See also Religion; specific
Einstein’s theories applied to, 792 al-Qaeda and, 990 groups
exchange of, 4 by anarchists, 796 of Calvin, 453
impact of, 948, 969, 999, 1007 by Basque nationalists, 985 Enlightenment and, 580
imperialism and, 756 by Chechens, 981 of Jansenists, 509–510
information technology, 938–940, in Europe, 959–960 of Luther, 451
1007 as global issue, 974, 992–993, of Peter the Chanter, 350
medical, 942–943 1006 schools of, 349
metallurgy and, 12 in Ireland, 843, 960, 960(m) Thérèse (Congolese immigrant),
military, 121, 134, 465 in London, 993 973, 974, 998, 1005
Neo-Assyrian, 43 in Madrid, 993 Thermidorian Reaction, 627
nuclear, 941–942 Middle East and, 992 Thermopylae, battle at, 81
reproductive, 942–943 in Nazi Germany, 868–869 Thévenin, Charles, 612(i)
space, 917, 940–941 on September 11, 2001, 992(i), Third Crusade, 359, 370
training in, 729 993 Third Estate (general populace), in
voyages of discovery and, at U.S. embassy in Iran, 959 France, 611, 612, 613(i)
442–443 war against, 993 Third Lateran Council, 384–385
in World War I, 824, 827 in West Germany, 960, 962 Third Punic War, 159
Technopoles, 950 Tertullian, 197 Third Reich (Germany), 869, 889,
Teenagers. See also Young people Test Act (England), 518 926
in postindustrial society, 946–947 Test-ban treaty (1963), 931–932 Third Republic (France), 772,
Teheran, U.S. embassy hostages in, Test-tube babies, 943, 943(i) 799–800
959 Tetanus, 942 Third Section (political police), 664
Telecommunications, 974 Tet offensive, 954 Third world, 900, 918
Telegraph, 713 Tetradia, 268–269 Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, 480
Telephone, 755, 760(i), 771 Tetrarchy, 213, 214 Thirty Tyrants (Athens), 107, 114,
Telescope, 494, 941 Tetzel, Johann, 450 116
Television, 931, 966 Texas, 724 Thirty Years’ War
in 1950s and 1960s, 929–930 Textile industry Baltic region following, 562
in 1960s and 1970s, 938–939, 946 in Britain, 678, 796–797 economic crisis after, 489–490
Einstein’s theories applied to, 792 Dutch, 560 effects of, 483–484, 486–487, 527
satellite-beamed telecasts on, 966, in India, 678 origins and course of, 482–483
999 industrialization of, 674–675 Peace of Westphalia and, 484–486,
Soviet, 956, 964 T4 project, 870, 885 485(m)
Spanish-language, 1003 Thailand, 995, 1005 violence of, 484(i)
Tell el-Amarna, 25 Thales of Miletus, 72 Tholos tombs (Mycenae), 32
[ Th omas Aquinas — Trinit y (Christian )
] Index I-67
Thomas Aquinas (Saint), 386, 418 Totalitarianism. See also Ottoman, 418
Thomas of Norwich, 384 Authoritarianism; Roman, 189
Thornton, Alice, 490 Dictatorships Suez Canal and, 731
Thoth (god), 20 in Europe, 864–870 in Sumer, 8
Thrace, 44 French Revolution and, 607 in western Europe, 267
Persian invasion of, 80(m) Total war West German, 949–950
Three Emperors’ League, 773 World War I as, 822, 827, 836 Trade routes, 442–443, 444
Three-field system, 296, 297(f), 301 World War II as, 900 Trade unions, 697, 796. See also
Three Guineas (Woolf), 874–875 To the Nobility of the German Nation Labor unions
Thucydides of Athens (historian), (Luther), 451 Trading companies, French, 511,
98, 99 Touraine, France and, 360 557. See also specific companies
on Peloponnesian War, 104, 106 Tour de France, 765 Trafalgar, battle of, 648
Thuringia, Peasants’ War in, 455 Tourism Tragedy (drama)
Tiananmen Square, protests in battlefield, 840, 850 Greek, 99–102
(1989), 965–966, 999 Great War, 850 of Shakespeare, 498
Tiberius (Rome), 184–185, 189, in West, 1000(i) Trajan (Rome), 186, 188(m), 191
194 Tours (city), 249, 265, 265(m) Transportation. See also Canals;
Tiberius Gracchus. See Gracchus Toussaint L’Ouverture, François- Travel; specific types
family Dominique, 632(i), 633 in 12th century, 317
Tigris River region, 3, 4, 8 Tower of the Winds (Athens), 132(i) of food, 756
Tilak, B. G., 808–809 Towns. See Cities and towns; Urban in Greece, 55
Tilsit, Treaties of, 649 areas; Villages; specific Trans-Siberian Railroad, 751, 758,
Time of Troubles (Russia), 481 locations 804
Tin, 756 Toxic waste, in lakes and rivers, 986 Transubstantiation, 381
Tinguely, Jean, 947–948 Trade. See also Commerce; Transvaal, 803
“Tintern Abbey” (Wordsworth), Economy; Free trade Transvestitism, 789
660 in 1050–1150, 313–314 Transylvania, 564, 691
Tipu Sultan, 633 Assyrian, 13 Trasformismo policy (Italy), 798
Tithe, 301, 490–491, 586, 611 in Athens, 115 Travel
Tito (Josip Broz), 905–906 Atlantic system of, 541, 542–548 civilian, 912, 979
Titus (Rome), 186 in Baltic region, 373 literature about, 568–570
Colosseum and, 186, 187(i) Byzantine, 281–282, 284 Montesquieu on, 569
Jews and, 196 Carolingian, 295–296 in Rome, 262–263
Tobacco, 492, 546 with China, 401 Travels in Icaria (Cabet), 696
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 679 civilizations and, 4 Treasury of Atreas (Mycenaean
Togo, 838 Common Market and, 912–913, domed tomb), 35
Togoland, 804 949 Treaties. See also specific treaties
Toilets, public, 727 Congress of Vienna and, 656–657 after War of the Spanish
Tokyo, World War II and, 883, 891 cultural interaction through, 32 Succession, 556–557
Toledo, Spain, 272 Dutch, 518, 522–523, 522(m), 560 after World War I, 837
Tolerance. See Religion(s); Religious economy and, 488 Trench warfare, in World War I, 813,
toleration Egyptian, 23, 35 823(m), 825–827, 826(i)
Toleration Act (England), 519 European imperialism and, Trent, Council of, 459–460
Tolstoy, Leo, 775, 776 778(m) Trial, The (Kafka), 850
Tombs. See Burials European patterns of (c. 1740), Trials
To Myself (Meditations, Marcus 543(m) of Galileo, 494(i)
Aurelius), 201 in former Soviet Union, 979 of Nazis, 909
Tonkin, 751 by France, 511, 590 of terrorists, 993
Tools, 4, 12, 51 in Great Depression, 864, 873 of witches, 499–500
Topkapi Saray, 409 Greek, 50, 55–56 Tribal Assembly (Rome), 155
Torah, 47 Hanseatic League and, 429 Tribes. See also specific groups
Tordesillas, Treaty of, 443(m), 444 by hunter-gatherers, 5 barbarian, 229
Tories (Britain), 518, 519, 560, 668, Islamic networks of, 288 Tribunes (Rome), 155, 177
724 Jews in, 315 Tricolor (French flag), 623
Torture Mycenaean, 32 Triennial Act (Great Britain), 559
efforts to abolish, 575, 579 in Near East, 6(m) Trier, as Roman city, 262, 263
natural law and, 497 by nobility, 586 Trilogy, tragedies as, 100
of witches, 499–500 open doors in, 892 Trinity (Christian), 222–223, 453
I-68 Index
[ Tri n it y, o f P l o t i n u s — U n ite d States
]
Trinity, of Plotinus, 201 Turner, Joseph M. W., 660, 684, in Great Depression, 860, 861,
Triple Alliance, 775, 777, 810, 822 684(i) 861(i), 871
Triremes (warships), 82, 82(i) Tustari brothers (merchants), 288 insurance for, 873
Tristan, Flora, 696 Tutankhamun (Egypt), 25 in mid-19th century, 698
Triumvirates (Rome) Twelve Tables (Rome), 154 oil embargo and, 958–959
First, 167–168 Twilight (Grosz), 849(i) after World War I, 841
Second, 176–177 2001: A Space Odyssey (movie), Unification. See also Berlin;
Trivium, 348–349 940–941, 956 Germany; Reunification
Trojan War, 32, 34, 41 Two Treatises of Government of Europe, 981
Tromboncino, Bartolomeo, 428 (Locke), 520 of Germany, 701, 705, 719–722,
Troops. See Military; Soldiers Tychê (god), 137, 136 721(m)
Trotsky, Leon, 832(i), 833, 852 Typefaces, 294 of Italy, 700, 705, 717–719, 718(m)
Troubadours, 364–366, 366(f) Typewriter, 755 Unified law code, in Austria, 595
Trouvères (singers), 365–366 Typhoid, 727 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Troy, 32, 52, 101(i), 166(i) Tyrants and tyranny (USSR). See Soviet Union
Truce of God movement, 303, 332 in Athens, 84 Union of Soviet Writers, 866
Truce of Nice (1538), 463(i) in Corinth, 67 Unions. See Labor unions
Truman, Harry S, 892, 904, 905 government and, 56–57 United Kingdom. See Britain;
Truman Doctrine, 904–905 in Greece, 59, 61 England
Trusts (business), 759 Tyre, 121 United Nations (UN), 900, 991
Truth Tyrol, 527 formation of, 892
in Hellenistic philosophy, 131 Tz’u-hsi (Cixi), 808 Korean War and, 919
Protagoras on, 95 newly independent nations in,
Tsars (Russia). See also specific U-boats. See Submarines 923
individuals Ukraine Palestine partition and, 920,
as absolutists, 528 Cossacks in, 525 920(m)
Tsushima Strait, battle of, 806 fertility in, 989 United States. See also Iraq War;
Tuberculosis, 914 land in, 551 specific presidents
Tudor monarchs (England), 432, Russia and, 525, 981 American Revolution and,
454. See also specific World War II and, 882, 883 601–602
monarchs Ulm, Bavaria, Napoleon in, 649 arts in, 851, 947
Tullia (Rome), 147 Ulster, 517 assassinations by anarchists in, 796
Tunis, 56. See also Carthage Ultra code-breaking group, 882 Canada and, 726
Tunisia. See also Carthage Ultrarevolutionaries (France), 625 cholera in, 681
digital media and government Ulysses (Joyce), 850 civil rights in, 900, 927, 950–951,
change in, 999 Umayyads 952
Fatimids in, 287 caliphate of, 254–255, 256, 280, Civil War in, 714(i), 725
France and, 747 285 in cold war, 903–904, 918–919
independence for, 923 Great Mosque at Damascus and, culture in, 1003
Turgenev, Ivan, 734 256(i) détente policy and, 958, 962
Turgot, Jacques, 598, 599 Islam and, 254(m) as dominant world power, 974
Turkey. See also Anatolia; Ottoman Qur’an and, 251(i) economy in, 756–757, 844, 962,
Empire in Spain, 287 974, 994, 996, 1006(m)
Armenians in, 828 Ummah, 252, 253, 254(m) emigration to, 682, 763
in cold war, 904–905 UN. See United Nations environment and, 988
in eastern Roman Empire, 249 Unam Sanctam (papal bull), 398–399 expansion of, 724, 725(m)
in EU, 982 Unbearable Lightness of Being, The France and, 633, 648
food supplies and, 5–6 (Kundera), 956 German occupation by, 892,
Germany and, 811 Uncertainty (indeterminacy) 906–907, 907(m)
Kemal Atatürk in, 864 principle, 875 Great Depression in, 871
migration from, 841, 924 Unconscious, Freud on, 789 Great Society in, 951
nationalism in, 810 Unemployment imperialism by, 804
Russian war with, 774 assistance, 798 industry in, 756–757
Turks. See also Ottoman Empire; in Britain, 861, 873 Iraq War and, 993
Ottoman Turks in depression of 1873, 758 Jewish migration to, 802
Mamluks as, 285–286 in France, 611–612, 962 McCarthy in, 911
Ottoman, 409, 463, 465 in Germany, 861, 861(i), 869 Monroe Doctrine and, 666
Seljuk, 332, 338, 370 in global economic crisis, 996 NAFTA and, 981
[ Unite d States — Veterans
] Index I-69
national debt in, 957, 958, 994 Upper Egypt, 16, 24(i) Van Gogh, Vincent, 766, 767
poverty in, 951 Ur (Mesopotamian city-state), 8, 10, Varro (writer), 422
railroads in, 676 47 Vassals and vassalage
real estate bubble in, 995–996 Ur III dynasty (Sumer), 13 Carolingian, 295
reform societies in, 687 Urban II (Pope), 332–333 in England, 340, 359
research funding by, 945 Urban VI (Pope), 418 in France, 306
second Great Awakening in, 659 Urban areas. See also Cities and medieval, 300, 302
slavery in, 602, 690, 724–725 towns; specific locations Vassilacchi, Antonio, 477(i)
stock market and (1929), 855, Byzantine, 259–260 Vatican. See also Roman
859, 860–861 charity in, 590 Catholicism; Sistine Chapel
as superpower, 900, 902–903, factories in, 678–679 as independent state, 854
974 globalization and, 981 Vatican II, 925
television in, 929, 938, 939, 1003 in Greece, 85–89 Vauxhall Gardens, London, 552(i)
terrorist attack on, 992(i), 993 industrialization and, 673, Vega, Lope de, 498
Vietnam and, 919, 938, 949, 680–681 Veii (Etruscan town), 156
951–952, 951(m), 957 in Rome, 180 Velázquez, Diego, 486(i)
Watergate scandal in, 958 social life in, 551–554 Vellum, 448
women in, 796 after World War II, 915 Velvet revolution, in Czechoslovakia,
World War I and, 830 Urbanization. See also Cities and 967
World War II and, 883, 887, 889, towns; specific locations Vendée rebellion, 624–625, 626
895, 900–901 birthrates and, 681, 785 Venereal disease, 728
United States of Belgium, 609 in Britain, 680–681 Venetia, 691, 717, 719
Universal Exhibition (Manet), 736 in Dutch Republic, 523 Venice
Universal Exposition (1889), 755 industrialization and, 674, arts in, 433–434, 434(i)
Universal gravitation, law of, 496 680–682 Asian trade by, 401
Universal male suffrage internal migration and, 551, 763 Byzantine trade and, 282
in Belgium, 772 Urbino, 462 classes in, 433
in France, 618 Uruk (Mesopotamian city-state), 8, crusaders in, 370
in Germany, 722 10 uprising in, 700
in Italy, 773 USSR. See Soviet Union Ventris, Michael, 33
in Netherlands, 773 Usury, 319 Verdi, Giuseppe, 708(i), 709, 719,
in Spain, 772 Uthman (Umayyad), 254–255 731, 736
Universe, 875, 941. See also Utilitarianism, 694 Verdun
Astronomy Utopia, communist, 851–852 battle at, 826
Universities. See also Education; Utrecht Treaty of (843), 292(m), 295, 306
Higher education; specific occupation of, 608 Vernacular languages
locations Peace of, 513, 564 courtly culture in, 364–367
Black Death and, 413 Uzbekistan, Alexander the Great in, in England, 304–305
curriculum of, 952–953 121 medieval literature in, 364–367,
Dutch, 523 387
Great Awakening and, 584 Vaccines, 914, 989 Versailles
growth of, 946 Václav (Bohemia), 308 Estates General at, 612
as guilds, 351 Valens (Rome), 223, 231 festivities at, 505, 508
Jesuit, 460 Vallain, Jeanne-Louise, 622(i) palace at, 509
in Middle Ages, 347, 348–351 Valois dynasty (France), 413, 414(f), women’s march to, 606(i), 607,
protests at, 954 463–465, 474 615
Upper classes. See also Aristocracy; Values Versailles Treaty, 837, 840, 876, 880
Classes; Elites; Lords advertising of, 930 Vesalius, Andreas, 495
cleanliness and, 566 postmodernism and, 2–5, 1005 Vespasian (Rome), 186
culture of, 533 restoration of “western,” 925–926 Vespucci, Amerigo, 444
Enlightenment and, 575 in Rome, 144, 148, 163, 165, 216, Vesta (god), cult of, 148–149
in France, 611 235 Vestal Virgins (Rome), 149
lifestyle of, 761–762 during World War II, 892 Vesuvius, eruption of, 162(i), 180(i),
literacy of, 553 Vandals, 210(i), 232, 235, 240 186
in rural areas, 682–683 Van de Velde, Theodor, 846 Veterans
in Russia, 561–562 Van de Venne, Adriaen Pietersz, in Rome, 167
women in, 688, 689 489(i) after World War I, 840, 845–846
in World War I, 829 Van Eyck, Jan, 427, 427(i) after World War II, 913
I-70 Index
[ Veto — Wars and warfare
]
Veto, absolute power of, 525 in Thirty Years’ War, 484(i) Wagner, Richard, 736
Veturia (Rome), tombstone of, 193 Western civilization and Walentynowicz, Anna, 965
Vichy France, 882 (1200–1000 b.c.e.), 34 Wales, 233, 680
Victor Emmanuel II (Italy), 709, Vipsania (Rome), 185 Walesa, Lech, 965
717, 718–719 Virgil (Rome), 183, 293, 387 Wallachia, 713
Victor Emmanuel III (Italy), 852 Virginia, African slaves in, 488, 545 Walled cities
Victoria (England), 689, 703, 723, Virginity, in Christianity, 226 commerce and, 314–315
724, 727, 730 Virgin Mary, 535 Frankish, 265
Victorian society, 689, 723–724 Virgin of Chancellor Rolin, The (Van Minoans and, 30
Video recorders, 939 Eyck), 427(i) Piacenza as, 317, 317(m)
Videotape, 939, 999 Virtue(s) Wallenberg, Raoul, 887
Vienna. See also Congress of of Merovingian warriors, 267 Wallenstein, Albrecht von, 482, 483
Vienna in Rome, 144–145 Walpole, Robert, 559–560
“homes for heroes” in, 845–846, Viruses, 942, 989 Wannsee, Germany, 884
846(i) Visigoths, 232, 233, 272–273 War against terrorism, 993
industry in, 757 Visual arts. See also Art(s); Painting; War and Peace (Tolstoy), 775
Jews in, 801 Sculpture War communism, in Russia, 833,
Napoleon and, 649 realism in, 735(i), 736 851
Nazi rule in, 879 secular subjects in, 493 War debts, German, 838–839
rebuilding of, 726 in technocratic society, 947–948 War guilt clause, 838
sieges of, 464(i), 465, 526 Vladimir (Kiev and Russia), 284 Warhol, Andy, 947
university at, 413 Voice of America, 931 War ministries, in World War I, 828
uprisings in, 701, 702 Volksgemeinschaft, in Germany, 868 War of Devolution, 511
Vietcong, 952, 954 Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), War of Independence (United
Viet Minh, 919 577 States). See American War of
Vietnam. See also Indochina; anticlericalism of, 657 Independence
Vietnam War Catherine II and, 575, 592 War of Italian Unification, 712
in cold war, 919 persecution of, 568, 582 War of the Austrian Succession, 564,
division of, 919 Philosophical Dictionary, 579, 571(m), 594
France and, 751, 919, 951(m) 583(f) War of the League of Augsburg
World War II and, 892 on religious fanaticism, 576, 579 (Nine Years’ War), 512
Vietnam War, 932(m), 938, 949, Von Bülow, Frieda, 745, 746, 747, War of the Polish Succession, 563
951–952, 951(m), 958 778 War of the Spanish Succession,
protests against, 957 Voting and voting rights. See also 512–513, 526, 556–557, 558(m)
Tet offensive in, 954 Suffrage Warriors. See also Military; Soldiers
Vigée-Lebrun, Marie-Louise- in 19th century, 768 Greek, 33, 60(i)
Élizabeth, 610(i), 645(i) in Athens, 68 medieval, 302–303
Vikings in Britain, 559, 600, 668, 702, 724, Merovingian, 267
in England, 298, 305 771 in post-Carolingian society, 299
invasions by, 297–298 in France, 611, 612, 615, 618, 641, Wars and warfare. See also Crusades;
Kievan Russia and, 284 658, 667, 698, 699, 910 Mercenaries; Military;
Villages. See also Cities and towns in Germany, 722 Violence; Weapons; specific
demes as, 70, 86(m) in Italy, 798 battles and wars
forms of justice in, 536 in Rome, 154 advantages to, 817
Frankish, 265 in Russia, 795 Alexander the Great and, 121
medieval, 301 Voyages of exploration, 441, Bismarck and, 719–722
Villeneuve Saint-Georges (manor), 442–444, 443(m) in Byzantine Empire, 257–259
296 Vulcanization, of rubber, 682, 785 dynastic, 463–465
Violence. See also Terrorism; Wars Vulgate Bible, 293, 460 during French Revolution, 617,
and warfare; specific locations 619, 620–621, 626, 628–633,
by anarchists, 770, 796 Wage and price controls, under 630(m)
in early Western civilization, Diocletian, 215–216 French wars of religion and,
34–36, 36(m) Wages, 962 474–476
by fascists, 852, 853 c. 1730, 590 in global age, 1006
medieval, 303–304 by gender, 845, 945 in Greece, 33
in nation building, 710 rise of, 487 Hundred Years’ War and, 413–416
in Roman entertainment, 181 for women, 759–760, 770, 862, of Louis XIV, 511–512, 512(f),
by suffragists, 797 945, 953 513(m)
[ Wars and warfare — Westernization
] Index I-71
Merovingian aristocratic, 268– in World War I, 828–829, 829(i) Working class. See also Workers
269 after World War I, 841, 841(f) education and, 728, 729, 795
middle class, 688, 689 World War II and, 886, 887–888 government assistance for, 798
Minoan, 30 after World War II, 908 intervention in lives of, 688, 764
monastic communities for, 228 Women in Love (Lawrence), 846 lifestyle of, 682, 761–764
nation-building and, 717(i) Women’s Paradise (Zola), 766 political parties of, 769, 774,
in Nazi Germany, 869, 886 Women’s rights, 644, 688, 739, 787, 795–796
Neo-Assyrian, 43 796–797, 953 protests by, 731–733
new woman and, 787–788 Women’s Social and Political Union socialism and, 695–696
as nurses, 713, 714(i) (WSPU), 797 sports, leisure, and, 765
Olympic Games and, 52–53 Wonders of the World, The, 129 use of term, 678
outwork by, 763–764 Woolf, Virginia, 849, 850, 874–875 white-collar service personnel in,
paintings by, 549(i), 767, 767(i) Wordsworth, William, 660 944–945
Paleolithic, 5, 6 Workday, industrial, 678, 679–680 women in, 689, 796–797
in Paris Commune, 733 Worker Opposition (Soviet Union), World War I and, 827
patrilineal inheritance and, 303 851 Workplace, 678, 679–680
as political activists, 698, 768, 770, Workers. See also Labor; Slaves and Works and Days (Hesiod), 54
965 slavery World Bank, 985, 990
portrayed in arts, 874, 947 agricultural, 551 World Court, Milosevic and, 976
in postwar society, 929, 945 Chartists and, 697, 703 World economy. See Global
as prime minister, 957, 960–962 community activities of, 770 economy
in professions, 729 computers and, 939–940 World Trade Center, destruction of,
property of, 148 in England, 668 992(i), 993
protective legislation for, 765 in factories, 678–679, 763–764 World Trade Organization, 985
protests by, 953–954, 953(i), 965 foreign, 923–925, 997–998 Worldview, secular vs. religious,
reading by, 553 in France, 611, 613, 618, 698, 699, 492–500
in realist art, 735(i) 873, 954 World War I
in recession (17th century), 490 globalization and, 984, 994, 997, alliances before, 810–813
reform and, 673, 687 999 alliances in, 822–824
religion and, 737 in Great Depression, 861, 861(i) arms race prior to, 810, 813–814
in religious orders, 368–369, 383 guest, 924–925 artistic expression during, 820(i)
as Roman slaves, 181 labor unions and, 678, 768–770 Balkan region prior to and,
in Rome, 144–145, 146–148, in medieval crafts, 318–319 811–813
147(i) migrant, 952 battles in, 825–827
in Russia, 561, 716 migrations by, 762–763, 923–925, colonial troops in, 824, 827
as salon hostesses, 533, 577–578 997–998 ending of (1918), 834
in sciences, 532–533, 534, 792 in multinationals, 944 Europe at outbreak of, 816(m)
scientific theories about, 738 in Napoleonic Code, 644–645 Europe after, 834, 835, 840–847,
separate spheres and, 688–689 in Nazi Germany, 869 902(m)
sexuality and, 591–592, 789 outworkers as, 755–756, 763–764, events leading to, 810–815
social and legal status of, 688 939 fronts in, 823(m)
socialism and, 696, 697 in postindustrial age, 944–945 home front in, 827–829
social manners and, 533–534 protests by, 954, 965 Ireland and, 830
Soviet, 852, 866, 903, 915, 929, in Russia, 795–796, 807, 977 mandate system after, 838
945 sans-culottes as, 611, 613, 618, mobilization for, 815
in space exploration, 940, 940(i) 625 outbreak of, 814–815, 816(m)
Spartan, 66, 67 in Soviet bloc, 915 peace after, 828, 835–838
sports and, 765 in Soviet Union, 865 protests against, 830
in sweat shops, 994 in textile industry, 675 Russian withdrawal from, 831
in Turkey, 864 in welfare state, 914–915 trench warfare in, 813, 823(m),
upper-class, 688, 689, 762 women as, 759–760, 760(i), 825–827, 826(i)
welfare-state policies and, 913, 763–764, 841, 845, 886, 912, United States in, 830
914 929, 994 women in, 828–829, 829(i)
witch trials and, 499–500 workplace conditions and, World War II
in workforce, 680, 703, 759–760, 679–680 in Africa, 887, 888, 889(m)
760(i), 763–764, 841, 912, 929, World War I and, 828–829 alliances before, 877
945, 994 after World War I, 835, 836, 845 civilians in, 860, 878, 879(i),
working class, 689 Workhouses, 590, 688 883–886, 891
I-74 Index
[ Wo rl d War I I — Zw i n g l i
]
World War II (continued) travel, 568–570 Yugoslavia, 973
colonized peoples in, 875, 887 in vernacular, 387 breakup of, 968(m), 974, 975–976,
in Europe, 860, 881–882, Wyck, Thomas, 517(i) 976(m), 985
887–889, 889(m) Wycliffe, John, 420, 453 after Communist revolution,
Europe after, 894(m), 901, 902(m) 906(m)
events leading to, 875–881 Xenophanes of Colophon, 72–73 ethnic groups in, 975, 976(m)
German surrender in, 889 Xenophon (author), 66 former (c. 2000), 976(m), 985–986
Holocaust during, 883–886 Xerxes I (Persia), 79–81 in Little Entente, 840
home front in, 886–887 Xhosa people, 749 migration of Magyars from, 841
imperialism preceding, 875–877 resistance to Soviets in, 905–906
Japanese surrender and, 892 Yahweh (Hebrew deity), 47, 48, 138 after World War I, 836
outbreak of, 859, 860, 881 Yalta meeting (1945), 892, 906 World War II and, 892
in Pacific region, 883, 890(m) Yeats, William Butler, 798 Yukos Oil Company (Russia), 977
postwar settlement and, 892–893 Yehud (kingdom), 48
resistance in, 887–888 Yeltsin, Boris, 965, 977 Zachary (Pope), 274, 290
Spain as training ground for, 878 Yeomanry, in England, 432 Zakat (tax), 253
wartime agreements in, 892–893 Yom Kippur War, 958 Zama, battle of, 159
weapons in, 881, 886 Young Bosnians, 815(i) Zara, Dalmatia, 370
World Wide Web, 974, 998, 1004, Young Ireland movement, 693 Zarathustra (prophet), 45–46
1007 Young Italy, 691–692 Zasulich,Vera, 775
Worms Young people. See also Students Zemstvos (Russian councils), 715,
Concordat of (1122), 326, 341, in 1920s, 846 807
361, 363 activism by, 701, 952–953 Zeno (eastern Roman Empire), 233
Imperial Diet of (1521), 451 in former Soviet bloc, 979–980 Zenobia (Palmyra), 205
Jews of, 334 generation gap and, 947 Zeus (god), 54, 63, 148
synagogue in, 315(i) in Great Depression, 862 Zhukov, Marshal, 915
Wretched of the Earth, The (Fanon), in Nazi Germany, 867, 869 Ziggurats, in Sumer, 9(i), 10, 13
927 postwar youth culture and, Zionism, 803, 901
Writing 927–928, 928(i) Zola, Émile, 765–766, 799
cuneiform, 11–12, 11(i) in Russia, 716 Zollverein (customs union), 692
Egyptian, 16, 19, 19(i) sexuality and, 942, 946 Zones of occupation, in Germany.
Linear A, 28 social reform and, 764 See Occupation (military)
Linear B, 33, 35 Young Plan (1929), 839 Zoroastrianism, 45–46, 48
in Mesopotamia, 11–12, 11(i) Young Turks, 810, 811 Zulu people, 749
in Mycenae, 32 Youth culture, 927–928, 947 Zurich, Zwingli in, 452, 455–456
social status and, 553 Ypsilanti, Alexander, 664 Zwingli, Huldrych, 452, 455–456
About the Authors
Lynn Hunt (PhD., Stanford University) Chicago and has been visiting
is Eugen Weber Professor of Modern professor at the Universities of Utrecht
European History at University of (Netherlands), Gothenburg (Sweden), and
California, Los Angeles. She is the author Oxford (Trinity College, England). She
or editor of several books, including is the author or editor of many books,
most recently Inventing Human Rights, including A Short History of the Middle
Measuring Time, Making History, and Ages and the very recent Generations of
The Book that Changed Europe. Feeling: A History of Emotion, 600–1700.
Thomas R. Martin (PhD., Harvard Bonnie G. Smith (PhD., University
University) is Jeremiah O’Connor of Rochester) is Board of Governors
Professor in Classics at the College of the Professor of History at Rutgers University.
Holy Cross. He is the author of Ancient She is author or editor of several books
Greece and Ancient Rome, and was one including Ladies of the Leisure Class;
of the originators of Perseus: Interactive The Gender of History: Men, Women
Sources and Studies on Ancient Greece and Historical Practice; and The Oxford
(perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/). Encyclopedia of Women in World
Barbara H. Rosenwein (PhD., History. Currently, she is studying the
University of Chicago) is professor globalization of European culture and
emerita of history at Loyola University society since the seventeenth century.