The emergence of modern europe Europe tightened The great geographic discoveries then in process were integrating Europe into a world economic system New commodities many of them imported from recently discovered lands enriched material life Both trade and the production of goods increased as a result of new ways of organizing production Merchants entrepreneurs and bankers accumulated and manipulated capital in unprec edented volume Most historians locate in the 16th century the beginning or at least the maturing of Western capital ism Capital assumed a major role not only in economic orga nization but also in political life and international relations Culturally new values many of them associated with the Renaissance and Reformation diffused through Europe and changed the ways in which people acted and the perspec tives by which they viewed themselves and the world This world of early capitalism however can hardly be regarded as stable or uniformly prosperous Financial crashes were common the Spanish crown the heaviest borrower in Europe suffered repeated bankruptcies in 1557 1575 77 1596 1607 1627 and 1647 The poor and destitute in soci ety became if not more numerous at least more visible Even as capitalism advanced in the West the once-free peasants of central and eastern Europe slipped into serfdom The appar ent prosperity of the 16th century gave way in the middle 10
InTroducTIon and late periods of the 17th century to a general crisis in many European regions Politically the new centralized states insisted on new levels of cultural conformity on the part of their subjects Several states expelled Jews and almost all of them refused to tolerate religious dissenters Culturally in spite of the revival of ancient learning and the reform of the churches a hysterical fear of witches grasped large segments of the population including the learned Understandably historians have had difficulty defining the exact place of this complex century in the course of European development In western Europe nation-states emerged under strong monarchical governments breaking down local immunities and destroying the unity of the European respublica Chris tiana Christian republic Centralized bureaucracy came to replace medieval government Underlying economic changes affected social stability Secular values prevailed in politics and the concept of a balance of power came to dominate international relations Diplomacy and warfare were conducted by new methods Sovereigns established permanent embassies in other states and on the battlefield standing armies of professional and mercenary soldiers took the place of the feudal array that had reflected the social structure of the past At the same time scientific discoveries cast doubt on the traditional cosmology The systems of 11
The emergence of modern europe Aristotle and Ptolemy which had long been sanctified by clerical approval were undermined by Copernicus Merca tor Galileo and Kepler Religious dynastic territorial and commercial rival ries among the states of Europe led to a series of wars known as the Thirty Years War 1618 48 Its destructive cam paigns and battles occurred over most of Europe and when it ended with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 the map of Europe had been irrevocably changed 12
Economics and sociEty T he 16th century’s economic expansion owed much to powerful changes that were already under way by 1500 At that time Europe com prised only between one-third and one-half the population it had possessed in about 1300 The infamous Black Death of 1347 50 principally accounts for the huge losses but plagues were recurrent famines frequent wars incessant and social tensions high as the Middle Ages ended The late medieval disasters radically transformed the structures of European society the ways by which it produced food and goods distributed income organized its society and state and looked at the world The huge human losses altered the old balances among the classical factors of production labour land and capital The fall in population forced up wages in the towns and depressed rents in the countryside as the fewer 13 chapTer one
